O Captain! My Captain! free essay sample

Every great nation’s past contains a great leader who sacrificed everything for his or her country. Abraham Lincoln gave his life after striving to abolish slavery. Soon after Lincoln’s murder, Walt Whitman wrote an apostrophe poem to Lincoln. In this eulogy, Whitman praised Lincoln’s accomplishments and mourned his death. In â€Å"O Captain! My Captain! †, Walt Whitman uses repetition, symbolism, assonance, and metaphors to portray the theme that every great leader should stand ready to lay down his or her life. Whitman uses repetition to show uncertainty about Lincoln’s death and symbolism to relate his victory and his death. When â€Å"O Captain! my Captain! † (1, 9, 13) is repeated it shows Whitman’s growing uncertainty about Lincoln’s assassination. The first line has an encouraging tone; however, with each repetition the tone carries more desperation. Lines five and six use the same desperate tone to show that Whitman still wants Lincoln to be alive: â€Å"But O heart! heart! heart! / O the bleeding drops of red,† (5-6). We will write a custom essay sample on O Captain! My Captain! or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Whitman shows his acceptance of the death at the end of each stanza with a calm tone: â€Å"Fallen cold and dead. / You’ve fallen cold and dead. / Fallen cold and dead† (8, 16, 24). The use of repetition provides different tones and gives emphasis to specific feelings. Starting in the first line and continuing throughout the poem, Whitman uses symbolism to relate Lincoln’s victory and death. In stanza two, Whitman states: â€Å"O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; / Rise up – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills; / For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths – for you the shores a-crowding;† (9-11). Everything listed could have been used to congratulate Lincoln on his victory when he returned home. Nevertheless, those things could represent ways to mourn Lincoln’s death. Whitman utilizes assonance to provide structure, and he makes the entire poem an extended metaphor to represent Lincoln’s sacrifice for this country. Whitman uses assonance to make â€Å"O Captain! My Captain! † a more fluent and structured work of literature: for you the bugle trills; his lips are pale and still; From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; (10, 17, 20). Not only does assonance create flow and structure, but it also makes certain words or phrases attract more attention which makes the line more memorable. Whitman’s clever use of assonance adds another impressive dimension to his work. It separates â€Å"O Captain! My Captain! † from the mediocre poems and raises the bar. The poem is a eulogy to Abraham Lincoln even though his name is never mentioned. The entire poem is an extended metaphor: â€Å"O Captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done; / The ship has weather’d every rack, †¦ / Here Captain! dear father! † (1-2, 13). Whitman is comparing a ship to the Union. The captain and father is representative of Abraham Lincoln, and the trip is being referred to as the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, but he gave his life for his valiance and effort. Walt Whitman used repetition, symbolism, assonance, and an extended metaphor to capture Lincoln’s sacrifice in a eulogistic poem. This poem is a testimony that if people do their absolute best, then they will have an impact on everyone around them. A person’s impact may cause his or her legacy to stick around to be remembered in the history books. Whitman creatively portrayed a pivotal moment in history to something as every day as a captain and his ship.

Ancient Flutes, Evidence of Prehistoric Music Making

Ancient Flutes, Evidence of Prehistoric Music Making Ancient flutes made of animal bone or carved from mammoth (extinct elephant) ivory are among the earliest examples of the use of ancient music- and one of the key recognized measures of behavioral modernity for modern human beings. The earliest forms of ancient flutes were made to be played like a modern recorder, that is held vertically. They were most often constructed from the hollow bones of animals, particularly bird wing bones. Bird bones are extremely well-suited for making flutes, as they are already hollow, thin and strong, so that they may be perforated without too much danger of fracturing. Later forms, carved from mammoth ivory, involve a greater grasp of the technology, including carving out the tubular form into two pieces and then fitting the pieces together with some adhesive, perhaps bitumen. Oldest Possible Ancient Flute The oldest possible bone flute discovered to date comes from a Middle Paleolithic site in Slovenia, the Divje Babe I site, a Neanderthal occupation site with Mousterian artifacts. The flute came from a stratigraphic level dated to 43,000 /- 700 RCYBP, and it was made on a juvenile cave bear femur. The Divje Babe I flute, if thats what it is, has two roughly circular holes punctured into it, and three more damaged potential holes. The layer has other gnawed cave bear bones, and some detailed scholarly research into the bones taphonomy- that is to say, the wear and markings on the bone- lead some scholars to conclude that this flute likely resulted from carnivore gnawing. Hohle Fels Flutes The Swabian Jura is an area in Germany where ivory figurines and debris from their production have been identified in numbers from the Upper Paleolithic levels. Three sites- Hohle Fels, Vogelherd, and Geißenklà ¶sterle- have produced flute fragments, all dated between about 30,000-40,000 years ago. In 2008, one nearly complete flute and two other flute fragments were discovered at the Hohle Fels Upper Paleolithic site, located in the Swabian Jura. The longest of these was made on the wing bone of a griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus). Discovered in 12 pieces and reassembled, the bone measures 21.8 centimeters (8.6 inches) long and about 8 millimeters (~1/3 of an inch) in diameter. The Hohle Fels flute has five finger holes and the blowing end has been deeply notched. Two other fragmented flutes found at Hohle Fels are made of ivory. The longest fragment is 11.7 mm (.46 in) in length, and oval (4.2x1.7 mm, or .17x.07 in) in cross-section; the other is 21.1 mm (.83 in) and also oval (7.6 mm x 2.5 mm, or .3x.1 in) in cross-section. Other Flutes Two other sites from the Swabian Jura in Germany have produced ancient flutes. Two flutes- one bird bone and one made up of ivory fragments- have been recovered from the Aurignacian levels of the Vogelherd site. The Geißenklà ¶sterle site excavations have recovered three more flutes, one from a swans wing bone, one from a possible swan wing bone, and one from mammoth ivory. A total of 22 bone flutes have been identified at the Isturitz site in the French Pyrenees, most from later Upper Paleolithic proveniences, circa 20,000 years bp. The Jiahu site, a Neolithic Peiligang culture site in China dating between ca. 7000 and 6000 BC, contained several bone flutes. Sources Taphonomy of a suggested MChase PG, and Nowell A. 1998. Paleolithic bone flute from Slovenia.iddle Current Anthropology 39(4):549-553.Conard NJ, Malina M, and Munzel SC. 2009. New flutes document the earliest musical tradition in southwestern Germany. Nature 460(7256):737-740.Fitch WT. 2006. The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspective. Cognition 100(1):173-215.Higham T, Basell L, Jacobi R, Wood R, Ramsey CB, and Conard NJ. 2012. Testing models for the beginnings of the Aurignacian and the advent of figurative art and music: The radiocarbon chronology of Geissenklosterle. Journal of Human Evolution(0).King S, and Snchez Santiago G. 2011. Soundscapes of the Everyday in Ancient Oaxaca, Mexico. Archaeologies 7(2):387-422.Morley I. 2006. Mousterian musicianship? the case of the Divje Babe I Bone. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 25(4): 317-333.Pettitt PB. 2008. Art and the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe: Comments on the archaeological arguments for an ear ly Upper Paleolithic antiquity of the Grotte Chauvet art. Journal of Human Evolution 55(5):908-917. Yang X-Y, Kadereit A, Wagner GA, Wagner I, and Zhang J-Z. 2005. TL and IRSL dating of Jiahu relics and sediments: clue of 7th millennium BC civilization in central China. Journal of Archaeological Science 32(7):1045-1051.

Huge inequality between Poor and Rich in China Essay

Huge inequality between Poor and Rich in China - Essay Example According to Gini Index, released recently indicates the income inequality between rich and poor, in rural China is 0.3949, near to the warning level of 0.4 fixed by the United Nations. Advanced research conducted by Central China Normal University's Center for China Rural Studies illustrated that the cash proceeds of rural families raised 14.13 percent and the per capita cash revenue in rural areas increased 11.95 percent. Agriculturalists in China aren’t becoming rich by farming activities. The rise in income growth in the rural areas are because of the salaries earned by those people who have uninhibited rural life to labor as migratory laborers in metropolises and big cities, the study stated. It is observed that the rural families are becoming more reliant on salaries received by their household members who work in cities. The study shown that salaries paid to the migratory employees estimated for 65.7%of the entire proceeds of rural families. Over and above the study as well established that the whole revenue of the top 20% of the rural families was 10.19 times more that of the lowest 20%. As per the study report, the prosperity difference in west China was larger than in the east of the nation. The appraisal by Central China Normal University did not study the income disparity of the country all together, since its scope was restricted to the rural region. But, it is stated by Xinhua, the state-owned news agency that the income disparity in China all together is well above 0.4, because of the huge income disparity amongst city and rural regions. In the year 2000, Chinese government issued a Gini index for the country which showed as 0.412. However many intellectuals at present believe that the index has gone up to between 0.45 and 0.50, stated Xinhua. The significance of Gini index is that ‘0’ indicate flawless equality and‘1’ indicate perfect inequality. The Gini index in the United States in 2009 was 0.468, referring to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is very close to the Gini index of China (Yoshida). The developing Asian countries like China, India, accepted the recent globalization move with comparable per capita GDP and income levels. However, China gone ahead with more to its open economy to the international market, despite the fact that major numbers of its coastline cities have made wide-ranging investment atmosphere for private investment. The outcome has been an amazing vibrant economic progress. Even though India has followed a similar system, however was slow in terms of opening up the economy and unsuccessful in making good investment atmosphere. Some of developing Asian countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam has achieved remarkable success, however other nations such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines has less progress because of lack of , investment opportunity and weaker links to the international market. The China’s continued progress resulted i n unparalleled poverty reduction. According to domestic studies, it is estimated that the poverty rate in China in 1981 was 64% of the populace. It has come down to 10% in 2004, showing that about 500 million people have overcome poverty throughout this period. This poverty decline has happened in phases. The change to the family obligation method boosted a large upsurge in agricultural yield, and scarcity was reduced to half over the small period from