Enough is never enough

AHHHHHHHH!! What am I going to wear today? Every morning, this seems to be a problem, even though I have closets full of clothes and no more space to actually place my clothes since every possible place has been filled. But, I feel I don't have enough, because it seems I've worn just that top yesterday and the other â€Å"Gap† black one, on Wednesday. I guess I'll just have to go shopping once more, since I just don't have enough! Enough is never enough. Whether it is a lust for material, social or political â€Å"stuff†, we simply want more. I live in a first world country, with all the luxuries of life in a house, with a delightful 3 times meal, nice, new shiny cars parked outside- allowing me to go whenever and wherever I want. Basically, for most of us here in Canada, it's the best life can ever get! But why is it that we continuously just demand more and more? Or even better we claim we â€Å"need† more. A want, all of a sudden becomes a need – something we couldn't survive without. But, it's no different for me. I have a huge collection of different types of shoes for different seasons, and the collection just seems to be looking old and I actually think it needs an update, because the last time I bought shoes was just last week, when the new boots came out in style. According to the 2001 Survey of Household Spending, Households in Canada spent an average of $57,730 in 2001 on everything from food, shelter and clothing to recreation and travel, which was up 3. 4% from $55,830 in 2000, slightly higher than the rate of inflation of 2. % as measured by the Consumer Price Index (Statistics Canada). This shows the continuous rise in our buying habits, since our thirst for deeper material possessions doesn't seem to have an end. Its not just one person desiring innumerable things but it applies to all of us. The other day my friend was complaining to me, † I know I just came from the salon but I wish I'd get those bangs instead, instead of these layers, so lets go there tomorrow again. † We actually think that's a bit too much, but you know what? It's happening. We aren't just dissatisfied with our looks, but with everything else we own. She just isn't pleased with what she's got! So, then who exactly is? I asked 10 people randomly to find out the answer and the responses I got were surprising. Six out of the ten people were satisfied with what they have and replied in a positive manner. â€Å"You can't be greedy! How much more can you ask for? You have a house†¦ TONS of clothes, food†¦ and all the other â€Å"wants† for entertainment and all the fun things†¦ o yeah totally satisfied â€Å"or â€Å"I'm satisfied with what I have but I also wish that I can have more material and wouldn't mind having more if I were to get it† or â€Å"I'm satisfied for now but I would want more in the future, like in 10 years† and â€Å"I'm satisfied for now, but because there is more out there and we can access it, we want more but just not right now. † The others were complaining about how little t hey have and life would be much better if they had much more. I would fit into that category! My house isn't getting any prettier, even after all the money spent on the antiques and the expensive decorations. I feel it would make the house look much better, if we purchased some paintings. I have a â€Å"56† inch T. V, that seizes half of our living room space but I plan to buy the new flat screen ones, since they are the â€Å"new look†, even though our T. V is precisely perfect. From Internet to Mp3 players, our life is fully complete. Isn't it? But instead of normal speed Internet, we want high speed – faster and advanced, which means our life is complete but we aren't content. We simply just can't see what items we actually do have and what we can use, instead we see what we don't have and just ask for more and more since its never sufficient for us. We're on a continuous search for material. It's a non-stop hunt! It's not a hunt just for material goods but for social and political rights as well. We live in a democratic society that allows us to have more social control over government. We have more communal rights and freedom then many citizens in other countries. We have the guarantee for the freedom of expression, assembly, religion, and the press. We have equal rights just like all the other citizens regarding race or religion. We have mobility rights, legal rights, minority languages, educational rights and democratic rights. However, same sex couples are still asking for same sex marriage rights. Why does it feel that we don't have enough freedom? But, I just thought, we did. Maybe we should be put in a communist country such as China where public criticism of government is not permitted, and the rights of the state take precedence over those of the individual. That way it would be more fun seeing people complain and trying to get their way across to a communist government. Many of us are well employed and the companies we work for promise us many things, such as benefits, but several of the occupations, such as teachers are still asking for a raise in the pay since its not an adequate pay for them. We are paying all those taxes and even though we are getting safer roads and a health care system, in return, we feel it's too much and want a tax cut. Why does it feel like the government is ripping us off? We have the ability to make choices, get education at any age, attend free language classes, read free books at the library, play at the community center but the list just seems to be looking shorter. We are still fighting with the government against the high tuition cost and the small size of the libraries. We are waiting for new political leaders to come into place and change the way things are being done politically, and make decisions that are a benefit to the society or us, which is constantly changing. We can actually never sit down and be thankful for what we have. It's like we are on a constant search for more social and political rights, because the amount of freedom we currently hold, still makes us feel caged. What is the motivation that's asking us to search and fight for extra? What makes us think we don't have enough and we need to consume more? Don't you want to know? One of the reasons may be that day by day, researchers are finding out new technology and ways to make life much easier and more convenient for us. They provide us with gadgets that allow us to carry out several different tasks at one time, which are tempting to have, thereby creating more wants. As fashion builds, with new styles and trends coming out everyday, it overwhelms us with a new look, which is new and exciting, that gives us a satisfying feeling, making it a desire to go out there and devour more. Daily, our wants fluctuate. Overall, society and our own opinions, make us judge about our haves and have not's. Not having one thing at any moment makes us feel we have nothing, therefore making us unsatisfied. The wants of a person, socially also change and as life gets convenient for everybody, we start thinking about people who are in wheelchairs and are disabled in other ways. We ask the government to make ramps into theatres for them and parking lot spaces, especially to meet their safety, creating a social want. As inflation occurs and prices hike up, people want to start earning more, to be able to afford a living and have enough to satisfy their desires and wants, once again creating a social hunger. According to Maslow's Theory, â€Å"People might have enough of food, security, belonging and respect but!!! Enough of self-actualization is harder to attain. In point of fact self-actualization is seen as being somewhat addictive, once experienced it is something that people tend to want more and more of! Moreover people can only really pay attention to self-actualization needs once their more basic needs are satisfactorally met! † (Abraham Maslow hierarchy of needs). This theory shows how it's in us that after we pass our needs we move on to our wants, which are innumerable. All these factors, affect for our longing for material goods and social rights since they arise as the need for them occurs. Maybe we do have an explanation of why we are always asking for more and not being delighted with what we actually have. We might just be able to make it through an answer. Do these reasons mean we can just keep on seeking for more and fighting for more? To what extent can these reasons be used and are they a positive impact or a negative one? The question comes down to asking if the desire for more is a good or bad thing? Are we living in a society that sees the long for more, of a good thing benefiting everyone or something against communal values? In my opinion, it depends on the person who's looking at it and the type of want. I guess the citizen or person for example, asking for less tuition fees, of course will see it as a good thing and sees it as a need to lower the costs which will point out all the benefits to all the students, province wide. However, the government will see this as a negative impact on their financial budget and wont see it at all as a financial crisis for students attending universities and colleges. It all comes down to whose point of view we are looking through. In my opinion, if the social or political want is a one that will help everyone in society, and not harm anything, it's an agreeable thing. We can fight and protest for it since it's something only citizens can see and the government can't and its up to us as responsible citizens to have the political leaders open their eyes and recognize that it's for a good cause. It's the only way to be able to improve our society and the world we live in. If companies for example, were asking for laws that would be damaging to the environment such as no pollution control or being able to throw chemicals in the water, they would be seen as a social greed. The government hasn't allowed this law to take place for a specific reason and it should be kept that way. As time passes and changes occur in style and technology the lust for new things seem logical as long as there isn't a continuous desire. We just need to draw a line sometimes to exactly where the limits are for searching and fighting for extra of everything, sometimes that can justify the good and bad. We should be able to stay within them, and the person that exactly decides the limits is – us.

Home Or Theatre? Essay

Everybody likes to watch movies no matter what kind of movie we like. Movies entertain us during our free time such as, in the weekends and holydays, in brief movies are a pastime for all people, but the question is what is better watching it at home or at the theater? Transparently, there are some advantages and disadvantages of both. People put these advantages into consideration like the comfort, privacy, and coast. These factors effects the watcher decision of watching it at home or at the theater. First, comfort is the first factor I would think of when I want to decide whether watching the movie at home or at the theater. In contrast, at the theater the way you want to sit is not an option since the seats are adjusted into a certain position; in addition, there is a limited room for you to sit at the theater seats which is unconfutable. But at home it is a whole different situation. While you are watching a movie at home, you decide whether you want to sit on a chair, lying down on the sofa, or even sit on the floor, so you chose the way you are comfortable with. Another thing when it comes to the fact of being comfortable is that you can wear whatever you want at home. Unlike theaters, at home you can wear your cozy, warm pajamas and watch. while at the theaters or in public you only wear casual clothes to avoid the odd looks people gives you when your something unusual going to the theater. Moreover, at home you can use your phone or talk to your friend in a loud voice without annoying or bothering others, but when doing that in theaters; consequently, you might get kicked out obviously because it’s not allowed. Second, another benefit of watching movies at home is that you can enjoy the privacy. For instance, you can chose your audience such as, your friends you love and the ones you have so much fun with even if the movie is not interesting it won’t feel like this when you are with the your loved ones. Unlike home, you can’t choose your audience at the theater, so you might meet with a friend that annoys you all the time; as a result, you will not have the fun in the theater as much as in home. In addition to the idea of privacy, you can enjoy whatever food you want to eat especially smelly foods  like fast food. In movie theaters you can only eat snacks like popcorn and chips because you may bother others with smell of fast food at the movie theater. Nevertheless, if you choose to watch a movie at home you will have a wide variety of movies to choose what movie you would like to watch and enjoy the most but for example, in theaters sometimes they only have 2 or 3 kinds of movies and you might not like them, so you end up not watching anyone. Controlling the movie setting is another feature that you can’t find at the movie theaters. In fact, at home you can adjust the volume to as much high as you like plus you have the option to pause the movie to stretch or going to the toilet without missing any part of the movie. Third, when watching a movie at the theater it’s going to cost you more in comparison with watching it at home. In fact, when purchasing a movie ticket at the theater plus snacks you will end up paying $25. However, renting a movie online to watch it at home is going to cost you maximum of $5. In addition, snacks are very cheap outside the theater. For example in theaters when you order a drink and a popcorn you will pay about $7, while outside you can buy 1 pound of popcorn kernels and any big size drink for only $8. Finally, there are a lot of advantages of watching movies at home but at the same time they are some advantages in the movie theater that you can’t find at home. The first advantage is that will have chance of listing to the movie in a loud high quality advanced sound system. When the sound is too loud you can feel a shake with an explosion that will sound like you’re actually in the middle of the movie. The second feature is that you will have the opportunity of watching the movie in 3D. In the 3D option you can see the characters in 3 diminutions, so it will be more entreating and realistic. Third, the screens in the theater are very wide and that’s why obviously they call them â€Å"movie theaters†. Because of the wide screen you can have a bigger picture, so you can gain a better perspective of the surroundings. In conclusion, both theaters and homes have advantages and disadvantages; in addition, they are much different than each other and have different surroundings. However, in my opinion and based on my own experience I would  watch a movie at home because it is more comfort, private, and much cheaper. In brief, the watcher have the privilege and the freedom to make his own environment at home.

A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson Essay Example for Free

A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson Essay Poetry (1289) , The Tempest (71) , Prospero (66) , Caliban (36) , Jean Rhys (6) ? Exile in the Works of Jean Rhys and Una Marson. In Jonathan Miller’s 1970 production of Shakespeare’s â€Å"The Tempest† the character of Caliban was cast as black, therefore reigniting the link between the Prospero/Caliban paradigm as the colonizer/colonized. It was not a new idea, indeed Shakespeare himself envisaged the play set on an island in the Antilles and the play would have had great appeal at the time when new territories were being discovered, conquered, plundered and providing seemingly inexhaustible revenue for the colonisers. What is particularly interesting, however, is how powerful the play later becomes for discourse on colonialism. This trope of Caliban is used by George Lamming in â€Å"The Pleasures of Exile† where he likens Prospero in his relationship with Caliban, to the first slave-traders who used physical force and then their culture to subjugate the African and the Carib, overcoming any rebellion with a self righteous determinism. In â€Å"The Pleasures of Exile† Lamming sees Caliban as: â€Å"Man and other than man. Caliban is his convert, colonized by language, and excluded by language. It is precisely this gift of language, this attempt at transformation which has brought about the pleasure and the paradox of Caliban’s exile. Exiled from his gods, exiled from his nature, exiled from his own name! Yet Prospero is afraid of Caliban. He is afraid because he knows that his encounter with Caliban is, largely, his encounter with himself.† 1 The Prospero/Caliban paradigm is a very relevant symbol for the colonizer/colonized situation of the West Indies but it nevertheless remains a paternalistic position. Where does that leave women of the Caribbean? It could be argued that the Caribbean woman has been even further marginalized. That in making Caliban the model of the Caribbean man it is therefore providing him with a voice. Yet nowhere in the Tempest is there a female counterpart, rendering the Caribbean woman invisible as well as silent and ignoring an essential part of their historical culture. Another issue raised here, is that Caribbean literature has for many years been male dominated. Just as the colonizer sought to ignore and marginalize their savage ‘Other’ so the Caribbean male has ignored their female counterpart. Opal Palmer Adisa, in exploring this issue, believes that it is â€Å"out of this patriarchal structure, designed to make her an object, part of the landscape to be used and discarded as seen fit by the colonizer, that the Caribbean woman has emerged.†2 It was out of such a ‘patriarchal structure’ that Jean Rhys and Una Marson emerged. The writing of both women revise and expand theme and personae, subverting a colonial and patriarchal culture. Both women â€Å"may exist in different ethnological and ontological realms but they both exist in worlds which have, at one time or another, attempted to censure, silence or ignore the ideals and interests of women†3 Like many of their male Caribbean counterparts to succeed them, their writing was greatly influenced by voyaging into the colonial metropolis and living in exile. In this essay I will discuss the importance of that journey in seeking to find a voice, an identity, and even a language to challenge established notions of Self, gender and race within the colonial structure. But essential to their experience is their struggle. Naipaul recognised, in Rhys, the themes of â€Å"isolation, an absence of society or community, the sense of things falling apart, depende nce, loss†.4 This could also be said of Marson. Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams on 24th August 1890, in Roseau, Dominica to a Creole mother of Scottish descent and a Welsh father who was a doctor. Rhys left Dominica in 1907, aged sixteen and continued her education in a Cambridge girls’ school and then at the Academy of Dramatic Art which she left after two terms. Rhys experienced feelings of alienation and isolation at both these institutions and these feelings were to stay with her for much of her life. Upon pursuing a career as a chorus girl under a variety of names Rhys embarked on an affair with a man twenty years older than herself and which lasted two years. It is broadly accepted that this early period of her London life formed the structure for Voyage In The Dark, and like all of Rhys’s novels, explores homelessness, dislocation, the marginal and the migrant. The character of Anna, like most of her female protagonists exists in the demimonde of city life, living on the wrong side of respecta bility. What Rhys does effectively in this novel is to centralize the marginalized, those subjects â€Å"who belong nowhere, between cultures, between histories.†5 Una Marson was born in rural Jamaica in 1905. Her father was a well respected Baptist minister and as a result of his standing within the community Marson had the opportunity to be educated on a scholarship at Hampton High School, a boarding school for mainly white, middle class girls. After finding employment as a stenographer, Marson went on to edit the ‘Jamaican Critic’, an established literary publication, and from 1928-1921, her own magazine ‘The Cosmopolitan’. Having established herself as a poet, playwright and women’s activist Marson made the decision to travel to Britain. Her achievements in London were impressive; a social activist within the League of Coloured Peoples which led to her taking a post as secretary to the deposed Emperor Haile Selassie and later she was appointed as a BBC commentator. In reality, however, Marson, like Rhys found the voyage into the Metropolis very difficult. Facing blatant racial discrimination like ‘so many West Indian women migrants of the 1950s, Una found herself blocked at every turn. She complained and cried; she felt lonely and humiliated,’. 6 In spite of many literary and social connections she remained an isolated and marginal figure. Her poetry displays the uncertainty of cultural belonging where her language ties her to colonialism yet also provides her with a powerful tool with which to challenge it. In placing Rhys alongside Marson as pioneering female writers, it is important to explore the notion of nationality, of being Caribbean and to question the grounds upon which such ideas are constructed. Both women were writing at the same time, having been born and educated in the British colonies. Both these writers, whose lives span the twentieth century, are situated at the crossroads of the colonial and post-colonial, the modern and post modern, where the threat of fascism and war result in anti colonial struggles and eventual decolonisation across the world. Their voyages from the colonies into the metropolitan centre generate similar experiences. What is clear with both is that by journeying into the metropolis, as women, they occupy a double marginal position within an already marginalized community. Their journey can be seen as an exploration of displacement where, according to Edward W. Said, the intellectual exile exists ‘in a median state, neither completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old, beset with half involvements and half attachments, nostalgic and sentimental at one level, an adept mimic or a secret outcast on the other.’7 Rhys and Marson, having left the Caribbean are asking us to consider what it means to write from the margins. Within their work, both women challenge notions of women’s place within society and women’s place as a colonized subject in the metropolitan centre. The protagonist, Anna Morgan, in Voyage in the Dark, reflects Rhys’s own multi indeterminate, multi conflicted identity. Anna, like Rhys is a white descendent of British colonists and slave traders who occupy a precarious position of being â€Å"inbetween†. Hated by the Blacks for their part in oppressing the slaves and continuing to cling on to that superior social position, they are also regarded by the ‘mother country’ as the last vestiges of a degenerate part of their own history best forgotten. Moreover, 1930s England, still under the shadow of Victorian moral dicta, continued to judge harshly a young woman without wealth, family, social position and with an odd accent. Throughout the novel Anna is identified with characters who are â€Å"usually objectified and silenced in canonical works: the chorus girl, the mannequin, the demimondaine.†8 Much has been made of her reading of Zola’s Nana and indeed there are many parallels between the two characters. Anna, like Nana becomes a prostitute and in the first version of Voyage in the Dark Anna like Nana dies very young. There is of course the obvious anagram of her name but, as Elaine Savory highlights, some interesting revisions by Rhys. Whereas Zola, in Nana, creates a character who brings about the downfall of upper class men not through power but â€Å"with only the unsophisticated currency of youth and raw female sexuality†9 Rhys, in Anna, creates a character who is herself destroyed by men. â€Å"In Rhys’s version the men who use her youth and beauty are for the most part evidently cowardly or downright disreputable: Anna herself begins as naively trusting, passes through a stage of self destructive hopelessness and passivity and ends, in Rhys’s preferred, unpublished version, by dying from a botched abortion.†10 If we are to see Walter Jeffries as the original European, existing in a world viewed certainly by himself as principally ordered and reasonable then Rhys is, through this character, highlighting the degenerate aspect of using power to commodify and even destroy, thereby subverting the colonizer’s position in relation to the colonized. Through the character of Anna, Rhys explores those oppositions of â€Å"Self† and â€Å"Other†, male and female, black and white. Even though she outwardly resembles the white European, enabling her, unlike Marson, to blend visually within London, her association with the Caribbean sets her apart as between black and white cultures and as an exotic â€Å"Other†. This ambiguity of Anna’s position results in â€Å"slippage†. Anna and her family would have been regarded in the West Indies as the white colonizers. In England and in her relationship with Jeffries she becomes the colonized â€Å"Other†. In being read as the colonized subject Anna is continually having to adapt her world view and sense of identity to the perspective being imposed on her. A good example of this is the chorus girls’s renaming her as the â€Å"Hottentot† aligning her more with the black African and demonstrating the homogenizing of the colonized peoples b y the colonizers. This is similar to Spivak’s belief that ‘so intimate a thing as personal and human identity might be determined by the politics of imperialism.’11 Interestingly, â€Å"Hottentot† is the former name for the Nama, a nomadic tribe of Southern Africa. A somewhat apt comparison which reflects Anna’s own nomadic existence as she moves from town to town as a chorus girl and from one bed sit to another. The term â€Å"Hottentot† developed into a derogatory term during the Victorian era and became synonymous firstly with wide hipped, big bottomed African women with oversized genitals and then with the sexuality of a prostitute. Jeffries is fully aware of the implications of the name â€Å"Hottentot†. In response to hearing Anna’s renaming he says, â€Å"I hope you call them something worse back.†12 Elaine Savory makes a strong connection between Anna’s renaming and her relationship with Jeffries, her eventual seducer. Whilst â€Å"not looking at Anna’s body in an obvious way, eventually the transaction between them is understood fully on his side to be a promise of sexual excitement from a white woman whom he perceives as having an extra thrill presumably from association with racist constructions of black females in his culture.†13 Franz Fanon, in his book Black Skin, White Masks perceives these complex colonial relations as being in a state of flux rather than fixed or static. In his introduction to Fanon’s text, Homi Bhabha highlights this point, stating that the ‘familiar alignment of colonial subjects†¦Black/White, Self/Other†¦is disturbed†¦and the traditional grounds of racial identity are dispersed.’14 So it is in the relationship between Jeffries and Anna. In transposing the colonizer’s stereotypical images of a black woman onto Anna he is disrupting and dispersing those ‘traditional grounds of racial identity’. Moreover, Anna is subconsciously enacting a mediated performance, aware of her impact upon him and the implications of her actions, in an attempt to adhere to his preconceptions of her. The relationship cannot be sustained on these fundamentally unstable preconceptions. Anna, both as a female and racial â€Å"Other† is penetrated by Jeffries and with the exchange of money is commodified. Without independent means Anna becomes that purchasable girl who is at the mercy of and eventually becomes dependent upon the upper middle class Jeffries. The relationship between these two characters reflects Rhys’s own location in the world where the West Indies was at the time still a commodity of the British Empire. In another analysis of the colonial stereotype, Homi Bhabha challenges the ‘limiting and traditional reliance of the stereotype as offering, at any one time, a secure point of identification on the part of the individual,’15 in this case Jeffries and Hester. Bhabha does not argue that the colonizer’s stereotyping of the colonized ‘Other’ is as a result of his security in his own identity or conception of himself but more to do with the colonizer’s own identity and authority which is in fact destabilized by contradictory responses to the Other. In order to maintain a powerful position it is important, according to Bhabha, for the colonizer to identify the colonized with the image he has already fixed in his mind. This image can be ambiguous as the colonized subject can be simultaneously familiar under the penetrable gaze of the all seeing, all powerful colonial gaze and be incomprehensible like the ‘inscrutable Oriental’. The coloni zed can be â€Å"both savage†¦and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants†¦; he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simpleminded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar , and the manipulator of social forces.†16 In short, for Bhabha, the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies which, when imposed upon the colonized ‘Other’, cause a crisis of identity. So it is with Anna. Jeffries upon first meeting with the very young Anna can see that she is as ‘innocent as a child’ and is ‘most obedient’ sexually, but by her association with the Caribbean and the Hottentot as I have previously explored, she is subsequently attributed with being ‘the embodiment of rampant sexuality’ resulting in his taking of her virginity, abandoning her to prostitution but also leading to as Veronica Clegg observes ‘a loss of temporal referents’17 Anna’s stepmother, Hester, also attempts to impose an identity upon Anna which not only conflicts with Anna’s own sense of identity but is also based around stereotypical perceptions. . Hester, whose ‘voice represents a repressive English colonial law’18 believes that Anna’s father’s troubles resulted from his having lost ‘touch with everybody in England’19 and that these severing of ties with the Imperial motherland is a signal to her that ‘he was failing’,20 losing his identity, reduced to the level of the black inhabitants of the island. This idea of contamination and racial reduction is explored by Paul B. Rich who explains that there was a belief in the early twentieth century that white people in the tropics risked ‘in the absence of continual cultural contacts with their temperate northern culture, being reduced to the level of those black races with whom they had made their â€Å"unnatural home†Ã¢ €˜.21 In Hester’s eyes this apparent loss of identity is also experienced by Anna. She continually criticizes her speech, her relationship with Francine the black servant, and also insinuates degenerative behaviour on the part of her family, particularly Uncle Bo. Hester’s views reflect the growing disapproval in England at that time, of relationships between white people and the black population in the West Indies. Inter-racial relationships were discouraged for fear of contamination of the white ‘Self’. In voicing her disapproval of Anna’s friendship with Francine along with her continual use of the racist and derogatory term â€Å"nigger†, Hester is alluding to the fact that, in her opinion, Anna, especially through her speech, has indeed been contaminated and reduced racially and that Anna’s association with Francine thwarts her attempts to reconnect her with the colonizer’s ‘cultural contacts’. Hester rails that she finds it ‘impossible to get you [Anna] away from the servants. That awful sing-song voice you had! Exactly like a nigger you talked†¦and still do. Exactly like that dreadful girl Francine. When you were jabbering away together in the pantry I never could tell which of you was speaking.’22 Hester’s constant criticism only serves to undermine Anna’s real identity and dislocate her further from the Caribbean world she once inhabited and the alienating London world she is now experiencing. Her accent sets her apart, drifting between two worlds. Anna’s difficulties in negotiating these two worlds is a result of the ‘return of the diasporic’ to the metropolitan centre where ‘the perplexity of the living is most acutely experienced.’23 This can certainly be seen in her response to the weather which, according to Bhabha, invokes ‘the most changeable and imminent signs of national difference’24 The novel opens with; â€Å"It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known. It was almost like being born again. The colours were different, the smells different, the feeling things gave you right down inside yourself was different. Not just the difference between heat and cold; light, darkness; purple, grey. But a difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy. I didn’t like London at first. I couldn’t get used to the cold.†25 And later upon arriving in England with Hester she describes it as being ‘divided into squares like pocket-handkerchiefs; a small tidy look it had, everywhere fenced off from everywhere else’ 26and then in London where the ‘dark houses all alike frowning down one after another’27 Throughout the novel Anna continually experiences feelings of being enclosed. Many of the bedsits are restricting and box-like. On one occasion she remarks that ‘this damned room’s getting smaller and smaller†¦And about the rows of houses outside gimcrack, rotten-looking and all exactly alike’.28 The many small rooms between which Anna moves emphasize her disempowerment through enclosed spaces. These spaces, in turn, serve as metaphors for the consequences in voyaging into the metropolitan centre. She is at once shut inside these small monotonous rooms and shut out from that world which has sought to colonize her. It is perhaps ironic that the further she mo ves into the centre of the city, ending up as she does on Bird Street, just off Oxford Street , the more she is shut out and marginalized by that imperialist society. Her memories of the West Indies are in sharp contrast to her impressions of England. The images of home are always warm, vivid and exotic, ‘Thinking of the walls of the Old Estate House, still standing, with moss on them. That was the garden. One ruined room for roses, one for orchids, one for ferns. And the honeysuckle all along the steep flight of steps’.29 When comparing the two worlds she remarks to herself that ‘the colours are red, purple, blue , gold, all shades of green. The colours here are black, grey, dim-green, pale blue, the white of people’s faces – like woodlice’. 30 Her memory of home is experienced sensuously as she recalls the sights and smells: â€Å"Market Street smelt of the wind but the narrow street smelt of niggers and wood smoke and salt fishcakes fried in lard’ and the sound of the black women as they call out, â€Å"salt fishcakes, all sweet an’ charmin’, all sweet an’ charmin’.'†31 Anna attempts to convey this richness to Jeffries. His failure to appreciate the beauty she describes merely underlines the differences between the two. He expresses a preference for cold places remarking that ‘The tropics would be altogether too lush’.32 Jeffries’s reaction to the West Indies in fact reflects the colonizer’s view that the ‘ruined room for roses’ and ‘orchids’ portray a disorder, a garden of Eden complete with its implications of moral decay and as Bhabha states, a ‘tropical chaos that was deemed despotic and ungovernable and therefore worthy of the civilizing mission.’33 Anna’s association with this world sets her up, in Walter’s eyes, as a figure representing a secret depravity promising forbidden desires. Anna, like the West Indies is something to be overpowered, enslaved and colonized, where the colonizer seeks to strip their identity and impose their own beliefs and desires. It is significant, therefore, that following this scene Anna loses her virginity to Jeffries and recalls the memory of the mulatto slave girl, Maillotte Boyd, aged 18, whose record Anna once found on ‘an old slave list at Constance’.34 Like Maillotte Boyd, Anna is now merely a commodity and Jeffries has no intention of ever seeing her as an equal. Her purity, in his eyes isn’t worth preserving as he already considers her the contaminated ‘Other’. By his actions he succeeds in maintaining that patriarchal imperialism which relies on institutional forms of racial and national separateness. Anna, as a twentieth century white Creole, is no freer than the nineteenth century mulatto slave. Just as Maillotte Boyd is, as racially mixed, suspended between two races, so Anna as a white Creole is suspended between two cultures, leaving her dislocated. Anna’s voyage into the imperialist metropolis leads to boundaries and codes of behaviour, language and dress being constantly imposed upon her. She is aware for example of the importance of clothes as a means of controlling her social standing and also her standing as a woman. Through her dress Anna almost becomes that elegant white lady, mimicking London’s female high society. For Jeffries, Anna represents the ‘menace of mimicry’, which , according to Bhabha is ‘a difference which is almost nothing but not quite’ and which turns ‘to menace- a difference that is total but not quite.’35 This mimicry serves to empower Anna as it ultimately destabilises the essentialism of colonialist ideology, resulting in Jeffries imposing upon Anna the identity of the West Indian ‘Other’ This in turn leads to feelings of loss, alienation and dislocation, a rejection of being white and a desire to be black. ‘I always wanted to be black. I was happy because Francine was there†¦.Being black is warm and gay, being white is cold and sad.’36 Anna’s association with Hester meant that she ‘hated being white. Being white and getting like Hester, †¦old and sad and everything.’37 Yet the warmth she expresses in her memories of Francine are always tempered by her realisation that Francine disliked her ‘because I [Anna] was white.’38 Her feelings of being between cultures and feeling dislocated are never fully resolved. Anna’s voyage in the dark, reflects Rhys’s own sense of exile and marginality as a white West Indian woman. Teresa O’Connor remarks that ‘Rhys, herself caught between places, cultures, classes and races, never able to identify clearly with one or the other, gives the same marginality to her heroines, so that they reflect the unique experience of dislocation of the white Creole woman.’39 The language used to express feelings of exile and loneliness, destitution and dislocation is both sparse and economic. It is neither decorative nor contrived, devoid of sentiment or without seeking sympathy. In commenting upon an essay written by Rhys discussing gender politics, Gregg writes that ‘It is important to note her [Rhys’s] belief that writing has a subversive potential. Resistance†¦can be carried out through writing that exposes and opposes the political and social arrangements.’40 Helen Carr, in her exploration of Rhys’s language believes that: â€Å"Rhys in her fictions unpicks and mocks the language by which the powerful keep control, while at the same time shifting, bending, re-inventing ways of using language to open up fresh possibilities of being.†41 Una Marson, another Caribbean to voyage into the metropolis, also experienced loneliness, isolation and a struggle with the complexity of identity. Like Rhys, Marson fought with these feelings throughout her life, resulting in long periods of depression. Her belief in women’s need for pride in their cultural heritage established Marson as ‘the earliest female poet of significance to emerge in West Indian literature’.42 She not only ‘challenged received notions of women’s place in society’ but also raised questions about ‘the relationship of the colonized subject to â€Å"the mother country†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢43 There was a considerable amount of poetry emerging out of the West Indies around this time but most of it was dismissed as being ‘not truly West Indian’,44 the reason for this being partly because many of the writers were English but also because many of the styles used by these writers mimicked colonial forms. Many of Marson’s early poetry reflects this mimicry showing a reliance upon the Romantics of the English poetic tradition, particularly Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron. The poem Spring in England reveals this indebtedness to the Romantics, including as it does a stanza where, having observed the arrival of Spring in London, the poet asks: Daffodils that Wordsworth praised?’ Wait for the Spring,’ the birds replied. I waited for Spring, and lo they came, Clearly there are echoes of Wordsworth’s Daffodils throughout the stanza, reflecting the drive by colonialism through education to eradicate the West Indian selfhood. Yet for Marson this harnessing of English culture not only posed few problems but indeed was, I would argue, a necessary step in her voyage of self discovery. As seen with Rhys, mimicry was a subversive threat to colonial ideology, especially through language. Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry seeks to explore those ambivalences of such destabilizing colonial and post-colonial exchanges. â€Å"The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority. †¦The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedly turns from mimicry – a difference which is almost nothing but not quite – to menace – a difference that is almost total but not quite. And in that other scene of colonial power, where history turns to farce and presence to a ‘part’ can be seen the twin figures of narcissism and paranoia that repeat furiously, uncontrollably.†46 Bhabha’s essay in recognising the power, the play and the dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized offers an alternative to the pessimistic view held by V.S. Naipaul who believed that West Indian culture was doomed to mimicry, unable to create anything ‘original’. Marson’s mimicry of the Romantics could be seen as a preparation to enter the colonizer’s metropolis, and to attempt to assimilate into the colonizer’s world. In making that voyage to the metropolis, Una Marson succeeds in taking that step from ‘the copy’ to the ‘original’. By remaining in Jamaica Marson risked remaining in an environment too rigidly ingrained by colonial prescriptions. Una Marson’s voyage into ‘the heart of the Empire’, however, resulted in intense disappointment. For the first time, Marson experienced open racism and according to Jarrett-McCauley ‘The truth was that Una dreaded going out because people stared at her, men were curious but their gaze insulted her, even small children with short dimpled legs called her â€Å"Nigger†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦She was a black foreigner seen only as strange and unwanted. This was the ‘Fact of Blackness’ which Fanon was to analyse in Black Skins, White Masks(1952), that inescapable, heightening level of consciousness which comes from â€Å"being dissected by white eyes†.’ 47 Unlike Rhys, Marson was finding it impossible to blend visually within London. Consciousness of her colour made Marson conscious of her marginality. This consciousness led her seriously to question the values of the ‘mother country’. Marson’s work moved from mimicry to anti-patriarchal discourse, seen in her poem Politeness where she responds to the William Blake poem Little Black Boy with: The poem demonstrates Marson’s growing resentment at being alienated by the colonial power. There is an uncertainty in her desire to both belong and to challenge, echoing Rhys in her sense of cultural unbelonging. Those anti-patriarchal feelings are present once more in her poem Nigger where she communicates the anger she feels at being abused and marginalized as the racial ‘Other’. She retorts to this abuse furiously with: My people’s flesh and now you still Add fierce insult to vilest injury.48 In its repetition of the shocking term ‘Nigger’, Marson is confronting the white colonialist’s use of the word to exert power over and oppress the colonized. The violence of its use reflects the violence of their shared history where ‘Of those who drove the Negroes / To their death in days of slavery,’ regard ‘Coloured folk as†¦low and base.’49 In highlighting this history of violence, oppression and slavery, Marson is attempting to invert this oppression and dislodge the notion of white supremacy, whilst attempting to negotiate a position from West Indian to African and in doing so, fashion an identity. By writing the poem in the first person singular and moving from ‘They’ to ‘You’ when addressing the white colonizers, Marson succeeds in centralizing herself and reversing the binary system of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’. Nigger marks Marson’s sharpened perspective on issues such as racism and identity. Her voyage into the metropolitan centre triggers those ’emergent identifications and new social movements†¦[being]†¦played out’.50 It was a time in Marson’s life where she was made to feel inadequate, lonely and humiliated but it also roused her to ‘resist the corrosive force of her oppressive world.’51 Nigger reveals this sense of belonging and not belonging felt by Marson, of being part of the empire but never part of the Motherland, yet it simultaneously challenges the very essentialism in which the colonial Self is rooted. Moreover, the hostility she experiences in many ways acknowledges the success of Marson’s performance as a hybrid. Marson’s frustration and anger was compounded by the fact that in being middle class and educated she possibly saw herself as ‘a notch above the poor, black working class women from the old communities in Cardiff, Liverpool and London’52 Marson explores this question of how middle class West Indians negotiate being educated and yet marginalized and even considered inferior in her play London Calling. The play, based on the experiences of colonial students in London charts the story of a group of expatriates who, upon being invited to the house of an aristocratic English family, dress up in outlandish native costume and speak in ‘broken’ English. The play, a comedy, takes a light hearted look at the stereotypical images held by the British, at the same time countering the myth of black inferiority. There is, in the play, a curious twist as the students from Novoko are presented as black versions of the British in their dress and behaviour, ‘mimic men’ and yet they themselves attempt to ‘mimic’ their own folk culture. They are eventually discovered by one of the family, Larkspur, who then proposes marriage to Rita, one of the Novokans. The play ends with Rita declining Larkspur’s proposal in favour of Alton, another Novokan. This rejection of Larkspur places Rita in a powerful position. Rita is no longer the undesirable ‘Other’, she has resisted the oppressive world of the colonialists and placed herself as the centralised ‘Self’. Rita is Marson’s fantasy where the black woman is recognised as beautiful and an equal. Marson’s activities in the League of Coloured Nations gave her purpose, direction and the opportunity to advance her political education whilst introducing her to the Pan – African movement ‘a sort of boomerang from the horrors of slavery and colonialism, to which Una, like many of her generation, was being steadily drawn.’53 Marson’s work around this time reflects a desire to reclaim and restore that ‘Other’ cultural tradition, a difficult task as the Caribbean was not an homogeneous agency and it was not easy to establish a pre-colonial culture. The ethnic mix was large and hybrid making the notion of ‘Caribbeanness’ less easy to define. The Pan-African movement provided links with an alternative body to European colonialism and offered Marson a platform to renegotiate and redefine her idea of ‘Caribbeaness’ and race, an option not offered to Rhys. Having established a sense of being a black person in a white imperialist centre, she now needed to make sense of being a black woman within this paternalistic centre. The poem Little Brown Girl attempts just this, constructing a dialogue of sorts between a white Londoner, whose gender is unclear, and a little brown girl. The poem begins with a series of questions put to the child: The questioning of the little brown girl’s presence in London suggests a linguistic imperialism. It may be construed as the speaker challenging her right to be in the city, establishing her as the nameless, black ‘Other’. Her feeling of difference is emphasized in the repetition of the word ‘white’ on the final line of the second stanza. The third stanza plays out an interesting reversal in notions of blackness. The speaker asks why she has left the ‘little sunlit land / where we sometimes go / to rest and get brown’54 alluding to the desire of white skinned people to tan which for the white colonialist signifies wealth, for the black ‘Other’ being inferior and uneducated. From here there is a subtle shift of speaker and London is seen through the eyes of the little brown girl. Her perception of the city is distinctly unattractive where ‘There are no laughing faces, / people frown if one really laughs’ and: If the poem began with the strangeness of the brown girl to the white gaze, here it teases out those feelings of alienation felt by the little brown girl at being in such a cold, drab place, so different from her own home. Once more Marson creates a reversal in the stereotype as she seeks to objectify white people observing that ‘the folks are all white -/ White, white, white, / And they all seem the same.’55 In homogenizing the colonizers, the hybridity of the West Indians are then celebrated in the many varied skin tones of ‘black and bronze and brown’ which are themselves homogenized by the label ‘Black’. The vibrancy, colour and friendliness of ‘back home’ where the folks are ‘Parading the city’ wearing ‘Bright attractive bandanas’ contrasts with the previous stanza of the dour images of London. The dialogue is handed back to the white speaker who attempts to establish the origins of the little black girl but succeeds in once more re-establishing the homogeneic white gaze indicated in the speaker’s inability to distinguish between many distinct nations : More than anything the poem conveys that sense of isolation felt by the little brown girl in the city. She never answers the white speaker directly and is positioned in the middle of the poem, again centralizing the colonized. In asking the question ‘Would you like to be white/Little brown girl?’ there is a sense of the colonizer attempting to manipulate and dominate the colonized, to Europeanise, ultimately leading to mimicry. Yet the questioner responds himself with ‘I don’t think you would / For you toss your head / As though you are proud / To be brown’. 56 Marson, here, signals a move away from being a ‘mimic man’ seeking to challenge that whole Eurocentric paternalistic world and centralise the black women, the most marginalized figure in society. The themes central to Little Brown Girl’s themes echo Rhys’s own negative reactions to London seen in the opening page of Voyage in the Dark. Like Rhys, Marson succeeds in capturing that colour and warmth of the West Indies contrasting greatly with the misery of London, experienced by both and which reinforce that racial and national separateness. Those differences prove for both to be irreconcilable, making it impossible for both Rhys and Marson to integrate, leaving both women dislocated from the metropolis. Little Black Girl serves as a useful reminder that many immigrants were women. This encounter between the city and a woman (in Marson’s case, a black woman) echoes Anna’s encounter in Voyage in the Dark albeit as a prostitute. Both walk the streets of the city and as women-as-walkers encounter the metropolis, negotiating its spaces. Denise deCaires Narian suggests that certainly Marson could be considered as a flaneuse.57 Neither Rhys nor Marson, however have the confident panache of the flaneuse and neither fulfil the requirements of flanerie originally set out by Baudelaire. The flaneur, he asserted, saw the ‘crowd as his domain, †¦ His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd’.58 The flaneur and therefore the flaneuse is engaged in strolling and looking but most importantly merging ‘with the crowd’. For Marson this is impossible as she is a black woman in a white city. Moreover, Baudelaire expands upon the idea of the flaneur as having ‘the ability to be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world’.59 Again this is problematic for both Marson and Rhys as their wanderings around the metropolis seek only to reinforce those feelings of ‘Otherness’, isolation and marginality. For Marson these feelings of alienation gained her the reputation of being a ‘true loner who didn’t exactly seek out company’60 leading to a ‘heightened level of bodily consciousness’ which comes from ‘being dissected by white eyes’.61 In her struggle with being marginalized as a black women always at the mercy of the white metropolitan gaze, Marson was always aware of that Europeanised sense of beauty being white. This idea of beauty was so entrenched, even within the black community that they themselves set beauty against the paleness of their own skin. The importance of popularly disseminated images is tackled in Cinema Eyes where a black mother in addressing her daughter attempts to challenge the idea that ‘Europeans still provide the aesthetic reference point’.62 The speaker urges her eighteen year old daughter to avoid the cinema fearing that it might reinforce the idea that white is beautiful causing the girl to lose sight of her own beauty: By growing up with a ‘cinema mind’ the mother has allowed herself to be at the mercy of those tools used by the colonizer to marginalize and indoctrinate, promoting their own superiority. Once again the ‘mimic man’ re-emerges when black women reject their own in seeking an ‘ideal man’. ‘No kinky haired man for me, / No black face, no black children for me.’63 This rather melodramatic narrative within the poem tells of the mother’s ‘fair’ husband shooting her first suitor whom she had initially rejected for being too dark, and then committing suicide. The shooting scene, a re enactment of a gun fight in a western, presents the cinema as a racist and degenerate institution. By the end of the poem, the speaker acknowledges her mistake in rejecting the first lover and finds a sense of self, previously denied by the saturation of cinematic images. In shaking off the colonizer’s indoctrination, which seeks to marginalize her, she addresses the question posed by Franz Fanon which is ‘to what extent authentic love will remain unattainable before one has purged oneself of that feeling of inferiority?’64 Black invisibility in the cinema results in white ideology being forced upon a black body and essentially commodifying it and it is this which Marson seeks to deconstruct. Another poem which tackles the reconstruction of female identity is Black is Fancy, where the speaker compares her reflection in the mirror with a picture ‘Of a beautiful white lady’.65 The mirror serves to reclaim the idea of black as being beautiful and a rediscovery of self: The speaker eventually removes the picture of the white woman suggesting that black worth and beauty can only really exist in the absence of white colonialism. The poem ends in a victory of sorts as she declares that John, her lover has rejected the pale skin in favour of ‘His black ivory girl’.66 Kinky Haired Blues represents Marson’s quest for a more effective and authentic poetic voice in its use of African American speech.. The poem explores the rhythms and musical influences found in Harlem and gathering momentum about this time. Kinky Haired Blues like Cinema Eyes and Black is Fancy criticizes the oppressive beauty regime of white colonialism which seeks to disfigure and marginalize the black woman. The poem opens with the speaker attempting to find a beauty shop: The speaker seeks to Europeanise her black features in an attempt to make herself more attractive. Male indifference experienced in the metropolis forces the speaker to see herself as an aberration, thrusting her onto the margins of a society which is continually projecting the idea that ‘white ‘is ‘right’. The beauty shop contains all the trappings of the colonizer’s idea of beauty, ‘ironed hair’ and ‘bleached skin’. Yet she is caught between being left to ‘die on de shelf’ 67 if she doesn’t change herself, or eradicating her ethnic features and therefore her inner self if she does. By using blues within the poetry she is able to communicate this misery felt within her, that male perceptions of beauty projected by the colonizers dictate that she must distort her own natural beauty in order to fit in and conform. The poem highlights the struggle Marson experiences in trying to preserve her selfhood against such oppressive cultural forces. Marson defiantly attempts to stand against this patriarchal order. She proudly announces that ‘I like me black face / And me kinky hair.’ Inspite of this brave stand Marson eventually succumbs and admits that she is ‘gwine press me hair / And bleach me skin.’ She, like Rhys can only resist internally to the colonialist’s ideals imposed on them. As writers voyaging into the metropolis both Rhys and Marson share in their writing a pervasive sense of isolation where, from the location of London, their particular voices and concerns are, at the time, not recognised. Both writers, from this isolated position on the periphery of the centre. explore issues of womanhood, race and identity,. Marson’s experiences bring about an acute awareness of her difference and ‘Otherness’ as a Black woman. Her work is a defiant voice against this marginalisation and isolation. She was, as Jarrett MaCauley claims ‘the first Black feminist to speak out against racism and sexism in Britain.’68 She was a pioneer in a growing literary culture which was to become the new postcolonial order. Rhys, by contrast, a white West Indian from Dominica was experiencing a declining white minority status against a growing black population, itself an isolating factor both at home and within the metropolis. Kenneth Ramchard suggests that the work of white West Indian writers is characterized by a sense of embattlement: â€Å"Adapted from Fanon we might use the phrase ‘terrified consciousness’ to suggest the White minority’s sensations of shock and disorientation as a smouldering Black population is released into an awareness of power.†69 It is this ‘terrified consciousness’ which contributes to the struggle experienced by Anna in Voyage in the Dark . Located simultaneously both inside and outside West Indian socio cultural history, her journey to the ‘mother country’ seeks only to exacerbate these feelings of ‘in-betweenness’ and to suffer feelings of dislocation and alienation. Both writers, therefore, in their voyage into the metropolis endure different kinds of anxieties in their sense of ‘unbelonging’ to either or both cultural worlds. Both use their writing to speak for the marginal, the hegemonic, the dispossessed, the colonized silenced female voice situated as they were within the cold, oppressive, hierarchical colonial metropolis attempting to impose an oppressive identity upon the exiled women. 1 George Lamming The Pleasures of Exile (London: Alison, 1960) p15 2 Palmer Adisa De Language Reflect Dem Ethos† in ‘The Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars’ ed. By Adele S. Newson and Linda Strong Leek. (New York: Peter Lang 1998 p23) 3 ‘The Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars’ ed By Adele S. Newson and Linda Strong-Leek. (New York: Peter Lang 1998 p6) 4 V.S. Naipaul New York Review of Books 1992. Quoted in Helen Carr Jean Rhys (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1996) p15 5 Helen Carr Jean Rhys (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1996) p. xiv 6 Delia Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998) p51 7 Edward W. Said Representations of the Intellectual (London: Vintage 1994) p49 8 Molly Hite The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative Quoted in Joy Castro ‘Jean Rhys’ in The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. 20, 2000. www.highbeam.com/library/doc.3.asp p6.Accessed 1 December 2005. 11 Gayatri Spivak ‘Three Women’s Text and a Critique of Imperialism’ in Henry Louis Jr. Gates Race, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) p269 12Jean Rhys Voyage in the Dark (London: Penguin Books 1969) 13 Elaine Savoury Jean Rhys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998) p 95 14 Homi Bhabha ‘Remembering Fanon’, forward to Franz Fanon ‘s Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986) p ix 15 Homi Bhabha ‘The Other Question’ Location of Culture (London: Routledge 1994)p69 17 Veronica Marie Gregg Jean Rhys’s Historical Imagination: Reading and Writing the Creole (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995) p115 18 Sue Thomas The Worlding of Jean Rhys ( Westport: Greenwood Press 1999) p106 19 Jean Rhys Voyage in the Dark p53 21 Paul B. Rich Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p19 24 Homi Bhabha â€Å"DissemInation: Time, Narrative and the margins of the Modern Nation† The Location of Culture p319 33 Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture p319 35 Homi Bhabha Location of Culture p85 39 Teresa O’Connor The Meaning of the West Indian Experience for Jean Rhys (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1985)cited in Caribbean Woman Writers; Essays from the first International Conference. p19 40 Taken from Rhys’s non fictional analysis of Gender Politics. Veronica Gregg, Jean Rhys’s Historical Imagination p47 41 Helen Carr Jean Rhys, (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 1996) p 77 42 Lloyd W. Brown, West Indian Poetry (London: Heineman, 1978) p 38 43 Denise deCaires Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry: Making style (London: Routledge, 2002) p 2 45 Una Marson The Moth and the Star, (Kingston, Jamaica: Published by the Author, 1937) p24 46 Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture, (London: Routledge, 1994) pp85-92 47 Delia Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson pp 49, 50 48 The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature ed. Alison Donnell and Sarah Lawson Welsh (London: Routledge, 1996) p140-141 50 Homi Bhabha Location of Culture p 320 51 Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson p51 54 Una Marson ‘Little Brown Girl’, The Moth and the Star. (Jamaica: The Gleaner. 1937) p11 57 deCaires Narain puts forward an interesting link between Marson and Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners highlighting external identity in her book Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry p 21 58 Baudelaire The Painter and the Modern Life cited in Keith Tester The Flaneur (New York: Routledge, 1994), p 2 62 Laurence A. Brainer An Introduction to West Indian Poetry (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), p154 63 Una Marson ‘Cinema Eyes’ The Moth and the Star. (Jamaica: The Gleaner.1937) p87 64 Franz Fanon Black Skins, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986), p4 65 Una Marson ‘Black is Fancy’ The Moth and the Star p75 67 Una Marson ‘Kinky Hair Blues’ The Moth and the Star p91 69 Kenneth Ramchard The West Indian Novel and its Background (London: Faber, 1870), p225 A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson. (2017, Oct 17).

McDonalds Foreign Direct Investment and Distribution strategy Essay

McDonalds Foreign Direct Investment and Distribution strategy - Essay Example McDonald’s foreign direct investment focuses primarily on investment in restaurants and the food industry. The company made its foreign direct investment for the long term, with the distinct purpose of making a profit. As a multinational firm, McDonald’s has significant foreign investment assets that comprise of the parent company in the US and foreign affiliates domiciled in host countries. The company has the capacity to derive and transfer its capital resources globally and operate restaurants and penetrated markets in other countries worldwide. McDonald’s foreign direct investment not only focuses on controlling affiliate restaurants in developed countries but developing countries, as well. Investing overseeing has generated immense benefits to McDonald’s and its investors. Inward investors continue to gain easy access to markets in foreign countries, particularly since the company’s products can be made using local ingredients.It makes apparent commercial sense for McDonald’s to set up local restaurants, which make use of local ingredients instead of exporting ingredients directly from the US.McDonald’s establishment of affiliate firms in other nations allows the company to gain access to a vast array of resources, which include among others cheap and skilled labour, as well as local expertise and knowledge inherent in the foreign nation. McDonald’s builds restaurants in other countries thereby exploiting the economies of scope.

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Special education - Assignment Example Some of the special needs entail communication challenges, physical disabilities, behavioral and emotional behaviors and developmental disorders. Students exhibiting the special needs usually benefit from additional educational services where different approaches are used with examples of a resource room, use of technology and a teaching area that is specifically adapted (University of La Crosse, 2012). This is where special educators come in. Special educators have a repertoire that has evidence based strategies meant to individualize instructions specifically for individuals who have exceptional learning needs (ELN). These strategies enhance critical thinking in learning, problem solving as well as individual skill performance. More over the strategies enhance self-reliance, self-control and self esteem. Special educators play a huge part in put a lot of emphasis in maintenance development and generalization of skills and knowledge across settings, environments and lifespan (Univer sity of La Crosse, 2012). When it comes to assessment, this is a very crucial process during decision making as well as teaching of special educators. The educators use various types of assessment information when making different educational decisions. They also use assessment results to assists them identify the exceptional learning needs and also to come up and enforce individualized instructional programs and also adjust instruction when it comes to responding to ongoing learning progress (University of La Crosse, 2012). ... In addition, they understand assessment that is related to eligibility, referral, instruction, program planning and placement. An empirical study conduct by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) in regards to the participation of disabled students in regards to statewide testing programs, probed the question of why students were excluded in these assessments (Almond et al, 1997). Despite the fact that participation rates largely contributed to poor data collection during testing time, the study found that there was also the files that used key marker variables. This resulted in many disabled students being lost in the midst. The study identified the four reasons that make statewide assessment to be used and they included; providing data so as to inform policy, make decisions regarding student competence, provide accountability data based on criterion achievement levels and lastly, to be able to compare the local agencies that are local (Almond et al, 1997). In their meth odology, they focused on testing students with disabilities from 3rd, 5th, 8th as well as 10th graders. After having done their research, the NCEO found that program participation and demographic data would be used when it came to grouping of scores and also taking into consideration the effects of program services, age, language proficiency and socioeconomic status (Almond et al, 1997). Therefore, when it comes to the evidence that I will use to make sure my students responses as well as errors guided discussion decisions and ensure that feedback is provided to learners, I will use the evidence based practice. This is where there is use of instructional strategy, teaching program or intervention that leads to consistent positive results particularly when they are experimentally

A Tropical Paradise Called Bohol Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

A Tropical Paradise Called Bohol - Essay Example Visiting a foreign place always gets butterflies fluttering in one’s guts due to the excitement and anxiety of the unfamiliar environment he or she is about to experience.   The thought of a far-off tropical paradise usually arouses much thrill.   This is what I feel right now as I embark on a tour of a province in the Philippines called Bohol, situated in the Visayas, the second largest group of islands in this Asian country (Lonely Planet Travel Information).   I have heard much about the tourist spots in the Philippines, and Bohol is one place garnering much praise.   Perhaps that is why I am among a plane filled with foreigners from America and Europe and yes, also Asia, to visit this pristine place that promises one to forget his worries and indulge in the pleasures it offers weary bodies and souls. The Philippines is a small country in Asia rich in history and culture.   The brown-skinned people have survived centuries of subjugation from foreign invaders. Thre e hundred thirty years as a colony of Spain, forty years of the USA and three years of Japan right before the second World War. Before colonization, a variety of foreign traders and settlers such as the Malays, the Indonesians, Arabs, Chinese, etc. migrated to the Philippines and left their influences on the people (Lonely Planet Travel Information â€Å"History of Philippines†). At present, Philippine culture boasts of a cornucopia of languages and dialects from its people, such as Pampangueno from the province of Pampanga, Ilonggo from the province of Iloilo, Visayan from Cebu, Samar, Leyte and the other Visayan provinces.   The colloquial language is Tagalog, and this is mostly spoken in their national language which is called Filipino (Lonely Planet Travel Information). Food dishes from various provinces abound, tickling the palate with exotic tastes.   A common favorite is Adobo, a meat dish marinated in vinegar, soy sauce, peppercorns and garlic, and Pancit, a noodl e dish filled with meat and vegetables (Lonely Planet Travel Information).   During special celebrations and fiestas, roasted pig is the centerpiece of the dinner table where guests feast on the crunchy skin and succulent meat of the tenderized pork.   The country is also rich in art.   One of their earlier heroes, Juan Luna, painted the â€Å"Spoilarium†, a renowned masterpiece that has won many awards all over the world (Spoliarium Wikipedia).   Music and dance are likewise enjoyed immensely, as a host of native songs, instrumental music and dances are perennially present in programs showcasing the culture of the place the art originated from.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Philippines is home to several tourist destinations.   It has many natural wonders such as the Mayon Volcano, which has an almost-perfect cone shape (Mahalo.com).   It also has the eighth wonder of the world - a man-made rice terraces called Banaue Rice Terraces, which is a mountainous region built by hand and about 2,000 years ago by the Ifugaos, natives of Banaue in the highlands (Banaue Rice Terraces).It was for their rice supply, rice, being the staple food of Filipinos, the people of the Philippines.   The country surely has a variety of land and water forms with its rich natural resources.

Leader ship Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Leader ship - Assignment Example Leadership is the backbone of the organization. Leaders of an organization are given the mandate of seeing into it that all the organizational operations run smoothly to ensure organizational success. Barnard (1938) defines leadership as the capability of the superior to influence the behaviour of subordinates and convince them to follow a particular strategy. Leaders should inspire confidence to their followers. Various theories have been associated with leadership and have been applied to solve difficult management issues arising in organizations. Individuals in leadership positions must posses’ vast knowledge of social behaviour of individuals or teams within the organization (Robins & Judge, 2010, p. 597). Leaders are innovators and change facilitators. Leaders are concerned with the planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting. Leadership Theories/Concepts There are several leadership theories that have been proposed. They include great man theory, trait theory, behavioural theories such as the managerial grid, theory x and y, contingency theory and many others. The various leadership styles include; participative leadership, transformational leadership, situational leadership and many others. Some leaders think more about their employees than themselves. Others are more committed to their work and have excellent communication skills. For every organization to be successful the leader should show commitment to his work, communicate effectively and motivate employees to perform their tasks (Hassan & Shaw, 2012). The trait theory assumes that individuals have natural traits that help them become leaders. They believe that these merits are inheritable. These traits include intelligence, conduct, sociability, commitment, devotion, determination and perseverance and other inherit abilities (Gorman, 2004). Situational theory argues that leaders arise from different situation in individuals’ face in life. The lead ers are expected to adjust and adapt to new circumstances to be able to deal with the new situation. The path goal theory deals employees motivations so as to enable them achieve the set goals and objectives (Gorman, 2004, p.82). According to this theory leaders have the ability to improve employees’ motivation by clarifying the goals and providing the resources necessary to ensure improved employee performance and achievement of the desired goals. The contingency theories are an expansion of the situational theories. They are based on categorizing various components which can be used to foretell of the best and effective management technique to be applied in a given situation (Hassan, 2009). The Fiedler contingency model proposes that for effective group performance the leaders’ approach must match with the situation, which gives leaders some control. Fiedler tried to establish whether a person is task-oriented or rapport oriented using the LPC scores. He further iden tified three dimensions, which could be used to determine effective leadership (Robins, & Judge, 2010, p. 522). These include leader-member relations, which involves individuals levels of confidence, trust and respect individuals had in their leaders, task structure, which involves the structured and the unstructured degree of job assignments position power which measures the degree of influence a leader has in relation to

Militarization and Police Brutality Annotated Bibliography

Militarization and Police Brutality - Annotated Bibliography Example Although the piece does focused mainly upon the process of the militarization of police, the tangential understanding that can be gained is the fact that this militarization has caused a psychological shift in the way that at least engage with crime. The veracity and truthfulness of this particular article is almost without question; due to the fact that it was published in a scholarly journal and thoroughly peer-reviewed. Furthermore, the author of the article has also been responsible for authoring several other pieces with relation to militarization of police and the overall impact upon society that these paramilitary forces have. Kimper, J. (2014). WHY MILITARIZED POLICE DEPARTMENTS DONT WORK: CONFRONTING ANGRY CITIZENS IN THE GARB OF JACK-BOOTED THUGS DOES PLENTY OF DAMAGE, ACCOMPLISHES NOTHING.  Newsweek Global,  163(8), 30-38. This particular article examines the correlation between the militarization of police and the overall level of violence that these so-called â€Å"peace officers† are willing to direct the average citizen. The author indicates that even though it might seem as a trivial matter, the actual clothing and tactical weapons that police are now receiving has had a direct correlation to the overall level of violence that they are comfortable with directing at the citizen. The source goes on to indicate the fact is that the militarization of the police is a relatively new occurrence; even though concerns and issues over police brutality is an issue that has been represented for a very long period of time.

Labour Movements in Germany Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Labour Movements in Germany - Essay Example The economic fluctuations witnessed during the 1870’s stirred debate on the feasibility of free market system. The economic depression had a weighty consequence on the philosophy of English Trade Unions, which led to adoption of an Anti-Capitalist stance. By then, Englishmen from all classes had grown to admire and respect established political institutions. They also had confidence on the existing liberal and conservative parties, which they thought were competent enough to bring about essential reforms on capitalism as well as other political and social problems (Lipset 1983, p.12). Thus, working class support of conventional political institutions and hope in further reform, demonstrates contrast between Britain and Germany. The latter emphasized pre-eminence of the political while in Britain trade unions organization was the principal focus (Linden 1988, p.307). The reformist policies undertaken in Britain in late 19th century, and early 20th century significantly contribu ted in assimilation of the workers into the National community, thus reducing resentment to existing political institutions. Whereas SPD was considered as a revolutionary threat, Labour party was not. Apart from economic woes, there were other factors that agitated for recruitment to socialist causes such as industrial expansion, which spurred growth and favoured intense concentration of capital and labour. Similarly, there was immense growth in numbers of urban workers coupled with mass literacy. Whereas economic factor was the overriding theme that heralded socialism in Britain, political factor can be considered to have been the prime motivation in Germany. Workers movement in Germany emerged in the 1840’s although they were limited to the artisans. However, with time, they coalesced to form workers association, which promoted socialist aims of redistribution of wealth and elimination of private property. However, divisions arose concerning how social change could be achie ved in society. The contesting parties were torn in between revolution and alliance with the state (Linden 1988, p.307). Prior to 1914; the political parties of Germany did not show willingness or constitutional ability to take power. Much of the parties influence was anchored in pressuring the government through obstruction of legislations and interrogating of government’s on its executive actions. The foremost motivation of the political parties was sectional advantages. Social Democratic Party (SPD) represented socially defensive organizations. At initiation, SPD was split between non-Marxist and Marxist. Later on, the division was between Orthodox and Revisionist Marxist and eventually it adopted a modest, democratic, progressive approach to socialism. Its representation mainly featured politically conscious workers who were repressed by the state. The party, which was inaugurated in 1875, adopted revolutionary programme, dedicated to eradication of class rule (Nettl 1965 , p.65). The party also affirmed its dedication of working within the existing system for short term reforms such as state sponsored education system, universal suffrage in all German states and social legislations that safeguarded the working conditions and health of workers. SPD from the onset considered itself an outcast in the political life in Imperial Germany and emphasized a

German military Essay Example for Free

German military Essay The overwhelming tactics unleashed by the Nazis at the beginning of World War Two signaled a shocking advance in the art of warfare. The allies struggled to devise defenses against the blitzkrieg of the German military. Eventually, they were able to repel the Germans. However, the nations of the world learned a great deal from the blitzkrieg. This frightening tactic would be emulated and modified in the decades to come. As the Blitzkrieg inspired fear in its opponents, it also eventually inspired overconfidence in the Germans. Many of the nations that the Germans attacked in the first years had antiquated militaries and were ill prepared for the onslaught of the German Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. In the first years of the conflict, the Luftwaffe seemed both omnipresent and nearly invincible as it fought on fronts as distant as North Africa and Northern Russia. 1 The Allies would be forced by the Blitzkrieg to rapidly retool their militaries and their military strategies. In the mean time, the Blitzkrieg would cause devastation across Europe. War in the early 20th Century World War One served as a major turning point in the conduct of warfare. Prior to this war, the idea of honor for ones opponent still existed to a certain degree. Many commanders frowned upon sneak attacks and civilian casualties. By 1914, the technology of weaponry had advanced significantly. It was now possible to kill large numbers of 1. Dale Brown (ed. ). The Luftwaffe. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. (16). soldiers easily. The tremendous number of casualties eliminated any sense of battlefield chivalry that remained. The machine gun, deadly gases, air power and more accurate and deadly shells resulted in unprecedented casualties. Yet, neither side was gaining any substantial ground. The war settled into a deadly stalemate in which soldiers were routinely sacrificed in large numbers with little hope of gain. With the exit of the newly formed Soviet Union and the entry of the United States into the conflict it became clear that Germany would run out of manpower before the allies. The eventual peace levied a punitive price on Germany. The nation was forced to accept full blame for the war, change its form of government, pay reparations and reduce the size of its military. Feeling the humiliation of the Versailles treaty, the Germans who would later come to power were determined not to make the same mistakes as their predecessors. After World War One, a committee was formed to assess war issues and strategies. It was decided that strategies emphasizing maneuver and surprise would be necessary in the future. Carl von Clausewitz and other German military theoreticians had successfully used such tactics in prior wars. 2 The new German command would draw on these principles, and merge them with rapidly advancing military technology. The Germans knew that, for them, a war of attrition was unwinnable. Yet, there were some who wanted to avenge the harsh terms of the Versailles treaty. The Nazis only held a minority in the Reichstag, but Hitler managed to maneuver his way into absolute power. From the early 1930’s, the Germans violated the terms of the treaty and rebuilt 2. Larry H. Addington. The Pattern of War Since the Eighteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. their military to frightening levels. Military leaders, such as Goring and Himmler studied the theories of J. F. C. Fuller and Liddell Hart in order to craft military strategies that took advantage of cutting edge technology. 3 Shades of the future could be seen even before the end of World War One. The Germans used Blitzkrieg-like attacks in Russia and in France during 1918. By that time, however, attrition had decimated the German forces and they were ultimately unable to capitalize upon these successes. What is Blitzkrieg? Blitzkrieg, or â€Å"Lightning War† was a startling advance on warfare first used comprehensively in the Nazi attack of Poland in 1939. The tactic was used extensively in the following years. The Blitzkrieg provided great success for the regime throughout Europe, in North Africa, and initially in Russia. The term â€Å"Blitzkrieg† is now a general term used to describe a variety of military actions. In all cases, it is a well-planned, widespread attack used to decimate the enemy’s defenses swiftly. In World War Two, the Nazi blitzkriegs often consisted of a specific sequence of actions. Any definition of Blitzkrieg should include the following elements: a decentralized command structure, the avoidance of combat in favor of targeting infrastructure, the use of air support, and the use of mobile, mechanized artillery. Engineering assets must also be prevalent in order to keep the force moving quickly. 4 3. Kenneth Macksey. Guderian: Panzer General. London: Greenhill Books, 2003 4. Alexander B. Rossino. Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg Ideology and Atrocity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. The term itself came into use in the mid 1930’s, although elements of the strategy had been around for centuries. It came into widespread use after Time magazine used it to describe the German attack on Poland in 1939. First, infrastructure, communications, and the front and back line troops are attacked by air. Any air forces were to be neutralized immediately. This is done by heavy, concentrated bombing sorties. The goal was to effectively blind the enemy and gain air superiority. Following closely behind, tank divisions break through and advance quickly. Other mechanized units follow the tanks, engaging the enemy and establishing strategic strongholds. Communication is critical for such an attack. Advances in radio technology allowed the Germans to create a seamless network in which commanders could receive, and react to, real time information from any sector of the battlefield. Meanwhile, the infantry is engaging the enemy forces. Those forces are then unable to pull back and defend against the fast-moving mechanized forces. The enemy flanks are also attacked. Ground forces continue the process of encircling the enemy forces, while the tank units plunge ever further into enemy territory. The highly concentrated, fierce attacks often caught enemies off-guard. The mechanized units advanced at such a rate that they were able to continually out flank defenders. Often within weeks the enemy forces would be circled and cut of from reinforcements. To enhance the effectiveness of these attacks, the Germans usually did not declare war. In some cases, Hitler had even made non-aggression pacts with countries he later attacked. Unleashing the new war machine The Nazi war plan was the product of years of preparation. Although the Blitzkrieg is a name specifically describing actions that began in 1939, the Nazis had already experimented with the idea prior to the war. The Spanish civil war of the late 1930’s provided a proving ground, of sorts, for a new theory of war. German high command participated in the war, evaluating and honing tactics for the larger conflict to come. According to Dale M Brown in The Luftwaffe: The eruption of that conflict in 1936 had been welcomed by Hitler and his Generals as a heaven sent opportunity for the young German air force to test its planes, train its air crews and develop new fighting techniques under modern battle conditions. 5 In 1939, the Nazi government manufactured a border dispute with neighboring Poland. The Polish army was accused of entering German territory and committing murder. Coincidentally enough, German forces were already poised at the border and ready for an offensive attack. What would occur next would come to be known as the Blitzkrieg. Poland and the other European nations were ill-prepared for the German onslaught. German forces poured in to Poland with lightning speed, while the Luftwaffe quickly neutralized the Polish Air Force. The Blitzkrieg had achieved its first major success. Edwin P. Holt writes in Angels of Death: Goring’s Luftwaffe: The effect was terrible. In minutes the roads were scenes of devastation and carnage. It was a case of a modern war machine 5. Dale Brown (ed. ). The Luftwaffe. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. (19). fighting a nineteenth-century army. 6 The speed of the attack was unprecedented. It was both physically and psychologically devastating for the Polish populace. Centers of population thought safely within the country’s interior were now reachable in a matter of days. The stunning attacks struck fear into both the civilian and military population. This, in fact, was a critical part of the Blitzkrieg plan. A population that feels utterly vulnerable is likely to submit quickly. The eyewitnesstohistory. com website provides a diary entry fro a German tank commander. He writes of the later French campaign: The people in the houses were rudely awoken by the din of our tanks, the clatter and roar of tracks and engines. Troops lay bivouacked beside the road†¦Civilians and French troops, their faces distorted with terror lay huddled in the ditches. 7 The Blitzkrieg later used against the French would be ruthlessly efficient. Historians disagree as to whether the Polish campaign was technically a Blitzkrieg, citing many of its conventional elements. It has come to be known as the beginning of Blitzkrieg none the less. It was devastatingly fast, and nearly impossible to defend against. The Polish defenders fought valiantly, but they were over matched. Polish troops repeatedly charged the German tanks in what amounted to a suicide mission. Nazi commanders, secure in their tanks spoke arrogantly of the Polish campaign. In Tank, Patrick Wright described the Nazi’s attitude: 6. Edwin P. Hoyt. Angels of Death: Goring’s Luftwaffe. New York: Forge, 1994. (146). 7. Ibis Communications Inc. â€Å"Blitzkrieg: 1940. † 2002. http://eyewitnesstohistory. com/pfblitzkrieg. htm . Accessed 22 December 2006. Hitler’s tank General, Heinz Guderian, claimed that the Polish Lancers took this desperate step â€Å"In ignorance of the nature of our tanks† and suffered â€Å"tremendous losses† as a consequence. 8 After the successful campaign against the Poles, the Nazi regime turned its sights toward the other neighboring countries. Some of them, intimidated by the Blitzkrieg, fell without a fight. Others were quickly overwhelmed by the ever more efficient blitz tactics. Before the end of 1940, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium had all fallen into German hands. With military confidence at an all-time high, Hitler unleashed the blitz on Russia in 1941. In short order, German troops surrounded Moscow and Leningrad. In the East, Hitler stood triumphantly in Paris. France had been conquered in less than two months. After the First World War, the French had constructed a system of border defenses called the Maginot Line. It was thought that this line could prevent any invasion, or at least delay it long enough for defenders to assemble. The Germans studied the line intensively and found its weak points. This illustrates the theory of schwerpunkt – a maximum concentration of integrated forces at one focal area. 9 From there, mechanized forces could get behind, and eventually encircle defenders. Ultimately, the Maginot line could not stand up to the much-advanced German tanks and artillery. Mechanized units plunged through the line, fanned out, and quickly drove remaining French forces underground. The process would be repeated many times throughout Europe. 8. Patrick Wright. Tank: the progress of a monstrous war machine. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. (232) 9. Bryan Perrett and John Hacket. A History of Blitzkrieg. New York: Stein and Day, 1984. German forces under Gen Erwin Rommel also used Blitzkrieg tactics in North Africa. Initially, they faced little resistance. Deception was often a part of the North African version of Blitzkrieg. Tanks and the Luftwaffe were still the spearheads of the attack, but Rommel also used the natural elements to his advantage. From The War in the Desert by Richard Collier: Behind them [the tanks] groaned trucks whose drivers were doing their best to obey Rommel’s order: â€Å"Rear vehicles to raise dust – Nothing but dust. † 10 Small deceptions such as this allowed the Germans to stretch their forces farther than otherwise possible. The Germans streaked across the desert, acquiring strategic positions and valuable natural resources. The allies had seen the devastating Blitzkrieg in Europe and now they faced a foe of unknown strength in Africa. That was how the Germans wanted it. From The War in the Desert: It was becoming increasingly clear that the enemy believed us to be far stronger than we actually were, Rommel said, â€Å"A belief that was essential to maintain. 11 In addition, the bombing of London is commonly referred to as â€Å"the Blitz†. From the perspective of those being bombed, this is understandable. Militarily, however, these attacks did not meet the technical definition of Blitzkrieg. Still, the whistle of the dive- bombing German Stukas provided the intimidation that could have made a later invasion easier. 10. Richard Collier. The War in the Desert. Alex. , VA: Time-Life Books, 1977. (64). 11. Richard Collier. The War in the Desert. Alex. , VA: Time-Life Books, 1977. (65). A key aspect of Blitzkrieg is the integration of all branches of the military in a well-coordinated attack. Air power was still relatively new to the battlefield. It had existed in WWI. Initially, balloons had been used for reconnaissance and occasional bombing. Later in the war, fighter aircraft were developed to the point of effectiveness. Strategy, however, was in its infancy. Using air power in concert with the army was rare and often ineffective. The Nazi’s were innovative in using the rapidly developing flight technology to its best advantage. If air power was important to the success of the blitzkrieg, the tank was critical. The mobility, firepower and defenses of the tank were substantially better than their WWI counterparts, due mainly to the innovation of the Germans. In World War One the tank was still relatively new. It showed potential as an offensive weapon, but it had many problems as well. WWI tanks frequently got stuck, broke down or were sabotaged. Some were very lightly armored. By the end of the war, the Germans had realized that the tank was ineffective in a stalemate situation. However, it showed great promise in swift, mobile attacks. Some of Germany’s potential foes also realized the military potential of mechanized warfare. British generals, including Sir Basil Liddell, were simultaneously developing the strategy of mechanized warfare. George Parada writes: They all postulated that tanks could not only seize ground by brute strength, but could also be the central factor in a new strategy of warfare†¦. All of them found the tank to be the ultimate weapon. 12 Speed was the central aspect to the Blitzkrieg. The Nazi’s had to cut off 12. George Parada. â€Å"The Concept of Blitzkrieg: Achtung Panzer. † 1996. http://www. achtungpanzer. com/blitz. htm . Accessed 23 December 2006. reinforcements and prevent enemy troops from regrouping to be successful. All of the actions of the Blitzkrieg were aimed toward those ends. Technological advances allowed for that speed. If the first wave of potential defenders could not be completely destroyed, at the logistics and communication that support those defenders could be interrupted. Further reinforcements would then have a difficult time catching up to the speedy German attack. The differences in military hardware between WWI and WWII are stark. Aircraft, for example, had become many times faster and more deadly. Tanks, also, were far more powerful and mobile than in the First World War. The changes in strategy that created the Blitzkrieg soon followed. From the eyewitnesstohistory. com website: This was a new kind of warfare integrating tanks, air power, artillery and motorized infantry into a steel juggernaut emphasizing speedy movement and maximization of battlefield opportunities. 13 The end of the Blitz? The success of the Blitzkrieg was reliant on many factors. For years, the Germans had been planning out every detail of their actions. One critical element, however, was beyond their control. The lack of enemy preparedness was as important as anything the Germans did in the attacks. As the war dragged on, German resources waned and the preparedness of the Allies increased. The blitz proved to be devastatingly effective against Germany’s European neighbors. Most were overrun within weeks. The blitz had its limitations, though. When the Nazi’s attacked the Soviet Union success appeared imminent. Russia is a massive 13. Ibis Communications Inc. â€Å"Blitzkrieg: 1940. † 2002. http://eyewitnesstohistory. com/pfblitzkrieg. htm . Accessed 22 December 2006. landmass with a vast amount of resources and often severe weather conditions. These forces would spread the German military too thin, and eventually turn it back. In the West, the English Channel provided a natural barrier against the Germans. The same fast, well-coordinated and overwhelming attacks that had brought great success in Europe were simply not possible against Great Britain. Germany was never able to gain air superiority over England and never launched an invasion. By 1944 the Blitzkrieg attacks had run their course. The Soviets had outlasted the Germans on the Eastern front. In the east, the Americans had joined Allied forces for the successful D-Day invasion. On the defensive, Germany was no longer able to mount massive blitz attacks. During their retreat, they were able to perform one final coordinated attack, at the Ardennes in France. The Blitzkrieg was undoubtedly effective in the early going. The stealth and speed of the attacks allowed the Germans to quickly conquer territories that might not have been possible with conventional tactics. As effective as it was, the Blitzkrieg could not counteract one maxim of conventional warfare – The side with the most resources will eventually win. The Germans simply could not match the resources the Allies could muster. The element of surprise was also gone by 1943. In the face of overwhelming force, the Blitzkrieg was neutralized. Pointing toward the future The Blitzkrieg advanced warfare to shocking levels. At least in the early going the Germans were successful in avoiding long wars of attrition. The Blitzkrieg also provided an intimidating image in which civilians were often in the crosshairs of the war machine. From Tank by Patrick Wright: †¦the image converts the opening weeks of the Second World War into a collision between eras; petrol against muscle, faceless mechanized power against personal valour. 14 It was a rude awakening to a new era of warfare. Killing was now impersonal in many cases. It could now be done from great distances in any conditions. Te days of two armies warring endlessly along a well-defined front were over. The Germans cannot be given all of the credit for developing what would become the Blitzkrieg. Mobile warfare had, in fact, been around for centuries. German commander Guderian and others gave credit to British theoreticians Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, although the extent of their influence is still a matter of debate. 15 During the late 1920’s the British had created an experimental force to test the effects of fully mechanized warfare. Fuller created new battle plans emphasizing the role of the modern tank. The Germans studied these actions closely, and improved upon them. Germany had also emerged as an industrial and scientific power. This was critical in the development of their new military. The advances in machinery in the early twentieth century allowed for unprecedented military speed. The Germans learned well from their World War One experience. Other nations were also developing Blitzkrieg-like tactics before WWII. The Germans, however, were the first to use the new strategy in a comprehensive way. In a world still war weary and suffering an economic depression, the Blitzkrieg achieved maximum shock value. 14. Patrick Wright. Tank: the progress of a monstrous war machine. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. (232). 15. Kenneth Macksey. Guderian: Panzer General. London: Greenhill Books, 2003. Anything successful is bound to be copied. The Allies were not oblivious to the new German tactics. The innovative German tactics would now be used against them. George Parada describes the process of adaptation: At the same time [the] potential of Blitzkrieg and related tactics was fully appreciated by the Allies, who implemented its tactics on both fronts†¦George Patton used Blitzkrieg and mobile warfare tactics in his European operations of 1944. 16 Echoes of the German blitz can be seen in modern warfare. The â€Å"shock and awe† campaign of the United States military against the Iraqi regime is one such example. It was a well-prepared and widespread attack on a vast number of pre-designated targets. Unlike the German attacks, this was not initially an invasion. The advances in air and missile technology allowed for this. The Iraqi regime, unlike the European nations in WWII, had plenty of warning that the attack would occur. The goals of the blitz and the â€Å"shock and awe† campaign remain the same, however. The attacks were designed to target military assets and the infrastructure that supports them. At the same time, the attackers want to intimidate and overwhelm their foes. The ultimate goal is to avoid a bloody stalemate such as that in World War One. Today, weaponry has advanced to the point where the element of surprise is no longer necessary for a major power. Guerrilla wars are also far more prevalent today. These types of wars limit the effectiveness of Blitzkrieg-type attacks. In short, the Blitzkrieg has greatly influenced attack strategy. However, the strategy is not as invincible as it once was. 16. Parada, George. â€Å"The Concept of Blitzkrieg: Achtung Panzer. † 1996. http://www. achtungpanzer. com/blitz. htm . Accessed 23 December 2006. Notes 1. Dale Brown (ed. ). The Luftwaffe. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. (16). 2. Larry H. Addington. The Pattern of War Since the Eighteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. 3. Kenneth Macksey. Guderian: Panzer General. London: Greenhill Books, 2003 4. Alexander B. Rossino. Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg Ideology and Atrocity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. 5. Dale Brown (ed. ). The Luftwaffe. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. (19). 6. Edwin P. Hoyt. Angels of Death: Goring’s Luftwaffe. New York: Forge, 1994. (146). 7. Ibis Communications Inc. â€Å"Blitzkrieg: 1940. † 2002. http://eyewitnesstohistory. com/pfblitzkrieg. htm . Accessed 22 December 2006. 8. Patrick Wright. Tank: the progress of a monstrous war machine. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. (232) 9. Bryan Perrett and John Hacket. A History of Blitzkrieg. New York: Stein and Day, 1984. 10. Richard Collier. The War in the Desert. Alex. , VA: Time-Life Books, 1977. (64). 11. Richard Collier. The War in the Desert. Alex. , VA: Time-Life Books, 1977. (65). 12. George Parada. â€Å"The Concept of Blitzkrieg: Achtung Panzer. † 1996. http://www. achtungpanzer. com/blitz. htm . Accessed 23 December 2006. 13. Ibis Communications Inc. â€Å"Blitzkrieg : 1940. † 2002. http://eyewitnesstohistory. com/pfblitzkrieg. htm . Accessed 22 December 2006. 14. Patrick Wright. Tank: the progress of a monstrous war machine. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. (232). 15. Kenneth Macksey. Guderian: Panzer General. London: Greenhill Books, 2003. 16. Parada, George. â€Å"The Concept of Blitzkrieg: Achtung Panzer. † 1996. http://www. achtungpanzer. com/blitz. htm . Accessed 23 December 2006. Sources Addington, Larry H. The Pattern of War Since the Eighteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Brown, Dale (ed. ). The Luftwaffe. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. Collier, Richard. The War in the Desert. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1977. Corum, James S. The Roots of Blitzkrieg. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992. Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: twentieth-century conflict and the descent of the West. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Hoyt, Edwin P. Angels of Death: Goring’s Luftwaffe. New York: Forge, 1994. Ibis Communications Inc. â€Å"Blitzkrieg: 1940. † 2002. http://eyewitnesstohistory. com/pfblitzkrieg. htm . Accessed 22 December 2006. Macksey, Kenneth. Guderian: Panzer General. London: Greenhill Books, 2003. Parada, George. â€Å"The Concept of Blitzkrieg: Achtung Panzer. † 1996. http://www. achtungpanzer. com/blitz. htm . Accessed 23 December 2006. Perrett, Bryan and Hacket, John. A History of Blitzkrieg. New York: Stein and Day, 1984. Rossino, Alexander B. Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg Ideology and Atrocity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. Rutherford, Ward. Blitzkrieg 1940. New York: Putnam Sons, 1979. Sheperd, Alan. France1940 Blitzkrieg in the West. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003. Wernick, Robert. Blitzkrieg. New York: Time-Life Books, 1976. Wright, Patrick. Tank: the progress of a monstrous war machine. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.