The Fall of the House of Usher

Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story which makes the reader feel fear, depression and guilt from the very first page and up to the final scene.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Fall of the House of Usher specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Having read the story up to the end, it seems that Usher and his sister are the most depressive people in the house and a simple guest, Usher’s friend who arrived becomes deeply depressed too because of the general conditions and mood in the house. However, looking at the situation from another angle, it is possible to see that depressed and gloomy atmosphere in the house is much exaggerated because of the pessimistic vision of life by the narrator personally. Therefore, having read a story attentively, it is possible to doubt the events which took place there and try to consider the situation from another point of view. The Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is a story about Usher and his family. The house is depicted as the symbol of the atmosphere and relations in the family. From the very beginning the house is shown as the place that gives â€Å"a sense of insufferable gloom† and â€Å"natural images of the desolate or terrible† (Poe, 2000, p. 1264). The narrator sees â€Å"the blank walls†¦ with an utter depression of soul†¦ after-dream of the reveler upon opium† (Poe, 2000, p. 1264). Describing the house, the protagonist sees â€Å"iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart†, and â€Å"barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn† (Poe, 2000, p. 1265).Advertising Looking for essay on american literature? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More All these descriptions create the gloomy mood before the reader gets acquainted with those who live in the house. Therefore, seeing the health problems the inhabitants of the house have, the reader takes it for granted that the atmosphere in the house is depressive. Reading of the books, listening to the music and even watching the paintings, in a word, everything the inhabitants of the house do puts the reader to consider the whole situation as depressive because of Usher and his sister. However, if one takes a closer reading and considers the first lines of the story, everything may be changed. â€Å"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on† (Poe, 2000, p. 1264) is the first part from the Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Have not seen the house, have not ex perienced the doom atmosphere there, the protagonist is already depressed. Therefore, this scene makes a reader doubt the events which took place in the story. Hinzpeter (2012) makes an offer that â€Å"the first-person-narrator may have suffered from depression or some other sort of causeless melancholy from the very beginning and was therefore easily influenced by the gothic setting† (p. 10). So, it may be concluded that the gothic setting makes the narrator discuss simple life of people who do not communicate with the outside world due to their diseases as a depressive and criminal. The events which happened in the story may be an imagination of the narrator.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Fall of the House of Usher specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More However, one detail makes the reader doubt this statement, the â€Å"perceptible fissure† which is not too big at the beginning, and then the fi ssures are too big at the end and they cause the house fall. Reference List Hinzpeter, K. (2012). Unreliable Narration in Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ – The Narrative Creation of Horror. New York: GRIN Verlag. Poe, E. (2000). The fall of the house of Usher. In R. Bausch R.V. Cassill (Eds.), The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (pp. 1264-1277). New York: W. W. Norton. This essay on The Fall of the House of Usher was written and submitted by user Melody Gentry to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Cuban Missile Crisis essays

Cuban Missile Crisis essays The Americans gained control of Cuba in the late nineteenth century and by 1950 supported a shady regime under Fulgencio Batista, who took control of Cuba by force in 1933. By the late 50s, the Americans controlled the Cuban economy. Fed up with Batistas corrupt regime, Fidel Castro, a lawyer with a liberal national background, organized a coup and seized the Cuban government. Once in power, Castro nationalized the US owned companies in Cuba, destroying relations with the Americans. By 1960, the US stopped buying Cuban sugar and Castro signed a trade agreement with the U.S.S.R. in which the U.S.S.R. agreed to buy all of Cubas sugar and to provide aid. Already, signs of bitterness between the two superpowers were building up and by 1961 the U.S. broke off all diplomatic relations with Cuba. In April of 1961, President Kennedy offered a military base in Guatemala to Cuban exiles and the C.I.A. to reinvade Cuba and recapture it. The Bay of Pigs, as it was called, was a huge embarrassment for the United States as none of the Cuban patriots made it ashore. Shortly thereafter Castro announced that Cuba was a Marxist state. The separation with the USA was complete. During the spring of 1962, the U.S.S.R. decided to deploy missiles in Cuba. Since the Soviet Union was behind in the space race, Khrushchev, the soviet leader, believed that if he could get away with putting missiles in Cuba, he could equalize the strategic situation with that of the US. Cuba and the U.S.S.R. also feared an invasion by the US. Since the Bay of Pigs was a failed attempt, the Cubans and Russians believed that another invasion would soon follow. Lastly, Khrushchev believed that if he put missiles next door to the US, the US would dismantle their missiles in Turkey. U-2 spy planes in August, 1962 saw and photographed Russian surface to air missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy, informed of these missiles, had three choices: a di...

Critical Evaluation of Descartes Principle of Proofs of Existence of Essay - 94

Critical Evaluation of Descartes Principle of Proofs of Existence of God - Essay Example Descartes studies about God were to show that God is not a deceiver, and he aims to bring a clear perception in our minds. In his ontological arguments, Descartes gives two arguments about the existence of God. He sets to prove the existence of God in these two arguments. In his first argument, Descartes states that God is a perfect being and that to exist than not to exist is the perfect thing and God must therefore exist. These were properly based on his early dreams and he set out to document them. The Descartes second argument is the most complex of the two. In his publications, he distinctively sets out two forms of reality. In believing that his thoughts were innate, Descartes thought that his perceptions and the way he sees God should not be objected. He points out that God is an infinite being and that reality come in the forms of infinite, modal and finite. Descartes sees God as existing in infinite reality. He further asserts that all substances by virtue of their existence posses’ finite formal reality and that all ideas that occur in any phase of thought posses the modal form of reality. Ideas, as he puts that have a form of reality which, when they are put in relation to the objects that they represent must have an objective form of reality. He further points out that these objective realities are of three forms, which mirror the formal realities dependent on the amount of reality contained in the object that those ideas represent. Basing his ideas on objective reality, Descartes argues using his inner reasoning that God is an objective finite being. He further bases his ideas on inner logical thoughts to state that something can come from nothing. On this basis, Descartes arrived at two major principles: One of the attacks on the philosophy of Descartes about God concerns the use of God in order to justify distinctions in his idea of perceptions.

Compare and Contrast Research Methods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Compare and Contrast Research Methods - Essay Example These research methods are applied in almost every field of study but their implementation in the field of business management and marketing is slightly more. For testing and analyzing quality measures, this research method plays a vital role and its significance holds a prestigious supremacy. In research methods, qualitative measures provide essential information which eventually helps in the formation of hypothesis. It has given a new sphere and horizon to the field of business management and development process in refining these techniques more is taking place (Hair, Celsi and Page, 2011). Following are some of the renowned qualitative research method approaches along with the comparison and debate with projective techniques. Their significance in business administration and usage is discussed with a conclusion to get an exact idea about the implementation and implication of these research methods and projective techniques in the mode of studies. Focus Groups To examine the impact of a product or service in the market, a focus group session is the most recognized technique. Focus group is basically a qualitative set of methodology in which people from diverse backgrounds are invited and a discussion session takes place. The discussion session is controlled by a moderator. ... (Blumberg & Schindler, 2008). (Lewis & Saunders, 2009) demonstrate that the implication of this research method is widely done in almost all major modes of studies. This gives a horizon that what actually people think. Focus group participants can vary from research to research. For instance to check out the performance of a car, focus group discussion takes place. The panel members in this discussion would be product manufacturing engineers, consumers, analysts, journalist, market guru’s and future potential customers. Their depiction of thoughts will be the quintessence of this discussion. Moderator will ask certain focused research based questions from the panel members. Members upon their respective turn will present their views. The proposition of this tactic is mostly done in the subject of psychology, sociology, marketing and its sub branches, human resources management etc. Market Surveys To get the concrete picture about the thinking of consumers, market surveys act a s the backbone. It has vast implication and is done in approximately research work. Market surveys provide the various ideas of people about a product, service or any other issue. People from diverse backgrounds provide their review about a certain product or service. They also bluntly demonstrate that what are the shortcomings and plus points of the product. Their representation of non fragmented thoughts makes this research technique powerful. Literate, illiterate- all consumers present their ideas clearly (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008). Market surveys are done in all the capacities to check out the positioning of a product or service. For instance to check out the impact of a certain mobile phone among users and customers, cell phone market survey will be done

Chapter 7 Reaction Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Chapter 7 Reaction Paper - Essay Example Stereotypes end up dehumanizing a whole group of people, essentially pigeonholing them without giving them any chance to prove their own unique identity. When talking about the â€Å"accuracy† of stereotypes, I did not like the fact that the author mentions that some stereotypes are â€Å"accurate.† The fact that he goes on to mention very objective terms (like the income of a certain group of people), further augments my point. Stereotypes, I feel are based on subjective terms and not objective ones, and that is precisely why they are so damaging. However, I did like the idea the author then goes on to say how, even though we cannot get rid of stereotyping all together, we need to recognize them for what they are so that they can be productive and not destructive. In this regard the chapter itself contains certain stereotypes, which the author also admits. However, I would have liked it if there had been mention of stereotypes causing prejudices to be formed. I liked h ow the article relays the idea that we need to acknowledge that people are different, or that certain groups of people will be different as a collective. However, if that is true, then, perhaps, there is a premise for stereotyping to be an effective social tool. Nonetheless, it need not be so if we refrain from making rigid assumptions about a whole group of people and applying them on individuals as well.

Survey Of Data Mining Techniques On Crime Data Criminology Essay

Survey Of Data Mining Techniques On Crime Data Criminology Essay Data mining is a process of extracting knowledge from huge amount of data stored in databases, data warehouse and data repositories. Crime is an interesting application where data mining plays an important role in terms of crime prediction and analysis. This paper presents detailed study on clustering techniques and its role on crime applications. This also helps the law enforcers in better investigation and crime prediction. Key words: Crime data mining, crime data analysis, clustering. Introduction In recent years, volume of crimes lead to serious problems throughout the world. Now-a- days criminals have maximum use of modern technologies and hi-tech methods which serve up criminals to commit crimes at an immense measure. The law enforcers have to effectively meet out challenges of crime control and maintain public law and order. Hence, creation of a data base for crimes and criminals is required. Data mining techniques have higher influence in the fields such as law-and-enforcement, narcotics, cyber crime, human trafficking and high-tech crimes. Crime data mining has been applied in the law and enforcement to retrieve the criminal details and useful information automatically, using named entity-extraction method. In this method, each word is compared with the noun phrases and the binary value either zero or one will be generated which indicates the match or mismatch of the name. Intelligence agencies and university of Arizona collaborated COPLINK project and applied crime data mining in two-dimensions as crime types and security concerns to analyses crime and criminals and face challenges of law-enforcement problems of massive data bases from police narrative records [9]. Suspects give details to police investigations in order to confuse and spoil the proceedings of the investigation. During the time of investigation, comparison is needed to find the differences between real entities and deceptive entities. One of the distance measurement methods is Euclidean distance method which is applied to calculate the distance between pairs of the real and deceptive entity and this distance gives the deceptions accurately at the time of detection [10]. Hence, data mining techniques and clustering algorithms have been developed for better crime analysis which leads to the prediction of crimes in future. The organization of the paper is as follows. Section II discusses some researches and applications on crime data analysis. Section III defines the role of data preprocessing in crime data mining. Section IV presents various clustering methods on crime domain and Section V discusses the conclusion and future work. II Related work Recent developments in crime control applications aim at adopting data mining techniques to aid the process of crime investigation. One of the earlier projects COPLINK, was teamed with Artificial Intelligence Lab of Arizona University, the police departments of Tuscon , Phonix solving crime and criminal network analysis [8]. Brown et al. proposed a framework for regional crime analysis (ReCAP), which was built to provide crime analysis with both data fusion and data mining techniques[2]. Data mining steps involved in crime investigations are: collection of crime data from multiple data sources such as police narrative records, criminal background information which consists of previous investigation files and police arrest records are used to diagnose whether a suspect was involved in any earlier cases. If it so, verdict clues from past annals featuring the suspect and it avails the investigators to preside in the case. Using crime data mining techniques, most required information has been extracted from the vast crime databases which are maintained by NCRB (National Crime Record Bureau) for locating à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“crime hot-spotsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . This helps the law enforcers to predict the crimes and to prevent in the near-future. Nath et al. has proposed k-means clustering technique with some enhancements to aid the process of identification of crime patterns. Semi-supervised learning technique for knowledge discovery has also been further developed which helps to increase the predictive accuracy [6]. J.S. de Bruin, K.Cocx and Kosters et al. have applied clustering techniques for the analysis of crimes and criminal carriers based on four salient factors such as crime nature, frequency, duration and severity of crime[3]. Binary (BCS) and transformed (TCS) categorical methods are similarity based methods used to find the similarity of corresponding attributes between real and deceptive entities from the crime records[13]. Ozgul et al. recently suggested a crime prediction model on crime details like location, date of the incident and mode-of-operandi of events against terrorists which have not been solved[20]. An enhanced Ak-mode algorithm called a weighted clustering algorithm which consists of two-phases to extract similar case subsets from large number of crime datasets[16]. III. Role of data preprocessing in crime data mining Data preprocessing techniques are mainly used for producing high-quality mining results. Raw data are being preprocessed before mining because data are in different format, collected from various sources and stored in the data base and data warehouses. Major steps involved in crime data mining are data cleaning, data integration, data transformation and data reduction. Data Cleaning Fill in missing crime data value. Smoothing crime data Removing outliers of crime data. Resolve inconsistent crime data. Data integration Merging of crime data from multiple data storages. Data Transformation Crime data normalization. Attribute construction Data Reduction Crime Attribute subset selection. Dimensionality reduction of crime attributes Data mining process Raw data Analysis Mining results Fig. Data Preprocessing steps in crime data mining Crime data have been collected from different sources such as police narrative records, criminal profiles, case histories and log files. In the data cleaning step, missing values are filled, noisy data are smoothened ,outliers data are removed and inconsistent data are resolved. Data integration step undergoes merging of crime data. Data normalization and attribution construction are done in the data transformation for standardizing data. When standardization of crime data, the data range falls under 0.0 to 1.0. Attribute subsets are selected from crime dataset and dimensionality has reduced. After preprocessing, finally standard data underwent the process of mining and hence better results are obtained. IV. Application of clustering methods in Crime The Clustering methods play an important role on crime applications. Some of the clustering techniques highlighted are k-means clustering, Ak-mode algorithm and other similarity methods. After preprocessing, the operational crime data are undergoing the clustering techniques for grouping the nature of crimes as different clusters. In this process, lots of unsolved crimes are also grouped together. The next step of clustering is to identify the significant or decisive attribute. This may from case to case.ie. one of the cases may need the age group of victim as decisive attribute and it is very important in a murder cases. The k-means clustering is one of the basic partition clustering techniques. The objects of similar crime cases are grouped together and are very dissimilar when compare to other groups. This algorithm mainly used to partition the clusters based on their means. Initially number of crime cases are grouped and specified as k clusters. The mean value is calculated as the mean distance between the objects. Then number of iteration are done until the convergence occur. The iterative process of weighing attributes and crime types, future crime patterns can be detected by the detectives or analysts. Unsolved crimes are clustered based on decisive attribute and the results are given to the investigators to proceed the case further. This k-mean is applicable only for numerical attributes and it is not applicable to categorical attributes. Ak- mode clustering technique is used for categorical attributes. In this technique there are two steps such as attribute weighting phase and clustering phase. Weights of the attributes are computed using Information Gain Ratio (IGR) value for each attribute. The greatest value of weight is taken as decisive attribute. The distance between two categorical attributes are computed by finding the differences between two cases give the similarity measures. The analyst has set the threshold value ÃŽÂ ± with the help of the computation result of similarity measures. Finally binary and transformed categorical similarity methods are discussed for finding similarity measures. In the data bases, attribute values are either numerical or categorical i.e. either quantitative or qualitative. In the quantitative (numerical), the difference between two attributes are calculated as the direct difference between those two values of attributes. In the case of qualitative(categorical), the difference between two attributes are calculated as binary values as 0 or 1. If there is a match than attribute value will be 1 or 0 if it is not. This method is named as binary categorical method (BCS). In the transformed categorical similarly (TCS) method, the similarity table has created for all the attributes and the differences between those attributes value will be calculated. This difference gives the similarity measures. Hence various clustering techniques are used to identify the crime patterns which helps the crime analysts to proceed the cases further. V. Conclusion and future work Crime data were under various data preparing steps i.e cleaned the data, resolved inconsistent data and outliers are removed. Grouping crime data objects of clustering was needed to identify crime patterns which support crime analysts and law-enforcers to proceed the case in the investigation and help solving unsolved crimes faster. Similarity measures is an important factor which helps to find unsolved crimes in crime pattern. K-means, Ak-mode and other similarity methods such as binary categorical and transformed categorical methods were used to find the similarity measures of attributes which are very much needed to the crime analysts and police enforcers to solve unsolved crimes. In future, some of the enhancements should be done in the existing algorithms to get an accurate results. There should be some improvement in finding similar case subsets that will be a good direction for solving crimes easily. Finally, challenge of setting threshold value without crime analyst may be an important task in future.

Marijuana Users: Victims of Social Stigmatization and Unjust Penalties :: essays research papers

The Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution states, â€Å"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.† Simply put, this means that, although limited in its scope of rights and privileges, any particular right, even if not mentioned specifically in the Constitution, cannot be taken away from the American people. Yet, the chosen lifestyles of one particular group of people are violated almost every day: marijuana smokers. Victims of social stigmatization and harsh penalties, marijuana smokers must suffer because of the innumerable falsities and fallacies held by many people, including lawmakers, concerning marijuana. However, when an educated mind disregards the misconceptions about marijuana and analyzes the factual information, the relative personal and societal harm caused by marijuana usage does not warrant its overwhelmingly harsh punishment, nor does it merit the economic stra in caused by the enforcement of radical prohibition laws. What Is It? Marijuana is part of the cannabis family. Considered to be a mild hallucinogen, it produces feelings of euphoria and well-being, a loss of inhibition, an altered sense of time, heightened senses, and, upon high dosage, slight hallucinations. Its active chemical is a cannabinoid called Delta-9 tetrahyrocannabinol, or THC. Research has shown that the human body naturally produces a cannabinoid-like endorphine called anandamine, and that, upon entering the brain, THC locks onto the same receptor cells as does anandamine. THC affects the cerebellum, which coordinates movement and balance; the hippocampus, which dictates thinking and memory; and the rostral ventromedial medulla, in which the pain response is moderated (Booth 12-13). Damaging and Addictive?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The subject of marijuana’s addictive and damaging properties is a hotly debated topic. According to many opponents of marijuana, it is a highly addictive substance. Recent statistics report that 150,000 individuals enter treatment each year for marijuana addiction. Marijuana â€Å"addicts,† according to many experts, experience a decrease in social, occupational or recreational activities; are unable to discontinue their marijuana usage; experience a tolerance buildup and must consume more marijuana for the desired effect; and continue marijuana usage despite the knowledge it can cause severe psychological problems. Claiming marijuana to be emotionally and mentally addictive, experts contend that marijuana addicts allow marijuana to develop into who they believe themselves to be (Marijuana Addiction 1).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  However, the question still remains as to whether these circumstances are entirely true, and, if so, warrant the criminalization of marijuana. Compared to studies done on food addiction, the patterns of addiction are very similar.