Oppressed Caribbean Culture Essay Example for Free

Oppressed Caribbean Culture Essay Caribbean culture, in so far as it is conceded to exist, is at once the cause, occasion, and result of evolved and evolving paradoxes. The psychic inheritance of dynamic response to disparate elements interacting to find ideal, form, and purpose within set geographical boundaries over time could not have produced otherwise. The 1990s have witnessed no less of this, precisely because the decade serves to encapsulate contradictions in human development over the past half a millennium. The entire Caribbean, and indeed all of the modern Americas of which the Caribbean, like the United States, is only one part, are the creatures of the awesome process of cross-fertilization following on the encounters between the old civilizations of Europe, Africa, and Asia on foreign soil and they, in turn, with the old Amerindian civilizations developed on American soil long before Christopher Columbus set foot on it. It is a development that has helped to shape the history and modern condition of the world for some half a millennium and one that has resulted in distinctive culture-spheres in the Western hemisphere, each claiming its own inner logic and consistency. The Caribbean, at the core of which are a number of island nations, themselves in sub-regional groupings, is conscious of the dynamics of its development. For it rests firmly on the agonizing and challenging process actualized in simultaneous acts of negating and affirming, demolishing and constructing, rejecting and reshaping. Nowhere is this more evident that in the creative arts, themselves a strong index of a peoples cultural distinctiveness and identity. Admittedly, other indices of culture such as linguistic communication, which underpins the oral and indigenous scribal literatures of the region, religion, and kinship patterns, reveal the texture and internal diversity that are the result of cross-fertilization of differing elements. The result is an emerging lifestyle, worldview, and a nascent ontology and epistemology that all speak to Caribbean historical experience and existential reality, in some cases struggling to gain currency and legitimacy worldwide (and even among some of its own people) for being native-born and nativebred. For this is the original meaning of Creole. Whites born in the American colonies were regarded as creoles by their metropolitan cousins. And the Jamaican-born slaves were similarly differentiated from their salt-water Negro colleagues freshly brought in from West Africa. The term was soon to be hijacked by or attributed to the mulatto (half-caste) who defiantly claimed certified rootedness in the coloniesa status not as easily claimed by the person of African or European descent whose ancestry lay elsewhere, it was felt, other than in the Caribbean or the Americas. An understanding of the shared human thirst for freedom in terms of its cultural significance is critical. For the impulses that drive the Caribbean people (like people anywhere) to freedom within nation states, to the right to choose their own friends and political systems, and to independent paths to development are the same impulses that drive them to the creation of their own music, their own languages and literature, their own gods and religious belief-systems, their own kinship patterns, modes of socialization, and self-perceptions. All plans made for them from outside must take this fact into account, whatever may be the dictates of military and strategic interests or the statistical logic of tabulated growth rates and gross national products. The Caribbean people, faced as they are with the post-colonial imperative of shaping civil society and building nations, expect to be taken seriously in terms of their proven capacities to act creatively in coordinated social interaction over centuries in the Americas. They feel passionately that their history and experience are worthy of theory and explanation and expect others to understand and appreciate this fact. They are unique, paradoxically because they are like everybody else. The Caribbean has been engaged in freedom struggles and its inhabitants have been at the job of creating their own languages, and designing their own appropriate lifestyles for as long as and, in some cases, longer than most parts of what became the United States. Recognition of this and the according of the status due such achievement is a prized wish of all Caribbean peopleBlack, White, Mestizo, Indian (indigenous and transplanted), Chinese, and Lebanese. By general critical consent, the principal women writers in English to emerge, so far, from the Caribbean are the properly varied trio of Jamaica Kincaid (Elaine Potter Richardson) and Jean Rhys. I say properly varied because the immensely mixed political and social history of the Caribbean is reflected by and in its writers. Kincaid, the most experimental of the three, is seen by her admirers as a deliberate subverted of Dead White European Male modes of narrative. Yet any reader deeply immersed in Western literature will recognize that prose poetry, Kincaids medium, always has been one of the staples of literary fantasy or mythological romance, including much of what we call childrens literature. Centering almost always upon the mother-daughter relationship, Kincaid returns us inevitably to perspectives familiar from our experience of the fantasy narratives of childhood. Kincaid genuinely expresses her regard to Caribbean as those that have been creolized into indigenous form and purpose distinctively different from the original elements from which those expressions first sprang. With some of those original elements, especially those from a European source, themselves reinforcing their claims on the region, whether through politics, economic control, or cultural penetration, the Caribbean is becoming even more conscious not only of its own unique expressions but also of the dynamism and nature of the process underlying these expressions. These in turn constitute the basis for the claims made for a Caribbean identity. Jean Rhys, of Creole Dominican descent, is a formidable contrast to Marshall and seems to me the major figure to emerge thus far among Caribbean women writers. Though she lived mostly in Paris and England, the imagination of Rhys came fully alive in her novel of 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea, a remarkable retelling of Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre from the perspective of Bertha Mason, Rochesters mad first wife. The terrifying predicament of the 19th-century Creole women of the West Indies, regarded as white niggers by colonialists and as European oppressors by blacks, is presented by Rhys with unforgettable poignancy and force. Shrewdly exploiting the modernist formal originalities of her mentor, Ford Maddox Ford, Rhys achieved a near masterpiece in Wide Sargasso Sea. Allusive, parodistic, and intensely wrought, the novel remains the most successful prose fiction in English to emerge from the Caribbean matrix. In Wide Sargasso Sea, the starting point is this placelessness. Although Rhyss novel starts with Antoinettes childhood in Coulibri, its boundaries lie outside the novel in another womans text. In Jane Eyre we have the madwoman Bertha locked up in the attic of Thornfield Hall. The significant title Wide Sargasso Sea refers to the dangers of the sea voyage. Rochester first crosses the Atlantic alone to a place which threatens to destroy him, then once more, bringing his new wife to England. Both Rochester and Antoinette are transformed through this passage. Rochester gives Antoinette a new name, Bertha, and in England she finally is locked up as mad. Rhys finds her own place in Jane Eyre, a prisoner of anothers desire. She sets out to describe that place and, in doing that, she redefines it as her own. In her challenge to Jane Eyre, Rhys draws on the collective experience of black people as sought out, uprooted, and transported across the Middle Passage and finally locked up and brutally exploited for economic gain. She uses this experience and the black forms of resistance as modes through which the madwoman in Jane Eyre is recreated. In the film version Wide Sargasso Sea develops stereotypes of Black West Indians that strongly mirror Bogles discussion of classic film depictions of African Americans. The inner stereotype in the film is that of the tragic mulatto which, the film hints, describes Angelique, the evidently White child who has been raised by Blacks. Although Angelique insists on her Whiteness, a menacing dark skinned stranger claims at diverse points in the film to be her brother through her fathers relationship with a slave. The viewer is left to consider whether the widowed plantation owner seen at the beginning of the film is actually Angeliques mother. While it does not answer this question directly, it obviously shows through Angeliques actions that her culture is far more African than European. These suspicions, actions, and Angeliques reliance on the ex-slave Christophine ultimately destroy her marriage and drive her insane. Christophine, herself, fulfills the mammy role since the film portrays her as a constant presence who fiercely guards Angelique from all dangers. In the West Indian context, though, she is given a twist, as she is not only guardian angel but also a practitioner of the magical art of obeah. This portrayal a staple of films dealing with the West Indies is never completely developed. Nevertheless, the film permits us to witness its potency, as Angelique, despairing of keeping her husbands love, calls on Christophine to develop a magical potion to bind his affections to hers. One opponent for those affections is Emily, a young Black servant who might well be characterized as a female Black buck a sexual predator who seduces a married White man into interracial unfaithfulness. Finally, there is Nelson, the long-suffering head of the household who intimately approximates Bogles Tom. In the film, insults of various sorts that are directed towards him result only in silence and a determination to remain a faithful servant. Though, in Dominican novelist Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the islands riotous vegetation and dramatic landscape are depicted with an ominous intensity that prompts the protagonists English husband to equate it with evil. Lally, the narrator of another Dominican classic, Phyllis Shand Allfrey The Orchid House ( 1953), faced with the menacing power the islands nature exerts over Stella and Andrew, ruefully concludes that the island offered nothing but beauty and disease. Rhyss protagonists, most evidently Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea, share a view of England as deadening, grey and emotionally destructive. England is a place of hypocrites, and the English have a bloody, bloody sense of humour. With a West Indian accent, she goes on, and stupid, lord, lord (Wide Sargasso Sea: 134). But it remains Rhyss place, the source of those English books which provided an early contribution to her construction of herself as writer. The idea of definitive national origin and affiliation is a source of anxiety for Rhyss protagonists. For Rhys herself nationality was complicated by her exile and her race: also England did not value her Caribbean origins. For Rhyss women, as perhaps for herself, England is also a place where human emotions, especially those associated with sexuality, are outlawed or repressed; she described sex in a letter of 1949 as a strange Anglo-Saxon word (Abalos, David T. 1998, 66). Hemond Brown comments that Rhyss attitude to England remained remarkably consistent over her whole writing career: For those fifty-odd years, England meant to her everything she despised (Bandon, Alexandra. 1995). But despite this, she surely demonstrated in her characterisation of working-class English chorus girls and call girls and Rochester (perhaps informed by her important attachments to Lancelot Grey, Hugh Smith, Leslie Tilden Smith and Max Hamer, all upper- or middle-class Englishmen), that the poor Englishwoman and even the colonizing, socially secure Englishman have their own areas of serious emotional damage. She may have blown off steam sometimes, but in her fiction she took pains to be fair to the country which had both given her sustained literary identity and denied her dignity. In the Caribbean, complex racial narratives are the most powerful signifiers, although class increasingly reverberates now. In England, in Rhyss lifetime, it was the class narrative which primarily constructed identity, though Rhys clearly writes the importance of race as a formative self-construction from her Dominican childhood. She sometimes sees race and class as equally important even in England, as in the case of Selina, who carries Rhyss own outlaw status during an important period of her life. In the two explicitly Caribbean novels, Voyage in the Dark and Wide Sargasso Sea, race is evidently a major source of identity. Jean Rhys had long described the cultural dialectic of his regions historical experience and contemporary reality in the following way: But the tribe in bondage learned to fortify itself by cunning assimilation of the religion of the Old World. What seemed to be surrender was redemption. What seemed the loss of tradition was its renewal. What seemed the death of faith was its rebirth. Caribbean existential reality is here portrayed as a creature of paradox. Surface appearances may well be masks for their opposites. What one sees is not likely to be what one gets. Other similar manuscript was in Goodbye Mother by Reinaldo Arenas, the grief inundated daughters Ofelia, Otilia, Odilia and Onelia kill themselves in front of their dead mum just for their cadavers to occasion a series of triumphant choruses from the legion of rats and maggots who feast on the putrefactory banquet. Neither of these authors, nor the evenly talented Rene Depestre and the former Dominican President Juan Bosch, is Anglophonic. Its usually believed that the most excellent Caribbean literature in English consists of chronological polemics On the other hand Cristina Garcia novel â€Å"Dreaming In Cuban† tells the stories of the women of a Cuban family, scattered by revolution but still connected through a shared past. The narrative is polyphony of several voices who, in turn, describe their world from their viewpoint. Characters include Lourdes, an anti-Castro exile who runs a chain of Yankee Doodle Bakeries, and Felicia, whose perceptions connect and blur the lines between insanity and santeria. Pillar, Lourdess daughter and an aspiring punk artist, is determined to return to Cuba to reconnect with her grandmother and make her present life meaningful. She laments that history does not tell the important stories and longs to recover Cuba for herself: [T]heres only imagination where our history should be (138). In the title of Dreaming in Cuban, Dreaming includes all the diverse dreams of Garcias female protagonists about the nature of being Cuban, what it is to be Cuban, to dream, not in American, but in Cuban. This necessitates Garcias taking into account all the conflicting elements of contemporary Cuban-ness for Cuban and Cuban American women. Amazingly, she never invalidates or disputes the diverse and conflicting perspectives of these different dreamers. She succeeds by giving readers a complexity of experience beyond binaries, where many diverse and conflicting perspectives circle around one another endlessly. These differences are constructed by differences in the various ideologies that the characters embrace communism, capitalism, traditional gender relations, voodoo, and feminismand also by differences in their experiences due to varying historical locations in time and place.

Merchant Of Venice Shylock Stu :: Free Merchant of Venice Essays

This character sketch will be on Shylock, describing his physical and personality traits. Shylock is an older, Jewish money lender who has one daughter named Jessica. Shylock is introduced into the novel when Antonio’s friend, Gratiano needs money in order to impress a girl. Antonio at the time does not have any money and sends Gratiano to Shylock to borrow money from him. Shylock does not like Antonio because of past experiences where Antonio made fun of him publically. This leads to an interesting bond that Antonio must agree to in order for Gratiano to get money. Shylock has many different character traits such as vengeful and his greed which will be displayed in this character sketch.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  His vengefulness is shown mainly towards two people in this play. Antonio being the greater of the two. He seeks revenge on Antonio because of how Antonio has treated Shylock in the past. One example of his vengefulness is when he said this to himself on page 15 “If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed the fat the ancient grudge I bear him.'; Not only does this prove that Shylock dislikes Antonio, it also proves that he holds grudges that aren’t usually solved without revenge. The other person that Shylock wants revenge from is his daughter Jessica. When Jessica and Lorenzo fall in love they decide they are going to elope. They do this the night that Shylock goes out for dinner when he goes Jessica steals some of his money and his dead wife’s ring. This made Shylock furious and he said, “ She is damned for it.';(page 44) Shylock seems to go after anyone that crosses his path, it is for good reason though being a Jew in Venician so ciety. In a way you may feel sorry for him until you realize how greedy this man is.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Shylock has a strong   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Shylock isn’t exactly a character that wins your respect throughout the book. He does this with his obsession with money and his hatred for Antonio one of the more liked characters in the book. In the end of the play Shylock does not get his bond and Antonio gets away free. Merchant Of Venice Shylock Stu :: Free Merchant of Venice Essays This character sketch will be on Shylock, describing his physical and personality traits. Shylock is an older, Jewish money lender who has one daughter named Jessica. Shylock is introduced into the novel when Antonio’s friend, Gratiano needs money in order to impress a girl. Antonio at the time does not have any money and sends Gratiano to Shylock to borrow money from him. Shylock does not like Antonio because of past experiences where Antonio made fun of him publically. This leads to an interesting bond that Antonio must agree to in order for Gratiano to get money. Shylock has many different character traits such as vengeful and his greed which will be displayed in this character sketch.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  His vengefulness is shown mainly towards two people in this play. Antonio being the greater of the two. He seeks revenge on Antonio because of how Antonio has treated Shylock in the past. One example of his vengefulness is when he said this to himself on page 15 “If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed the fat the ancient grudge I bear him.'; Not only does this prove that Shylock dislikes Antonio, it also proves that he holds grudges that aren’t usually solved without revenge. The other person that Shylock wants revenge from is his daughter Jessica. When Jessica and Lorenzo fall in love they decide they are going to elope. They do this the night that Shylock goes out for dinner when he goes Jessica steals some of his money and his dead wife’s ring. This made Shylock furious and he said, “ She is damned for it.';(page 44) Shylock seems to go after anyone that crosses his path, it is for good reason though being a Jew in Venician so ciety. In a way you may feel sorry for him until you realize how greedy this man is.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Shylock has a strong   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Shylock isn’t exactly a character that wins your respect throughout the book. He does this with his obsession with money and his hatred for Antonio one of the more liked characters in the book. In the end of the play Shylock does not get his bond and Antonio gets away free.

How Do You Ensure Pupils Understand Explanations? Essay

The purpose of this essay is to look at the ways in which a child retains information, how that information is processed and the possible barriers involved. There will be some focus on the theories of learning and the strategies and practices employed in the classroom. At this juncture it must be stated that ‘ensuring’ may be an ambiguous word, and that ‘enabling’ the understanding may be more precise, as no matter how vociferous the intention to ‘ensure’ there will always be pupils who fall through the net or may even have developed their own strategies to cope with not understanding yet leading the teacher to believe they have. Surely the answer to this statement must begin with good ‘communication’. It is recognised that communication is a ‘two way process’, starting as far back as pre-birth as stated by Elisbeth Hallett in her book ‘Soul Trek Meeting our Children on the Way to Birth’ (1995). If this idea is to stand the test of time, the pupils must therefore be given the opportunity to verbalise their level of understanding before a task is attempted. This relatively obvious procedure may not be possible in pupils with any existence of special educational need. Difficulties affecting the brain’s processing ability and auditory impairment may not always manifest themselves but will result in poor communication (Dittrich and Tutt, 2008). Therefore the need for effective two communication and pupils feeling empowered to be able to ask for help becomes a priority in teaching. Ed Balls (2007) states ‘effective communication and language skills are fundamental to young people’s learning, developing social skills and fulfilling their potential’. Whatever the age of the learner, the cognitive ability, the language or SEN barriers, good clear, age specific, decipherable communication must be the key to understanding. Piaget (cited Pound, 2005) believed that children learnt in stages dependent on age and awareness of their environment and surroundings. These stages will also impact on the ability for a child to understand an explanation. Therefore before logical thinking arrives at around 7-11 years of age, visual, tactile clues and instructions, will be  more easily absorbed. However the need still exists to enable understanding of the need to progress on to attempting and succeeding. Creating that perfect classroom setting where the teacher delivers the starter and instructions and the class independently commences the task without any clarification is an ideal not often witnessed. This could be for many reasons; the class size, noise levels or even visibility of the teacher. Psychologists such as Maslow (1954) talk about the 5 levels of need in life, from the very basics of environmental issues to self-actualisation and problem solving. Therefore being conscious of these factors, room layout, and temperature, even lighting, may influence the ability to understand and disseminate instructions independently. These physical ideals are not always possible, given the large number of pupils in the classroom. As reported in a study by the Dfe (2011), ‘research findings from England show that in smaller classes, individual pupils are the focus of a teacher’s attention for more time; there is more active interaction between pupils and teachers; and more pupil engagement’. Taking all these possible barriers into account and the different learning styles that exist, it is paramount therefore to create the correct atmosphere conducive to learning in the classroom. Planning should incorporate this and the use of good vocal skills will promote confidence and assertiveness (Bruce, 2005). Instilling a sense of self belief and esteem that encourages children to engage and be able to ask for help or explanation. However despite all these strategies being in place it must be noted that levels of understanding will differ and aiming the teaching at the correct level of ability is essential. Froebel (cited, Pound 2005) states ‘to begin where the learner is’. A valid statement that is underpinned by most theorists who believe that cognitive understanding relates to developmental stages in age and maturity. Piaget believed that learning was supported by action. That thought is developed by experiencing and active experimenting. With the knowledge of al l the impediments in place let us know consider the classroom strategies available. A tried and tested method is to ask the pupils what they think their course of action will be. For example ‘what do you think I want you to do when you have read through the text?’. (Case, 2010). This in itself for some, may take some  coding and decoding and therefore present vast possibilities of misunderstanding (Denby, 2012). Obviously the message has to be first ‘coded’ by the teacher , in other words putting it into a form that can be understood, this may be visual or written. As many theorists claim however, interpretation of the spoken word is not only auditory. Approximately 35% of meaning is in the way it is actually said and a further 55% in body language and facial expression (Mehrabian, 1971). Highlighting as previously mentioned the importance of the positioning of the teacher in the room and the classroom layout. If the pupils cannot see the teacher, they may miss important facets of the instruction that will then mean them having to fill in the gaps by guessing. As Piaget states ‘ learning is a process of active discovery’ (Piaget sited MacNaughton, 2003). As teachers there is a need to facilitate the understanding by firstly using age and ability levelled speak. If the cognitive level is pitched too high there may only be a small number of the class that understand. Merely asking â€Å"do you all understand ?â€Å", is as good as useless as Swift (2007) demonstrates. This question will leave those that haven’t understood too shy to admit it and some that think they have understood but may in fact have not. A more successful way would be to ask them to repeat back the instructions, making sure a less able pupil is asked so there is a better gauge of the whole class and not just the brightest pupils. It may be a practical task that two pupils could demonstrate to show their level of understanding, or if it’s a written task, they might offer the answer to the first question for instance. A further method for tasks that are known to the pupils, ask them what they think they have to do. This draws on prior learning and offers the teacher information for future planning also. It may be possible to just give instructions for the first part of the lesson. Stopping half way through to do a mini plenary, and then giving the second set of instructions to finish the task can also help to pace out the amount of instructions being given. Having the explanation and expected outcomes within the Learning Intention that the pupils write in their books can offer help to those who may wander off track too. Or indeed having them all written on the whiteboard or displayed on the IWB. (1339) Balls, E. (2007) Department for Children Schools and Families. [online],  available at http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/quotes.html [Accessed 4 No 2012]. Bruce, T. (2005) Developing learning in early childhood. Buckingham: Open University Press. Case, A. (2010) Making Sure Students Understood Your Instructions. [online]. Available at http://edition.tefl.net/articles/teacher/instructions/ [Accessed 18 Nov 2012]. Denby, N. (2012) Training to Teach- A guide for students. London: Sage Publications. Department for Education, ( 2011). Economics, Evaluation and Appraisal Team Education Standards Analysis and Research Division. [online] at : https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RR169.pdf Dittrich,H. and Tutt, R. (2008) Educating Childern with Complex Conditions. London : Sage Publications. Hallett, E. (1995) Soul Trek: Meeting our Children on the Way to Birth. Montana : Light Heart Publishing. MacNaughton, G. (2003) Shaping Early Childhood : Learning, curriculum and context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maslow, A. (1954) Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. [Accessed : 16.11.12]. online at : http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html Mehrabian, A. (1971) Silent Messages. California. Wadsworth. Pound, L. (2007) How children learn. London: Step forward publishing. Swift, S. (2007) Giving and Checking Instructions. [online] at : http://ezinearticles.com/?Giving-and-Checking-Instructions&id=404950 [Accessed : 19 Nov 2012].

Essay Constitution And Law In America - 970 Words

Constitution’s Significance with Law in America The definition of constitution is the act or process of composing, setting up or establishing (Websters Dictionary online). When I think of constitution I think of our â€Å"founding father’s†, the ones who established our governemnt and function. I am reminded of why they came over here. I think of the Constitution as the mission statement for the American government. America’s set of standards. It gaurantees that we cannot stray from the vision of what we stand for. The constitution to me stands basically, for freedom of rights for all. All men are created equal. Our fathers were derived from a generation of people who came to this â€Å"newfoundland† because of the riticule and corruption of the†¦show more content†¦It reflects their intentions of its implementation. Their principals still affect our modern laws of today. I think that its pretty impressive that the constitution could survive hundreds of years of generations, wars, financial depressions, and technologies chamges and not be too old fashioned for today’s ways. The reason why it still stands strong is because its purpose has always been the same. To make sure that new laws do not contridict the philosophy that all men are created equal and should be able to retain that freedom. The purpose of the Constitution is to regulate modern laws in every state. To make sure that laws do not take away from peoples rights. The Constitution still to this day carries great significance because it is our basis as citizens, law enforcers and law makers to creating new laws to adjust to our always changing society. If our President, the chief executive of the United States of America, strays from the constitutional focus because of unruly conduct or interests, the constitution garauntees our right to override and fire him. We are the boss. 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