Dispatches Paper Essay Example for Free

Dispatches Paper Essay As I read Dispatches by Michael Herr, there is an overwhelming sense of fear and horror. His dispatches are populated by soldiers called grunts, whose enemy was everywhere and nowhere. Their maps were blank; their names for the enemy, Charlie or VC, told them nothing. How do you recognize them? They all wear black pajamas; they are all alien to us. They are everywhere. Thats where the paranoia began. Herrs dispatches are disturbing because he writes from inside the nightmare, with all the tension and terror that turned these young men into killing machines. It is all the more frightening because, emptied of any concerns for justice, or ethics, or solidarity, they opened fire anywhere, everywhere. After all, who could know where or who the enemy was? Herrs use of brutal imagery absorbed me into his savage surroundings. From the soldier who cant stop drooling as a result of a particularly dreadful gun battle, to the scenes of the dead, American and Vietnamese, adult and infant, on battlefields and village streets. The characters are real people in a situation that most of them neither like nor understand. They are young men who invoke the same shortcomings we all have. They are professional soldiers and act that way despite their misgivings. They push past the boundaries of fear and into the realms of heroism or insanity or death. Everyone that he introduces is individual. There are no carbon copy soldiers here. They are funny or musical or religious or delusional. I felt as though I was being introduced to people I knew throughout the book. From time off in Saigon and Hong Kong to his time spent in a bunker during the siege of Khe Sanh, Herr covers every aspect of the war. He shows how so many soldiers were so drastically affected by the war. He describes the strange, fearful moments when at night the jungle suddenly goes silent. Herr tells tales of Marines throwing themselves on top of him with incoming fire, people he has only just met minutes or hours before that are risking their lives to protect his. This book is very descriptive and one of the best examples of this is this sentence, Every fifth round was a tracer, and when Spooky was working, everything stopped while that solid stream of violent  red poured down out of the black sky. In this sentence Herr is retelling the feelings felt by everyone as they watched the gunships flying overhead, unleashing the fury of gatling-guns that could fire thousands of rounds per minute. Not only does Herr convey the impact of such a sight; he does it in such a manner that a vivid image is formed in the readers mind. One of the more disturbing and insightful quotes in the book comes when a Marine at Khe Sanh learns that his wife is pregnant, but not with his child. Herr retells with this account, Oh dont worry, Orrin said. Theres gonna be a death in my family. Just soons I git home. And then he laughed. It was a terrible laugh, very quiet and intense, and it was the thing that made everyone who heard it believe Orrin. This quote shows how badly some soldiers were transformed during the war. A man who used to be very peaceful and calm would now snap at the slightest provocation. He would now plan the death of his wife for cheating on him. With these examples I would definitely say that one of the strengths of this book is its vivid descriptions. The other strength of this book is probably how it covers the emotional and physical aspects of the war. Still it is difficult to reconcile Herrs disregard for the grunts brutality and his apparent admiration that surfaces. Herr feeds on the death and carnage of the battlefield. It is difficult to grudge a person for their attachment to the most exciting times of their life. Herrs is almost an addiction to the life of the thrill seeker, but as he frequently mentions, unlike the grunts, he could always take the next chopper back to an air-conditioned hotel room in Saigon, or leave altogether. (Not that an air-conditioned room in Saigon would be necessarily safer than Khe Sahn) He describes Vietnam as a jumbled, confused, mess of a living hell. Herr also wrote the narration for Apocalypse Now, so what more do you need to know? It is crucial to understand that this book is not a political or military history of the war. Instead, Herr tried to portray the experience of what it was like to be in Vietnam; you wont find a handy map and glossary in the back. (If you honestly dont know what words like di di, zip, grunt, 16, and DMZ mean, I suggest you bone up on your history.) There are two major downfalls to this book: rambling and fiction. His writing style, disjointed and confused, makes the book a little hard to get used to. But when you do get used to it only then can you see that Herr is trying to give the reader an accurate account rather than a moral lecture. In terms of fiction the problem with writers is that they are writers. As such they are basically dishonest. This is not Vietnam as told by a soldier. This is Vietnam as told by a journalist who is in-country to the precise extent he cares to be and hotfoots it out of there when the going gets rough. In the beginning of the book Herr describes the horrors of night patrol by describing his own fear. He then informs the bewildered reader that this is a bit too much for him and therefore takes his journalistic eye somewhere else. The difference between a journalist and a soldier is that the soldier cant leave when he feels like it and so he doesnt have the luxury of drama. Unfortunately, most of this book is drama.

Emily Dickinson :: essays research papers

B) The riddle we can guess We speedily despise - Not anything is stale so long as yesterday’s surprise - How important is the idea of riddling in Emily Dickinson’s poetry? Cover a range of poems in your answer, and discuss at least four of them in close detail. During the late nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) featured as one of the few female poets in the largely male-dominated sphere of American literature. Although she authored 1800 poems, only seven were published during her lifetime - why? Emily Dickinson has always provoked debate; over her life, her motivations for the words she wrote and the interpretations of those words. It can be argued that Emily Dickinson herself, was as ambiguous, as misunderstood and as elusive as her poetry. As a outlet for relentless examination of every aspect of her mind and faith her poems are both expository and puzzling. Her conclusions are often cryptically implicit and largely dependant on the readers ability to put together the pieces - to see the connections and implications. Amy Lowell said "She was the mistress of suggestion....and to a lesser degree, irony" The ruses and riddles in her poems came from her; and as such she too was a riddle. The riddle was important to Emily Dickinson for several reasons. She wished to reason with her own feelings despite her contradictory beliefs - she wished to be one who "distils amazing sense / from ordinary meanings (#448)". For her, life, nature and faith were all riddles in themselves. None of these three come with all the answers, although clues are given - her poems both deal with and mirror this phenomenon. And through a riddle, at the last - sagacity must go - (#501) (In these lines Dickinson doubts the sense of religious claims about life, death and life after death). Her cryptic language thus became part of her search for truth and personal clarification. She couched her poetry in ambiguous, complex and multi-layered language - in this form it became both a defence, and a game. The riddles concealed her anarchy, her dissension and her audaciousness in questioning the status quo. She achieved her most audacious commentaries and attacks on American perceptions and values through riddle and ruse; by ellipsis, dodge, a vague daring, an evident superiority of language and idea, staying virtually unknown . The ambiguities in the riddles were her defence against authority, religious tyranny and "norm" thinking.

Why Prohibition Failed to Control American Alcohol Consumption

A single sketchy light flickers in a dark room. The smell of pure, hard liquor (most likely moonshine), permeates the air. Screams, laughter, shattering glass, and the freshly-made whiskey are shared by all in the dingy lair–until a stern knock cuts through the noise, silencing and destroying the night. It was this scenario and countless others like it that defined American Prohibition, also known as â€Å"The Noble Experiment†, a ban on any intoxicating beverage from 1920 to 1933.Reasons Prohibition was enacted was to correct corruption and reduce prison numbers, solve social unrest, lower taxes, and improve hygiene and health of the people. However, Prohibition ultimately failed in its attempt to control the behavior and vices of its citizens. One particular issue that arose from Prohibition was that it fostered corruption; poor, young immigrants gradually morphed into mobs and general crime became organized. Extensive crime syndicates solidified and what is now collo quially known as the â€Å"Mafia† formed.The public had nowhere else to turn but these bootleg distilleries (dubbed â€Å"speakeasies†), because the method of getting in was a password–and by the end of Prohibition, over one million gallons of liquor had been bootlegged and brought into the United States alone. Not only had organized crime increased, but most crimes in general did, too. In addition to distilling alcohol illegally, police budgets in the period of Prohibition had increased by 11. 4 million dollars (adjusted for today’s inflation, more than 140. 5 million dollars). Total federal expenditures on penal institutions increased by a whopping 1000%.Homicides, civil unrest, the prison population, and Prohibition violations had actually increased during Prohibition. The demand for alcohol and the elimination of the public’s legal supply ultimately played a large part in the spike in crime during this era. Besides the fact that crime multiplie d uncontrollably, Prohibition was also practically unenforceable. Interestingly enough, the act of drinking in itself was not banned, rather, only sale and distribution. Bootleggers outnumbered police officers and enforcement became laughably lax in some areas of the United States.The 21 Club, a popular speakeasy in New York City, had been raided many times by police, but the owners were never caught. Many American immigrants viewed liquor not as a vice but as an integral cultural component. Smuggling and bootlegging were in full swing, and by 1927 the number of speakeasies was twice the number of legal bars pre-Prohibition. The Volstead Act itself (the enabling legislation for Prohibition) allowed the sale and production of wine at home and for religious purposes, allowing for vineyards to sell grapes and concentrate for people to make their own wine at home.The contents of the law was full of loopholes that were often exploited, such as whiskey prescription for medical reasons. Th e Prohibition saw a sharp increase in prescriptions written for patients that called for alcohol. Prohibition had also decimated the alcohol-production industry, particularly that of winemaking. As mentioned previously, winemakers had to find loopholes and crafty ways to bypass the law. Many went out of business due to the fact that any alcohol over 0. 5% was banned, and most wines had about a 13% alcohol content.Wine for sacramental purposes was allowed, and people who acted as imposters of church figures obtained wine through this alternative route. Lack of support was widespread and only increased as Prohibition went on. The increase of chaos, loss of businesses, and most of all crime only caused any original support for the law to dwindle. Finally, at 3:32 p. m. on December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, effectively nullifying the 18th Amendment and repealing Prohibition.As the Roaring Twenties came to a close, the United States of America saw that the tax revenue gen erated by legal sale of alcohol would help take the edge off of the financial burden that came with the Great Depression. In conclusion, Prohibition in the United States is generally known as an unsuccessful experiment in enforcing morality in legislation. Illegal distilleries and speakeasies (establishments for illegally purchasing alcohol) broke out and encouraged the spread of crime. The Mafia was established as poor immigrants who found an easy way to make a great deal of money by selling alcohol to those in desperate want of it.Countless loopholes were exploited and enforcement of the laws, over time, decreased steeply. Despite the conviction by Congress that going dry would help the United States cut down on alcoholism and crime, Prohibition ended up doing the exact opposite. Overall, lack of support, increase in crime, unenforceability, and necessity of alcohol in society during the 1920s caused the ultimate downfall and failure of the American Prohibition.CITATIONS (sorry th at this version does not have them inline): http://www. cato. rg/publications/policy-analysis/alcohol-prohibition-was-failure http://www. albany. edu/~wm731882/organized_crime1_final. html http://www. westegg. com/inflation/infl. cgi http://www. digitalhistory. uh. edu/database/article_display. cfm? HHID=441 http://www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/pmc/articles/PMC1655505/pdf/calwestmed00210-0040b. pdf http://library. thinkquest. org/04oct/00492/Why_It_Did_Not_Work. htm http://www. netplaces. com/wine-guide/a-brief-history-of-wine/prohibition-wipes-out-an-industry. htm http://history. howstuffworks. com/american-history/prohibition. htm

Media vs. Parenting Essay - 3077 Words

Media vs. Parenting What impact does sex, violence, drugs, etc. in the media have on children? What can we do about it? How do we balance the tension between freedom of expression and the need to protect children? When you talk about the media and whether or not it is harmful on children, you must examine the whole industry and all aspects of its effects on children. It is that the media as a whole is not as harmful to children as some intense other can, but over exposure to certain aspects of certain types of media can be harmful. To say that all media can be harmful to children is a fallacy that must be avoided when examining this topic. Most people when analyzing this issue tend to focus on drugs, sex, and violence in terms of†¦show more content†¦Those who disliked Hearst or competed against him called his brand of media yellow press. However is can we accuse a person of imposing bad media onto society, just because we do not believe in what they wish to talk about? The second amendment ass ures us that we have the right to voice our opinions, therefore by holding his ground I believe Mr. Hearst was not doing harm to society but just doing what he thought he was entitled to do. I will further discuss other prominent individuals in the media and how they have been perceived. In a matter of seconds, 80% children can impersonate an action hero in a video action game, A TV show, Reality shows or even a movie/TV character. We see a lot of media as happy, energetic, and exciting. We rarely see the media as depressed, boring, and unattractive. Sadly, as much as happy, exciting, and energetic sounds so great, a great number of that happy media is related to sex, violence, drugs, tobacco and alcohol. Children rely on the television, games, magazines, and the internet to occupy their time. The second a child opens a magazine and sees sexy women striking a pose with a beer in her hand, he/she looks up to that as sexy and cool. 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