The Chosen :: essays research papers

Plot Summary of The Chosen The action of The Chosen unfolds in the immigrant community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, against the backdrop of World War II. It is seen through the eyes of Reuven Malter, a boy who would appear to have much in common with Danny, for they are both brilliant, Jewish, closely tied to their fathers, and near-neighbors who live only five blocks apart. Still, they attend separate yeshivas and inhabit very different worlds. A baseball league is begun. When Danny Saunders’ school plays Reuven Malter’s, the Hasids are determined to show the apikorsim a thing or two and the competition is fierce. Danny’s murderous hitting is remarkable, but when Reuven comes to pitch he does not back away. A hard ball shatters his glasses and smashes into his eye, sending him to the hospital for a week. At his father’s insistence, Reuven permits the repentant Danny to visit him, and they become friends. Danny dazzles Reuven with demonstrations of his photographic mind, with the quantity of scholarly work he bears each day, and with the intellectual prowess of his English and Hebrew studies—qualities greatly revered in traditional Jewish culture. Danny’s revelations startle Reuven; he confesses he would rather be a psychologist than accept his inherited role as spiritual leader of his father’s sect. Reuven’s confessions surprise Danny; he reveals his desire to become a rabbi, though his scholar-father would prefer him to follow his talent and become a mathematician. Danny cannot understand how anyone would choose the very position he secretly wishes to reject. At a time when conflicts are churning within him, Danny finds Reuven as an empathetic listener who is highly intelligent yet safe—not a Hasid, but a Jew who follows orthodox religious traditions without rejecting the secular possibilities in the world around them. As the boys become friends, Reuven begins to learn about Hasidism. He learns that there are tzaddiks who were believed to be superhuman links between the people and God. In some sects it was believed that a leader should take upon himself the sufferings of the Jewish people. Such a leader is Reb Saunders. His ways and his teachings are the ways of seventeenth century Hasids and it is this role that Danny is expected to fill when he becomes the tzaddik. In the long initial visits that Reuven pays to Reb Saunder’s congregation to be approved as fit company for Danny, Reuven observes the way Hasidic philosophy permeates his friend’s life.

Story OF A Lion :: essays research papers

Night of the Lion One dark night Jim, Jake, and their little brother Adam decided to stay home to watch the Haley’s Comet fly over. The news stations had been airing story, after story about the rarity of the comet’s pass over the sky’s and it seemed to them that to not watch it would be completely stupid. Little did they know that this night was not going to be a fun filled night instead the worst night of their lives. Jim and Jake are 18 year-old fraternal twins that were inseparable and loved life. Adam who was 11 years old and little shy, was their little brother who was always picked on. Adam loved astronomy and he was really sad when he heard that he had to spend this momentous night with his mean brothers. Their mother made Jim and Jake spend time with their brother instead of going to a huge party with their other friends. They all lived in a small eastern town called Rockport but it was known for the famous Rockport Zoo. â€Å"Adam, get that telescope out of the garage so you can be entertained and shut up†, yelled Jim. â€Å"Okay†¦Ã¢â‚¬  replied Adam. Adam went to the garage to find the telescope. He dug and dug through the endless junk and it appeared. He took out to the porch and set it up like his brother told him to do. â€Å"Hey Adam when is your bed time†, asked Jake. â€Å"I don’t have one!† barked Adam. â€Å"And your not leaving me here alone or I’ll tell Mom.† He laid on the couch and sneered at his brothers. He turned on the TV and started to watch the news for news on the comet. They newscaster said that the comet would pass over at 12:00am that night and would stay in the sky until almost 1:00am. â€Å"Well, Adam it’s ten now, are you sure you can stay up that late?† asked Jim laughing. â€Å"Shut up!† yelled Adam. He looked back at to see a breaking news story. â€Å" We interrupt this program to bring you breaking news live at the Rockport Zoo. We have obtained news that a very dangerous lion has escaped his compound and is lurking the area. The lion on the loose has a rabid like disease that makes him extremely aggressive. There are many Zoo officials and police officers working on finding the lion but so far there is no trace of him.

Clockwork Orange And The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction Essay -- essay

Clockwork Orange and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction For Walter Benjamin, the defining characteristic of modernity was mass assembly and production of commodities, concomitant with this transformation of production is the destruction of tradition and the mode of experience which depends upon that tradition. While the destruction of tradition means the destruction of authenticity, of the originally, in that it also collapses the distance between art and the masses it makes possible the liberation which capitalism both obscures and opposes. While commodity fetishism represents the alienation away from use-value and towards exchange-value, leading to the assembly line construction of the same--as we see relentlessly analyzed by Horkheimer and Adorno in their essay The Culture Industry. Benjamin believes that with the destruction of tradition, laboratory potentialities are nonetheless created. The process of the destruction of aura through mass reproduction brings about the "destruction of traditional modes of experience through shock," in response new forms of experience are created which attempt to cope with that shock. "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking one element: its presence in time and space, it’s unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning" when substantive duration ceases to matter, he says, the authority of the object is threatened. (Think, for example of Alex's response to high art...) "technology has subjected the human sensorium to a complex kind of training. There came a day when a new and urgent need for stimuli was met by the film. In a film, perception in the form of shocks was established as a formal principle. That which determines the rhythm of production on a conveyor belt is the basis of the rhythm of reception in a film." (Motifs in Baudelaire) Benjamin distinguishes between two kinds of experience: Erfahrung something integrated as experience, and Erlebnis, something merely lived through. Erlebnis characterizes the modern age and refers to the inability to integrate oneself and the world via experience. Erlebnis, then, ... ...lus (a "very important piece of art," ritualized and de-politicized) is made into a weapon, and the scene of her death is a nearly subliminal orgy of modern-art. Whereas she, as with the use of all high-art among the Bourgeoisie, finds only exchange value in the phallus, phallus as pure sign, Alex initiates the violent reversal of that commodification. He turns it into a tool, here a tool of violence; what she has done is to inject exhibition value into forms of art which have only exchange value, the work of art in the hands of the Bourgeoisie is reinjected with a type of aura, which only lead it further in the direction of losing control (like the reinjection of aura in the robot --Maria's aura--in Metropolis). Control is lost and the phallus becomes a weapon, a violent recontextualization by Alex. He proves to understand well this process. There are also similarities here with the State's control of his mind through conditioning. The state attempts to gain control by turning Alex into a robot (a clockwork orange), thus commodifying him (isn't this the struggle at the end for control of Alex--the liberals and state?). His use-value is a fun ction of his exchange-value.

Hierarchical Databases Essay

There are four structural types of database management systems: hierarchical, network, relational, and object-oriented. Hierarchical Databases (DBMS), commonly used on mainframe computers, have been around for a long time. It is one of the oldest methods of organizing and storing data, and it is still used by some organizations for making travel reservations. Related fields or records are grouped together so that there are higher-level records and lower-level records, just like the parents in a family tree sit above the subordinated children. Based on this analogy, the parent record at the top of the pyramid is called the root record. A child record always has only one parent record to which it is linked, just like in a normal family tree. In contrast, a parent record may have more than one child record linked to it. Hierarchical databases work by moving from the top down. A record search is conducted by starting at the top of the pyramid and working down through the tree from parent to child until the appropriate child record is found. Furthermore, each child can also be a parent with children underneath it. The advantage of hierarchical databases is that they can be accessed and updated rapidly because the tree-like structure and the relationships between records are defined in advance. Hierarchical databases are so rigid in their design that adding a new field or record requires that the entire database be redefined. Types of DBMS: Network Databases Network databases are similar to hierarchical databases by also having a hierarchical structure. There are a few key differences, however. Instead of looking like an upside-down tree, a network database looks more like a cobweb or interconnected network of records. In network databases, children are called membersand parents are called owners. The most important difference is that each child or member can have more than one parent (or owner). two limitations must be considered when using this kind of database. Similar to hierarchical databases, network databases must be defined in advance. There is also a limit to the number of connections that can be made between records. Types of DBMS: Relational Databases In relational databases, the relationship between data files is relational, not hierarchical Relational databases connect data in different files by using common data elements or a key field. Data in relational databases is stored in different tables, each having a key field that uniquely identifies each row. Relational databases are more flexible than either the hierarchical or network database structures. Types of DBMS: Object-oriented Databases (OODBMS) Able to handle many new data types, including graphics, photographs, audio, and video, object-oriented databases represent a significant advance over their other database cousins. an object-oriented database can be used to store data from a variety of media sources, such as photographs and text, and produce work, as output, in a multimedia format. Object-oriented databases have two disadvantages. First, they are more costly to develop. Second, most organizations are reluctant to abandon or convert from those databases that they have already invested money in developing and implementing. COMPUTING TYPES: CLUSTER COMPUTING: clustering means linking together two or more systems to handle variable workloads or to provide continued operation in the event one fails. Each computer may be a multiprocessor system itself. For example, a cluster of four computers, each with two CPUs, would provide a total of eight CPUs processing simultaneously. When clustered, these computers behave like a single computer and are used for load balancing, fault tolerance, and parallel processing. Two or more servers that have been configured in a cluster use a heartbeat mechanism to continuously monitor each other’s health. Each server sends the other an I am OK message at regular intervals. If several messages or heartbeats are missed, it is assumed that a server has failed and the surviving server begins the failover operation. That is, the surviving server assumes the identity of the failed server in addition to its identity and recovers and restores the network interfaces, storage connections, and applications. Clients are then reconnected to their applications on the surviving server. The minimum requirements for a server cluster are (a) two servers connected by a network, (b) a method for each server to access the other’s disk data, and (c) special cluster software like Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS). The special software provides services such as failure detection, recovery, and the ability to manage the service as a single system. Benefits of Clustering Technology Availability, scalability and to a lesser extent, investment protection and simplified administration are all touted as benefits from clustering technology. Availability translates into decreased downtime, scalability translates into flexible growth, and investment protection and simplified administration translate into lowered cost of ownership. Clustered systems bring fault-tolerance and support for rolling upgrades. The most common uses of clustering technique are mission-critical database management, file/intranet data sharing, messaging, and general business applications. PARALLEL COMPUTING: The Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard provides a common Application Programming Interface (API) for the development of parallel applications regardless of the type of multiprocessor system used. In the recent past, the Java programming language has made significant inroads as the programming language of choice for the development of a variety of applications in diverse domains. IPV4/IPV6: What is Internet Protocol? Internet Protocol is a set of technical rules that defines how computers communicate over a network. There are currently two versions: IP version 4 (IPv4) and IP version 6 (IPv6). What is IPv4? IPv4 was the first version of Internet Protocol to be widely used, and accounts for most of today’s Internet traffic. There are just over 4 billion IPv4 addresses. While that is a lot of IP addresses, it is not enough to last forever. What is IPv6? IPv6 is a newer numbering system that provides a much larger address pool than IPv4. It was deployed in 1999 and should meet the world’s IP addressing needs well into the future. PROTOCOLS: File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host or to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems.[1] HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web. Hypertext is a multi-linear set of objects, building a network by using logical links (the so-called hyperlinks) between the nodes (e.g. text or words). HTTP is the protocol to exchange or transfer hypertext. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet. SSL encrypt the segments of network connections at the Application Layer for theTransport Layer, using asymmetric cryptography for key exchange, symmetric encryption for confidentiality, and message authentication codes for message integrity. In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IPconnection.[1] POP and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval.[2] Virtually all modern e-mail clients and servers support both. The POP protocol has been developed through several versions, with version 3 (POP3) being the current standard. Most webmail service providers such as Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail also provide IMAP and POP3 service. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (e-mail) transmission across Internet Protocol (IP) networks. While electronic mail servers and other mail transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages, user-level client mail applications typically only use SMTP for sending messages to a mail server for relaying. The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core members of the Internet protocol suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network without prior communications to set up special transmission channels or data paths. UDP is suitable for purposes where error checking and correction is either not necessary or performed in the application, avoiding the overhead of such processing at the network interface level.

Interpretation of “My Papa’s Wallet”

â€Å"My Papa’s Waltz† was written by Theodore Roethke, which is a stanza poem with 16 lines. The narrator of the poem seems to be a young child speaking about an experience with his drunken father. In this poem the father came home after a night of drinking. As the father enters the house he grabs the child by the wrist with his battered knuckles, which indicates that he works with his hands. Playfully knocking down the pans, the mother irritated gives them an unhappy frown. The rhyme scheme is as follows, breath/death, dizzy/easy, pans/countenance, shelf/itself, wrist/missed, knuckle/buckle, head/bed and shirt/dirt. It’s obvious that the rhyme scheme is abab/cdcd. The rhyming in this poem seems to imitate the ordered steps of the dance of the poem’s title. However, it serves to show up the joyfulness that a person thinks of with the waltz. There is alliteration in every stanza, except in the last stanza. â€Å"Waltzing was† has the recurring sound of the letter â€Å"w†, which has a calm sound (line number 4). There are other indications that the waltz sounds loud, but the alliteration makes waltzing sound calm and usual. Countenance/could† have the sound of the frequent â€Å"c† which is a stanza with an exact sound (7/8). â€Å"Hand that held† is similar to the first stanza, which has a caring sound, â€Å"hand†¦. held†, is a an extreme contrast with the battered knuckle and scraped ear (9). â€Å"The hand that held† is assonance. â€Å"Still clinging to your shirt† is another assonance. The word â€Å"romped† is a connotation of disruptiveness, which the dancing in the kitchen caused the utensils to fall from the shelf. The tone of the poem is joyful and playful, because it seems that the father and the son are having a great time. The five main images that appear in the poem are gustatory, aural, visual, tactile and olfactory. The gustatory image is â€Å"The whisky on you breather† which is indicating the whisky can be taste. The aural image is â€Å"We romped until the pans† indicating that the sound of the pans were so loud that the mother was upset. The visual image is â€Å"My mother’s countenance/Could not unfrown itself† which indicates the look on his mother’s face was full of anger. The olfactory image is also â€Å"The whisky on your breath† which indicates the child could smell the whisky coming from his breath. At every step you missed/My right ear scraped a buckle† meaning the father is enthusiastic as he is waltzing in a fast pace (11/12). The narrator doesn’t want the young boys ear to touch the buckle, so he used ‘you’ trying to say that the father purposely lost control. â€Å"Then waltzed me off to bed/Still clinging to your shirt† the father is showing the son that he cares about him by taking him to bed (15/16). He is also showing him that he loves immensely regardless of what his son thinks. In the son’s eyes his father is a hero and the behavior that went throughout the entire poem was full of love.

Political Ideologies

D. Sokolova 28/09/2011 On the topic of â€Å"Political Ideology† (Heywood 2003, p. 5) states: † ‘Ideology’ is consider a particular type of political thought, distinct from, say, political science or political philosophy. † Ideology is a set of views and ideas that provides the theoretical basis to organize and rule community life, establish values, habits and perspectives. It demands the certain methods to be used for solving different social problems. As (MacKenzie, et al. 1994, p. 1) have noted, ideology † provides both an account of existing social and political relations and blueprint of how these relation ought to be organized. Beyond this general definition, however, the concept of ideology is notoriously difficult to get to grips with. It is loaded with a wide range of possible meanings, many of which are contradictory. † † The word ideology was coined during the French Revolution by Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) , and was first used in public in 1796. For de Tracy, ideologue referred to a new ‘science of ideas', literally an idea-ology. † (Heywood 2003, p. 6) De Tracy tried to find moral, ethic and political phenomena of basic consciousness and offer a logical explanation under one concept. For Marx and Engels ‘ideology' (MacKenzie, et al. 994, p. 5) † is the role of changing historical conditions that is fundamental to the formation of ideas. † Rather, French philosopher Louis Pierre Althusser (MacKenzie, et al. 1994, p. 16) † insists upon the strict separation of ideology and science. Arguing against the traditional relationship between ideology an d truth†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He affirms that † ideology is the ‘cement' that binds human societies together. † An Australian political theorist Minogue have noticed, that ideologies (MacKenzie,et al. 1994, p. 4) † create the false expectation in people's minds that a perfect world is ultimately attainable. From this point of view,† ideologies are seen as abstract system of thought, sets on ideas that are destined to simplify and distort social reality because they claim to explain what is, frankly, incomprehensible. † The foremost modern exponent of this view was the British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-90)† , who has issued guideline, that † Ideology is thus equated with dogmatism : fixed on doctrinaire beliefs, that are divorced from the complexities of the real world. † (Heywood 2003, p. 10) † The birth of political ideologies can be traced back to the processes thought which the modern world came into existenc e. The process of modernization had social, political and cultural dimension. Socially, it was linked to the emergence of increasingly market-orientated and capitalist economies, dominated by new social classes, the middle class and the working class. Politically, it involved the replacement of monarchical absolutism by the advance of constitutional and, in due course, democratic government. Culturally, it took the form of spread of Enlightenment ideas and views, which challenged traditional beliefs in religion, politics and learning in general, based upon a commitment to the principles of reason and progress. The ‘core' political ideologies, the ones out of which later ideologies emerged or developed in opposition to – liberalism, conservatism and socialism – reflected contrasting responses to the process of modernization. † (Heywood 2003,p. 21- 22) Main features distinguished them from each other are the following: Liberals, particularly during the Cold War period, have viewed ideology as an officially sanctioned belief system that claims a monopoly of truth, often through a spurious claim to be scientific. Ideology is therefore inherently repressive, even totalitarian. Conservatives have traditionally regarded ideology as manifestation of the arrogance of rationalism. Ideologies are elaborate system of thought that are dangerous or unreliable because, being abstracted from reality, they establish principles and goals that lead to repression or are simply unachievable. Socialists, following Marx, have seen ideology as a body of ideas that conceal the contradictions of class society, thereby promoting false consciousness and political passivity amongst subordinate classes†¦ Later Marxist adopted neutral concept of ideology, regarding it as the distinctive ideas of any social class, including the working class. Fascist are often dismissive of ideology as an over-systematic, dry and intellectualized form of political understanding that is based on mere reason rather than passion and the will. The Nazis preferred to portray their own ideas as a Weltanschaung or ‘world view', not as systematic philosophy. Ecologists have tended to regard al conventional political doctrines as part of super-ideology of industrialism. Ideology is thus tainted by its association with arrogant humanism and growth-orientated economics-liberalism and socialism being its most obvious examples. Religious fundamentalists have treated key religious texts as ideology, on the grounds that, by expressing the revealed world of God, they provide a programme for comprehensive social reconstruction. (Heywood 2003, p. 15) It is recognizable, that the theory of ideology still has many different features. This view has been supported in the (Eccleshall 1984, p. 23) saying that â€Å"Ideology is the realm in which people clarify and justify their actions as they pursue divergent interests. † However, â€Å".. there is no settle or agreed definition of the term, only a collection of rival definitions. As David McLellan (1995) put it, ‘Ideology is the most elusive concept in the whole of social science'. † (Heywood 2003, p. 5) Bibliography 1. Heywood Andrew. Political ideologies: An introduction. 3rd edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 2. Eccleshall Robert, Geoghegan Vincent, Jay Richard, Kenny Michael, MacKenzie Iain and Wilford Rick. Political Ideologies: An introduction. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 1994. 3. Eccleshall Robert, Geoghegan Vincent, Jay Richard and Rick Wilford. Political Ideologies: An Introduction Great Britain: Essex, 1984.

Critisism on Curleys Wife Essay

For Of Mice and Men is a Tragedy, a tragedy not in the narrow modern sense of a mere ‘sad story’ (though it certainly is that), but a tragedy in the classic Aristotelian/Shakespearean sense of showing humanity’s achievement of greatness through and in spite of defeat. Some people seem to believe that the function of literature is to provide vicarious â€Å"happy endings,† to provide in words a sugary sweetness we would like to have but cannot always get in real life. To such people, true literary tragedy is distasteful. But the greatest writers and the best readers know that literature is not always only mere sugar candy; it can sometimes be a strong medicine: sour perhaps — at least to the untrained taste — but necessary for continued health[.] Some readers may object to the book’s presentation of low class characters, vulgar language, scenes suggestive of improper sexual conduct, and an implied criticism of the social system. But none of this is presented indecently, or beyond the ordinary norms of contemporary literature. Compared to many modern works, (or to movies and TV) this book is tame indeed. Furthermore, these features are necessary in this book in two ways. First, they are part of the accurate precise reporting of the reality of a particular time and place and environment. Part of Steinbeck’s literary point is that this is true to life. As such, the dirty details are part of Steinbeck’s enlargement of the realm of Tragedy, the democratization of the tragic world. Traditionally, the subjects of Tragedies have been Kings and other Great Ones: Job, Oedipus, Lear. But Steinbeck’s point — a truly American point — is that all men are created equal: Tragedy exists even among the lowly of the earth; even the least of us — even a Lennie or a George — has the human potential for tragic nobility. Of Mice and Men is a tragedy in the modern tradition of The Hairy Ape and Death of a Salesman. Second, the grossness is a way of presenting briefly the complex turmoil of life. This book is not stereotype melodrama. It is not a simpleminded book. There are no purely bad people in it. Conversely, there are no purely good people in it either. All the characters are complex mixtures of good and bad, or rather of bad results from good intentions. They are all — in their ability and in their outlook — limited. And they live in a gross and dirty world. Given their position in that world, they are not able to achieve much. But they are trying to do the best they can; they are trying to be good people and to have good lives. They have good intentions. They have noble aims. The tragedy is that, limited as the characters are, the world they live in is even more limited; it is a world in which the simplest dream of the simplest man — poor dumb big Lennie — cannot come true. â€Å"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft a-glae [go oft a-stray],† wrote Robert Burns in the poem which provides the book’s title and its theme. And Steinbeck’s story shows why: The best laid plans go oft ast ray because they come in conflict with one another. The simplest good intention — simply to stay alive — of a simple mouse, a simple pup, a simple young woman, is thwarted by Lennie’s urge to pet something soft and beautiful. Lennie’s drive to touch beauty kills the things he loves. But his problem is the same problem that bothers Curley, the Boss’s son, the closest thing to a villain in the book. Like Lennie, Curley doesn’t know how to hold on to what he finds important: his young wife, his status as the Boss’s son, his reputation as a man. He loses each by trying to hold on too tightly. Curley’s aim to be a respected husband/boss/man is foiled by his own limited abilities. The similar but simpler aim of Lennie and George to have a small place of their own where they can â€Å"live offa the fatta the lan † is doomed to frustration also by their own limitations and the tragic chain of circumstance and coincidence that ends with Lennie dead by George’s hand. The point, of course, is that they all — we all — live in a too limited world, a world in which not all our dreams can come true, a world in which we — all of us some of the time and some of us all the time — are doomed to disappointment. The tragic dilemma is that for our basic humanity, for the goodness of our aims, we all deserve better than we get. But because of our human limitations, by our weaknesses of character, none of us is ever good enough to earn what we deserve. Some philosophers, seeing this dilemma, pronounce profound pessimism for humanity. Some religions promise for this world’s disappointments supernatural intercession and other-worldly compensations. The tragic viewpoint (the view of Shakespeare, the Greek tragedians, the Old Testament Job, and John Steinbeck) finds in it the chance for nobility of soul: even in the blackest of disappointments, a human can achieve individual greatness. One may be defeated physically — but one need not be crushed spiritually. One can remain true to one’s dream and true to one’s friend. We humans may die, but we can love one another. Friendship. Love. That too is what Of Mice and Men is all about. Lennie and George, disparate types, are, against all good reason, friends. They share a good dream. They love one another. They are too limited, too inarticulate, to know how to say it, but they do show it — or rather Steinbeck shows it to us readers. So the book treats the great themes of Dreams and Death and Love with simple powerful clarity. It does so with a classically elegant structure — another reason for using the book as a teaching tool: it allows a reader — especially an untrained or beginning reader of literature — to see (or be shown) how structure supports and presents content. Of Mice and Men has the classic situation/complication/twist/and/resolution plot structure uncluttered by diversions, distractions, or subplots. There is inevitableness, a starkness th at makes the point of the story unavoidable. The story has the classic unities of time and place and action. It begins in a small spot of beautiful nature, a secluded camp in the woods by a stream; it moves to the buildings of a California ranch, and ends back in the woods by the stream. The style is simple: clear, direct sentences of description and action, direct quotation of the speech of simple people. Few long words, no hard words. The action is simple: two poor and vagrant workers, big, dumb Lennie and small, clever George, take jobs at a large ranch. Lennie has trouble with the Boss’s son, Curley. Lennie accidentally — more or less — kills Curley’s wife. George kills Lennie to save him from the horrors of a lynch mob led by Curley, bent on revenge. The settings are simple in detail, and simply powerfully symbolic. The secluded spot in the woods by the stream is the uncomplicated world of Nature; the bunkhouse is the bleak home of hired working men trying to make sense of their lives and gain comfort in a limited environment; the barn is the place of working life, of seed and harvest, birth and death; the harness room with Crook’s bunk symbolizes social constraints; the â€Å"little place of our own† about which George and Lennie dream and all too vaguely plan is the Paradise on earth we all hope for. The characters, too, are simple yet significant. â€Å"Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find you have created a type,† wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald; â€Å"begin with a type, and you find that you have created — nothing.† Steinbeck begins with individuals: clearly and sharply crafted characters, a whole set of individuals who are so clearly realized that each — without surrendering individuality — becomes a type, an archetype, a univ ersal character: There is Candy, the old, one-armed worker with no place to go, as useless as his toothless dog; there is Carlson, gruffly and deliberately â€Å"unfeeling,† who can coolly kill old Candy’s ancient dog simply because â€Å"he stinks† and â€Å"he ain’t no good to you†; and there is Crooks, the dignified proud and aloof but helpless and lonely victim of racial discrimination. There is Slim, calm, reasonable, compassionate, the real leader of men. And there is Curley, the arrogant but inept Boss’s son. The man who could lead well does not have the position; the one who has the position and the authority is not a true leader. Curley hides his insecurities behind a mask of macho toughness. His competitive bravado makes him push too far and Lennie, after enduring much, is given permission by George to â€Å"get him.† Lennie in self-protection crushes Curley’s fist in his own big hand, crippling Curley somewhat as Candy and Crooks have been crippled by the punitive harshness of life. Curley is also the one man who has a woman. But clearly he does not — does not know how to — relate to her as a person. She is to him a thing, a possession, a sex-object and a status symbol. For the men, in braggadocio, he flaunts the sexuality of the relationship; and yet, out of his own self-doubts he is intensely jealous of the men’s awareness of her. The young woman has no name — she is merely â€Å"Curley’s wife.† She knows she wants — and somehow deserves — something better than this. â€Å"I don’t like Curley,† she says of her husband. She has grandiose ambitions of being a Hollywood star â€Å"in the pitchers.† She is a lost little girl in a world of men whose knowledge of women is largely limited to memories of kind old ladies and rumors of casual prostitution. All these men are afraid of Curley’s wife, afraid and aware that her innocent animal appeal may lead them into temptation and trouble. In self-protection they avoid her. Only Lennie, in naive goodness, actually relates to her as a person to a person. She talks to him. For a little time they share in their aesthetic sense; they both admi re beauty. Unfortunately, she is too naive, and Lennie is too strong and clumsy. In trying — at her invitation — to pet her lovely hair he is panicked by her quick resistance, and ends by killing her. Just as he had earlier killed a puppy and a mouse. Curley’s wife, a naive Romantic, wants love and tenderness in a harsh crude Naturalistic world; Lennie, big and ignorant, tries to give love. But he is too weak in the mind, too strong in the body. His tenderness is too powerful for weaker, unsuspecting creatures. We readers can identify with Lennie. We sympathize; we empathize. We care. We have — most of us — been in his position; not quite able to cope with the complexities of the world around us, wanting only security, peace, comfort, and something soft and beautiful to pet and love. Perhaps one reason that this book has evoked controversy and censorious action is that it is so simple and clear and easy to understand — and so painful! It hurts to read this book. And some people don’t like their books to hurt them; they want soothing. But great Tragedy is meant to hurt. One needn’t subscribe wholly to the Aristotelian doctrine of ‘catharsis’ by Art to see that one function of literature is to help us deal with the pain of real life by practicing with the vicarious pains of tragic art. Of course Of Mice and Men contains unpleasant attitudes; there is brutality, racism, sexism, economic exploitation. But the book does not advocate them; rather it shows that these too-narrow conceptions of human life are part of the cause of human tragedy. They are forces which frustrate human aspiration. Lennie and George have a noble dream. They are personally too limited to make it come true, but they do try. They try to help each other, and they even enlarge their dream to include old one-handed Candy and crippled black Crooks. Theirs is the American Dream: that there is somehow, somewhere, sometime, the possibility that we can make our Paradise on earth, that we can have our own self-sufficient little place where we can live off the fat of the land as peaceful friends. What is sad, what is tragic, what is horrible, is that the Dream may not come true because we are — each and all of us — too limited, too selfish, too much in conflict with one another. â€Å"Maybe ever’-body in the whole damn world is scared of each other,† says Slim. And George expresses the effects of loneliness, â€Å"Guys that go around alone don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time.† What is ennobling in this tragedy of mice and men is the Revelation of a way beyond that loneliness and meanness and fighting, a way to rise above our human limitations: Two men — Lennie and George — who have nothing else, do have each other. â€Å"We kinda look after each other.† says George. And they do have their Dream. And the Dream is there even in the final defeat. For in the end the one thing George can do for Lennie is to make sure he’s happy as he dies. He has Lennie â€Å"look acrost the river you can almost see [the place].† And as Lennie says, â€Å"Let’s get that place now,† George kills him mercifully. It’s a horrible thing to do, and George knows that. And we know that. But in this limited world in this limited way it is all that George can do for his friend. And he does it. That is the horror and the nobility which together make up Tragedy. The Tragic pattern closes. There is a sense of completeness, of both defeat and satisfaction. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck has shown us something about the pain of living in a complex human world and created something beautiful from it. In true great literature the pain of Life is transmuted into the beauty of Art. The book is worth reading for a glimpse of that beauty — and worth teaching as a way to show others how such beauty works.