Saturday, December 28, 2019

Bees That Teach a Lesson in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue...

â€Å"Lets imagine for a moment that we are tiny enough to follow a bee into a hive. Usually the first thing we would have to ge used to is the darkness†(Kidd 82). The bee is an insect that spends all day working: working to create a home, working to spread pollen and working to create honey. A bees life and the society of bees can be closely related to the life of humans. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the author conveys her lessons about human life through the imagery of bees. Bees need a queen in order to survive. While there are thousands of worker bees per successful hive, the queen, lays the eggs and the thousands of bees worship her; August teaches Lily, â€Å"...they all depend on her to keep [the system] going†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦show more content†¦However, her father, T. Ray thwarts this and will not allow Lily to bring books to the peach stand. The job becomes tedious and boring, â€Å"I just sat out there and thought about how much I hated t he peach stand, how completely and absolutely I hated it† (Kidd 16). Because of this, Lily is unable to ever begin to try to find her role in life, as she is forced to do one she clearly does not belong in and does not enjoy. Kidd clearly mirrors the way males are portrayed in the hive and in the society in which Lily finds herself. In the bee hive males are of minimal use; â€Å"Each colony is a family unit, comprising of a single, egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters called workers... Males are reared only at the times of the year when their presence is required† (Kidd 66). The bee hive does not need males in order to survive, over the course of the story Lily also learns that male presence is unneeded in order to survive and have a family. In the novel males are viewed in a negative light (with the exception of Zach and Neil). Every male Lily has been in contact with was harsh and showed no respect for women. Her father teaches her to be a victim of male abuse and does not show her any kindness. Her Nanny Rosaleen also threw her husband out of the house after three years of marriage because he was abusive. Next she encounters the white men who hit Rosaleen and send herShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Secret Life Of Bees 1549 Words   |  7 Pages  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Norman 1 Shaw Honors ELA 9 9 October, 2017       Women empower the world Empowerment. One word could change the lives of thousands. Empowerment is not something we can force someone into believing, or teach in schools. It is a decision you make every single day once your feet hit the floor in the morning. You decide whether you will empower someone else when they are down, or just walk away and think â€Å"why should I care, what does it have to do with meRead MoreAre A Racist Human Being?1454 Words   |  6 Pagesfor any of it (fact). Thank you and please enjoy (praise and request). During this past summer I was assigned to read a book and annotate it before going back to school and into my sophomore year of high school. It was the novel Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Now this book was phenomenal (opinion). I enjoyed every second of it (fact). One thing about this book is that it took place in a time where racism was a very big issue, right after the civil rights movement. African American s were

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Children of the Holocaust Essay - 983 Words

â€Å"One of the most extraordinary aspects of Nazi genocide was the cold deliberate intention to kill children in numbers so great that there is no historical precedent for it.† (Lukas, 13 Kindle) About 1.5 million children were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust—one million being killed because they were Jews (ushmm.org) The Germans had a clearly defined goal of killing the Jewish children so that there would be no remnants of their race to reproduce, resulting in extinction. Not only were the children that were victimized in the Holocaust persecuted and murdered, but they were all stripped of their childhood. Children were not allowed to be children—they had to, for their own survival, be adults. The oppression of children because of†¦show more content†¦Children also went through the trauma of experiencing things that normal childhoods do not include. Essentially, they lost their childhood because of the separation from their families. Childr en are meant to live care-free lives of happiness; those in the Holocaust, instead, endured lives of watching death, illness, suffering, and hatred. These children were also exposed to extreme emotions such as hatred, envy, and depression. Many did not understand why their people, and not others, had to lose so much, including friendships (Lukas, 138 Kindle). One might ask: why the children? The Nazis knew that the children were like seeds, and without them, the Jewish nation could not grow, so they had to be exterminated first to secure the complete elimination. In the book, Did the Children Cry, by Richard C. Lukas, he writes, â€Å"Killing Jewish children was intended to prevent Jews from perpetuating themselves, which explains why the Nazis were as ruthless in slaughtering Jewish children as they were in killing Jewish adults.† (22 Kindle) Not all children were subject to death by gas chambers. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the other ways in which children were maimed, perished, or traumatized, saying: The fate of Jewish and non-Jewish children can be categorized in the following way: 1) children killed when they arrived inShow MoreRelatedChildren Of The Holocaust : Children1328 Words   |  6 PagesChildren of the Holocaust As the 1930’s came along, The Nazi’s set out a series of laws and regulations called ‘Nazi Laws’. One of the very first laws was ,†Laws against Overcrowding in German schools and universities†. This was a result of many children were looked down upon by Hitler and his Nazis as ‘racially inferior’. Letters from German Children to the editor of the Nazi tabloid Der Sturmer reveal a shameful potpourri Lettof and fanaticism against their Jewish classmates. The first punishmentRead MoreChildren During the Holocaust1306 Words   |  5 PagesThroughout the Holocaust, â€Å"the Nazis killed over 1.5 billion children† (Children during the Holocaust). Of these children, one million of them were Jewish. The Nazis had no good reason to kill them; they only killed these innocent children because Hitler did not care for their race. The Nazis, a forceful, merciless power led by Adolf Hitler brainwashed the country of Germany into believin g that Jews and other races were awful. These children bravely fought persecution and avoided death by hidingRead More Children of the Holocaust Essay1634 Words   |  7 PagesOver one million Jewish children died during the Holocaust. They were ripped out of their homes and taken away from their families, and stripped of their childhoods. Innocent lives were caught in a war that they were not able to stop. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he promised Germany that he would improve life their by getting rid of the one race that caused the problems, the Jews. Jews, including Jewish children, were sent to concentration camps, inspected, and if approved, were sentRead MoreThe Hidden Children Of The Holocaust1642 Words   |  7 PagesThe Holocaust is a very large topic with many subtopics within, which many people have never heard of. One in particular is the Hidden Children of the Holocaust. Like a majority of individuals, I never heard of this topic before, until I started my inquiry work. Hiding children during the holocaust was an effort to save thousands of children’s lives. The children were hidden in different ways, either with false identities, underground, and with or without their parents. The children with false identitiesRead MoreChildren Of The Holocaust Survivor Essay1384 Words   |  6 PagesAs children of the Holocaust survivor, Jacob in Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michael s novel haunted from his past from his memories of his parents and his beloved sister Bella. Growing up with Athos care, Jacob struggles to adapt to a new environment as a child with his memories of his parents still preserve into his mind and battling to make what might have happened to his sister Bella. As Jacob ponders on his past, his memories become stronger and save him that will eventually free him from pain andRead MoreEssay on Holocaust Children2974 Words   |  12 PagesChildren of the Holocaust Advanced Composition/ ENGL 135 June 20, 2011 Alena Synjova once stated, â€Å" I’d like to go away alone where there are other, nicer people, somewhere into the far unknown, there, where no one kills another. Maybe more of us, a thousand strong, will reach this goal before too long† (Volavkovà ¡, 1994, p. 50). During the Holocaust, people craved opportunity to escape to a place where there were polite people and no one killed each other. The Holocaust affected everyoneRead MoreIs The Holocaust Over The Children Of The World?1078 Words   |  5 PagesIs the Holocaust over for the children of the world? The Holocaust was a dark time in human history during the reign of Hitler. Millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis. However, some people were still lucky enough to survive. One of these survivors, Leon Leyson, experienced the horrors of pure evil as a child. He lived to share his story, and today in America there are many programs and organizations dedicated to protecting children, but in other parts of the world children continue to experienceRead More Childrens Literature and the Holocaust Essay2097 Words   |  9 PagesLiterature and the Holocaust nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;During the 1940’s Jewish Europeans experienced an unthinkable and atrocious collective trauma. In her work â€Å"Survivor-Parents and Their Children† taken from the anthology Generations of the Holocaust, Judith S. Kestenberg has argued that regardless of location, the effects of the Holocaust are felt on survivors parenting. The children of survivors receive a secondary traumatic impact by being forced to deal with the impact the Holocaust had directlyRead MoreChildren and Morality during the Holocaust1405 Words   |  6 PagesDuring World War II and the Holocaust, morality collapsed. It was no longer easy to differentiate between what was good and what was evil. With a world filled with starvation, dehumanization, and dictatorship, Jewish children had a rough life. They were not free to run away and play; instead they were either in hiding or a camp. The three sources that will be analyzed in this essay demonstrate how the Jews and Gentil es risked their lives to help save innocent Jewish children. One Jew who risked hisRead MoreThe Vulnerability of Children in the Era of the Holocaust942 Words   |  4 PagesChildren were especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust. The Nazis advocated killing children of â€Å"unwanted† or â€Å"dangerous† groups in accordance with their ideological views, either as part of the â€Å"racial struggle† or as a measure of preventative security. The Germans and their collaborators killed children both for these ideological reasons and in retaliation for real or alleged partisan attacks. The Germans and their collaborators killed as many as 1.5 million children, including over a

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making free essay sample

The number one philosophy of building a great business is to fill a void. Nick Swinmurn founder did just that in 1999 when he started Zappos. com Inc (Zappos. com). Mr. Swinmurn wanted to start an online store that catered to selling a great selection of shoe after going to a mall and he could not find the shoes he was looking for (Eng 2012; Zappos. com). The website was dedicated to the selling of wide variety of brands, colors, sizes, and widths; if you are looking for a shoe chances are Zappos. com has them. There was finally a website customers could go and shop for the best shoes and have no trouble returning the shoes if it did not fit. The website started by Nick Swinmurn going into stores and actually taking pictures of shoes then selling them on the website (Eng, D. 2012). This was done by the company actually buying the inventory then selling it on the website. To make Zappos the online shoe giant, Swinmurn teamed up with investor Tony Hsieh who was later named CEO and helped grow the company (Eng, 2012; Kopelman at. el, 2012; Zappos. com). The company started making profits slowly after making a commitment to customer services; gaining loyal customers. In Early 2009 the company was sold to Amazon, closing a $1. 2 billion deal (Kopelman at. El, 2012). Not only did Swinmurn and Hsieh build a company but they also build a whole new culture. This paper will examine the culture of Zappos. com, the factors that demonstrated the culture, the type of leader that would be best suited for the company’s culture, and the culture change needed to if there was a decline in sells. Examine the Culture: The Zappos company brand is known as a culture that is fun, unique, and customer centered. The company has ten core values, which drives the culture of the company. The core values speak to the company’s culture. The values includes â€Å"embrace and drive change†, â€Å"create fun and a little weirdness†, ‘do more with less†, and â€Å"be humble† (Zappos. com). Number one for the company is to â€Å"deliver WOW through services† (Zappos. com). According to the company’s website delivering the WOW through services means delivering something innovated, unconventional, and something that is beyond what is expected (Zappos.com). Due to this core value many costumers would agree that Zappos. com is top when it comes to customer services. The company shows their dedication for service by the way they have set up the companies operations. The company has a â€Å"customer loyalty department† who job it is to ensure the customer receives the best service possible and are mixed with other departments like the resources desk, quality assurance and anti-fraud teams (Boone and Kurtz, 2012). Having this type of team makes a different in the service the customer of Zappos. com receives. According to Boone and Kurtz (2012), â€Å"Customers loyalty team members have the authority to send individual customers personal notes or request flowers for a wedding or anniversary celebration. They don’t need to ask permission to issue refunds or coupons or ask to give out their contact information† (Page 344). Many customers notice the difference when a customer service rep can issue a refund without having to get approval and will continue to go back to the site to make another purchase. This is a small policy but makes a big difference. Another way the company show their loyalty to customer service is they post the customer service number at the top of every page on the website and the line is 24/7 (Kopelman at. el, 2012). Customer can call when they have a problem and not wait until the next business day. Explain how the selected organization showed the signs of the culture: Customer service is not the only factor that drives the company’s culture the company is also employee driven. Employee satisfaction is also a key component to great customer service; it is hard to have one with out the other. The core values that has also shaped the company’s culture is â€Å"Create fun and a little weirdness† and â€Å"Be adventurous, creative, and open-mined† (Zappos. com). According to the website these values embodies the idea of embracing the uniqueness and diversity of the company’s employees while encouraging creativity, adventure, and innovation with a hint of weirdness (Zappos. com). Due to the fact employees do not have to check with management to in order to help the customers, employee’s are tasked with coming up with out the box ways to provide better customer service (Kopelman at., el 2012; and Zappos. com). According to the Kopelman article, â€Å"Zappos also encourages employees to respond spontaneously and warmly to customers†¦One Zappos employee, for example, sent flowers to the funeral of a customer’s husband, an action that was taken without first checking with a supervisor. This gesture purportedly earned the company 30 loyal customers† (Page 67). Determine the factors that caused the organization to embody this particular culture: Innovation has been another key component for Zappos. com Inc. The company itself was started by an innovated idea of having a large inventory shoe store online and it has continued to be innovated from offering free shipping to having an intelligent tracking system. Such innovation has been geared towards a productivity-driven practice. Normally inventory is stocked in a warehouse by stacking the shoes with the same brand by each other; however Zappos tracks each pair of shoe allowing for random stacking and saves lots of time (Kopelman at. , el, 2012). This means the shoes or products gets to the consumer faster. Determine what type of leader would be best suited for this organization: A company with a unique and fun culture like Zappos would need a just as fun and unique leader. The leader of this company would need to be a transformational leader, one who leads by developing relationship with the employees and motivate them to complete goals (Cavazotte, Moreno, and Bernardo 2013). Having this type of leader would be important due to the fact the employees are expected to make decision without approval or impute from management. The culture of Zappos.  com rewards out of the box thinking and support being the company who does things differently. According to Lowe and Galen Kroeck, â€Å"Transformational leaders seek new ways of working, seek opportunities in the face of risk, prefer effective answers to efficient answers, and are less likely to support the status quo. Transformational leaders do not merely react to environmental circumstancesthey attempt to shape and create them† (1996). The leader of Zappos, under the current culture has to be willing to be creative, think outside the box, and be willing to motive the employees. If there is a decline in demand determine what the change in culture would need to be in response to this situation: One foreseeable decline would be lack the of sells and new customers. There are a lot of new sites that off offer shoes. There are now sites like Just Fab that offer to send one pair of shoes a month for one low price. Theses customer are getting the convenience of having an online stylist where they don’t have to do the shopping or searching for items they like. These sites gather information about the member and each month a stylist pick out items that would likely appeal to the certain member. The culture of a company shapes everything. A company’s culture is the foundation of how the company is run and when there is a decline the culture has to change. However if there is a decline in Zappos’ decline the culture can remain the same. The current culture allows for the company to constantly to change and to come up with new ideas. Zappos. com culture is surrounds customer services and employee-driven innovation (Zappos. com). If there was a decline this would be the same culture the company would need to help turn the company around.

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Stereotypes of Native Americans free essay sample

Native Americans in films during the 1930’s, 1940’s, and the 1950’s were usually portrayed as irrational people that were determined on attacking and pillaging the peaceful settlers of the American west. The understanding of Native Americans in films was mostly limited to a single genre, the Western. The generalization of Native Americans can be classified under a few key themes. The history of the Native Americans have been condensed and represented under a single period of time. They have a rich history and it has been categorized under the period of the Western. Over time, much of the Native cultures have been interpreted through white values. In the past, white people had a different way of doing things but it doesn’t make the Natives lifestyle wrong or primitive. Furthermore, a reoccurring theme is the grouping of the six hundred distinct Native American cultures under one general classification. Films and movies have always been influential in American life and almost every type of movie has been created. We will write a custom essay sample on Stereotypes of Native Americans or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It has covered many different and popular genres and one of the most enduring genres of the film world is the Wild Wild West. Ever since the birth of the film industry, there have been approximately 2,000 dramatic films produced with Indian themes. About another 2,500 Indian television programs were made between 1950 and 1970. Film played an important role in spreading the stereotypes of the Native Americans as riding horses, screaming war chants, and scalping people. Film reveals the culture of the people and represents the values, beliefs, and social structure by spreading their interpretation of culture to large audiences. It is evident in movies because when an Indian comes into the picture, the mood of the actors change. They start to act startled, the background music changes, and the pigeonholed â€Å"big-bad† Native Americans emerge. These stories and generalizations about Native Americans are very much alive today because media has been able to bring the misconceptions to life. More times than not, the â€Å"good† Indians portrayed in the western era was one that either assisted the white settlers or tried to adjust to the white culture. This portrayal made Indian violence a key art in western films and a focal point for the suspense and excitement necessary to selling them. Categorizing Native Americans in limited, stereotyped roles were so established and unchallenged that they turned out to be society’s only impression of Native culture. This sparked the creation of the popular misunderstandings and racial slander today. The development of natives in film has mainly been from the influences of white directors and them being oblivious to the realistic view of Native culture. In result, the progress of natives in films has been determined by the changing social views of the white Americans. A Native American author, Michael Hilger, supported this statement saying that â€Å"tracing images of the Savage and Noble Red Man through historical periods of the cinema, it will reveal little about Native American people of the past or present but a lot about the evolution of white American attitudes and values. † In western films, they were always shown with scowls and wearing war paint, making them look willing to kill at any time. They appeared inferior to the whites and that the Indians needed to be taught everything having to do with the white way of life. Quoting a scene from â€Å"The Great Sioux Massacre, †a man said, â€Å"Cheyenne, Apache, Blackfoot, Sioux – they’re vicious killers all of them; they ain’t even human. † The film justified the slayings committed at the Sand Creek Massacre by classifying the Indians and stating that they are all ruthless and blood-thirsty. Throughout films there has been many stereotypes, one of them being the Indian woman being restrained to only two types, a princess or a squaw. The Indian princess is displayed as the Native beauty who falls in love with the white man, and becomes open to giving up her cultural heritage and wed into the civilized white culture. The Indian squaw is traditionally reserved and almost invisible as she tends to her husband and family, preparing hides, weaving, cooking, and taking care of the children. Even when an Indian is designated as a secondary hero, he is still believed to be inferior to his white counter part and is typically the joke of racist humor. They provide racial comedy relief, which is demeaning to his intelligence and significance in the film. Also, any multiracial affairs happening between Native and non-Native people were never blessed with a happy ending. These relationships often concluded with the Indian giving up their lover at the understanding that their cultures could never coexist. These kinds of endings and generalizations promoted the fact that white civilization and Native culture could never live together as one. All through history, many Americans have placed Native people in the lower echelon of intelligence since first interaction was made. Like any other traditional minority, Native Americans are frequently portrayed as biologically and morally lesser to the more civilized white Americans. However, while these depictions are fabricated, the audience is very naive and sheltered from any real interaction with a Native American. The majority of people had no experience or familiarity of how an Indian looked or appeared. They had nothing to compare the imageries they saw on screen with so they believed the film was true. Movies during this time were very influential because how the movies portrayed Native Americans to the people who have never seen or been exposed to that culture. The people believed that they were seeing an authentic Native American, or the â€Å"real† Indian that they had heard all of the stories about. Television and old movies often portray the Indian speaking little to few words of English, and repeatedly saying ugh. Yet anthropologists have documented the intricacy of Native American languages and at least 350 different languages were spoken in North America before first contact was made ashore in Massachusetts. As the nation has experienced changes in the way that it views people as equals, most of Hollywood has begun to change from displaying Indians as vicious savages into showing what the majority of Native Americans in fact were; a peaceful and proud people who stood up and fought for what they believed. Hollywood often ignores the historical standpoint of Indian cultures and rarely provides an informed understanding of Indian identity. Most Native Americans dislike the stereotypical image that the commercial media has created. In the past few decades, there has been a growth of Native American producers and scriptwriters, working to show audiences a new outlook on their culture. There is much truth in a book made by an intelligent author on the subject, stating that Film must provide a face for the faceless in a history that does not provide one (Rosenstone 36). Film provides an image of Native Americans that we were not able to see from that time and place. It generates the life and times that American society has merely heard about or studied, but never lived. Filmmakers found it easy to create a negative image of Native Americans because they are not white; so they can be whatever directors and historians want them to be seen as. Many directors were inclined to settle on the Indians illiteracy, alcoholism, and â€Å"primitive† way of life. These traits made the red man appear like a child who needed the protection and guidance of the white father. All of these judgments live off the assumption that the Native American’s culture was savage, white culture was civilized, and the two societies could never peacefully harmonize. On the other hand, the nation has made many great strides and improving the relationship between both ethnicities. We are all a part of the United States and we are all equal in the law and in the eyes of the public. Directors, television, and film have been much more educated on the representation of Indians and have improved on how they are shown in media today.