Thesis- To Be Unstuck In Time And Fight Or To Be Against War And Not F

Thesis- To be "unstuck in time" and fight or to be against war and not fight. I. How Kurt Vonnegut uses Fragmentation. A. Keeping Dresden fresh in the readers mind. 1. Billy goes back to Dresden reader goes with him. 2. First hand account of the massacre. a. Live through the horrors of war b. The reader is able to reflect on the horrors of war. II. Time there is no past,present or future in Slaughterhouse-five. A. Billy learns this view of all time existing from a group of aliens called Tralfamadorians. 1. There way of looking at time is comparable to a human's way of looking at"a stretch of the Rocky Mountains." 2. All things are destined to happen. B. Constantly seeing things through Billy's eyes. 1. Reader is with Billy wherever he goes. 2. "so it goes" III. Vonnegut presents the war experience as one that still goes on. A. Billy never leaves the war. 1. The reader does not leave the war 2. Reader is not able to experience the war. B. Horrific details 1. Saves the actual account of the bombing until the reader entrenched in the narrative. 2. Reader is denied the luxury of saying that he or she has seen worse. IV. Billy steps out of time. A. Planet Trafalmadore 1. "Heavenly" 2. Billy is only allowed to have peace here B. Aliens teach Billy. 1. View his own line as a long line rather than concentrating on one point in particular. 2. View the novel as a whole rather than pieces of events. V. Verge of Billy breaking up. A. Pressures of the outside worlds. 1. Finds himself in different events. 2. "a constant state of stage fright" B. Splitting himself into different parts. 1. Husband,soldier and employer 2. Seems to be spread a little too thin to handle all of these roles. VI. Billy ages A. Becomes separated from himself 1. Play a role at each stage of his life. 2. Even when he steps out of time he is still performing. B. Billy is always on stage 1. The dangers of role playing surfaces with the example of Billy Pilgrim. 2. Billy is a person who must pretend in order to be..

Eric Schlossers 1994 article Reefer Madness essays

Eric Schlosser's 1994 article Reefer Madness essays Eric Schlosser's 1994 article "Reefer Madness" outlines the history and ideology behind marijuana criminalization laws. The author attempts to point out the flaws in America's anti-drug policies by criticizing heavy- handed sentencing and the lack of scientific evidence against the dangers of marijuana use. Tracing the origins of marijuana cultivation in the United States, Schlosser shows that pot was not always the "evil weed" that many assume it is; it was once used in an innocuous manner by the Founding Fathers as a sturdy fiber and even as legal tender. What began the campaign against cannabis sativa was actually rooted in racism and class discrimination, according to Schlosser. Citing evidence that Mexican migrant farm laborers, black New Orleans jazz musicians, and underground groups used marijuana recreationally, the author connects anti-marijuana laws to the era of the Great Depression. Consequently, drug laws began politically charged and remain so until this day. Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs" further exacerbated the problem of overcrowding prisons with nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom receive stricter sentences than murderers or rapists. The purpose of Schlosser's article is to point out the problems inherent in America's strict drug laws. The article is divided into seven main sections. The first is a comprehensive introduction and the remaining six deal with specific historical and geographical issues relevant to the discussion of the topic. The introductory section of "Reefer madness" grabs the reader's attention though the story of Mark Young, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for being a "middleman." Young was not found in possession of the plant; he simply acted as a go-between for the seller and the buyer. Schlosser wonders how a society comes to slap stiffer sentences on a man such as Young while those who commit violent crimes f...

The Expression of Cyclical-Universal Understanding Inherent in the Essay

The Expression of Cyclical-Universal Understanding Inherent in the Mlamadhyamakikrik by Ngrjuna - Essay Example The philosophers who ascribe to this position do so without having real proof: certainly in many cases it seems to be true that the same thing will always happen in identical conditions, say, a sound will always travel at the speed of sound through a certain medium. On the other hand, there are documented limitations to this understanding: in quantum mechanics, scientists can have exactly the same circumstances, and only predict a probability of results. They argue this away by indicating that there was probably something different in the circumstances that cannot be effectively observed, but the bottom line is that this philosophy inherently rests on an unproven assumption, without which it cannot stand. It is thus always interesting to analyze the fundamental premises on which a major work of thought is based. Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakikarik, the foundational text of â€Å"Middle Way† Buddhism, demonstrates all the hallmarks of the best Buddhist thinking: a unique com bination of logic and spirituality, a peace with subjectivity and so on. But it, like every work of philosophy, rests on an un-provable premise, without which its arguments largely fail. IN the case of Mulamadhyamakikarik, one such fundamental premise is that the universe is cyclical in nature. ... If a thing is non-existent, how could it have a condition? / if a thing is already existent, what would a condition do?† (Nagarjuna 1.6). This is essentially a play on the idea of conditional existence: obviously everything has a conditional existence (a bird would not exist if its mother did not lay an egg, for instance), and yet that conditional existence implies the possibility of the non-existence of the thing, which obviously cannot be, because the thing is. Similarly, the condition of a non-extant thing’s existence is obviously of no importance, as the thing does not exist. He then uses this comfort in comparing the conditionality of existent and non-existent things to describe how the conditionality of existence essentially negates a thing having its own essence, separate from another thing – so everything can exist, but everything that exists is essentially the same (Nagarjuna). This philosophy thus earns the name â€Å"The Middle Way† because it fo rges a practical middle road between the two extremes of Buddhist thought: that everything exists, or that nothing does. Nagarjuna’s argument that nothing has its own separate, distinct essence serves as the central argument of this work. But this essential argument rests fundamentally on the idea of a cyclical universe, something inherent to all Buddhist thinking. Nagarjuna expresses this Buddhist idea of the infinity in the opening lines of his text: â€Å"Neither from itself, nor from another, / Nor from both, / nor without a cause, / does anything whatever, anywhere arise† (Nagarjuna 1.1). This demonstrates the idea of the infinite being a circle, as opposed to an expanse as imagined in Western thought. That is, obviously things are – or at