How are women represented in the Ramayana story Essay

How are women represented in the Ramayana story - Essay Example The epic, in totality, describes victory of goodness over evil through the virtues of love, honesty, truth, respect, and dignity. Ramayana has been translated, rewritten and reinterpreted by many scholars in various Indian languages. The author, R.K.Narayan, has followed the work of Kamban, a famous Tamil poet of the 11th century A.D, in his narration of The Ramayana (p.xii). While the Ramayana describes the greatness of Rama, son of King Dasaratha, the epic highlights depth of every relation; for example, that of the son, the teacher, the father, the mother, the brother, the sister, the daughter, the King, the Soldier, and the servant. Parallely, it also describes the role of the man and woman on this earth. Ever since history was discovered, the Hindu mythology always regarded woman with great respect and dignity, next to the Almighty, himself. Scholars have also stated that even God, himself, bows down only in front of this mother. Even Ramayana describes woman with the same dignity and respect. The author’s narration of the story of Thataka, a ferocious female demon, depicts Rama’s hesitation to kill her on the orders of teacher Vishwamitra because killing a woman was against his principles. Then the author refers to the teacher’s statement made to Rama, ‘a woman of demoniac tendencies loses all consideration to be treated as a woman’ (p.13). This explains that woman is considered to be a life-giver and deserves the ultimate position of respect that any human being can ever receive. Any woman that cannot personify that ideal figure and causes destruction, is not worthy of living. In the context of power and control, the author refers to Vishwamitra’s narration of the story of Ganga to Rama. In this context, Ganga, the holy river is gendered as female (p.16). In his narration Ganga is all powerful, and convincing Ganga for a cause

Harry Shippe Truman :: Biographies Presidents Essays

Harry Shippe Truman missing works cited When Harry Truman was about five years old, his family noticed he was having eye troubles. With these eye problems, Harry wasn't able to see stars or the falling dust from fireworks. Harry never noticed this. When his mother got his first pair of glasses, they were thick glass in which the doctor said that he shouldn't run hard or play in many sports with them on. Harry saw a whole new world when he first got the glasses. He would stare for hours just looking at the bright stars. But, Harry's fun with the glasses soon ended when he went to school. The other kids would tease him about the glasses because he was the only one in the class with glasses. The teasing didn't bother him much because the other kids grew up learning not to hit kids with glasses. Harry liked reading books in his spare time. He especially liked Mark Twain's books 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn'. He had to read mostly adult books. Another one of his favorite books were biographies of the U.S. presidents. Harry read most of the three- thousand books that were in a nearby library. Harry was very good in school because of reading all the books. His mom wanted Harry, his brother Vivian, and Their little sister Mary Jane to enrich their lives so she bought them a piano. She gave the children lessons and noticed that Harry was especially gifted with the piano. So, she sent him to get professional lessons with a woman named Mrs. Edwin C. White. Everyone in his family thought that Harry would become a concert Pianist. Harry thought so too. Harry had experiences that the other kids did not have while playing the piano. Harry's teacher once was a student of one of the greatest pianists ever to live named Ignacy Jan Paderewski. When he was having a concert in their town, Harry's teacher brought him to the concert and introduced Harry to Ignacy. Ignacy showed Harry how to play his own famous composition Minuet in G. It was a moment Harry never forgot. The kids at his school really started to make fun of him when they saw him going to school with music roles because they thought piano playing was for sissies. But he kept on going and still ignored them. Harry' father got harry a pony so he wouldn't be all books and piano

How Does Literature Affect the Society

There are many kinds of incurable diseases which yet medical scientists with improved instruments and medicine haven’t been able to find any treatment for them and finally it results to the death of the affected person or animal HIV can be one of those diseases that right now in the world with about seven milliard population a numerous number of people are waiting to welcome death because of this fatal disease Scientists believe HIV came from a particular kind of chimpanzee in Western Africa. Humans probably came in contact with HIV when they hunted and ate infected animals. Recent studies indicate that HIV may have jumped from monkeys to humans as far back as the late 1800s. Human Immunodeficiency Virus is a lot like other viruses, including those that cause the â€Å"flu† or the common cold. But there is an important difference – over time, your immune system can clear most viruses out of your body. That isn't the case with HIV – the human immune system can't seem to get rid of it. Scientists are still trying to figure out why. We know that HIV can hide for long periods of time in the cells of your body and that it attacks a key part of your immune system – your T-cells or CD4 cells. Your body has to have these cells to fight infections and disease, but HIV invades them, uses them to make more copies of itself, and then destroys them. Over time, HIV can destroy so many of your CD4 cells that your body can't fight infections and diseases anymore In conclusion it can be said that HIV is the most incurable and fatal disease that can take the lives of millions every year

The Analytic Lenses of Ethnography - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 5 Words: 1356 Downloads: 10 Date added: 2019/06/24 Category Culture Essay Level High school Topics: Ethnographic Essay Did you like this example? The ethnographic compositions of researchers Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg, authors of Righteous Dopefiend, and Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted, exemplify the way that qualitative research can radically help to understand major public health concerns. While the authors believe that ethnographic research is a powerful vehicle for understanding transcultural issues, especially among vulnerable populations, their convictions about ethnographically is fundamentally different, which is reflected in the respective authors choice of methods and voice in the text. Ethnography, in a very basic sense, is the integration of investigative journalism and scientific method. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The Analytic Lenses of Ethnography" essay for you Create order In his essay Anthropology and epidemiology on drugs: the challenges of cross-methodological and theoretical dialogue, Philippe Bourgois emphasizes the importance of discourse between epidemiologists and ethnographers in order to advance public health sectors among vulnerable populations. Although the health science field is dominated by quantitative work, Bourgois suggests that integrating qualitative work and mixed-methods can offer critical insight into the social structures and individual behaviors that give rise to illness (Bourgois 2002: 260). The power of language in ethnographic writing is also extremely critical to accurately portray the experiences of the research subjects. Susan Sontag, a 20th century writer known for her essays Illness as Metaphor and Aids as Metaphor, argues that language produces meaning, guides conceptual thought, and is a central structural force. Sontag suggests that this power is often detrimental because it incites harmful stigma and stereotyping ag ainst individuals based on the cultural assumptions embedded in the language we use. One goal of ethnography writing, therefore, should be to present objective observations unprejudiced by embedded assumptions within the language. While the authors of Righteous Dopefiend and Evicted differ in their scientific methods and ethnographic narrative, they both strongly insist that the power of well-written, articulated ethnographic research is undeniably necessary to engage with texts and offer accurate, non-partisan insight of the ethnographic subject. Righteous Dopefiend focuses on injection-drug users living in homeless encampments in San Francisco. The primary goal presented by Bourgois and Schonberg is to understand how institutional structural agents, like government and family, manifest in individuals facing drug-addiction and extreme poverty. For Bourgois and Schonberg, ethnographic research should accurately reflect the zeitgeist, sentiments, and hardships of the subject, but without glorification or aggrandization. Researching severely stigmatized demographics necessitates careful attention to methodology, especially in the extent of participant observation, without encroaching upon analytical and professional boundaries. In the case of observing the Edgewater Homeless, Bourgois and Schonberg had to assert their boundaries definitively so as not to be relied upon for money, transportation, or other services. At the same time, however, the authors express the importance of understanding the moral economy in order to gage the underlying social structures that propagate the social norms and health outcomes among individuals in the demographic. For individuals living in non-market economies, the moral economy sustains and drives communities through exchanges in the universal pursuit of survival. As presented in Righteous Dopefiend, the moral economy was driven by the cotton exchange, which created a sort of informal insurance policy against heroin withdrawal in the form of sharing. Bourgois and Schonberg suggest that their participation in the moral economy was necessary for accurate data collection and insight into the mechanics of the factors governing individual and interpersonal behavior. For the authors, engaging in the moral economy often meant offering blankets, food, or transportation, which is exemplified when Bourgois offered a ride to Tina in exchange for an informal interview. According to Bourgois and Schonberg, the anthropological notion of cultural relativism is an important vehicle to be able to digest the extremely complex, often distressing, experiences of vulnerable populations. The authors write learning about life on the street in the United States requires the reader to keep an open mind and, at least provisionally, to suspend judgement, (Bourgois, 2009: 7) demonstrating that observing the upsetting, even shocking, experiences of marginalized populations requires a degree of cultural relativism. Bourgois and Schonberg also address the ethical dilemmas of ethnography. They discuss their initial concerns, especially among marginalized populations, that their presence might arouse local law enforcement, causing negative repercussions for their subjects and thus blight their objective of observing by the least-intrusive methods possible. Informed consent, respect, and privacy is critical, according to Bourgois and Schonberg, from a legalistic human r ights perspective, and also to preserve the dignity of their subjects without reifying stigmatization and negative images. The controversial nature of illicit drug use, sex work, and violence, in combination with apparent racism and sexism makes Bourgois and Schonbergs research particularly susceptible to reification of existing social stigma. The difficulty of ethnographic research, as stated by Bourgois and Schonberg, is the contentious, often difficult, balance of being present in ones environment, while also refining an analytical understanding of the subjects. The power of participant observation is that it forces academics out of their ivory tower and compels them to violate the boundaries of class and cultural segregation, (Bourgois, 2009: 14) implying that ethnography creates an intimacy that fosters precious insight into research subjects that quantitative work simply cannot provide. In a similar sense, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted, argues that ethnographic research is critical to providing accurate and non-partisan insight of the ethnographic subjects, but he varies greatly in his analytical approach. Evicted focuses on poverty-stricken individuals living in low-income neighborhoods of Milwaukee, who face economic exploitation and structural violence embedded in the private housing market. Desmond conducts his ethnographic research in correspondence with quantitative research collected through surveys. In his discussion of ethnography, Desmonds main argument revolves around the decision to write in the third-person, despite acknowledging that ethnographic writing is typically dominated by first-person narratives. Ethnographic work, in a general sense, favors a first-person narrative because it offers an intimate look into the lives of the research subjects and furnishes evidence that the researcher was on site, directly interacting with the subjects, reinf orcing scientific credibility. Desmond critiques first-person accounts by saying ethnographers shrink themselves in the field but enlarge themselves on the page because first-person accounts convey experienceand experience, authority, (Desmond 2016, 334) illustrating that the egocentric nature of first-person is far too focused on the researcher and his or her personal responses to their observations. According to Desmond, the reality of extreme poverty, unequal wealth-distribution, and racism in America is far too pressing an issue to veer the attention away from the subject to focus on the ethnographers subjective experience. Stylistically, third-person narratives are harder to prove scientifically authentic because the researcher does not directly insert themselves and their work in the text. This narrative style also risks appearing sensationalist or hyperbolic, which can negatively distort the way the research subject is perceived. However, third-person is less methodological and naturally evokes depth and meaning because the ethnographer is using prose. The purpose of Desmonds research, with the aid of the third-person narrative, is to foster an objective understanding of the extreme inequality and poverty rampantly spreading across America through the lens of his subjects unfiltered stories and experiences. Evicted also discusses the logistical and ethical dilemmas of ethnographic research. In stating that your race and gender, where and how you were raised, your temperament and dispositioncan influence whom you meet, what is confided to you, what you are shown and how you interpret what you see, (Desmond 2016: 325) Desmond suggests that an ethnographers state of mind and personal qualities deeply affect the data that is collected. Furthermore, like Bourgois and Schonberg, Desmond illustrates his experience with the moral economy of exchange through food sharing and small favors, while also reflecting the nee d to definitively assert boundaries by refusing to giving out large amounts of money. As Bourgois and Schonberg argued the need for cultural relativism to handle the upsetting, even shocking, observations of marginalized populations, Desmond discusses his own affliction with prolonged depression in the wake of observing the heartbreaking trauma experienced by his research subjects. While Desmond describes that he ultimately was able to conceal his distress, he still felt underlying guilt for the apparent socioeconomic disparity between himself and his subjects. Desmond describes this experience when he writes: the more difficult ethical dilemma is not how to respond when asked to help but how to respond when you are given too much (Desmond 2016: 336).