Monday, December 30, 2019
Essay about Cultural Anthropology Book Report - 1815 Words
Classical Readings on Cultural Anthropology What do we have to learn through the study of different cultures? I was hoping for some wonderful revelation in the collection of writings. I may have found one. This book was a difficult read for me. I am not sure whether itââ¬â¢s my age or my inexperience with classical readings. I also found it difficult to formulate a report on a collection of readings, the last report I did was on Laura Ingallââ¬â¢s Little House on the Prairie. This reading was a little more challenging. The main point that seemed to jump out at me is that perceptions change, our theory of reality changes with every viewpoint. Every culture can seem primitive, self destructive, nonsensical, immoral or just wrong, depending onâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦He had spent a year with these people and they humiliated him and hurt him and he needed to find out why. Then along comes someone else, Marvin Harris, and he uses the exact same incident as an ââ¬Å"amusing storyâ⬠to point out the need of the peop les to curb the ego. I donââ¬â¢t think Mr. Lee thought is was amusing at the time, however that is how Mr. Harris perceived it. I donââ¬â¢t think that either of these stories belonged in the Economics and Ecology section. It appears to me that Mr. Harris has taken his theory way beyond the economical points of world cultures. He seems much more interested in exploring the theory of why we work at jobs and are not just self-sustaining. He gives much credence to the fact that if we would return to the hunter-gatherer state that we could work less and be better off. Next we move into the Marriage and Family Section, with a writing from Melvyn C. Goldstein. This was a much easier read for me ââ¬â less technical or scientific terms that I am as yet unfamiliar with. This was an interesting story of why one woman would take on many husbands in the Tibetan culture. I thoroughly understood this passage and appreciated the insight given by the author. It appeared non-judgmental and non-condescending like some of the other passages I had read to this point. Death without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes takes you on a journey through theShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Book Savage Minds By Adam Fish And Nick Seaver855 Words à |à 4 Pages I have chosen blog posts by Adam Fish and Nick Seaver. Adam Fish is a cultural anthropologist, a teacher and researcher at the Sociology Department of Lancaster University, UK. The blog posts I have chosen written by him are: ââ¬Å"The genie is out of the bottle ââ¬â itââ¬â¢s foolish to think encryption can now be bannedâ⬠and ââ¬Å"Interview: An anthropologist on Tiger Woodsâ⬠. On the other hand, Nick Seaver is a PhD candidate in anthropology at UC Irvine. Conducting his research with developers of algorithmic musicRead MoreScience Majored Students Life At Queens College885 Words à |à 4 PagesScience Majored Studentsââ¬â¢ Life at Queens College Anthropology is a combination of the words ââ¬Å"Anthroposâ⬠and ââ¬Å"Logosâ⬠. It simply means the study of human. Since the human beings have both biological and cultural characteristics, anthropology extensively studies including both aspects. However, culture is the most important thing in anthropology. The culture of a particular organization, group, or country consists of the habits of the people in it and the way they generally behave. The particular traitsRead MoreThe Biotic Community Do Not Construct Paradigms Essay1628 Words à |à 7 Pagesbe it The Prince, by Machiavelli or The Book of Genesis. Also, as a liberal environmentalist intersectionality is an important aspect in viewing the world from a holistic lens rather from the binary. As mentioned in the book by DeFrancisco and Palczewski, intersectionality takes into account race, ethnicity, sex, gender, class, and sexual orientation. Also, intersectionality is an idea that is holistic in its approach. For instance, after analyzing The Book of Genesis, mentioned in the first sectionRead MoreParticipant Observation in Anthropology1749 Words à |à 7 Pagesobservations and no other methods increases the possibility that they may not report the negative aspects of the culture. Schultz and Lavenda (2005) discuss the physical disadvantages of fully immersing oneself in a new culture, describing the ââ¬Å"physical and mental dislocation and stressâ⬠(p.38). This includes the sometimes drastic change in climate, such as adjusting to extreme heat or cold. In addition, they note the cultural differences that will, despite being expected, inevitably be an adjustmentRead MoreThunder rides a black horse1100 Words à |à 5 Pages Introduction to Anthropology 01 This report is based on the book Thunder Rides a Black Horse written by Claire R. Farrer. This book is written in context of an indian group called the Mescalero Apache Indians. Their reservation and ceremonial grounds are based in the south-central part of New Mexico. The author is very familiar with this tribe as she claims to be like family with some of the members. She writes this book based on her visit to join in on one ofRead MoreGregory Bateson And His Quest3338 Words à |à 14 Pagescontributed to multiple subfields within anthropology along with other fields in the social sciences. Bateson never completely settled into one field, but rather, he synthesized his knowledge to incorporate it into his epistemology and methodologies. Gregory Batesonââ¬â¢s contributions to anthropology range from providing new methods of ethnography, helping to establish the field of visual anthropology, influencing ecological, psychological, and linguistics anthropology, to moving cybernetic theory from theRead MoreCareer Essay : A Career As A Career1256 Words à |à 6 Pagesjobs may not have had a direct influence on my current career choice but they have all made me the person I am today. In most of my jobs I have pushed myself to excel and move up the ââ¬Å"corporate ladderâ⬠. I started my archaeology career by keeping books for my ex-boss, Jeffrey Pangburn. I was promoted to his office manager but it was not until he fired me, that my career really began. Excelling in and losing what I thought would be my last job, has brought me to my amazing career in archaeologyRead MoreBook Report Of Preparing Missionaries Or Intercultural855 Words à |à 4 PagesBook Report of Preparing Missionaries or Intercultural Communication This book was written by Lyman E. Reed. ââ¬Å"Preparing Missionaries or Intercultural Communicationâ⬠is a book for missionaries who want to prepare for being a cross-cultural missionary and provides the necessities for adequate preparation of missionaries. One of the clearer imperative for missions was pronounced and is recorded in Matthew 28: 19-20: Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of theRead MoreBeruit to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman Essay1526 Words à |à 7 Pagesthe different tools to assess the state of affairs in the Middle East. Friedman uses the social sciences to analysis the situation that he observed when he was in Beirut writing for The New York Times. Being that Friedman is Jewish I rode off the book as a one-sided view of the happenings in the Middle East. What I found was quite the opposite; Friedman took a neutral position. Analyzing the situation in the Middle East is by no means an easy thing. There have of co urse been situations like thisRead MoreAnalysis Of Margaret Meads Coming Of Age In Samoa1227 Words à |à 5 Pagessubject matter due to her speculation that the period adolescence within the United States during the 1920s was filled with stress and a period of turbulence; therefore, Mead hypothesized that stress felt by American youth resulted from the American cultural environment. Through her investigation adolescent girls, Mead aimed to test the validity of the claims of adolescent behavior being a physiological determinant. After spending nearly a year in American Samoa, Mead returned to New York in 1926 and
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Women in the 20th Century - 1684 Words
The 1960ââ¬â¢s was a time period in the United States history that saw an abundance of change for the American people. One of the many changes was the ââ¬Å"sexual revolutionâ⬠, which mainly focused on women. Not only did it focus on the sexual liberation of women, but also the attitude towards women in corporate America. The sexual revolution was a major turning point on how women were perceived in public, media, and politics. Throughout the 20th century women had become a political presence. They fought for the civil right of African Americans and were finally being heard as an organized group. Then women finally started to fight for their own right to vote, and in 1920 it was granted with the 19th amendment. After women were allowed to vote, and finally got to in the election of 1922, an abundance of women saw themselves as political equals to men. As a result of this many women started to pursue more professional freedoms, and started to engage in more masculine activities in view of the public eye. Women started to drink in public, which at the time was illegal due to prohibition. Fashion became more proactive for that time, skirts became higher, and hair was cut shorter as to blend in with their male counterparts. Women started to smoke as well, and wanted to obtain more sexual freedom, and to destroy the double standard of men being able to take multiple lovers, which was seen as healthy, but when a woman engaged in this activity was immoral and evil. With this fight forShow MoreRelatedWomen During The 20th Century1548 Words à |à 7 PagesWomen are a large part of our society. They always have been. Without women none of us would be here right now. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries women did not really get to work much. A woman s job was typically to have and take care of the children. Mother was the main title that a woman could have. Then WWI started, and all of the men went off to fight in the war. With all of the men off fighting, there was no one left to to work in the factories. All of the wives and mothers, and womenRead MoreWomen During The 20th Century1840 Words à |à 8 PagesThe government and ladinos had certain designs upon the market place and who ought to control it, and Mayan women fought them on it on a daily basis in order to protect their own interests and survival. As such, the state and its apparatuses created ways to police women who had very strong presence in public, included in that categories were midwives, market vendors, and sex workers, all targets of liberal narratives surrounding social control and national development. Thus, the market place becameRead MoreThe Role of American Women in the 20th Century1318 Words à |à 5 PagesBefore the 20th century, the constrictions of the private sphere limited the roles of American women to those that related to domesticity. These roles included child bearing, rearing, cleaning, cooking, and tending to their husbands. This meant that women tended to set aside their hopes and dreams for a future that would extend beyond their lives of domesticity in order to focus solely on their home life. However, at the beginning of the 20th century women took it upon themselves to move away fromRead MoreWomen of the 20th Century Essays1670 Words à |à 7 Pagesââ¬Å"I feel empty somehowâ⬠¦ incompleteâ⬠¦ I feel as if I donââ¬â¢t exist.â⬠A sense of numbness was not u ncommon for many women who lived in the suburban world of the 1950ââ¬â¢s. Confined by a strong emphasis on family and gender roles, women acted as wives and mothers, but did not live as individuals; always being their childââ¬â¢s mother, or their husbandââ¬â¢s wife, led these women to lose their sense of self. As prisoners of their own lives, suburban housewives experienced an identity crisis that stripped them ofRead MoreThe Objectification Of Women During The 20th Century1382 Words à |à 6 Pagesthe depiction of women. The Objectification of women did not start with photography, but it certainly did not end with photography either. The progression of objectification was only blossoming in the 19th-20th century. At that time, most acknowledged photographers were men. Men were expected to live a public life, whether it was working in a factory or socializing with ââ¬Ëlikemindedââ¬â¢ men in public places, like parties or out and about taking photographs. On the other hand, women were usually expectedRead MoreWomen in Sports 19th and 20th Century1067 Words à |à 5 PagesJen Pearlstein December 2, 2010 Kin 305 Women in Sports 19th and 20th Century Womenââ¬â¢s participation in sports has changed over the centuries. In ancient times, men dominated societies. Women were viewed as the caretaker, a provider for life. Women who did participate were criticized and were thought of as threatening. In 18th century America, women were considered inferior to men because of the belief that women are the weaker sex. A womanââ¬â¢s purpose in life was to take care of the houseRead MoreWomen And Gender During 20th Century America3566 Words à |à 15 Pages Name: Title: Institution: Women and gender In 20th Century America Abstract Paid work for women moved from principally customary female-situated employments to all the more non-conventional and already male-arranged vocations. Ladies support in the workforce prompted them to start careers in the field dominated by male in the 20th century. Career yearnings were affected by elements, such as sexual orientation, financial status, race, occupation and instruction level, and parental desires. ThisRead MoreOppurtunities and Struggles for women of the 20th century910 Words à |à 4 Pagesclosing of the 19th century brought along many new technological and social changes. In the article ââ¬Å"The New Technology and Womenââ¬â¢s Workâ⬠by Sheila Rothman tells of the opportunities and struggles that women faced in the college and job market following the new social and technological advances of this period. Rothman tells of advancing opportunities in College, as well as Department stores and offices positions, while also acknowledging the limitations that still existed with women in social workplacesRead MoreWomen s Rights During The 20th Century1302 Words à |à 6 Pagesmovements to fight for women s equalities happened in the 20th century. People like Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony helped to make it possible. In the 20th century there were two waves of feminism and third started in the 80ââ¬â¢s but still continues today. I talk about the first and second wave in this essay. Then how these waves have changed the role of women in society. One of the first things to change the role of women in society was the right to vote. Women were seen as anRead MoreMargaret Sanger : An Influential Women Of The 20th Century1375 Words à |à 6 PagesI. Introduction Margaret Sanger was one of the most influential women of the 20th century. She worked tirelessly as a nurse tending to female patients in the slums of New Yorkââ¬â¢s Lower East Side. This experience converted her into an activist, not only for feminism, but for fair working conditions in the textile industry. Margaret was a polarizing figure. She was seen as antagonistic, even by the groups she fought for. Nevertheless she continued to fight for her causes. The United States owes much
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Roland Barthes the Death of the Author Free Essays
string(360) " person of the interlocutors: linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I: language knows a ââ¬Å"subject,â⬠not a ââ¬Å"person,â⬠end this subject, void outside of the very utterance which defines it, suffices to make language ââ¬Å"work,â⬠that is, to exhaust it\." The Death of the Author In his story Sarrasine, Balzac, speaking of a castrato disguised as a woman, writes this sentence: ââ¬Å"It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feelingâ⬠Who is speaking in this way? Is it the storyââ¬â¢s hero, concerned to ignore the castrato concealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman?Is it the author Balzac, professing certain ââ¬Å"literaryâ⬠ideas of femininity? Is it universal wisdom? or romantic psychology? It will always be impossible to know, for the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.Probably this has always been the case: once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality ââ¬â that is, finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol ââ¬â this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins.Nevertheless, the feeling about this phenomenon has been variable; in primitive societies, narrative is never undertaken by a person, but by a mediator, shaman or speaker, whose ââ¬Å"performanceâ⬠may be admired (that is, his mastery of the narrative code), but not his ââ¬Å"geniusâ⬠The author is a modern figure, produced no doubt by our society insofar as, at the end of the middle ages, with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation, it discovered the prestige of the individual, or, to put it more nobly, of the ââ¬Å"hu man personâ⬠Hence it is logical that with regard to literature it should be positivism, resume and the result of capitalist ideology, which has accorded the greatest importance to the authorââ¬â¢s ââ¬Å"personâ⬠The author still rules in manuals of literary history, in biographies of writers, in magazine interviews, and even in the awareness of literary men, anxious to unite, by their private journals, their person and their work; the image of literature to be found in contemporary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions; criticism still consists, ost of the time, in saying that Baudelaireââ¬â¢s work is the failure of the man Baudelaire, Van Goghââ¬â¢s work his madness, Tchaikovskyââ¬â¢s his vice: the explanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it, as if, through the more or less transparent allegory of fiction, it was always finally the voice of one and the same person, the aut hor, which delivered his ââ¬Å"confidence. We will write a custom essay sample on Roland Barthes the Death of the Author or any similar topic only for you Order Now ââ¬Å"Though the Authorââ¬â¢s empire is still very powerful (recent criticism has often merely consolidated it), it is evident that for a long time now certain writers have attempted to topple it. In France, Mallarme was doubtless the first to see and foresee in its full extent the necessity of substituting language itself for the man who hitherto was supposed to own it; for Mallarme, as for us, it is language which speaks, not the author: to write is to reach, through a preexisting impersonality never to be confused with the castrating objectivity of the realistic ovelist ââ¬â that point where language alone acts, ââ¬Å"performs,â⬠and not ââ¬Å"oneselfâ⬠: Mallarmeââ¬â¢s entire poetics consists in suppressing the author for the sake of the writing (which is, as we shall see, to restore the status of the reader. ) Valery, encumbered with a psychology of the Self, greatly edulcorated Mallarmeââ¬â¢s theory, but, turning in a preference for classicism to the lessons of rhetoric, he unceasingly questioned and mocked the Author, emphasized the linguistic and almost ââ¬Å"chanceâ⬠nature of his activity, and throughout his prose works championed the essentially verbal condition of literature, in the face of which any recourse to the writerââ¬â¢s inferiority seemed to him pure superstition.It is clear that Proust himself, despite the apparent psychological character of what is called his analyses, undertook the responsibility of inexorably blurring, by an extreme subtilization, the relation of the writer and his characters: by making the narrator not the person who has seen or felt, nor even the person who writes, but the person who will write (the young man of the novel ââ¬â but, in fact, how old is he, and who is he? ââ¬â wants to write but cannot, and the novel ends when at last the writing becomes possible), Proust has given modern writing its epic: by a radical reversal, instead of putting his life into his novel, as we say so often, he makes his very life into a work for which his own book was in a sense the model, so that it is quite obvious to us that it is not Charlus who imitates Montesquiou, but that Montesquiou in his anecdotal, historical reality is merely a secondary fragment, derived from Charlus.Surrealism lastly ââ¬â to remain on the level of this prehistory of modernity ââ¬â surrealism doubtless could not accord language a sovereign place, since language is a system and since what the movement sought was, romantically, a direct subversion of all codes ââ¬â an illusory subversion, moreover, for a code cannot be destroyed, it can only be ââ¬Å"played withâ⬠; but by abruptly violating expected meanings (this was the famous surrealist ââ¬Å"joltâ⬠), by entrusting to the hand the responsibility of writing as fast as po ssible what the head itself ignores (this was automatic writing), by accepting the principle and the experience of a collective writing, surrealism helped secularize the image of the Author.Finally, outside of literature itself (actually, these distinctions are being superseded), linguistics has just furnished the destruction of the Author with a precious analytic instrument by showing that utterance in its entirety is a void process, which functions perfectly without requiring to be filled by the person of the interlocutors: linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I: language knows a ââ¬Å"subject,â⬠not a ââ¬Å"person,â⬠end this subject, void outside of the very utterance which defines it, suffices to make language ââ¬Å"work,â⬠that is, to exhaust it. You read "Roland Barthes the Death of the Author" in category "Papers" The absence of the Author (with Brecht, we might speak here of a real ââ¬Å"alienation:ââ¬â¢ the Author diminishing like a tiny figure at the far end of the literary stage) is not only a historical fact or an act of writing: it utterly transforms the modern text (or ââ¬â what is the same thing ââ¬â the text is henceforth written and read so that in it, on every level, the Author absents himself). Time, first of all, is no longer the same.The Author, when we believe in him, is always conceived as the past of his own book: the book and the author take their places of their own accord on the same line, cast as a before and an after: the Author is supposed to feed the book ââ¬â that is, he pre-exists it, thinks, suffers, lives for it; he maintains with his work the same relation of antecedence a father maintains with his child. Quite the contrary, the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now.This is because (or: it follows that) to write can no longer designate an operation of recording, of observing, of representing, of ââ¬Å"paintingâ⬠(as the Classic writers put it), but rather what the linguisticians, following the vocabulary of the Oxford school, call a performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given to the first person and to the present), in which utterance has no other content than the act by which it is uttered: something like the / Command of kings or the I Sing of the early bards; the modern writer, having buried the Author, can therefore no longer believe, according to the ââ¬Å"pathosâ⬠of his predecessors, that his hand is too slow for his thought or his passion, and that in consequence, making a law out of necessity, he must accentuate this gap and endlessly ââ¬Å"elaborateâ⬠his form; for him, on the contrary, his hand, detached from any voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a field without origin ââ¬â or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, that is, the very thing which ceaselessly questions any origin. We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single ââ¬Å"theologicalâ⬠meaning (the ââ¬Å"messageâ⬠of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture.Like Bouvard and Pecuchet, those eternal copyists, both sublime and comical and whose profound absurdity precisely designates the truth of writing, the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing, to oppose some by others, so as never to sustain himself by just one of them; if he wants to express himself, at least he should know that the internal ââ¬Å"thingâ⬠he claims to ââ¬Å"translateâ⬠is itself only a readymade dictionary whose words can be explained (defined) only by other words, and so on ad infinitum: an experience which occurred in an exemplary fashion to the young De Quincey, so gifted in Greek that in order to translate into that dead language certain absolutely modern ideas and images, Baudelaire tells us, ââ¬Å"he created for it a standing dictionary much more complex and extensive than the one which results from the vulgar patience of purely literary themesâ⬠(Paradis Artificiels). succeeding the Author, the writer no longer contains within himself passions, humors, sentiments, impressions, but that enormous dictionary, from wh ich he derives a writing which can know no end or halt: life can only imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, a lost, infinitely remote imitation.Once the Author is gone, the claim to ââ¬Å"decipherâ⬠a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing. This conception perfectly suits criticism, which can then take as its major task the discovery of the Author (or his hypostases: society, history, the psyche, freedom) beneath the work: once the Author is discovered, the text is ââ¬Å"explained:ââ¬â¢ the critic has conquered; hence it is scarcely surprising not only that, historically, the reign of the Author should also have been that of the Critic, but that criticism (even ââ¬Å"new criticismâ⬠) should be overthrown along with the Author. In a ultiple writing, indeed, everything is to be distinguished, but nothing deciphered; structure can be followed, ââ¬Å"threadedâ⬠(like a stocking that has run) in all its recurrences and all its stages, but there is no underlying ground; the space of the writing is to be traversed, not penetrated: writing ceaselessly posits meaning but always in order to evaporate it: it proceeds to a systematic exemption of meaning. Thus literature (it would be better, henceforth, to say writ ing), by refusing to assign to the text (and to the world as text) a ââ¬Å"secret:ââ¬â¢ that is, an ultimate meaning, liberates an activity which we might call counter-theological, properly revolutionary, for to refuse to arrest meaning is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law.Let us return to Balzacââ¬â¢s sentence: no one (that is, no ââ¬Å"personâ⬠) utters it: its source, its voice is not to be located; and yet it is perfectly read; this is because the true locus of writing is reading. Another very specific example can make this understood: recent investigations (J. P. Vernant) have shed light upon the constitutively ambiguous nature of Greek tragedy, the text of which is woven with words that have double meanings, each character understanding them unilaterally (this perpetual misunderstanding is precisely what is meant by ââ¬Å"the tragicâ⬠); yet there is someone who understands each word in its duplicity, and understands further, o ne might say, the very deafness of the characters speaking in front of him: this someone is precisely the reader (or here the spectator). In this way is revealed the whole being of writing: a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of; the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; but this destination can no longer be personal: the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only that someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted.This is why it is absurd to hear the new writing condemned in the name of a humanism which hypocritically appoints itself the champion of the readerââ¬â¢s rights. The reader has never been the concern of classical criticism; fo r it, there is no other man in literature but the one who writes. We are now beginning to be the dupes no longer of such antiphrases, by which our society proudly champions precisely what it dismisses, ignores, smothers or destroys; we know that to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author. How to cite Roland Barthes the Death of the Author, Papers
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Pressure From The Women Essay Example For Students
Pressure From The Women Essay March 10, 1999English 102Pressure from the WomenIn Like a Winding Sheet Anne Petry chooses not to fully develop the femalecharacters of the story but still used them as a major part of the story to bring on theclimax. Petry chose to do this by using each womans appearance and in some cases theirrank in society to bring out the violent doings of Johnson. Petry first used Johnsons boss as a crisis in the plot. Johnson was described as aman in pain and being tired which is assumed by the reader was from working the longhours at work. After repeatedly being late to work his boss finally scolds him for arrivingso late, making her the first lady to start the conflict in the story. By Johnsons bossyelling at him he becomes angered as thoughts of striking his white, female boss enter hismind. The only things that keeps Johnson from hitting the boss was that it was extremelyimmoral to hit a woman, and the fact that she is a superior to him as his boss. The second woman in the story to create a complication in the story was the nextyoung white girl who is working at the coffee shop. On his way home from work Johnsonstopped at the coffee shop for the obvious cup of coffee. Johnson had waited in line forquite a while for the cup of coffee but when he finally got to the front for his coffee, theyoung white girl said that they were out of coffee. When she told Johnson this he didntthink that she did it in a polite manner at all. Johnson thought that he deserved morerespect due to him being an elder to the girl, he felt that the girl didnt show this respect. Once again Johnson had thoughts of striking the young girl but for morality reasons, herefrained. The final woman was the one that pushed the story to its climax. Johnsonreturned home a very tired and aggravated man from working and the disrespectfulwomen through out the day. This woman happened to be his wife Mae, waiting forJohnson at home. Mae verbally abused him similarly to what his boss had done. His wifetold him that he was being a tough old nigger, and continued with similar statements. Although her meaning of the term wasnt as serious as the bosses was, it still added toJohnsons pressure. Once again the thoughts of raising a hand and striking the woman passed throughhis mind. This time Johnson couldnt refrain from striking his abuser. Although theperson was again a woman, the pressure on the man had been too much, and he releasedall of his pressure. All the women throughout the day contributed to the pressure that theman had building inside which finally became too much for Johnson to contain.
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