Red Badge Of Courage Essays - The Red Badge Of Courage,

Red Badge of Courage The Red Badge of Courage is the story of a young man named Henry Fleming. The novel concerns only two days in his life and he is a boy when the novel begins, a man when the novel ends. He enlists in the 304th Regiment of New York Volounteers against his mother's wishes, and spends many boring months in training. He is sent into battle finally. The battle of Chancellorville is the agreed upon location where the book probably takes place. It is mentioned that he travels along the Arappahanock River and by Richmond. The book details historical fact of the battle. This was the closest the South ever came to Washington D.C. and it was a very intense battle. Against a background of battlefield trauma, Crane sets a very important battle: the battle going on in Henry's mind. Henry believes he is faced with imminent death, and throws down his rifle and flees during the second skirmish on the first day. He attempts to rationalize his actions and becomes increasingly ashamed of himself. As he wanders in the rear of the fighting, he encounters a dead soldier. Eventually he falls in with some wounded men and witnesses the death of his close friend, Jim Conklin. As a result of that, he deserts another friend dying and runs. He wants to make a wound for himself so that he is removed from the battle, and by accident is hit on the head by a deserter. He's discovered by another soldier, who helps him return to his regiment. There he lies and says he was wounded in battle. The next day he goes to the front again, and actually retrieves his army's colors from the dying flag bearer. He urges his comrads on, and is proclaimed a hero. Crane wrote this book when he was twenty three years old, in ten days. He had never been in battle and critics through the United States and England could not believe that he had never seen war. His sources were teachers athis small private school in New York State. The book's genius is now regarded as an American masterpiece of psychological writing. Unfortunately, it seems he was probably haunted by the experience of this book and ultimately went to join the Spanish American War. He was disqualified from fighting due to tuberculosis, but he continued into Cuba as a reporter for Pulitzer and Hearst. He contracted malaria there and several years later died at the age of twenty eight. The Red Badge of Courage is an intense inner story of thoughts, fears and imaginings that any member of an infantry would find. As comrads fell to the right and left, and as people were pannicked, the chaos and confusion of kill or be killed comes forth in simple boyish questions. He stares at corposes. He becomes obsessed with the thought that the troops are marching into a trap and none of the leaders know it. He wants to warn his companions. He feels stupid and incompetent. The first battle arrives and he feels the physical effects of fighting burning in his eyes and roaring in his ears. He feels suffocated by the smoke of gunfire. All the soldiers and officers are fighting in every way possible and when it stops, infront of him, he sees everyone around him dead and the wounded crawling away. He hears the sounds of fighting coming from everywhere and realizes that he is surrounded by war. Crane's language becomes impressionistic. Henry is amazed to see "a pure blue sky and the sun gleaming on the trees and fields." He then wakes up, somehow, and sees how proud he is of himself. Suddenly the enemy reappears. The youth feels it must be a mistake. He sees men around him running and he feels he is being left alone to die. He turns and runs. He runs into yet another battle where, at the edge of the forest, he feels as if he's being kept in by nature itself. That the branches of the trees are trying to halt his progress. He sees his friend Jim Conklin shot through the stomach, mortally wounded, and is told he should remove him from the battle. Jim runs to the bushes before he dies to avoid being run over by war wagons. Henry watches with an agony almost as great as his friend. Henry tries to understand what Jim is thinking but cannot reach his friend. Crane ends the chapter with the sentance, "The red sun was pasted in the sky Red Badge Of Courage Essays - The Red Badge Of Courage, Red Badge of Courage Physical and emotional pain is what the tattered solider illustrates in the book. The tattered solider pain comes from all of the horrible things associated with war. Him going crazy brings emotional pain and the physical pain is brought on by the endurances of war. "There was a tattered man, fouled with dust, blood and powder stain from hair to shoes, who trudged quietly at the youths side". The tattered solider also characterizes the toughness people can endear. Even through the harshness of war people will find something inside of them, overcome it and not let it bother them. The tattered solider goes out and lives through the tough endurance's of war but he finds something inside of him to live through it. The perfect solider is what Jim Conklin brings to the book. Jim never complains about war and fights as good as the next man. Many of the people look up to Jim because he is so strong willed. The regiments almost look up to Jim in a spiritual way finding peace inside of them when they think of him. It is a tragedy when Jim dies because of all of the moral inspiration he gave the regiment. True to his character Jim dies a quiet and peaceful death not distributing any of the regiment. Wilson represents the two sides of human nature. In the beginning of the book Wilson is a mean tough guy that no one liked. This outward act of being tuff is just a cover of the true nature of Wilson. It is natural for people to cover their true nature in front of new faces. Towards the end of the book Wilson starts to care about Henry. hen Henry is injured and he doesn't try and fight the other men anymore. True to human nature once times start getting more difficult and Wilson becomes more comfortable with his surroundings he transcends into the calm compassionate person he really is. All of the characters in the Red Badge of Courage represent some aspect of man either physically or emotionally. This connection between the characters and the reader make the book true to life and more believable. Since the characters feel so real, physically and emotionally, the reader has an easier time relating to them.

Pragmatics Gives Context to Language

Pragmatics Gives Context to Language Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the use of language in social  contexts  and the ways people produce and comprehend meanings through language. The term pragmatics was coined in the 1930s by psychologist and philosopher Charles Morris. Pragmatics was developed as a subfield of linguistics in the 1970s. Background Pragmatics has its roots in philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. Morris drew on his background when he laid out his theory of pragmatics in his book Signs, Language and Behavior, explaining that the linguistic term deals with the origins, uses, and effects of signs within the total behavior of the interpreters of signs. In terms of pragmatics, signs refers not to physical signs but to the subtle movements, gestures, tone of voice, and body language that often accompany speech. Sociology- the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society- and anthropology played large roles in the development of pragmatics. Morris based his theory on his earlier work editing the writings and lectures of George Herbert Mead, an American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, in the book Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, writes John Shook in  Pragmatism Cybrary, an online pragmatism encyclopedia. Mead, whose work also drew heavily on anthropology- the study of human societies and cultures and their development- explained how communication involves much more than just the words people use: It involves the all-important social signs people make when they communicate. Pragmatics vs. Semantics Morris explained that pragmatics is different from  semantics, which  concerns the relations between signs and the objects they signify. Semantics refers to the specific meaning of language; pragmatics involves all the social cues that accompany language. Pragmatics focuses not on  what  people say but  how  they say it and how others interpret their  utterances  in social contexts, says Geoffrey Finch in Linguistic Terms and Concepts. Utterances are literally the units of sound you make when you talk, but the signs that accompany those utterances give the sounds their true meaning. Pragmatics in Action The  American Speech-Language-Hearing Association  (ASHA) gives two examples of how pragmatics influences language and its interpretation. In the first, ASHA notes: You invited your friend over for dinner. Your child sees your friend reach for some cookies and says, Better not take those, or youll get even bigger. You cant believe your child could be so rude. In a literal sense, the daughter is simply saying that eating cookies can make you gain weight. But due to the social context, the mother interprets that sentence to mean that her daughter is calling her friend fat. The first sentence in this explanation refers to the semantics- the literal meaning of the sentence. The second and third refer  to the pragmatics, the actual meaning of the words as interpreted by a listener based on social context. In another example, ASHA notes: You talk with a neighbor about his new car. He has trouble staying on topic and starts talking about his favorite TV show. He doesnt look at you when you talk and doesnt laugh at your jokes. He keeps talking, even when you look at your watch and say, Wow. Its getting late. You finally leave, thinking about how hard it is to talk with him. In this scenario, the speaker is just talking about a new car and his favorite TV show. But the listener interprets the signs the speaker is using- not looking at the listener and not laughing at his jokes- as the speaker being unaware of the listeners views (let alone his presence) and monopolizing his time. Youve likely been in this kind of situation before, where the speaker is talking about perfectly reasonable, simple subjects but is unaware of your presence and your need to escape. While the speaker sees the talk as a simple sharing of information (the semantics), you see it as a rude monopolization of your time (the pragmatics). Pragmatics has proved helpful in working with children with  autism.  Beverly Vicker, a speech and language pathologist writing on the  Autism Support Network  website, notes that many children with autism find it difficult to pick up on what she and other autism theorists describe as social pragmatics, which refers to: ...the ability to effectively use and adjust communication messages for a variety of purposes with an array of communication partners within diverse circumstances. When educators, speech pathologists, and other interventionists teach these explicit communication skills, or  social pragmatics, to children with autism spectrum disorder, the results are often profound and can have a big  impact in improving their conversational interaction skills. Importance of Pragmatics Pragmatics is the meaning minus semantics, says  Frank Brisard in his essay Introduction: Meaning and Use in Grammar, published in Grammar, Meaning and Pragmatics. Semantics, as noted, refers to the literal meaning of a spoken utterance. Grammar, Brisard says, involves the rules defining how the language is put together. Pragmatics takes  context  into account to complement the contributions that semantics and grammar make to meaning, he says. David Lodge, writing in the Paradise News, says that pragmatics gives humans a fuller, deeper, and generally more reasonable account of human language behavior. Without pragmatics, there is often  no understanding of what language actually means, or what a person truly means when she is speaking. The context- the social signs, body language, and tone of voice (the pragmatics)- is what makes utterances clear or unclear to the speaker and her listeners.

Plato vs. Aristotle Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Plato vs. Aristotle - Essay Example Although the theory is destined to set up tangible values for the knowledge of realism, Aristotle believes it burdened with discrepancies and considers that the idea of realism depends ahead all forms of connections to other rudiments. Ideas, Plato thinks, are everlasting, self-contained absolutes, which respond to every point of precise knowledge achieved through human consideration. Also, ideas are in Plato's analysis are of tangible values by which all human effort can be reviewed, for the pecking order of all ideas guides to the uppermost absolute, that of Good. Additionally, the theory asserts that situations of being are dependent in the lead of the blending of a variety of types of subsistence, that knowledge is idea and therefore obviously more genuine plus that only the courses of nature were suitable entities. However, Aristotle assaults this conjecture on the basis that Plato's point of view are uncertain either his declaration are not at all convincing. Aristotle states or in other words, his point of view directs to opposing ends. The most important dissimilarities that can be distinguished amid these two arguments are seen when the objectives of both Plato and Aristotle ar... The most important dissimilarities that can be distinguished amid these two arguments are seen when the objectives of both Plato and Aristotle are examined. Plato has two major objectives following his argument; the first is to disprove the situation that unfairness is better than fairness and secondly, his human function quarrel which assists to set up the idea of his model metropolises, in which every individual has a purpose and the city is righteous when everybody executes their own purpose. Aristotle is exploratory joy as the decisive end and is probing for methods to get to that stage. Therefore, by demonstrating that this good is initiated in the expression of cause, Aristotle is capable to set down a course to happiness. If one accomplishes one's purpose, expression of cause and does so in an outstanding way, than one will essentially achieve joy. One more way in which the two points of view vary is on their genuine conceptualization of what the human purpose is. For Plato, t he human purpose is described as thought, judgment, existing and be careful with a lot of things. This varies very much from Aristotle idea of the human purpose which is, to carry out activities that convey reason. Not simply are these two meanings a lot dissimilar but they demonstrate the gap amid the ways that both philosopher are arguing for the thought of a human purpose1. Plato vs. Aristotle 3 Plato believes of it in the conditions of the person's position in society. His ideas of judgment, purposeful, et cetera pertains to the society in which one resides and one's relation to it. Aristotle moves toward the dilemma from a lot more distinctive