Thursday, October 31, 2019
20th century human resource management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words
20th century human resource management - Essay Example During the last quarter of the 20th Century, human resource management arrived in the UK, having originated in the US. Please identify and explain those factors that led to the rise of this concept in the UK at this time"Human resource management is one of the distinguished sub-sectors which fall under human rights. Human resource management is related to employees. Their training; recruitment, interview and selection; labor relations, performance appraisal, wage and salary administration, equal employment opportunity, occupational health and safety act, personnel records management, quality of work life. Hence it deals with every necessity of an individual employee.Human resource management is said to have been originated in America in the late fifties and early sixties by the propagation of a different view of the work-force by the organizational humanists such as Argyris and McGregor. Since then number of new approaches leading to HRM have been formulated which include human capital theory by Likeert and human resource indexing by Schuster. The major similarity between all these approaches was that in these theories human labor was treated as a major asset rather then viewing labor as a cost factor. These theories or concept were further modified in 1980's the basic modification was that the new concepts aimed at the importance of the human factor aimed at integrating the personal function into general strategic management. These concepts were used as the foundation of HRM. (Human Resource Management: An International Comparison).... While in UK the trade unions were much more powerful and membership was high, thus a vacuum was created in UK to evacuate the strong bonds between trade unions. To achieve this misconception was created that the pluralist industrial relations strategy to deliver good industrial relations or an efficient and productive industry has failed. (Contemporary Industrial Relations: A Critical Analysis) The result of this was that a new legislation was needed urgently which would be detrimental about the roles of trade unions. Thus UK policy makers deduced an approach which had the potential to replace pluralistic system; this approach was the human resource management which focused on individualism. In the 1980s UK faced recession while his competitor US was in the period of mass production and corporate organization. The reason for this was the shortcomings in managerial techniques, UK employers and mangers chose to retain their imperial and specialist markets. Thus when the Bruisers realized their mistakes they chose to adopt US standards of managing human resource. This was the time when human resource management was introduced in UK after being originated and tested by the American organizations. The private sector was the first to adopt human management resources. (Change for Competitive Success) The private sector adopted human resource management first because in the 1980,s a number of private organizations were being introduced in the UK. The governments organizations were old and well established thus they were able to compete with increase in completion very easily. While the newly developed private sector which was growing rapidly was not able to compete with the increase in competition, as not only were the private organizations evolving
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Learning a second language
Learning a second language 1 Can learning an L2 cause L1 attrition? Attrition is the non-pathological, not age-related loss of a language. Speakers learning a second language often experience a change in the way they process their native language, a process called L1 attrition. L1 attrition often occurs in migrant individuals, since they immerse themselves fully into another language. It is expected that, as someone learns an L2 in an immersion environment, some crosslinguistic interference might happen. This interference can happen in both directions: just as the L2 is influenced by the L1, the L1 can assimilate to the L2. The present paper discusses the possibility of L1 phonetic attrition caused by the acquiring of an L2. Phonetic attrition is the loss of phonetic segments and/or suprasegmental features and/or the adaptation to other phonetic units. This paper will discuss how phonetic attrition can affect the production of sounds and suprasegmental features, specifically peak alignment. It will also discuss how phonetic attrition can happen in be ginner learners in classroom settings as well as the more expected case of complete language immersion. Mennen (2004) pursued the question of whether Dutch non-native speakers of Greek are able to produce cross-linguistic differences in the timing of peak alignments in both their languages. He conducted two experiments to answer his question. The first experiment tested whether experiences L2 speakers (Dutch non-native speakers of Greek) can produce accurate f0 timing in their L2 (Greek). A further aim of this study was to see whether an influence from the L1 (Dutch) can be observed in the L2. The participants were divided into three groups: five native Dutch speakers (D), five native Greek speakers (G), and five non-native (Dutch) speakers of Greek (DG). All participants in the LG group were late bilinguals with experience in their L2 ranging from 12 to 35 years, used their L2 regularly, and were college educated. The materials used in the first experiment were 20 declaratives in Greek and 40 declaratives in Dutch (further divided into 20 declaratives containing short vowels and 20 declaratives containing long vowels). The participants were asked to read the test sentences twice in a random order. Group D read two sets of sentences in Dutch (declaratives containing short and long vowels), awhile groups G and DG only read the set of sentences in Greek. The readings were recorded and their peak alignment onset measured. The speakers were asked to repeat any mispronounced sentences. When comparing group DG’s alignment data to that of groups G, the results showed clear differences in their peak alignment times. Four out of the five L2 learners aligned their peaks earlier than native Greek speakers. When compared to group’s D data, the peaks alignments were closer in time but still not native-like. This result showed that L2 speakers could not reach a native-like production of peak alignments in their L2, Greek. At the same time, this shows cross-linguistic influence from the L1 into the L2. The second experiment was conducted to investigate if Dutch non-native speakers of Greek were able to maintain correct peak alignment times in their L1. The materials and procedure were the same as in experiment 1, as for the participants, only groups D and DG were required for this experiment. The results from this second experiment showed a difference in peak alignment times in both sets of sentences in Dutch for both groups; this difference however was smaller in the DG group, and therefore non-native like. From both these experiments, Mennen concluded that Dutch on-native speakers of Greek fail to produce native-like peak alignments in their L1 and L2, which can be interpreted as L1 phonetic attrition. In 2012, Chang conducted an experiment with the goal of examining the extent to which the L1 can change during L2 learning in beginner L2 learners, and also if the L1 would be affected within the first weeks of acquisition. For this experiment, two groups of participants were recruited: an L2 learner group, consisting of 36 adult nave speakers of American English learning Korean and a control group consisting of nine native Korean speakers. The L2ers group lived in a South Korean university campus and were starting an intensive six week course of introductory Korean (the equivalent of a semester of college-level Korean classes) The participants had no significant previous exposure to Korean and although they were living in Korea, their interactions were limited to other L2 learners. The materials in this experiment consisted of 22 Korean and 23 English monosyllabic items. There were 15 critical items beginning with plosives. The participants were asked to read the monosyllables and their VOT for the critical items was recorded. The results from this experiment showed that by week five, phonetic attrition of the learners’ English in approximation to Korean. That is to say, the VOT of the learnersà ¢â‚¬â„¢ English plosives stopped being native-like and drifted into being more like the Korean stops they had been learning. The learners’ production of English voiceless stops and Korean aspirated stops lengthened in VOT in a manner that suggests they were coordinated. From this experiment, Chang concluded that phonemic attrition can occur rapidly, in a class-room setting, due to cross-linguistic interference even during the first weeks of instruction. The next study, by Mayr et al. (2013), investigates whether L1 attrition has occurred in the speech of a monozygotic twin who emigrated from the L1 environment 30 years ago. This was tested by comparing her speech productions to those of her identical twin sister, who has been living in the L1-speaking environment all her life. The participants consisted of identical twin sisters MZ and TZ, both of which were consecutive Dutch-English bilinguals. They were 62 years old at the time of the study. Their language background is as follows: MZ and TZ grew up together in the Netherlands, where they acquired their L1. In high school, both were introduced to English as their L2 and later acquired jobs in an international telecommunications company, where they only spoke English. At age 32 MZ left the Netherlands to live in the UK, where she had a daughter (also Dutch-English bilingual). MZ reported to preferring English in her everyday life, but speaks both Dutch and English with her daughter (she also reported frequent code-switching with her daughter). In contrast, TZ stayed in the Netherlands her whole life and stopped using English once she left her telecommunications job. The materials consisted of 20 monosyllabic Dutch target words and 20 monosyllabic English target words. The participants were asked to produc e each target word four times, randomly, in the following fashion: â€Å"I say X†(for English targets) and â€Å"Ik zei X†(for Dutch targets). This resulted in 80 Dutch tokens and 96 English tokens per participant. The researchers measured the VOT of plosives in both languages. The data for each language was recorded in different days (appropriately far from each other) to avoid the effects of language suppression and activation during the process. The results of this experiment showed clear phonetic attrition in MZ’s production of voiceless plosives, which indicate cross-linguistic assimilation patterns. She produced VOT values that are longer than the Dutch norm, while TZ’s VOT values were perfectly within the Dutch norm. MZ’s VOT values were much more similar to her English VOT values than to her sister’s Dutch VOT values. The researchers concluded that this difference was caused by cross-linguistic influences from MZ’s L2 into h er L1, which caused L1 attrition. They also mentioned that MZ’s code switching interactions with her daughter might have a large part in her L1 attrition, since bilinguals that code switch are more likely to be perceived as foreigners or more heavily accented by native speakers. The last study, by de Leeuw et al. (2010), investigated how the acquisition of an L2 affects the accentedness of the L1 in two different consecutive bilingual groups with different L2s by comparing them to monolingual native speakers of their L1. For this experiment, 34 German immigrants in Anglophone Canada, 23 German immigrants in the Netherlands, and five German monolingual controls in Germany were recruited. The speakers were questioned on different aspects of their language usage, such as the frequency with which they used their L1, or if they code-switched between languages (this question was not asked explicitly). A group of 19 German listeners were also recruited. They had a minimal or non-existent knowledge of English and Dutch and were not bilingual. The materials consisted of speech samples of a film retelling (not a script, but a scene to describe spontaneously). The participants were asked to record the speech samples in their own homes to ensure their comfort. One speech sample from each participant was obtained and then presented to the group of 19 German judges, which then assessed the speech samples in a scale from 1(certain of non-native status) to 6 (certain of native status). The results showed that biling ual speakers (both English and Dutch as L2) are more likely to be perceived as foreigners than the German control group. Also, that the amount of informal use of the L1 does not impact on the degree of perceived foreign accent, and that speakers who use this language for professional purposes are less likely to be perceived as foreigners. From these results phonetic the bilingual speakers can be concluded to experience L1 phonetic attrition, which would explain why their L1 production was perceived as foreign. In the present paper, the possibility of phonetic attrition as a result of acquiring a second language was assessed. The results from the previously discussed experiments all point towards the obvious conclusion that phonetic attrition can be caused by cross linguistic influence from the L2 into the L1. The results also show that phonetic attrition can occur rapidly among beginner L2 learners in classroom settings, but that it is more prominent in immersion settings, such as that of immigrants. Although phonetic L1 attrition, and L1 attrition in general, is a common phenomenon among immigrants and there is no evidence that it affects L1 speech in a way that prevents other speakers of the language from recognizing what has been said, there is a prominent negative opinion about the process. This could be caused by the pride that countries take in their languages and how their languages are representative of their traditions. Even then, L1 attrition should be regarded as a completely normal process, as it does not hinder, in any way, the ability of a person to communicate in their L1. Further studies of L1 attrition could help dispel the negative views that surround the subject, as it is an area not yet developed completely. For example, a better definition of the word ‘loss’, used to describe the process, might help dispel the stigma behind attrition. The ‘loss’ of the native language does not give any indication as to how permanent or irreversible i t is. It also does not provide any clue as to how deeply it affects the L1 and how it might impact the lives of those who go through this process. References Chang, C. E. (2012). Rapid and multifaceted effects of second language learning on first language speech production. Journal of Phonetics 40, 249-268. de Leeuw, E., I. Mennen J. M. Scobbie. (2013). Dynamic systems, maturational constraints and L1 phonetic attrition. International Journal of Bilingualism 17:6 Mayr, R., S. Price I. Mennen (2012). First language attrition in the speech of Dutch–English bilinguals: The case of monozygotic twin sisters. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15.4, 687-700. Mennen, I. 2004. Bi-directional interference in the intonation of Dutch speakers of Greek. Journal of Phonetics 32, 543-563.
Friday, October 25, 2019
Electronic Arts and the Global Video Game Industry Essay -- Video Game
Electronic Arts and the Global Video Game Industry Demographic trends      Gaming has become an important part of growing up for people who were born in the last 25 years. Approximately 3.9 - 4.7% of total world population (250 to 300 million people) is  ¡Ã‚ §very active ¡Ã‚ ¨ or a  ¡Ã‚ §frequent ¡Ã‚ ¨ player of video games or at least owns the necessary equipment. This target group spends five or more hours a week playing video games. The United States is the largest video game market in the world with about 50% of the US population (145 Million people) spending 6.5 hours a week on computers and video games.      The majority of video game players are preteens, teenagers, and young adults (between the age of 20 and 40). A full 70% of college students play video games at least occasionally in a year and 100% had played at some point in their life. The average age of game players in the US in 2003 is 29 years old and hard-core gamers purchase 10-15 new games annually. Indeed, the average age of game players is rising because gamers continue to play into their adult years, of those over age 50, 17% play video games up from 13% in 2000. The number of females who played console games dramatically rose also to about 40%. It is interesting to note that gamers over the age of 35 like to play games on PCs while those younger than 35 preferred console systems. Socio-cultural      Many people think spending many hours in front of either PCs or video game consoles is not a good hobby for kids. There are many issues such as health, personality, motivation and especially violence and aggression . Some people believe violence in video games and in other media promotes violent behavior among participants. It can contribute to players becoming overweight by decreasing outdoor activity and reducing the capability of eye-sight. The content of violent games could account for changes in the player's mood and cause him or her to become more aggressive or emotional. Political/Legal      The video game business is an interdependent industry. Companies have to pay a customary royalty to the console makers. The console manufacturer have the power to authorize all games, limited the number of games, marketing plan and even the quantity of production. The guidelines and restrictions put forth by the Software Rating Board (ESRB) effects the content, storylines and features of vi... ...at encourages creativity but also will pull the plug on ideas in the early stages so that they can concentrate resources on ventures that are more likely to pay off. Because of this most of the games EA creates are sequels to previously successful franchise brands. Finally, the company is one that prides itself on moral character. EA ¡Ã‚ ¦s Chairman and CEO Lawrence Probst states that  ¡Ã‚ §EA will not publish games with gratuitous sex and violence. ¡Ã‚ ¨ This is an important distinguishing point in an industry that is know for pushing the edge of decency with regard to sex, violence and drugs. SWOT Analysis Strengths „X     Dominate Player in market „X     Great game franchises „X     International reach „X     Strong talent pipeline „X     Moral leadership     Weaknesses „X     Poor Relationship with Microsoft „X     Overly focused business (on games) Opportunities „X     Mobile market „X     Cell phone market „X     In car equipment „X     Branch out into other forms of media (TV, movies) „X     Online gaming     Threats „X     Rising production costs. „X     New entrants especially in the mobile market „X     Console upgrades „X     Increasing development costs
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Baseball and Antitrust Laws Essay
Any commerce with operations spanning state boundaries, thus undertaking interstate trade, is governed by antitrust laws. Efforts at monopolizing and controlling trade could be regarded unlawful by national circuit courts as per the Clayton and Sherman Acts. Baseball has always been immune from such antitrust regulations from 1922, upon the Supreme Court’s verdict made baseball winner in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National Baseball Clubs. It was determined that although planning of sports was done across State boundaries, such games constituted intrastate occasions since movement from state to state was not essential (Falk, 1994). The antirust immunity bars MLB from being legally challenged because of national antirust braches. Unless such immunity is removed by Congress, baseball proprietors make whatever decisions they wish because no antirust-related legal proceedings can be instituted against them. Whenever the proprietors attempt to modify baseball, the MLBPA quickly comes in to claim that they were not consulted (Bendix, 2008). Despite the fact that proprietors may do whatever they wish disregarding antitrust regulations, nothing which breaches the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) can be done. Such agreement requires that almost each dispute be mediated, like it is done with numerous labor deals. If the antirust immunity of baseball was cancelled, would this mean the changing of baseball? This is unlikely since the same regulations that govern NHL, NFL, and NBA would continue to govern baseball. The USA at the moment has antitrust regulations meant to bar businesses from controlling specific markets. Nevertheless, US baseball market has been monopolized by key league baseball for ages, thus preventing upcoming players from actually gaining footage. The US Supreme Court has defended Major League Baseball’s (MLB) liberty to monopolize in a number of instances. MLB remains the sole US monopoly in numerous ways, and has remained so from its beginning. Upon the 1903 merger of the National League (NL) with the American League (AL), such partnership immediately proved successful. Such success was surely bound to invite imitation. Therefore a different baseball league almost immediately demonstrated willingness to challenge the NL/AL monopoly. The Federal League began as an insignificant league; however, it espoused key intentions (Anderson, 2002). By 1914, numerous individuals regarded such Federal League to be a main league; the league itself desired to officially confirm this. The Federal League (FL) took legal action against Major League Baseball on 5th January 1915 for disrupting their efforts at hiring players who were between agreements that is, not governed by the Reserve Clause, from the American National League, citing national antitrust law. The case was heard by Kennesaw Mountain Landhis, reputed for his firm observance of the law. However, Ladhis was as well a big fan of Chicago Cubs. He knew that the Federal League’s case was a justifiable one, however, his favorite team, the Cubs, would suffer if FL won the case, and thus Ladhis kept such case under advisement as opposed to immediately issuing a verdict. The FL’s 19156 collapse made everyone happy. The Baltimore Federal League license proprietors tried to buy out a team of the Major League (ML) only to be rejected. They subsequently attempted to purchase a franchise of the International league; they were once more rejected. The proprietor of White Sox, Chalets Chomsky, offended Baltimore city by saying that the metropolis constituted a bad and insignificant league. Charles Ebbets, the proprietor of Dodgers, added to the insult by stating that the metropolis was among the worst insignificant league metropolis because of having excess colored people. The perspective proprietors then took legal action against ML baseball, alleging a scheme to tear down the FL. In April 1919, a law court declared the Baltimore proprietors the winners of the suit, thus awarding them damages worth $240,000. An appeal was instituted in 1920, with the appeal ruling being made in 1921 (Barra, 2003). The 1921 ruling nullified the decision of the junior court and declared that baseball did not constitute the type of trade national law ought to standardize. The US Supreme Court endorsed such a ruling on May 22nd 1922, thus strengthening baseball’s antitrust immunity. In the Federal Baseball Club v. National League, the Supreme Court gave the verdict that ML baseball remained immune from the Sherman Antitrust Act provisions. Following the 1915 folding of the FL, majority of the FL proprietors were purchased by proprietors within the other MLs, or had received compensation in other modes. For instance, St. Louis FL owner was authorized to purchase the St Louis Browns. Baltimore Federal League club owner did not get this authorization and hence he took legal action against the American league, National League, as well as additional defendants, such as a number of FL officials. The suit alleged a plot to dominate baseball through demolishing the FL (Rovell, 2001). The listed defendants were declared jointly answerable, with $80,000 worth of damages assessed. The figure was tripled to total $240,000 as per the Clayton Antitrust Act provisions. Such immunity, as well as the monopoly of MLB, was unchallenged up to 1972. Curt Flood took legal action against baseball following his sale to Philadelphia Phillies from the Saint Louis Cardinals following 1969’s season. Such a case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, where the initial decision was endorsed with Congress left to rectify the inconsistency. Despite the fact that Flood did not win the case, he set the precedence for wage negotiation, and immediately afterwards, free action. At the moment free agency survives, however such antitrust immunity is as well law. Baseball was not to be awarded antitrust immunity if the Baltimore League squad owners had been reimbursed after the league was disbanded. All other squad’s proprietors were compensated with the exception of Baltimore, thus prompting their filing of the initial antitrust lawsuit. Such immunity is suspect, and several observers are convinced that it may once more be upheld in a law court. Nevertheless, from the Flood case of 1972, no any one case has been even close to being heard at the Supreme Court (Barra, 2006). In addition MLB’s domination has not been challenged by any league since the 1950s unsuccessful Continental League. The National Federal League has been engrossed in majority of the major antitrust court cases, such as, its lawsuits against the US Football League. Such cases have demonstrated that antitrust lawsuits are not essentially fatal. Despite that fact that the NFL lost the two cases, numerous lawsuits have been previously won by sports leagues. In antitrust lawsuits, such leagues have to demonstrate that they did not breach antitrust regulations through demonstrating that their activities generally, served to promote contest more as opposed to inhibiting it. Despite the fact that Al Davis legally defeated the NFL, the NFL could as well have emerged victorious if it possessed an unambiguous guidelines and adhered to them rather than acting because they particularly disliked Al Davis (Bartree, 2005). In addition, despite the fact that USFL legally beat NFL, a mere $3 worth of damages was awarded. If the US Congress completely revokes the antirust immunity of baseball, some interesting enduring consequences could result. Firstly, the key leagues are to be affected. Insignificant-league baseball t the moment relies on the ongoing presence of the Reserve Clause , which permits major-league teams to legally control players even following the expiry of the players’ contracts. Such Reserve Clause permits the existence of deep insignificant-league structures within baseball by permitting such teams to control numerous players not in their key-league rosters. NBA and NFL do not have any minor-league structures. Hockey has insignificant-league squads; however, such are mediated into the joint bargaining of hockey with the players. The Reserve Clause is likely to be legally challenged if the antitrust immunity of baseball is lost. In case such clause is determined to breach antitrust regulations, baseball squads could be forced surrender the legal claims to a number of or even every of their insignificant-league players. With no interest to develop the team members whom they formerly controlled, big-league squads would be less motivated to offer support to their insignificant-league partners through subsidizing their activities (Blum, 2001). This has thus made insignificant leagues lobby Congress to uphold the antitrust immunity of baseball. Without such immunity insignificant leagues would be forced to modify their activities, to become more similar to free insignificant early 1900s leagues rather than be under MLB. Proprietors would have no power regarding discussing with team members due to lack of legal standing to possess a Reserve Clause. When squads have no rights over team members, there will be less willingness to recruit high school players and accord them 4 or 5 development years, particularly if they are forced to dwell much on major league rosters. This could imply a major impetus fro baseball in colleges, and perhaps also for global baseball leagues (Rovell, 2001). Such would form the major MLB’s propagation ground as has been for basketball and football. If the antitrust immunity is revoked, franchise transfer, and particularly contraction, would from the greatest challenge. Close to thirty years have elapsed since a single baseball squad relocated from one metropolis to the other. Since that time, the other 3 games have progressed since the antitrust immunity grants baseball proprietors extra authority to bar squads from relocating than the proprietors have within other games. Such authority was especially apparent in 1992 at the time when the Tampa/St. Petersburg Vince Piazza’s group wanted to purchase the Giants from Bob Lurie at $115 million. The proprietors declined to allow such sale, and then compelled Lurie to accept $100 million from Peter Mogowan for the squad. Piazza instituted legal proceedings against MLB, actually winning the initial round of the case. The court stated that the antitrust immunity did not cover relocations (Belth, 2001). However, the Curt Flood Act currently holds that immunity does touch on relocations. Absence of antitrust immunity makes it hard to bar teams from relocating by the MLB. Attempts to block relocations would surely be met with lawsuits instituted by the cities or teams that were attempting to relocate. Baseball would be tasked with the responsibility to demonstrating that barring such relocation would benefit contest, plus that the resolution was founded on unambiguous guidelines. If Congress repealed the immunity, the contraction war would most likely not be based on Twin’s release and labor deals. Contraction challengers would posit that the proprietors were attempting to get rid of 2 competitors so as to raise profits; this is a typical antitrust breach (Falk, 1994). The proprietors would be forced to defend such relocation arguing that they were enhancing competition within the game. It is difficult to determine whether America or baseball would benefit if the antitrust immunity of baseball is revoked. Attorneys would surely benefit owing to increased lawsuits. The proprietors would benefit since the MLB has previously won against attempts to revoke the immunity and Congress always takes it time. References Anderson, P. (2002). Recent major league baseball contraction cases. Retrieved august 4th 2009, from http://law. marquette. edu/cgi-bin/site. pl? 2130&pageID=474 Barra, A. (2003). Policy debate: Should the antitrust exemption be eliminated? Retrieved august 4th 2009, from http://swcollege. com/bef/policy_debates/baseball. html Barra, A. (2006). Policy debate: Should the antitrust exemption be eliminated? Retrieved august 4th 2009, from http://www. swlearning. com/economics/policy_debates/baseball. html Bartree, H. (2005). The role of antirust laws in the professional sports industry from a financial perspective. Retrieved august 4th 2009, from http://www. thesportjournal. org/article/role-antitrust-laws-professional-sports-industry-financial-perspective Belth, A. (November 26th 2001). Ending baseballs antitrust exemption. Retrieved august 4th 2009, from http://courses. cit. cornell. edu/econ352jpw/readme/Baseball%20Prospectus%20-%20Ending%20Baseball%27s%20Antitrust%20Exemption. htm Bendix, P. (December 3rd 2008). The history of baseball’s antitrust exemption. Retrieved august 4th 2009, from http://www. beyondtheboxscore. com/2008/12/3/678134/the-history-of-baseball-s Blum, R. (June 12th 2001). Why is the antitrust exemption important? Retrieved august 4th 2009, from http://www. usatoday. com/sports/baseball/stories/2001-12-05-antitrust-explanation. htm
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Car Crash While Hitchhiking Essay
1. In the story, â€Å"Car Crash While Hitchhiking†the protagonist is characterized as an outsider. Reason being, is because he is he’s evidently a drug addict who wakes up in the middle of nowhere. It even mentioned in the story that he had been to detox. He’s abandoned by the fellows whom he did drugs with. Clearly he did not fit in with most social groups, and he had a hard time being accepted. Due to him being an outsider, I believe that there was some type of event that lead him to be an addict. Maybe he was neglected, or he had a midlife crisis.In the story, he implicated that he wanted to die. As he said when he was inside the car and put all his bags on one side of the car and said that he did not care whether he lives or dies. Certainly all this man was living for was so that he can reach his ultimate nirvana. 2. The central theme in Susan Minot’s short story, â€Å"Lust†is running on empty. Reason I chose this to be the theme is because the protagonist in the story is seeks and she’s in search for the right guy to fall in love with her. Yet, as she continues to be promiscuous activities trying to find the right one, she realizes that they all want her for one reason. She knows that they just want her for sex, and every time she has sexual encounters with them she feels empty inside afterwards. We know she is empty because her parents don’t give her attention, she has no family, and she just wants her heart to be fulfilled. But as you read throughout the short story, you realize all this promiscuity is her fulfillment. This is what makes her content. When she’s in the act of it she has nothing to worry about, bc the sex is hot and passionate. She’s running in empty because she’s absorbing all these guys with the gratifying attitude of not b eing loved. And that is why she continues to lustful.. 3. In the short story, â€Å"The Half Skinned-Steer, the story takes place a in Chicago on a ranch somewhere in the country outskirts. The setting also causes me to think that it’s set in the 1900’s due to the Chicago stockyards. In the short story, â€Å"A Good Man Is Hard to Find†the setting of the story takes place in Atlanta, Ga, somewhere maybe in the city, or the suburbs. The reason I believe that the setting is in the city or suburbs, is because it took the family twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. You can also assume that the setting of the story is in the city due to how the family are dresses. In the story, â€Å"A Worn Path†the setting of the story is in a country town Natchez, Mississippi on an early chilly cold morning on a path of pinewoods while the sun is rising.
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