Redesign UC Davis bookstore Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Redesign UC Davis bookstore - Essay Example The university soon took control of the UCD Davis bookstore and established itself as its legitimate owner over time. After a period of time ASUCD tried to regain control of the bookstore. It culminated when; in 1982 ASUCD sued the UC Regents for one million dollars in lost profits and for control of the bookstore. The university did not respond well and even threatened to kick ASUCD off campus and to revoke ASUCD owned Unitrans’ – the primary bus service within the campus – insurance. Eventually, ASUCD dropped its lawsuit and signed a Memorandum of Understanding to relinquish all control of the bookstore; in return, ASUCD receives $20,000 a year from the bookstore’s revenue to use on the Memorial Union. The university’s ownership of the bookstore is strong and will continue to hold for the years to come. Another reason that it does not perform to it full potential and the subsequent need to redesign the space is the fact that the UC Davis Bookstore sells more than just books. The range of products available inside the store makes it more like a one-stop shop for students needs. If the space is cluttered or disorganized, the flow of goods and people within the store will also suffer.

Business Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Business Strategy - Essay Example This will range from an individual to an organisation. A contractor of a construction project can subcontract the electricity wiring to the subcontractor. Recommendation as a subcontractor or main contractor The amount of resources available would determine whether a company or an individual can be the main contractor or the subcontractor. The private family owned company would be better off operating as a sub contractor rather than a main contractor or even carrying out both the activities of the main contractor and the subcontractor. The operations of the company as evidenced by the financial statements indicate large amounts of sum that has been used to transact the liabilities. As much as the liabilities still run lower than the assets, the margin is very small and would not guarantee that the company will not incur losses soon. A company would consider being a main contractor or a subcontractor depending on the balance between the assets and liabilities. This financial statement is important to determine the profitability and the liquidity of the company. A subcontractor may decide to operate so not only because of the limit of resources but because the subcontractor is more specialised in a given section of the contract than the main contractor. The company’s decision to become a main or subcontractor should be based on the health and safety of the employees and workers of the organisation which would have been provided to give a judgement that is based on all the factors that affect the operation of the compan

The Limitation Of Emarketing Marketing Essay

The Limitation Of Emarketing Marketing Essay Take Saks Fifth Avenue as an example, it invited people to go into their shop and take photos about the thing which they find in the shop, they cannot live without, the winner of this campaign can win $1,000. This company use Instagram as a platform to spread this message out of crowd, it also use the participators to help that company to do promotions because people who take part in this campaign needs to go into their shop and find a product that they cannot live without and photo that product and post it on their Instagram pages. Firstly, you need to be fans of that company so that you post your photo on Instagram and the company knows that you have participated. Secondly, this campaign can increase the visiting of the shop or even more sales. Thirdly, when you post photos on your Instagram at the meanwhile, you are sharing something to your friends or people who follow you. Moreover, sometimes when you post something on your Instagram, it can also post something on your twitter a nd Facebook simultaneously. On the other hand, the company only needs to pay $1,000 in order to get access to your social networks. If the company uses traditional marketing strategy, it may need to pay double or triple price in order to get a few seconds of advertisement on TV, but the result is not that big. If you think deeply, the company has a slightly chance to earn back the cost within a few months because participators think that they cannot live without that product, that means they require to have that product in their life, it may encourage their wants so they may spend money on that company so the firm can earn more than the cost. Moreover, if companies organize a lucky draw in Facebook, it may require people to give some personal information to them in order to maintain that activity. Through that lucky draw, the company may need to give out a few products but the company can gain attention from public and collect people personal information to be used in the future. Furthermore, Starbucks organized a campaign on Instagram which encourage people to share their favorite drinks of Starbucks through Instagram and tag Starbucks. Through this campaign, Starbucks gained a lot not only revenues from drinks which people bought and photo it on Instagram but also many advertisements spread among social network due to the fact that when you share your photo on Instagram, you are sharing photo to friends you have on Facebook and twitter which makes you share one photo on multiple channels. Moreover, if one of your friends likes your photo on Facebook, he will also help you to spread your photo to his Facebook with his friends. If this happens continuously, Starbucks will gain attention of their products all over the world. In addition, people who follow Starbuck on Instagram can get large information of products which supplied by Starbucks and Starbucks sells their product by view of third party which is more persuasive. In addition, viral marketing includes tag tool. Nowadays many companies have set up their own Facebook pages which allow them to have many followers. When they want to sell a new product or service, they will tag people who follow their Facebook page to announce the new coming product. Before pop up of e-marketing, people used to sell their product by goodwill and spread by connecting others. Compared with viral marketing, this strategy is low efficient and takes times. Traditional marketing cannot allow people update information immediately, it transports message to customers in a slow way compared with viral marketing which spread like a virus. Affiliate Marketing Affiliate Marketing is one kind of marketing strategy which is popular recently; it works out by using the power of join force. Company finds different industries companies as partners to promote its own products on their website, at the same time company helps its partners to promote and advertise their products. Except promote its own companys products on multiple websites, company also can gain revenue for successful selling its partners products. On the other hand, company also needs to pay partners for transaction of its own products. In order to be successful in affiliate marketing, there are four elements. Firstly, the retailer is used for sales of products. Secondly, the network, which uses to enhance exposure of company products, is essential because it is a platform for company and its partners to share their products with each other and use their network to sell its own product. Thirdly, partners are more important in this marketing because the key term is the joining forc e. Fourthly, customers are necessary because the end of marketing strategy is to sell more products to more customers. Advantages of that marketing strategy are lower cost of marketing, increase the volume of companys website, this marketing strategy also providing extra revenue for company. Affiliate marketing is lower cost of marketing because it charges either cost per sales, cost per click or cost per lead. For cost per sales, company will be charge to pay its advertisement according to sales volumes made by its partners; it will ensure that company only need to pay when company earns money. Additional, cost per click means as long as advertisement click by customers and review, company will need to pay for its exposure. Moreover, cost per lead is a way that company will pay when partners successfully to link customers to advertisement of company and fill their information. Either of way, the cost is lower than usual marketing strategy however, the outcome of affiliate marketing is better than traditional marketing because people can buy companies/ its partners product in multiple places, also co mpany may has its chance to work with big company as its partners to boost up its sales. I would like to use Amazon as an example to illustrate affiliate marketing strategy which it quite successful in Amazon. Amazon began as an e-tailor bookstore. However, after a period of time, Amazon started to use affiliate marketing strategy. Nowadays people want to shop, the first thing comes up their mind is Amazon. Due to fact of many affiliates in Amazon, Amazon can sell variety type of products to satisfy customers needs. Meanwhile, Amazon can earn a huge amount of profit from this affiliate to support its operation. Why people choose Amazon is the key reason why Amazons affiliate marketing strategy becomes successful. Amazon is a well-known brand which is the first requirement. And Amazon is a well-known brand also helps to people to feel safe with clicking on Amazons link which lead to lesser-known company. Moreover, Amazon only takes maximum 30% as its commission which is ridiculously small. This action can allow people to earn more. Proximity Marketing (Mobile Marketing) Proximity marketing is the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. Transmissions can be received by individuals in that location who wish to receive them and have the necessary equipment to do so. The reason why mobile marketing has become the trend of marketing is based on the fact of fast development of smart phone. Nowadays almost everyone in developed countries has a smart phone with them typically Hong Kong. People will no longer use PC to connect to internet; they can use their smart phone which allows them to check email, Facebook easier than before. This change ,also rewrite marketing history, it opens more ways to company in order to promote their products to customers, allows people to receive information no matter why they are as long as they have a smart phone with them. Within mobile marketing, people use two main functions of smart phone as a way to promote their products, those functions are texting and Wi-Fi. Texting can be used as a marketing strategy is because there are 10 trillion messages sent globally per day in 2012, can u imagine how often people text? According to this fact, people use texting as a way to promote their product. Did you give your mobile phone number to any shop when you become a member of shop? If yes, I guess you already have experience of getting marketing text which contents the latest news/ promotion of that shop. However, did you realize how quickly you response to text rather than e-mail? According to statistics, 97% of people will response to text within a few minutes, that response rate is 7 to 15 times quicker than email. And that is part of the reason why companies are likely to use text marketing instead of email marketing anymore. Take Netpunch company as an example, it is a company which sells mobile marketing to others. It put a video online on YouTube and tell people how good mobile marketing it is and if people is interested, please send it a text (Netpunch) to the number it provide at the end on the video then the company will inform you more information through text. How convince this way to communicate to your clients? Communicate through text and lowering cost of employees because you dont need somebody to ask the phone call, you just reply peoples text and give more information about things that they are interested. Also, by different text content you can category different needs of people. If you company has ten different types of products by typing different content in text, you can able to identify them and reply information they want to know. Text marketing happens based on customers want to receive more information about your company, through this way, marketing becomes more effective. Also, did you even forward your message received from one company to your friends? When you saw message, you find the discount given by that company is cheap, you may want to forward to your friends so they can enjoy that discount too . In this way, message spreads no only between you and company but also between your friends, company can gain more revenue through spreading process. Compared with advertisement cost, text marketing which is a lower cost and more effective and efficient. Moreover, text marketing also helps to build a two-way communication between company and client. Furthermore, it is easy to track result of that campaign such as A company is offering discount to its customers by sending them some codes when customers come into A company and use their codes. A company is able to identify the result of campaign through codes use by customers. Wi-Fi becomes more and more essential when we use smart phone more frequently. Therefore, people think of ways to promote their product through Wi-Fi system which has in every smart phone. In order to advertise people, company needs to put a system in a public and crowd place such as mall, bus stop etc. Through putting a system in mall, it can identify people by their own smartphone, once they step into mall, the system will send a message to ask whether they want to accept information from the mall, if yes, the system will automatically send them different promotions within the mall. This situation also applies in bus stop when people are waiting bus, they can receive information from companies of selling their product. Compared with bus stop, the way to promote advertisement in mall will be more effective because when people go to mall, they may want to shop for something, thats why people will 100% open and accept to receive information from the mall. This strategy helps companies generate more sales. Limitation of e-marketing: Although there are lots of advantages of using e-marketing, there are still some limitations. We would like to divide that into two big categories which are technology and non-technology. In technology part, lack of sufficient systems security, reliability, standards, and communication protocols, insufficient telecommunication bandwidth, maintenance costs due to a constantly evolving environments and low connection speed are essential to success of e-marketing. Lack of sufficient systems security, reliability, standards, and communication protocols will leads to failure of e-marketing because the infrastructure of communication with customers is incomplete. Due to incomplete infrastructure, companies may not be able to respond to customers in time. This act will make company lose some of its customers. Insufficient telecommunication bandwidth affects the way companies and customers communicate to each other. In order to communicate within the internet, sufficient bandwidth is essential; it affects success of internet marketing. How can you see and spread your message within Facebook without bandwidth? Sufficient bandwidth allows people spread message between others become more effective and efficient. Due to software development tools are still evolving and changing rapidly, maintenance costs may be high in order to keep up with new development of technology. This will make small company step back about using e-marketing because this may be costly to small firm in order to hold an IT team to promote their product online. Companies have low connection speed may lose its customers because some companies use Wi-Fi marketing require a high respond rate to customers, if they fail to do this, they may lose their chance to promote their products to customers. Also, low connection speed may affect the availability people receive information from outsiders. Typically affect mobile marketing because mobile marketing becomes more and more important due to people use mobile to surf the Internet rather than a PC. However, if the connection speed of mobile is so low, it takes 15minutes to get people on Facebook, people may not willing to wait for the time, they may use their PC instead of mobile, it not just only affect mobile marketing but also viral marketing, the speed that message spread between people getting longer, the result of companies will be affected. So far, we discuss limitation of e-marketing on technological way; we would like to continue discuss it on non-technological way which includes lack of personal approach, data may not be updated, content security and privacy issues and physical examination issue. Lack of personal approach will be a major damage to e-marketing, customers may not be able to build up a relationship between customers and companies. Not loyalty to companies will be lead companies lose customers in a sudden. Unlike traditional marketing, salesperson may able to know the name of customer and chat with them face-to-face, e-marketing such as text marketing is just texting between customer and companies, which involves less interaction. Data may not be updated may occur in e-marketing. Small companies may be the largest group that use e-marketing as promoting their product however small companies may have insufficient employees to update their companies Facebook or websites in time. In consequence, companies Facebook or websites are not updated. It may affect the revenue of companies because their new product may not sell well and lose potential customers. Content security and privacy issues also occur when involve in Internet because there is no guarantee that your information will not leak to outsiders. When companies uses Wi-Fi marketing, they may accidently receive many information about customers personal information how to deal with those information is troublesome. The content of text may lead companies to know more about their customers such as their needs and interest or personal information, on the other hand inappropriate deal with those information may lead companies lose huge amount of customers and maybe lawsuit due to leaking information. Unlike traditional marketing, e-marketing does not allow customers to have physical examination on product which is a disadvantage to e-marketing especially when companies are selling food products. Companies may sell their products online however without testing and experiencing by customers themselves, customers may not want to buy it. If companies tell you that its new product A is very tasty, without tasting it are you going to believe it? It may become difficult without tasting; this is a weakness for e-marketing. Recommendations: Outsourcing would be useful to solve data updated and maintenance costs limitation. When companies hire other companies to do their marketing strategy, it can help companies to avoid information of website or Facebook is not update issue. Also, companies dont need to pay a huge amount of maintenance costs because company only need to pay to other companies to help them with maintenance issues. Moreover, companies can send out samples to customers to solve physical examine issue. E-marketing only promote products online without real face-to-face connect and product experience, it leads to less attractive. However, if companies send out some sample to potential customers, they can attract customers after using their products. http://www.standardmarketing.ca/2012/06/use-instagram-your-business/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_marketing#Limitations http://weblogs.about.com/od/monetizingablog/fr/AmazonAssocRev_2.htm http://mobile-marketing-colorado.com/sms-text-marketing-facts-and-benefits http://emarketingtanzania.com/what-is-emarketing/why-emarketing/disadvantages-of-e-marketing http://www.wewanttraffic.com/ebusiness/emarketing/advantages.aspx http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_disadvantages_of_e-marketing http://www.google.com/url?sa=trct=jq=limitation+of+e-marketingsource=webcd=5cad=rjaved=0CFUQFjAEurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cba.edu.kw%2Fabo%2F2007%2FeMarketing%2520ppT.pptei=OFWoUJD3H8T_iAewpYCACQusg=AFQjCNHVk_5JeghkZ56pTH4fqRIGwMA0bw http://blog.i2k2.com/seo/what-are-the-limitations-of-online-marketing/

Assisted Suicide :: essays research papers

Assisted Suicide In reaction to the law the Michigan Legislature recently passed outlawing assisted suicide, I found myself with many mixed feelings. I found myself often feeling bad for the patients Dr. Kevorkian dealt with but more often felt sorry for him that he should be responsible for so many deaths. It is a sad road to travel on when faced with a terminal disease. It includes many harsh realities and many are not prepared to deal with their illness. There are many aspects I chose to look at when preparing to write this paper. A person's self-worth is one and also the doctor's evaluation of a person's self-worth. I chose to take my own personal stand on the issue, which includes my own opinions, feelings, and thoughts on the many controversies surrounding Euthanasia. I also chose to write about the "Slippery Slope" for I find it to be a very relevant and useful tool in looking at the topic of Euthanasia. This is a very interesting subject to me for I look ahead at the next few years of many painful deaths for a family that is getting very old. When looking at someone's self-worth†¦what they feel they can offer, you have to put into perspective what they are dealing with. Of course, someone who is slowly dieing of a terminal disease is going to find their self-worth at virtually nothing. They are depressed and in pain and are not capable of doing things on their own any longer. What pride is there in that? Most people find none. On a more personal level, I would find pride in waking up each day, and in waking up each day trying to find something to smile about. I could find pride in knowing that even though I am dieing†¦and I am in pain†¦that I am still able to be strong for the people who love me. I find pride and dignity in that and that makes my self-worth†¦something worth saving. I have been brought up in a Catholic family. Therefore, many of my opinions on controversial issues such as this stem from my upbringing. However, I have been able to do the research and form my own opinions. And, even so, I still think assisted suicide is wrong. When one person is responsible for the stopping of another person's heart from beating, it should be considered murder. And, I equally agree that it shouldn't have taken a case where

Bank holiday

I have read the story under the title â€Å"Bank Holiday† by Katherine Mansfield. Speaking about the author, I should say that Katherine Mansfield was born In New Zealand In 1888. Katherine Is a New Zealand writer and she Is known by her short stories which deal with human nature and psychology. This Is a philosophical story for a discerning reader who has to read between the lines.Giving the reader a chance to see somebody else s inner life, presented directly and indirectly, the author at the same time does not provide any answers to the questions that one asks himself. The author seems to grant the reader a chance to take leave to doubt and disagree with what he concludes and infers. Being imposing, she's at the same time pretty unobtrusive which definitely, makes a merit of the story. The story under consideration is narration interlaced with descriptive passages.This story is ironical when the author shows regret, displeasure and annoyance of the situation. The author sh ows us Inconsistence way of life different representatives of social classes. In this story details play the main role, the Ironical description of their clothes, the old Oman the author reserved detachment and metaphor, he compares old women with old dusty pin-cushions. Through the choice of the words, the author uses for main characters' description, we can easily understand the author's attitude to them.The author criticizes them. The plot of the short story relies on the internal conflict between the crowd and society. The action of the story occurred in the street during celebrating the holiday. The story under analysis is a third-person narrative. The story is about a festival, which involves a big crowd of People from all different social lasses, to spend a Good time together and enjoy themselves. The main problem that story touches upon Is about people's unwillingness to improve their life, to achieve something better.The character of the story Is a middle-class crowd, miser able people described with bitterness who haven achieve anything but remained the past old times. There Is no action and the events are trivial but we understand the unhappiness of the existence of the crowd. On the one hand their life is dynamic but it's concentrated on trivial events, nothing important, all these people remained in the past. This life is concentrating on some talking, that it's nothing important. The author is disguised.The crowd is presented by different people, but all of them are similar in their world view, besides poor clothes they are illiterate. The way people spill the lemonade they spill their lives. The author addresses to the reader â€Å"Look out! Don't spill your own lives†. She described people without any future. The story falls into three logically connected parts. The first part of the story is taken up the introduction of the crowd, on the one hand they are different people, but all of them haven't any future.The story presents some pictur es and the flirts of them Is crowd, people who are quite and who understanding the music . Then It presents children. They might have had something better but they haven't an opportunity to develop In such society. There a lot of detachments, so the author underlines all the details not to miss anything. Alliteration in the sentence: and is dissolved, and the crowd scatters, mobbing slowly up the hill† produces affect on the reader. The author uses a lot of verbs: â€Å"dodging, nudging, talking†¦ † To show the aggressiveness of the situation.The subject of the depiction in the second part is a fair, during which people sell ugly things and it metaphorically shows. This fact proves the ugliness of the crowd's existence The story reaches the climax by gradation. The crowd rise top on the hill and it seems that something must change but everything remains the same and they continue to live a useless life. The idea of the text can be state as follows: the author is tr ying to convince the reader that people must not waste their life. Every person has a chance for a better life, but he does it better by himself.

A Study of Trends in Indian Partition Literature Essay

The Partition of India was the geographical division of colonial India into two bordering nation states of India and Pakistan based on religious demographics.1 It was proposed as an unsavoury but necessary accompaniment to the Independence of India from the British Empire. However, it was not only a diplomatic and administrative exercise but rather had a long-lasting psychological impact on the human population of these areas. Though Bapu2 was firmly against this idea, it was reluctantly accepted by Nehru and Jinnah as the only solution to the growing communal divide between the Muslim and Hindu communities. 3 However, what the political class had never predicted was the unprecedented amount of bloodshed, violence and widespread civil unrest that followed in its wake. Even years after this event, the perpetrators and the victims are still baffled as to the cause of this â€Å"madness†4 that gripped civilized society. In the aftermath, historians pretended to ignore it terming it unfortunate but somewhat inevitable while literature tried to come to terms with its bestiality and future implications. The authorial response of the first generation was severely limited however due to a level of emotional attachment and involvement in the subject matter. They lacked perspective and varied in two ways: either they were very brief and lacked empathy or tended to be voyeuristic in nature. The official responses attempted to historicise Partition through statistics, facts and figures while literature, to the contrary attempted to give voice to subaltern perspectives personalising victim narratives. Despite such a movement, it was not until the 70’s that it was realised that hardly any attention was paid to the experiences of women during Partition. There was a deep reluctance to address the gender atrocities committed during Partition and it manifested itself through the invisibilisation of women voices. Although it had been clear from the start that the worst sufferers of Partition violence had been women5, a stoic silence upon the tragic reality had been maintained. Many of these women had led forgotten lives and their trauma suppressed in an attempt to forget the onslaught upon their bodies and minds. Therefore, renewed efforts began to document and portray the forgotten stories of such women. But it was a complex problem in many ways. Partition had had a multifaceted impact on the women of India and Pakistan that not only defined their coming lives but also impacted the future generations as psycho-somatic memories and construction of familial structures post-Partition.6 Literature took the initiative of this task: there were two major strains of women oriented Partition narratives that emerged in the period thus. One school of thought dealt with Partition as a backdrop to the â€Å"larger narrative†. In such stories, the lives of the main characters were highlighted and their lives were allegorised to represent the trauma of the nation itself. The stories of their existence were represented dually: as human beings involved in personal dramas and as social creatures part of a larger mainframe. Their places within the higher superstructure and as creatures dominated by the larger contexts were analysed by writers. A startling example of this was â€Å"The Clear Light Of Day† by Anita Desai which never referred to Partition in specific incidents but rather subtle, broken reflections into the people whose day-to-day lives were affected by the growing communal tension and changing socio-political equations. It refers to the ties of family, friendship, kinship and love that were abruptly ruptured by the literal division of the nation. There were novels such as â€Å"Ice-Candy Man† by Bapsi Sidhwa that looks at Partition from the ‘outside’. The narrator Lenny is imbued with unique qualities that were highly unconventional for the times. She was a child, hence she had a limited worldview, a Parsee, hence not religiously biased and neither a participant, physically disabled, therefore able to sympathise with the suffering of others and, a girl therefore her narration is unapologetically gender-conscious. What she learns, is all by association. The story is a sharp attack on official discourses that denied the suffering of millions of people. Lenny’s story is not only her own but a mirroring of girl-children everywhere that were faced with questions with identity, sexuality, community and nation as a whole and how they shaped individual lives. A child is brutally honest and spares nobody and nothing. She has no inbuilt prejudices so she can speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. As a result of such experimental tales, women felt ready to finally speak up. But, their attempts were met with more resistance than expected. They were themselves reluctant to speak about they went through; it was too painful but combined with societal pressures, their mouths had been almost sealed shut from fear. For daring to break this unspoken taboo, some of them faced severe consequences and were even disowned by their own families for besmirching the family name. But such actions often took a huge toll on their mental and physical health and though they had survived, they hadn’t healed. As a result of mass migration, women were abruptly uprooted from their homes to move to a strange and unfamiliar place. They had to build their lives and homes anew, sometimes with no support system. Many of these women were so bereaved at losing their home and hearth, that they could never recover from this sense of loss. Women in traditional society had since ancient days been tasked with looking after the home. Since they were not allowed to venture outside their domain7, the home had been almost personified for them. It was a living breathing space. The only place which they could rightfully stake claim to and which was a source of comfort and solace for them. They were so tangibly attached to their land that family was synonymous with home and her identity came to be defined by her place in the home. Hence when forced to migrate, their sense of unsettlement and upheaval was immense. They could never return to their past lives and change was not so easy for these women who had never been given the opportunity to trespass their comfort zones. Some stories that movingly illustrated the dilemmas of such women are â€Å"Jadein† by Ismat Chughtai, â€Å"Sikka Badal Gaya† by Krishna Sobti Sahni and â€Å"The Thirst Of Rivers† by Joginder Paul . These women had to undergo the process of relocating their selves. Many women like Bebe from â€Å"The Thirst†¦Ã¢â‚¬  refused to leave their homes assured of its protection from evils outside. However, their families were broken up with some members choosing to stay back and some leaving for a new land. Due to differences in opinion, family members become estranged and refused to talk to each other or had problems meeting each other due to large geographical distances. Often, migrants did not have enough money to travel back and forth and permits were hard to come by. Due to mutual hostilities, communication across borders was sketchy at best. Hence, many a times, a natural void between families occurred. All the while, the matriarch of the family remained a silent witness to events. The family ties that she had spent all her life building up and nurturing were breaking up right before her eyes and she was helpless, unable to act or intervene. Who would listen to her? Partition had served to further communal tension and hardening religious identities than perhaps any event in the history of India or Pakistan. People who had lived together for several millennia with tranquillity were suddenly made conscious of their differences from each other. They who had been friends earlier were suddenly staunch enemies and women bore the brunt of these realizations. In â€Å"Peshawar Express†8, one such incident is narrated when at Wazirabad station, where Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities had celebrated Baisakhi together for ages becomes a site of base humiliation and gruesome celebration; the women of the Hindu and Sikhs communities were paraded around naked as if they were nothing but objects of gratification for the general public. These women had become mere shells, their souls long dead. In Kamleshwar’s â€Å"Kitne Pakistan†, the author ruminates upon the fruitlessness of Partition and the breaking of bonds of families, love and friendships due to its occurrence. It is the story of a Muslim girl, Bano who falls in love with a Hindu boy, Mangal but is not able to marry him because of religious dogmas. She is told that she will cause communal riots. There is a hidden implication in this viewpoint that seems to say that the cause of every mishappening must be a woman somehow. Rules for men and women in traditional dogmatic societies are different It is ironic that men are not chastised for forcibly marrying a man of the other religion but they will not allow their daughters to choose her spouse on her own and he may never belong to another religion. There is rampant hypocrisy and hollowness in societal mores regarding women. Bano is married off to Muneer who unable to provide for his family with his own hard work resorts to selling his own wife’s body to earn money. The shamefulness of this situation is beyond imagination. These are not falsifications as advocated by fundamental religious leaders but a retelling of many women’s lives. Another kind of psychological trauma that many women underwent was the loss of a child. Many women were forced to leave their children by their husband and children during flight. Children became a burden during this time. They had to be cared for especially with crucial funds required by the family going for their supplies. Also, escapees with children were more vulnerable to attacks by rioters since they not only had to look after themselves but look after their child as well. There are real life cases documented by Urvashi Bhutalia in her book, â€Å"The Other Side Of Silence† wherein women of Muslim as well as Hindu communities were forced to desert their infants that could raise an alarm in the rioters by making noise. Sikh men told tales of killing their children, asking the author, if they should be saving themselves or their daughters? Clearly, man’s inherent selfishness had come to the fore where no one mattered more than the self. Many children were abducted during the widespread chaos to be sold off as domestic help or prostituted in the streets. Women who lost their children during this time were incessantly plagued by guilt and grief. One such woman was Kulsum from â€Å"Pali†9 who lost her child and along with him, her mental balance as well. She was blanketed completely by her grief and only the return of her child restored her sanity. But meanwhile, Zenab who had taken care of her son, Dilip when she found him lost had developed a motherly bond with him and cannot bear parting with him. She knows that she has no biological claim over him but what the mind knows, the heart does not. Eventually, she has to reconcile herself with the reality of her situation. But her life will forever be shadowed by this sadness. Women who were forced by circumstances to give up their child were forever haunted by their own actions and decisions. They were always in search of redemption and peace and could not reconcile themselves to the loss of their offspring. One example of this can be seen in â€Å"The Abandoned Child†10. Infant as well as toddler girls were left by the roadside or killed by their families to avoid making them a target. The life story of one such girl is narrated in â€Å"Where Did She Belong† by Suraiya Quasim wherein the protagonist Munni is not sure of her religious or national identity. She is pushed into prostitution by her so-called ‘saviour’11 , who only wants to use her for economic gain. She is deceived by two of her customers who pretend to love her, but leave her bereft when Partition happens. Nobody asks for her or enquires as to her whereabouts. She is deceived by everyone in her life, ultimately. There were also cases of women who were injured and deceived by members of their own community. People who had been their well-wishers and whom they trusted implicitly, took advantage of their vulnerability and preyed on their bodies. Ayesha’s12 story is the ultimate tragedy of such a ‘lady’13. In guise of protecting her and reuniting Ayesha with her daughter, Nurul takes her with him to Pakistan but betrays her trust by prostituting her instead. She is cursed to a life of assault, on her body and her mind. Her saviour turns out to her destructor. She dies a life of desolation, her own brethren refusing to come to her aid and never seeing her child again. Afroz too in â€Å"I Am Game†14 falls weak due to her instincts of providing and caring for daughter. Seeing no option left for herself and her child, she agrees to prostitution. This depicts to us the sad state of affairs during Partition, when uncertainty and insecurity reigned supreme. Man, woman or children, all had to protect themselves on their own and women for the sake of their families were forced into professions of exploitation to earn their keep. Besides these atrocities, women were also subjected to particularly vulgar sexual attacks. Writers like Ashis Nandy, Veena Das, and Mushirul Hasan describe the bizarre and horrific nature of sexual violence afflicted on women. It was pornographic in its varied forms. Their bodies were mutilated, disfigured, slogans15 branded on them like they were animals, their wombs sliced open and their foetuses savagely butchered. Women were reduced to spoils of war who were never allowed to unburden themselves or be free. They were reduced to a part of the multitude, just one of many. Many victims had been traumatised to an extent that they lost themselves to insanity. They could not cope with their reality. Many underwent derealisation16 wherein after the superficial wounds had mended, they started to deny that anything had ever happened to them. It became something of a nightmare, horrific but fantastical. Literature becomes a cathartic medium for many such women, a chance to narrate their tale. Such memoirs also provided a base for Partition scholars to analyse the feminine subject in social and historical contexts of that time period. Partition has often been termed as the dark underbelly17 of Independence but what it really exposed was the base attitudes of patriarchal Indian society, be it any religion. It revealed how women were equated with the community they belonged to. Though the violence was inter-religious in nature, the modes of inflicting violence were one and the same. All ethics were forgotten in the frenzy of religious vendetta. Revenge was used as an excuse to inflict wounds. They were the contested sites between two opposing factions and were devoid of any agency. One example may be an incident in â€Å"The City Of Sorrow†18 , where a man is forced to strip his sister naked by someone of the other religion. When given a chance to retaliate, he forces his tormentor to strip his own wife naked. Hence, the revenge is complete but ironically, in both cases, the women were the innocent parties who became the medium of exacting justice. They were expected to uphold familial and communal honour and were sacrificed at the altar of â€Å"izzat†19 if they were in danger of being captured by the enemy. The concept of honour was internalised20 hence any stain on it was beyond tolerance by patriarchal society. Therefore, to insult and hurt communal sentiments, it was natural that in order to debase the enemy and shed him of his honour, women of his community were targeted systematically. There were also women who had been indoctrinated to such an extent by religious propaganda that they committed suicide, misled into thinking that they were fulfilling their duty as women. This tradition dates back to the time of ancient Rajputs whose women committed Johar21 to sustain their honour. Hence, it has been a concept propagated throughout the history of religions, Hinduism especially. Bhishma Sahni in â€Å"Tamas† and Jyotirmoyee in â€Å"The River Churning† present such incidents where women of Hindu and Sikh communities drown themselves in wells in order to â€Å"save†22 themselves. Women of the family were the most precious possessions and were to be protected at all costs. However, when they presented an obstacle in the escape of their family, they were brutally â€Å"martyred†23 without compunctions by the family itself. The men of the family did it all in order to save themselves first and to prevent dealing with the hassle of looking after these women. Such people had no conscience in them. This is demonstrated in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s novel â€Å"What The Body Remembers† where the daughter-in-law of a Sikh family, Kusum is mercilessly killed by her father-in-law and furthermore chopped into pieces to prevent her from being â€Å"contaminated†24 by Muslims. Her womb is also removed as a symbolic gesture to signify her being pure25. We can therefore read into the implied fear and repulsion of a child born of an inter-religious union. Hence, Kusum is a victim of her own family’s moral code. Such incidents are not hyperbolic in nature but rather fictionalized accounts of reality. Women who were misfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the â€Å"other†26 and raped by them could never again return to their roots. They were dirtied and treated as untouchable because they had lost their chastity to the enemy. In â€Å"The River Churning†, the protagonist, Sutara is treated as a lower caste untouchable would be27. Though never raped, even staying in a Muslim household had damned her. She had become polluted like Sita. Like Sita, she became a victim of â€Å"social morality†.28 If women had become pregnant somehow, it was even worse for them. They were miscarried forcibly and if the child was born somehow, he or she was never accepted as a part of the family. Women themselves had to come to terms with their reality. They had to learn to let go of their self-loathing which often took root in their minds. They had to live with a child who was a constant reminder of their suffering. Yet, women learned to let go and forgive but their families could not move past this situation. The woman was given the choice of either abandoning her children or her family. Therefore, she was kept trapped in overlapping identities of woman, mother and daughter. There was no time to consider the interests of the self. The children of such women were often physically, mentally and verbally abused all throughout their lives. They were the victims of religious hatred. It left deep scars on their psyche that could never be repaired. They were often castigated for having lived and their mothers looked at with contempt for not having died in order to preserve themselves. Women often started hating their own selves when faced with a constant stream of disgust and repulsion. It is said that â€Å"Rape is the only crime where the victim is held guilty† and these women were the prime examples of this adage. They were made to feel guilty, demeaned and dehumanized to such an extent that they often felt that dying would perhaps have been a better option. Women were at the highest risk of being abducted during migration across borders. These women stranded on the wrong side were forcibly converted and married off to their abductors. They were raped repeatedly or sold off as entertainment. Women were objectified as commodities and their bodies became alien to their own selves. They were not their own persons but mere belongings. Anis Kidwai in her novel, â€Å"Azaadi Ki Chaon Mein† writes starkly about these girls who were nothing but stuff to be shared among the men who were, but slaves of their lust. In his short story, Open It!, Saadat Hasan Manto further elaborates upon the savagery doled out to these women. The main protagonist, Sakina had been ravaged to such an extent that she had lost her personality and her sanity. She was alive only physically, but emotionally and mentally dead. She knew nothing but what she had been forced to go through again and again. Her senses had been so wrecked that she only expects men to want one thing from her i.e. her body. This story presents a horrifying picture to the reader who is compelled to question if Sakina will ever recover from her trauma. Other women were forcibly married off to their abductors and underwent alienation of the self. They were conflicted as to their identities. On one hand, they felt abhorrence for their abductors. On the other hand, such marriages often bore children which caused these women to war with their motherly instincts. Ultimately losing all hope of rescue or restoration, these women had resigned to their life but, again, they were expected to return at the behest of the respective governments of the two countries. Women had become mere tools of diplomatic manoeuvring between the hostile governments who were under immense political pressure to retrieve the population of women that had been left behind or abducted during Partition. One such woman’s tale is narrated in â€Å"Exile†29 where the woman narrator is forcibly married to her abductor, Gurpal, a man who regards her as nothing more than a maid that he brought to serve his mother (Badi Ma). What is even more poignant is the fact that Badi Ma, a woman herself is not able to empathise with her Bahu30 or show kindness towards her. She is merely there to serve their needs, like a tool. Ironically, Gurpal who is clearly devoted towards his mother evidently has no guilt about ill-treating a woman of another community. We can see here the oppressive influence of patriarchal society that does not allow for women to exercise an opinion of their own. The narrator has never been able to accept Gurpal as her husband. In nine years she has never able to understand why her brother, whom she dearly loves has not come to rescue her. She feels lonely and abandoned by her loved ones. She longs for her home and wants her life to end at last so she can be at peace. When the soldiers arrive to rescue her, she knows that she cannot return since she will not be accepted back as a ‘mother’. And she cannot leave her children. Hence she hides from the soldiers. Her apprehension of the other option can be justified by reading â€Å"Lajwanti†31 whose tragedy is shrouded by complete silence. She was treated abominably by her husband, Sunderlal who asserts his domination over her body and mind by beating her like an animal. She bore it all as part of her wifely duties clearly adhering to traditional norms of domesticity. But when she is abducted during Partition chaos, her husband, perhaps, feeling remorse for how he had treated her, became a campaigner for the rights of abductee women. He advocates their rehabilitation and reacceptance into society but when his wife, Lajo is restored to him, he distances himself from her and sets her on the pedestal of a goddess. She feels alienated, lonely and longs for her old life where she could at least interact with her husband. In the present, her husband wants her to forget her sufferings and not to speak of them. But can the past really be forgotten as easily as he wanted it to be? Many women who had built new lives for themselves post-Partition often came face to face with their pasts when their lost loved ones returned back to them. In this situation, what was the woman to do? Should she abandon her present life to return to her past happiness? This is obviously a problem to which there is no clear-cut solution. But it was often expected of women to move on from their pasts and not look back but even they are living, breathing human beings with feelings and emotions. These may be unwanted but cannot be so easily banished from the mind. Women end up feeling conflicted all throughout their lives. One text that accurately depicts one such situation is â€Å"A Visitor From Pakistan†32 where the protagonist Saraswati is trapped between her first husband, Baldev whom she had thought dead; and her husband at present, Sunderdas who had saved her and her parents during the riots. Her own mother chastises her for even talking to Baldev so then who will understand her predicament? She is blamed for something that she is not even responsible for. Partition left a long-lasting impact on the women who witnessed and suffered through it. They passed on the lessons they learned to their daughters hoping for a better future for them. It is an important part of women’s history and it should be analysed carefully to change the conservative thought processes of Indian society to avoid women from becoming subjects of patriarchal oppression and break the repetitive patterns of history. END NOTES : 1. India and Pakistan were divided along the Radcliffe Line with Muslim majority areas seceded to Pakistan and Hindu-Sikh majority areas to India. 2. Mahatma Gandhi was deemed the â€Å"Father Of The Nation† and hence affectionately called Bapu by the general populace. 3. J.L. Nehru and M.A. Jinnah were leaders of the Congress party and Muslim League respectively. They were not agreeable to sharing power in the united govt. of sovereign India and hence the only option was to divide the country with both parties ruling over their majority vote areas. 4. The metaphor of madness was used by many Partition writers like Saadat Hasan Manto in â€Å"Toba Tek Singh† to describe the religious hatred that changed normal people into rioters, rapists and murderers. 5. J.L. Nehru stated this in The International Women’s Conference in 1947 alluding to the extreme violence perpetrated upon women in North India. 6. Ideas postulated by Carl Jung and supported by Freudian theories. 7. Women were kept under purdah and not allowed to meet with people outside the family. Women lived in separate quarters of the house called the ‘antahpur’ which was solely in their control. 8. written by Krishan Chander 9. written by Bhishma Sahni 10. written by Gurmukh Singh Musafir 11. Ironic since Munni’s saviour is herself a victim of circumstances and Munni is just a way to earn more money. 12. â€Å"A Grave Turned Inside Out† by Ibrahim Jalees 13. Ayesha was the lady of a noble family but debased to the level of a common prostitute. Shows that societal hierarchies were suspended during Partition. 14. written by Sultan Jamil Nasim 15. The slogans Hindustan Zindabad and Pakistan Zindabad were carved onto their bodies as validating gestures of the victimiser’s own national identity. 16. Derealisation is a psychological condition where the subject deludes himself/herself into thinking that their present reality is illusory and unreal and that reality is different. 17. Independence was achieved after a long struggle, so there was jubilation among the people but at the same time, this happiness was marred by the grief of Partition and its aftermath. 18. written by Intizar Hussain 19. Izzat is one of the basic concepts of Hindu womanhood where a woman’s honour is defined by her chastity and any outrage of her modesty stains her honour as well as her family’s. The family’s honour is an extension of the woman’s honour. 20. Internalisation is the process of integration of certain values as part of the self-identification. It becomes a part of one’s self-image. 21. Johar is the ancient Rajput tradition of women jumping into huge fire-pits to save their honour from the enemy’s army if defeat seemed imminent. 22. Women jumped into wells to protect themselves from rape and mutilation. Dying chaste was preferred to living a life of humiliation. Hence, they were saved in the eyes of society. 23. Women who committed suicide were venerated because they were believed to have died for a noble cause. Hence, their deaths received social sanction and appreciation. 24. If women were raped, their bodies no longer remained solely of their religion. And, hence, inter-religious taboos were applied to such women. Hence chopping of the bodies signified that no one of the other side had had sex with her or would be able to. 25. The womb was removed to signify that it did not carry a Muslim bastard child and her ability to do so is removed from her. 26. During conflict, the opposing faction is alienated and presented as someone strange and unfamiliar to the minds of the mob. This requires dehumanization of the people from the other side so that they do not evoke emotions of sympathy. 27. The taboos associated with untouchability are not allowing them to eat and drink from the same vessels and prevent from touching them. 28. Sita was banished from Ayodhya because even though she was pure, the people of Ram’s kingdom did not believe her. Doubts were cast on her character since she had lived in Ravana’s Lanka for a long time. 29. Written by Jamila Hashmi 30. When a bahu arrives in her marital household, she is bedecked with jewels, dressed in finery and serenaded by shehnai. She is full of happiness and hope. Here, the narrator is exactly opposed to this situation and yet, ironically she has become the bahu of a family. 31. written by Rajinder Singh Bedi 32. written by Ramlal BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. â€Å"Partition In Fiction: Gendered Perspectives†, Isabella Bruschi, New Delhi, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd.,2010 2. In The Heat Of Fratricide: The Literature Of India’s Partition Burning Freshly (A Review Article)†,Jason Francisco 3. â€Å"Stories About The Partition Of India†, Vol. 1.,Ed. By Alok Bhalla, Delhi,Harper Collins, 1994 4. Re-Membering Woman: Partition,Gender And Reorientations, â€Å"Narrating Partition:Texts, Interpretations And Ideas†, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Indialog Publications,2004

A Room with a View Essay Essays

A Room with a View Essay Essays A Room with a View Essay Paper A Room with a View Essay Paper Italy Enables Lucy to Change and Become Her Own Individual in A Room With a View Lucy is presented with an opportunity to become her own person and look at things differently in Italy. This concept is used throughout the novel A Room With a View by E. M. Forster, in which a young girl named Lucy is able to see the world with a different eye and become a new person. She is surrounded with a culture and way of life that is much different than the one she is used to back at home. The free and open Italian setting enables Lucy to start a new life and find her love. In Italy, the city of Florence shows Lucy a life with much more freedom. This is illustrated throughout Lucy’s stay in Florence, Italy. She is unfamiliar with the new setting and all of the new culture overwhelms her. According to the Twayne Author series, â€Å"†¦ the ‘magic city’ of Florence elicits all that is unpredictable. Passionate, vibrant, violent Italy all but overwhelms Lucy. † (304) This emphasizes that this new setting is influential for Lucy because of all the new ideas surrounding her. It makes her aware of the possibility of this new kind of life that she can decide what she wants to do. Another example of Italy showing Lucy a more open life is when she arrives at the hotel, she was promised a room with a view, but instead she was given a room that did not have a view and she became angry showing her anxiousness for a new world. For instance Lucy says, â€Å"The rooms the Signora promised us in her letter would have looked over the Arno. The signora had no business to do it at all! † (Forster 3) This illustrates that Lucy becomes distressed by the fact that they did not get a room with a view and this supports the idea that she was excited to get free of her old childhood home and experience a new setting in Italy. The Italian landscape also helps Lucy experience a more free life by enabling her to become her own person and not having to conform to restrictions. This is observed when Forster says, â€Å"Italy was offering her the most priceless of all possessions – her own soul. † (90) The Italian setting took Lucy away from all the restrictions she had in her life before. She was free to think whatever she wanted about something and she could truly be her own person. Italy’s free and open setting clearly influences Lucy to change and become her own person. Lucy is held back by many social restrictions but Italy shows her around them and helps her become independent and find her love. To illustrate, in England, Lucy found that social classes were significant in society while she finds that in Italy, they are not significant at all. This is acknowledged when Forster says, â€Å"But in Italy, where anyone who chooses may warn himself in equality, as in the sun, this conception of life vanished. She felt that there was no one whom she might not get to like, that social barriers were irremovable, doubtless, but not particularly high†¦She returned with new eyes. (Forster 90) This is to say Lucy is able to see things with a new perspective in Italy. She sees that social restrictions and levels are not necessary. She realizes that people from all social classes should interact and that she doesn’t want to only interact with people in her social class. Similarly, Italy is free of discrimination while in England there was much discr imination. Lucy realizes she was taught many different views. A literary critic says, â€Å"Italy and the English countrywide encourage a free and open existence as compared to the cramped, stereotyped, middle-class British life. (Twayne 302) This confirms that when Lucy is in Italy, she discovers that there is no discrimination and people are a lot more open towards each other in the sense that they do not form false opinions about people by their background. She realizes that many of the distorted views she learned back in England about this are false. Furthermore, Italy gives Lucy the opportunity to become her own true self because there are no more restrictions that were there in England. For instance, Mr. Beebe says, â€Å"There was simply the sense that she had found wings, and meant to use them. (Forster 75) This asserts that in Italy Lucy’s ‘wings’ are now open and she has a lot more independence to do whatever she wants or think whatever she wants unli ke in England where they could be considered ‘clipped’. It is clear that Lucy’s progress of becoming more open and free is aided by the reduced amount of social barriers in Italy. Lucy is able to experience things she has never before in Italy with its more opportunistic culture. Technological advances in Italy enabled different social classes to intertwine and become more uniform. The creation of the trams enabled people to go out in other places where only higher-class people had gone. This is determined when critic Jeremy Hubbell says, â€Å"While in Florence, Mr. Eager notes the way in which trams enable people of the lower classes to take outings in the countryside†¦ Still, trams enable the â€Å"poor† to walk where only the rich had previously† (301) Lucy is able to experience life to the fullest, as she isn’t limited to a lower standard of living with the newer technology in Italy. The tram is only one of the many examples of how Italy greatly helped Lucy to her full potential. Next, we see Lucy’s affect to experiencing music. Forster illustrates the scene with Lucy going through a dramatic phase while listening to music. While Lucy listens, Forster articulates, â€Å"†¦Nor was she the passionate young lady, who performs so tragically on a summers evening with the window open. Passion was there, but it could not be easily labeled; it slipped between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the pictorial style. † (Forster 23) Music in Italy introduces Lucy’s actual feelings inside of her, which are concealed by a fake personality. She is a completely different person with music bringing out her real self from her heart. Another thought is that Italy has brought Lucy to witness murder and also experience love. These experiences have caused her to change greatly. Cecil explains, â€Å"But Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and – which he held more precious – it gave her shadow†¦She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. † (Forster 72) He describes how Lucy has changed so much because of her experiences in Italy. A person that has been kissed passionately and witnessed a murder is bound to change significantly. With aspects of Italy ranging from the arts to technology, Lucy has greatly been affected by the distinct culture of this new environment. When Lucy arrives in Italy, she is bewildered by its distinctive nature. Lucy utilizes Italy’s entirely different lifestyle to achieve her independence and find her love. She is able to transform her self by experiencing many new things, one of them being, finding her love. Often, a person’s life can be completely altered by the environment in which they reside in. A Sense of Deities Reconciled: A Room With a View in Twaynes Authors Series: Twayne English Authors (Twayne, 1999); excerpted and reprinted in Novels for Students, Vol. II, ed. Elizabeth Thomason (Detroit: Gale, 2001), pp. 302-308. Hubbell, Jeremy. Critical essay on A Room With a View. Novels for Students. Ed. Elizabeth Thomason. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 299-302 Forster, E. M. A Room With a View. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1995.