Analysis of “He” by Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter’s â€Å"He† In Katherine Anne Porter’s short story, â€Å"He†, Mrs. Whipple has the misfortune of a mentally retarded son. While struggling to feed and clothe the hungry mouths of her family, Mrs. Whipple tries to camouflage hatred toward her son by putting up a facade of love and concern for him in an attempt to look like a better individual. Mr. Whipple and Mrs. Whipple’s neglect toward their son is evident right from the start by his lack of a name. He is only acknowledged as â€Å"He† or â€Å"Him†. Nance explains that this, â€Å"failure of the boy’s parents to recognize his personality, symbolized by their failure to give him a name, is the root of their error and suffering† (Nance 19). If Mr. and Mrs. Whipple would take the time to understand their son as a person and recognize his abilities, they would be able to accept his situation more easily and Mrs. Whipple could be less concerned with what people say. The distortion of Mrs. Whipple’s concern for her son is first evident when she says, â€Å"I wouldn’t have anything happen to Him for all the world, but it just looks like I can’t keep Him out of mischief. He’s so strong and active;He’s always into everything; He was like that since He could walk. It’s actually funny sometimes, the way He can do anything; it’s laughable to see Him up to His tricks. † (Porter 493) The truth is that Mrs. Whipple fails to put any considerable effort into keeping Him out of trouble in the first place. Mr. and Mrs. Whipple give the boy more chores because they say that He is bigger than average, and wont think twice about taking some of his blankets if the other children get cold in winter. On more than one occasion she intentionally puts Him in harms way. After receiving a letter saying that her brother and his family is coming for a visit, Mrs. Whipple insists on sacrificing a baby pig that would be worth a substantial amount of money by Christmas. With the mama pig being a great fighter, Mrs. Whipple asks Adna to retrieve the piglet. After Adna refuses the challenge, Mrs. Whipple believes it would be a great joke to make Him do it. After the boy manages to steal the pig, with the sow raging at His heels, Mrs. Whipple takes the pig from the boy without showing gratitude for the great favor He did. On another occasion, Mr. and Mrs. Whipple allow the boy to lead a full grown bull home. Both knowing that the bull could easily tear the boy to pieces, they still allow him to bring the animal three miles home. She mustn’t make a sound nor a move; she mustn’t get the bull started. The bull heaved his head aside and horned the air at a fly. Her voice burst out of her in a shriek, and she screamed at Him to come on, for God’s sake. He didn’t seem to hear her clamor, but kept on twirling His switch and limping on, and the bull lumbered along behind him as gently as a calf. Mrs. Whipple stopped calling and ran towards the house, praying under her breath: â€Å"Lord, don’t let anything happen to Him. Lord, you know people will say we oughtn’t to have sent Him. You know they’ll say we didn’t take care of Him. Oh, get Him home, safe home, safe home, and I’ll look out for Him better! Amen. † (Porter 497) Without concern for the boys safety Mrs. Whipple cries out at the boy to hurry up knowing that her actions could startle the bull. She then runs inside, not waiting to make sure her son made it all the way safely, and prays. Her prayers to get Him home safely bear more on what people will say about her if he does not make it. â€Å"[This] is a prime example where Mrs. Whipple’s superficial mask of love and concern is taken over by her abhorrence toward Him because of her personality flaw† (Makoid). Year after year the Whipple’s condition slowly dwindles. Adna and Emly move to the city for jobs, and He gets more chores placed upon his shoulders. One winter the boy slipped on some ice and fell over and started having convulsions. From then on He had to stay in bed. His legs swelled up and his condition didn’t improve. With the Whipples on their last legs, the doctor suggested they put the boy into the County Home. Mrs. Whipple, still worried about what people will say, refuses to see the boy go. She thinks that with Adna and Emlys’ help the family will be able to get back on their feet by next summer and take care of the boy. Eventually Mrs. Whipple understands what has to be done. Her neighbor and the doctor drive Mrs. Whipple and Him to the hospital. On the ride to the hospital He starts to cry. This is when Mrs. Whipple realizes that He is going away forever. His tears signify that maybe He knew that He was going away and He was finally happy; Happy to get away from the distortion and confusion of his parents. Mrs. Whipple understands her err, and is now truly concerned about his feelings. Mrs. Whipple and her family are poor southerners struggling to feed and clothe their children. With the addition of a mentally retarded second son, situations become more complicated for the family. Mrs. Whipple tries to mask the neglect of her disabled child by showing false love and concern for him. Only if she could grasp reality and accept her situation, would she be able to overcome her position and truly be happy. Instead Mrs. Whipple insists on hiding her conditions and doing whatever is possible to appear as a great family that is better off than they actually are. Works Cited Makoid, Terence. (2003, April 23). Katherine Anne Porter: Analysis of Mrs. Whipple in â€Å"He†. Retrieved April 24, 2011, from University of North Carolina website: http://www. unc. edu/home/tmakoid/english/he. html Nance, William L. Katherine Anne Porter & the Art of Rejection. University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill , 1964. 18-23. Porter, Katherine A. (1927). He. In L. McDougal, American Literature (pp. 493-498). Evanston, IL: McDougal.

youth protest in vietnam war essays

youth protest in vietnam war essays In 1961 president Kennedy decided to send American troops to Vietnam to stop the spread of Communism and to show the United States' strength of resolve. At the time he did not know the turmoil he would bring to his own country. The United States was split between those who believed it was our part to get involved in Vietnam and those who thought it was none of our business. As the war continued people's opinions intensified, especially student's. Youth protests during the 1960's changed the way many Americans viewed the Vietnam War. In the early 1960's protests first became a way of change for the civil rights movement. Then as men started going off to war it became a way of displaying activism. Liberal cities with big universities were the first to experience the antiwar movement. The cities of Ann Arbor, Bloomington, Chicago, East Lansing, Lawrence, Madison, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis saw the movement in full effect (Anderson 4-5). Some people believed that the protesters were a disgrace for betraying their own country (Dudley 83). "Teach-ins" became a way of educating students about what was really happening in Vietnam. Speeches, songs, discussions, and seminars helped get the students involved at the "teach-ins". After the first "teach in" occurred on March 24, 1965, at the University of Michigan, hundreds more started taking place within a few weeks. All the administration could do was to send for government officials called "truth teams". When that did not work, the government realized they should not reveal their policies to the public (Dougan and Weiss 87-88). The students from the University of California at Berkely felt like a minority when no one took them seriously at their campus demonstration in September 1965 because of their long hair and ragged clothes (Kent 74). Many youth joined organizations that were against the war. They would go to protests such as the one that took place on April 17, 1965. The 2...

Free Essays on Warm Desserts Of North America

North America contains three â€Å"warm† deserts. They are known as the Chihuahuan, the Sonoran, and the Mojave deserts. Warm deserts have relatively high temperatures during the long summer months and low amounts of rainfall; as a result, the evolutionary affinities of their plant life are largely with the subtropical plant communities to the south. Desert soils tend to be poorly developed, with a high content of mineral particles but little organic matter. The poor soil is caused by low plant productivity, which restricts the soil-building properties of microorganisms that convert organic matter into the humus components of soils. Soils with low organic matter content have a low water-holding capacity, adding to the aridity of the land (Smith et al 1997). Unlike other types of North American biomes, warm desert plants are competing for water, not light. The availability of water is the major factor determining the types of organisms that can live in the deserts. Warm deserts typically receive less than 25 cm of precipitation per year. The amount of evaporation is often greater than the amount of rainfall that occurs. Evaporation is an important factor contributing to aridity. Rising air cools and can hold less moisture, producing clouds and precipitation; falling air warms, absorbing moisture. Areas with few clouds, bodies of water, and little vegetation absorb most of the sun's radiation, thus heating the air at the soil surface. High wind in open country also contributes to aridity of the warm desert (Eddins, 2002). Plants that have adapted to dry habitats by altering their physical structure are known as xerophytes. Xerophytes, such as cacti, are the largest type plants living in the deserts of the North America. To reduce transpiration, xerophytes usually have few or no leaves and have special means of storing and conserving water. Most annual desert plants germinate only after heavy seasonal rain, and then comple... Free Essays on Warm Desserts Of North America Free Essays on Warm Desserts Of North America North America contains three â€Å"warm† deserts. They are known as the Chihuahuan, the Sonoran, and the Mojave deserts. Warm deserts have relatively high temperatures during the long summer months and low amounts of rainfall; as a result, the evolutionary affinities of their plant life are largely with the subtropical plant communities to the south. Desert soils tend to be poorly developed, with a high content of mineral particles but little organic matter. The poor soil is caused by low plant productivity, which restricts the soil-building properties of microorganisms that convert organic matter into the humus components of soils. Soils with low organic matter content have a low water-holding capacity, adding to the aridity of the land (Smith et al 1997). Unlike other types of North American biomes, warm desert plants are competing for water, not light. The availability of water is the major factor determining the types of organisms that can live in the deserts. Warm deserts typically receive less than 25 cm of precipitation per year. The amount of evaporation is often greater than the amount of rainfall that occurs. Evaporation is an important factor contributing to aridity. Rising air cools and can hold less moisture, producing clouds and precipitation; falling air warms, absorbing moisture. Areas with few clouds, bodies of water, and little vegetation absorb most of the sun's radiation, thus heating the air at the soil surface. High wind in open country also contributes to aridity of the warm desert (Eddins, 2002). Plants that have adapted to dry habitats by altering their physical structure are known as xerophytes. Xerophytes, such as cacti, are the largest type plants living in the deserts of the North America. To reduce transpiration, xerophytes usually have few or no leaves and have special means of storing and conserving water. Most annual desert plants germinate only after heavy seasonal rain, and then comple...

Common App 2017-18 How to Write a Great College Application Essay

Common App 2017-18 How to Write a Great College Application Essay After a year of stability, the Common Application essay prompts have changed again – I think for the better – based on surveys of 5000 teachers, students, counselors and colleges. This year brings some wording changes and a brand new prompt – and an old, previously discarded question that has been brought back to life. Significantly, the now â€Å"old† Common App prompts have not changed a lot – which makes sense since 90% of survey respondents reported that the prompts already worked well. Ideally, the new ones will work even better. Let’s take a look at the 2017-18 Common App prompts: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.  This prompt has not changed, and I think that’s a good thing. Many college applicants have some aspect of their lives that’s meaningful and important enough to share with the admissions committee. This question provides a welcome opportunity to do so. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced a challenge, setback or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Obstacles we encounter† and â€Å"a challenge, setback or failure† replaced the previous â€Å"failures† and â€Å"failure.†Ah, this prompt is so much less confronting, and so much more welcoming, to students who do not consider that they have â€Å"failed† but certainly have faced challenges in their lives. Not everyone is too evolved to see failure as an opportunity. And why require a failure to give students the opportunity to write about lessons learned? I like this change. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?â€Å"Questioned† was added to â€Å"challenged†; â€Å"prompted you to act† was replaced with â€Å"your thinking†: and â€Å"Would you make the same decision again?† was replaced by â€Å"What was the outcome?†I like this change because, while few youngsters have gone against the grain in a meaningful way, many of them have had thoughts that go against a belief or idea. The new prompt does not require students to have taken huge risks or to be activists. It just requires them to have opinions. Furthermore, they do not have to answer a yes or no question about whether they would take the same action in the future. Why require students to fortune tell like that? Instead, they can talk about what happened and naturally examine their role in that outcome. Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.  This was a completely new prompt two years ago, and it provides an exciting opportunity for students to display their intellectual prowess or emotional intelligence. No changes for next year! Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization, that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. This is a fairly old prompt with a fresh take. Interestingly, I predicted that it would be deleted or changed significantly last time I wrote about the Common App prompts, as I saw the danger of clichà ©d answers talking about Bar Mitzvahs and Eagle Scout projects.Here’s what changed: The words â€Å"formal or informal† were deleted, and the word â€Å"realization† was added. Even more significantly, instead of asking about something that â€Å"marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family,† the prompt now asks for students to delve into their own growth and understanding of themselves, their relationships and the world.Both changes reveal admissions committees’ clear preference for introspection and self-understanding. I’ve been saying for years that the com mittees want to see self-awareness and a focus on personal growth, and this preference could not be clearer than from the changes in this essay question. Describe a topic, idea or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?  This brand new prompt is another opportunity for applicants to explain how their brains work, what makes them tick, and how they explore their intellectual interests. I believe it’s a way for the admissions committee to discover how engaged a student would be in both intellectual and extra-curricular pursuits. It will be a great option for any students with passion and curiosity! Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.  While there was a â€Å"topic of your choice† essay question in the past, it did not suggest submitting an essay the student has already written! This choice fascinates and scares me. With the emphasis in all the other questions on sharing so personally, why open things up to essays on Huckleberry Finn? Why give this easy out to students who can just slap an essay into the box that they wrote for an English class? I bet this question in its current form won’t last long.Also interestingly, when the â€Å"topic of your choice† question was eliminated, there was very little complaint. But after a couple of years, people want it back. We’ll see what the feedback is in the future. It doesn’t really seem necessary, as the instructions to the Common App encourage students to use the prompts to write about anything they want:â€Å"What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response.† As Scott Anderson, Senior Director for Access and Education at The Common Application, points out in The Common App Essay Prompts Are Changing. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Matter, there’s really only one question in the Common App Essay: â€Å"Write an essay on a topic of your choice.† The Common App Essay has provided you direction, and your job is to take it and create your story. If your child is applying to college and wants support on writing a great response to the Common Application Essay questions, contact The Essay Expert. Remember, approximately 26% of all college applicants hire an admissions consultant, and your child is in the same pool as they are. You might also enjoy some of my other articles about college essays and admissions.

Writing Course for General Services Corporation Employees Essay

Writing Course for General Services Corporation Employees - Essay Example The paper throws light on General Services Corporation (GSC). In GSC, letters to customers, internal memos and emails are the most common types of written communication. Since GSC is a service company, it needs to constantly be in touch with its customers, and this makes external communication very important. There is also a lot of written communication that goes on between different departments. Most of this internal communication is normally in the form of e-mails and memos. Employees in the marketing department also have to do a lot of proposal writing for the purposes of getting more customers for the company. With all this writing that employees have to do every now and then, it is important to upgrade their writing skills so as to make the communication process easier and more efficient. The employees should receive training not only how to write well, but also how to write creatively. For instance, when writing internal memos and emails, most employees normally do not really k now how to bring out the point they want to make. This makes their written communication seem pointless, which can be quite frustrating for both the receiver and sender. However, some employees are quite good at communicating through whatever form of written communication they use. For instance, when one states his message right at the beginning instead of beating around the bush, then it is likely that whoever is reading the letter or memo will take whatever is in it with the seriousness it deserves.

Emergence of Crime Prevention and Community Safety in the Context of t Essay

Emergence of Crime Prevention and Community Safety in the Context of the Crisis of Governance That Afflicted the UK during 1970 and 1980 - Essay Example Representations of crime and punishment offer, in varying measure, titillating glimpses of the seductions of deviance, moral boundary maintenance and an anxiety-arousing frisson of fear. It is further mentioned that election campaigns did not mention crime as an important issue until 1970 when Margaret Thatcher developed law and order into a major arena of ideological conflict. Thus it is evident that the UK had realized the importance of community safety and crime prevention during the late 1970’s which prompted the government to chalk out policies and framework for crime prevention. This paper examines the emergence of crime prevention and community safety in the context of the ‘crisis’ of governance that afflicted the United Kingdom during 1970 and 1980. Reiner (2000, p.81) mentioned that the increases in recorded crime levels were fuelled further after the mid-1970s by the consequences of the fundamental shift in the political economy represented by the return of free market economies and the deregulation of an increasingly globalized market. It is further mentioned that the consequences of crime and social cohesion are enormous because of the widening of social divisions, and growth fo social exclusions. As social exclusions, economic, insecurity and inequality grew; the motives and opportunities of crime multiplied and the restraining effects of both formal and informal social controls are eroded. Dingwall and Davenport (cited in Fennell, 1995, p. 21) mentioned that the United Kingdom today faces a problem of crime which could not possibly have been forecast at the end of the Second World War. It is further stated that crime rate increased from 50,000 reported crimes in 1950 to 1.6 million in 1970 which further increased to 2.5 mi llion in 1980. It is further stated in a comparative study by Biles that in the period between 1960 and 1979 the recorded crime rose by 177 percent in England and Wales (Fennel, 1995, p27).     

Information Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Information - Essay Example One reason, the focus of my speech today, is the special protection that baseball (Major League Baseball) has been afforded by Congress. This protection comes in the form of antitrust law and, to a significant extant, insulates owners and other interested stakeholders from competition within the baseball industry. As an initial matter, it is important to define what is meant by antitrust law, a topic frequently foreign to baseball aficionados. Antitrust law is an umbrella designation that includes a number of laws dealing with fair competition; more specifically, because America deems itself a free market capitalist economy, there exist a number of laws designed to prevent such things as monopolies and unfair methods of competition. Strangely enough, baseball has for quite some time been exempt from a number of antitrust laws. As stated by Bartee, â€Å"professional sports are a textbook example of a bilateral cartel made up of club owners and unionized players engaged in intrastate and interstate commerce. The club owners exercise monopoly power in the product market† (2008: n.p.). Baseball, like steel or agriculture in certain respects, is a protected industry. It is not a monopoly per se but a competitive cartel in which owners compete with the unionized players. We read all of the time about competition between owners and players. There are disagreements about such things as free agency, salary caps, and collective bargaining agreements. The irony is that while the owners and the players often trade accusations about the other using unfair methods or misleading financial formulas the truth is that both reap the rewards of a non-competitive industry because of the antitrust exemption granted to Major League Baseball by the United States Congress. In addition, in a 1972 case called Kuhn v. Flood and decided by the United States Supreme Court, it was also decided that â€Å"baseball and its reserve system are also exempt from state antitrust