McDonalds Restaurants free essay sample

Reviews some of the difficulties faced by the McDonalds fast food restaurants in the 1990s. The third stage of organization development is closely related to the fourth and final stage of organization development which is the stage of evaluating and institutionalizing change. This stage involves monitoring the overall success or failure of the change. It is also important in the third and fourth stages that the change is overseen by qualified leadership. As was mentioned above, this is less of a problem for McDonalds Corporation than it might be for other corporations who do not have an organization development specialist as part of their full-time staff.

Amedeo Modigliani - a Jewish French Artist essays

Amedeo Modigliani - a Jewish French Artist essays Amedeo Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor. He is among the most important of the 20th century. His life is one of the greatest tragedies in art. He was born on July 12, 1884 to a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno (Leghorn), Italy. He was raised in a Jewish ghetto. His father was a businessman and his brother, Vittorio Emanuele Modigliani, was in active Socialist leader. He became ill in January 1920 and died ten days later of tubercular meningitis. He died a pauper on January 24, 1920 at 35. His family was poor but they had prosperous relatives so that the boy lacked nothing. He attended gymnasium, showed signs of tuberculosis at 17 and spent the winter on the Isle of Capri. After suffering from pleurisy and typhus in 1895 and 1898, he was forced to give up a conventional education, and it was then that he began to study painting. After a brief stay in Florence in 1902, he continued his artistic studies in Venice, remaining there until the winter of 1906, when he left for Paris well equipped with money from his uncle. He attended art classes at the Colarossi school in Paris. In 1908, he exhibited five or six paintings at the Salon des Independants. He also met the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, whom influenced Modigliani on African sculpting. Despite his many love affairs, excess of drunkenness, frequent lapses into illness, and poverty, he managed to produce with his relatively short career, a substantial body of work. More than 20 of his sculptures, some 500 paintings, and thousands of watercolors and drawings have survived. He is best known for his portraits of women and elegant nudes with their characteristic elongated necks, almond-shaped eyes, calm facial expressions, restrained color and energetic grace. He used many different techniques. One of which is distortion which is the act of deceiving the eye by twisting something out of its original condition or shape. He used this...

International Business Management (Strategic Alliances types) Essay

International Business Management (Strategic Alliances types) - Essay Example Features responsible for success of an alliance are managing co-ordination and trust between partners. Trust develops through various processes as commitment, bargaining and interaction. The alliance must also develop trust between its vendors and customers, this is relational capital. Trust among the customers raises the alliance reputation capital, consequently resulting to alliance success. Alliances are founded on contract and not friendship bases, therefore, each partner is expected to be committed and display its trustworthy. The alliance maintenance must focus on trust between the parties involved and the degree of adherence to set rules and regulations. The partners have the advantage to learn from each other without exploiting each other through resources or capabilities. Knowledge diffuses takes place from one firm to all the alliance parties. In each alliance well defined, rules are set aside to protect the parties from exploitation by the giant partners. The general types of strategic alliances are Joint venture, non-equity alliance, equity strategic alliance and global strategic alliance (Gomes, 2011, p. 53-47). Joint venture alliance involves a long term investment between two or more organisation which benefits all partners. The investment includes funds, resources and facilities which are contributed equally by the associated companies. A classic example of the joint venture is Caltex Company that is formed between the California Standard oil and the Texaco Company earlier known as Texas Company (Mitchell, 2013, p. 77). The petroleum company products are available in more than 60 countries in the Asia, Middle East, pacific region and the Southern Africa. Caltex is a global organisation having its product distributed and consumed in many parts of the world. The companies combined their resources together to create a separate business. Chevron had plenty oil wells but

Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development , One written project Essay

Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development , One written project on the theme of one selected attribute associated with the - Essay Example The returns of an entrepreneur are the profit generated by the corporate organization. Capital in the economic sense is a produced means of production (Iversen, Jorgensen and Malchow-Moller, 2008). However, an entrepreneur in business is termed as the human capital. The economic capital of the organization can only be productive with the benefits of the human capital in its business operations. In 1999, Richard Cantillon had stated that leadership of the entrepreneurs is responsible for the different circulations and changes in the economy (Glover, 2013). However, in the later stage of 2001, Jean Baptiste had stated that an entrepreneur is the primary agent of fabrication in the economy (Glover, 2013). An entrepreneur is the person who has the responsibility to manage, organize and also, forecast the impending risks in a business organization. After the emergence of globalization, the trading activities in nations have largely improved. Each and every country in the world has experie nced high growth rates with the rise in the number of new business firms. The rise in the number of small business developments has helped to improve the value of national products and employment opportunities in nations. The context of this essay will show the contribution of entrepreneurs in small business developments, both empirically and theoretically. ... It is the leadership quality of an entrepreneur that helps him to facilitate new business developments. Eminent scholars had stated that entrepreneurship in business encompasses a whole new concept (Stryker, 1998). They claimed that the originality and self sufficiency of entrepreneurship is different in business. Entrepreneurship in business helps to convert the technical resources in business to product and services. However, considering the characteristics, it can be concluded that entrepreneurial behaviour develops with time. This paper would primarily concentrate on the Leadership School Of Thought on Entrepreneurship that was first introduced by Cunningham and Lischeron in 1991 (Madsen, Neergaard and Ulhoi, 2008). This concept explains that entrepreneurs are actually the leaders of common people. They assure that their subordinates accomplish the different purposes and objectives in the workplace. Direction and motivation are the other skills of an entrepreneur that is develope d from the basic quality of leadership. This School of approach is completely non-technical in nature. It explains that a successful entrepreneur must have the quality of leadership with which he would be able to attract people and convert business vision into reality. It was also proclaimed by Schein in 1983 that an entrepreneur is a leader who is responsible for upgrading the work culture of a firm (Glover, 2013). It is true that the management and leadership attributes are the factors which help in the establishment of small business firms. Cogliser and Brigham had stated in 2004 that leadership theories were established long ago, but the practical linkage of leadership with entrepreneurship is made in the recent years. The main theories of

The Failure Of Unamid In Darfur Politics Essay

The Failure Of Unamid In Darfur Politics Essay Darfur has been called the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. Since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the world has not seen such a campaign of killing, refugees, rape and destruction. The crisis caused the death of 300  000 people and over 2.5 million displaced Sudanese since February 2003. This crisis attracted the attention of many humanitarian and human rights organizations, various states policy makers, and a number of regional and international organizations such as the African Union, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. In 2004, the African Union established the Darfur Integrated Taskforce (DITF). In 2007, the continuing hazardous situation required the creation of a joined AU-UN operation to intervene in Darfur, which was called United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). After three years of functioning of the UNAMID, the situation in Darfur still depicts a lot of human suffering and deprivation  [3]  . This suggests that the UNAMID was not effective in dealing with the crisis. To understand this, the paper will investigate the reasons behind the missions failure in achieving its objectives and goals. Hence, the study will try to answer the following question: why did UNAMID fail in Darfur? In other words, what are the reasons behind UNAMIDs ineffectiveness in Darfur? In fact, there are various reasons that can be investigated ranging from domestic to international, organizational to financial ones. However, given the limited time and knowledge, we will focus on two major reasons that we think created obstacles to the missions success. Thus, the hypothesis that we are willing to test is that UNAMID was not effective in Darfur because the Khartoum government didnt cooperate and the mission lacked resources. Before answering the question and testing the hypothesis, it is important to understand the conflict and its roots. For this purpose, we are going to divide the paper into three major parts. The first one will deal with defining the concepts, literature review and the theoretical framework. The second part will focus of the conflict. That is to say, it will give a background of the Darfurian situation before and after the 2003 conflict, explaining the origins of this latter and its key actors. The last part will deal with the UNAMID intervention. It will give an overview of the creation of the mission, an assessment of its work, and then a brief analysis of the causes of its ineffectiveness. Theoretical Framework Concepts Before analyzing UN peacekeeping operation (PKO) Darfur, we should first define the concept of peacekeeping and understand its role in order to be able to reflect on the UNAMID mission and its success or failure. Peacekeeping, as defined by the Cambridge dictionary, is the activity of preventing war and violence, especially the use of armed forces not involved in a disagreement to prevent fighting in an area. This definition is broad, and it does not specify the conditions under which the intervention can occur, nor the procedures that should be taken before that. For this purpose, we will take the definition of the UN and which defines peacekeeping as the deployment of international military and civilian personnel to a conflict area with the consent of the parties to the conflict in order to: stop or contain hostilities or supervise the carrying out of a peace agreement  [4]  . This definition adds two important points: the first one is that the interveners are international act ors, both military and civilians; and the second point stresses the agreement of the parties involved. It also exposes the role of these operations. This latter was further clarified by the International Peace Academy. It stated that the roles of the PKO are: the prevention, containment, moderation and termination of hostilities between and within states, through the medium of a peaceful third party intervention, using a multinational force of soldiers, police and civilians to restore and maintain peace. Hence, the developments in the practices and operations of peacekeeping resulted to the emergence of a set of concepts and terms that describe the different natures of the operations and tasks they undertake.  That is to say, peacekeeping has become a general concept which requires details of the selected sub-show style of operation that is intended in each particular case. These sub-divisions are defined in Boutous Ghalis Agenda for Peace. In this latter, he mentioned three conce pts: peacemaking, peace-keeping, and preventive diplomacy. The first one is defined as an action to prevent disputes from arising between parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur, the second one as an action to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through such peaceful means as those foreseen in Chapter VI of the Charter of the United Nations, and the third as a technique that expands the possibilities for both the prevention of conflict and the making of peace. It is noted that some operations may combine the properties of more than one type of peacekeeping operation. That is to say, the mission may begin according to one of the patterns but the developments on the ground may drive it to shift to another type of operation.  It is further noted that the different sub-divisions of the peacekeeping operations run in parallel, meaning that they did not cancel each other since the world is still witnessing all of these processes in different parts of it, depending on the situation and the circumstances that require one operation over the others. Literature review During the Cold War, the United Nations Charter put an integrated system for collective security. Theoretically, the system has the necessary components to ensure its effectiveness, which are general principles and rules agreed on and shared, namely: a device responsible for making sure the states respect these principles, and giving it the resources and capabilities so that it can do  the task of deterrence or punishment for states that cross the limits agreed upon.  However, the implementation of this system was conditioned by the acceptance of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which was impossible to achieve in most cases under the conditions of the cold war  [5]  . This created an obstacle for the implementation of the collective security system. In this case of polarization, the UN tried to find alternative mechanisms to deal with events of international violence and conflicts that arise in different areas throughout the world.  One of these mechanisms is the creation of peacekeeping operations. The creation of this latter was justified by the need to adopt methods designed to stop or contain conflicts that have turned into armed conflicts  [6]  . Besides, the PKOs would serve to deepen the gap that emerged between the arrangements set out in the Charter concerning reaching a peaceful settlement of disputes and contained in articles 28-33 (which gave the Security Council the main role in assisting States to resolve problems among themselves)  [7]  as well as the arrangements set out in articles 39   51 (under which the UN Security Council has the right to use force to impose peace)  [8]  on the one hand, and the possibilities for the actual implementation of these arrangements on the other hand. Thus, the UN interventions rose from only 14 between 1947 and 1987, to 32 between 1988 and 1997  [9]  . Particularly, UN intervention in Africa in extensive regarding the number of peacekeeping operations which are 27 in Africa compared to 39 in the rest of the world  [10]  . This can be explained by the various wars that occurred and occur in Africa, both inter and intra-states conflicts that differ in this severity, and that range from the dispute over land like the case of Benin, to the ethnic cleansing and genocide such as Rwanda. In 2003, the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) was created. Its goals are as follows: enhance international support for Africas development and security through its advocacy and analytical work,  assist the Secretary General in improving coherence and coordination of the UN system support to Africa, andfacilitate inter-governmental deliberations on Africa at the global level, in particular relating to the New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD)  [11]  . Moreover, the outcomes of the UN intervention in Africa are different, depending on the situation and the circumstances. Some of them manage to achieve the missions goals and hence are successful, others fail to implement the goals or part of them. Rhazaoui illustrates this idea by giving examples. He said: while Somalia and Rwanda illustrated the limitations of indecisive action by the Security Council, UN intervention in Mozambique succeeded in consolidating peace and mobilising adequate resources for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of that war-torn country  [12]  . Thus, UN is heavily interested in stabilizing and developing the African countries through various missions which have different goals depending on the situations. Nevertheless, these operations are not always successful due to a range of reasons related either to the state cooperation, or to the UNs organization and resources, and sometimes both. Conflict Theory The crisis in Darfur is a multidimensional conflict that can be explained in various ways be it ethnic, religious, ecologicalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ In order to understand the crisis, we will use conflict theory as a theoretical framework. This theory analyses conflicts economically. That is to say, the causes of conflicts, according to this theory, are the desire to redistribute scare sources, to in act incompatible roles, or to pursue incompatible value  [13]  . Society is composed of groups that are unequal in terms of wealth, distribution of resources and power, and hence, the disadvantaged struggle to ensure a kind of equality and defend their interests. So, using conflict theory as a theoretical framework, we will analyze the economic causes of conflict in Darfur both within the region (between the Darfurian tribes) and between the region and the government. Understanding the Crisis of Darfur Sudan, in northeast Africa, is the largest country in the continent measuring about one fourth the size of the USA. It neighbors nine countries (see map1 in appendix). Sudan is an authoritarian Republic because all power is in the hands of President Umar El-Bashir who has controlled government since military led coup in 1989. Sudan is a very fragmented nation with 400 languages and dialects and 600 cultural and ethnic groups  [14]  . Pre-conflict Situation The Darfur region is located in the western part of Sudan (see map2 in appendix). It is roughly the size of Texas  [15]  and has a pre-conflict population of approximately 6 million. It borders Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic. Darfur is known throughout history, as an independent state. It was colonized 18years after Sudan  [16]  . It has an ethnic, economic and political situation different from that of the north or the south in Sudan. The Arabic word Dar roughly means homeland and the population of Darfur is divided into several Dars, not only the Fur as its name suggests, but also in several other communities (see map3 in Appendix) determined by livelihood as much as ethnicity. However, this latter is not itself clear-cut, given the long history of racial mixing between indigenous non-Arab peoples and Arabs, who are now distinguished by cultural-linguistic attachment rather than race  [17]  . The Fur are peasant people and they occupy the central part of the region which is the richest and most stable area  [18]  in terms of land fertility and water resources. Also in its central zone are the non-Arab Masalit, Berti and Bergid peoples who are all sedentary farmers. The northern zone is Dar Zaghawa which is inherited by camel nomads, principally the Zaghawa who are non-Arab in origin, and the Arab Beni Hussein, Mahamid, Mahariya and Irayqat  [19]  . It is the most ecologically fragile of the three main zones and affected by drought. The eastern and southern zone of Darfur is occupied by the Arab nomads. They comprise Rezeigat, Habbaniya, Beni Halba and Taaisha. The area is severely affected by drought than the northern zone. economics Throughout history, the population of Darfur suffered from marginalization and neglect. This idea is stressed by Saleh who said that what can be deduced from 18th and 19th century Darfur is that government and elite alike have never treated the people of Darfur kindly  [20]  . He added that they were suffering from all kinds of injustice including slavery and high taxation  [21]  . Since Darfur was annexed by the British to Sudan, the former was excluded and abandoned by the successive governments  [22]  . Moreover, most Darfurians voted for the NIF, but once in power, they showed bias to the Arabs and neglected Darfur  [23]  . So, politically speaking, Darfur was not fully integrated in the dynamics of Sudan. Political system Key Actors In order to fully understand the conflict of Darfur and its dynamics, we need to know the actors involved, their background and their goals. Hence, we are going to discuss the Janjaweed as a government sponsored militias, the government as a double role actor in the conflict, and the two Darfurian rebel groups: the Sudanese Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement. In fact, we should mention that there are various other groups that are included in the conflict such as National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD), Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA)  [24]  , but they are not as important as SLM and JEM and hence we will focus on the two latter for their importance in Darfur Politics. The Janjaweed are Arab militias that are responsible for most of the damages in Darfur, in terms both of blood and treasure. To know who they are and how they emerged, we should go back in history. From the time of the Sultans, the camel-herding Abbala Reizeigat, to which belong the Janjaweed, had been a headache to the rule In the1980s, s of Darfur  [25]  . In the 1980s, the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) law was created with an objective of training men and women in civil and military tasks, to raise their level of security consciousness, and instill military discipline so that they can cooperate with the regular armed forces and security services  [26]  . Janjaweed became part of the PDF, the state paramilitary force  [27]  . The government, on the other hand, is government The Darfur Liberation Movement (DLM) was created during the late 1980, as a response to the activities of the Sudan government sponsored militias in Darfur, but became Sudanese Liberation Movement/ Army (SLM/A) in 2003 and an alliance of the tribal groups that oppose the government and their para-military militia groups  [28]  . The creation of SLA marked a formidable ideological shift from Darfur Liberation Front which was a secessionist movement premised on establishing a separate Darfur state, to a movement that aspires to create a democratic and more equitable Sudan. The SLA/SLM position on the unity of the Sudan is stated in its Political Declaration as follows: The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army is of the view that Sudans unity is of paramount importance, but it should not be maintained and cannot be viable unless it is based on justice and equality for all the Sudanese peoples. Sudans unity must be anchored on a new basis that is predicated on full acknowledgement of Sudans ethnic, cultural, social and political diversity. Viable unity must therefore ultimately be based on the right of self-determination and the free will of the various peoples of Sudan. The fundamental imperatives of a viable unity are an economy and political system that address the uneven development and marginalization that have plagued the country since independence, so that the interests of the marginalized majority are adequately catered for and they are brought to the same level of development of the ruling minority. The SLM/A shall work with all political forces that ascribe to this view.  [29]   The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) JEM The 2003 Crisis The conflict of Darfur turned out to be a humanitarian crisis, described by some as genocide and by others as the worst humanitarian crisis. As any conflict, it has various reasons varying from political, economic, ecological, and ethnic. However, we will deal with the economic ones as conflict theory considers the struggle over resources is the main cause of conflicts. Causes West Darfur has a population of approximately 1,7 million, most of them are African farmers from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes. The rest of the population of Darfur consists of Arab nomadic groups. Although both the black African and Arab tribes are all Muslim, they have a long history of clashes over land, crops and resources  [30]  . The fighting in Darfur is usually described as racially motivated, pitting mounted Arabs against black rebels and civilians; but the conflict has its causes in another dimension, between settled farmers and nomadic over failing lands. Until the rains began to fail, the nomads lived amicably with the settled farmers. The nomads were welcome passers. The farmers would share their wells, and the herders would feed their stock on the leavings from the harvest. However, with the drought, farmers who had once hosted the tribes and their camels were now blocking their migration because the land could no longer support both herder and farmer. Few tri bes drifted elsewhere or took up farming, but the Arab herders stuck to their lifestyle as part of their Arab identity  [31]  . Fertile land continued to decrease as desertification became more of a problem. Tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and African farming communities began a struggle over controlling an environment that can no longer support all the people who must live on it  [32]  . Another economic dimension to the conflict is between the Darfurians and the government. Darfur is the poorest state in Sudan. It has been neglected, abused, and underdeveloped and all tribes, Arab and African alike, suffered greatly from this. Even if Sudan became an oil exporter country with700 million barrel oil reserves, Darfur people suffer from hunger and frustration. more Consequences In 2000, pastoralists moved towards the south and disputed over the fertile region, so clashes were renewed, which resulted in violence that led to the deaths of more than three thousand people, displaced a million people and burned thousands of villages in two years. In 2003, the conflict entered a dangerous turn when rebels from the two groups (SLM and JEM) attacked government targets in Darfur, destroying aircraft on the runway and the occupying El Fasher for hours and then withdrawing to their positions, accusing the government of marginalization of the region, which lacks development. Thus, the government intervened military to stop the rebels. consequences UN intervention in Darfur The Creation of the UNAMID Did it fail? Reasons behind its failure Lack of Government Cooperation Lack of UN Resources

A Dose of Fear

Once on a dark, stormy autumn's evening, the grey fog hung so thick and heavy over the country lane that it blocked the view of the landscape. The gloomy, cumulonimbus clouds filled the thick, filthy air that smelt of dirty sewage water, as if there had been flames of fire that had let off a lot of smoke. You could hardly see a thing unless you had perfect vision. In the evening nearby an inconspicuously, deserted mansion that was about fifty metres away from the narrow, odd, tarmac road in the countryside, branches creaked and birds squeaked in their nests. It seemed to him like many days since he had begun to prepare his mind for â€Å"the camp† as he always called it. Seth Winston was a fifteen-year-old adventurous teenager who was so alive, vital and positive about everything. He also had a personality that one could not ignore. He had dark, brown eyes, short black hair and olive skin. His mother had died when he was born so he had never known or missed her. However, his young and handsome father seemed to be the only relation he had in the world apart from Ruth and Peter his caring and loving best friends. Ruth Mathews was sixteen years old, had blue eyes and ginger hair. There was more connection between her and Seth. On the other hand, Peter St John was an eighteen year old; who only had one thing in common with Seth and that was camping. That Saturday afternoon at half past two, Seth, Ruth and Peter set off to go camping in the countryside. This would have been their first camp ever without Seth's father because Peter was old enough to drive and owned a driving licence. â€Å"This is going to be the best camp ever,† said Seth in an excited voice as Peter started to drive. Three hours later nearly two hundred miles away from town, the weather began to change from slightly warm and sunny to heavy rainfall. As darkness drew closer, the rain got worse every minute and the country lane became too slippery to drive the car. â€Å"I think you need to stop at the side of the road until the weather gets better Peter,† said Ruth in a tentative voice. â€Å"Don't be silly, we've only got a few more miles to go until we reach the camping site,† said Peter in a voice that was struggling to hide the fear inside him. â€Å"Guys I think I see something,† Seth said loudly wishing it was a place to escape the unexpected heavy rain. â€Å"What is it?† Ruth and Peter both spoke at the same time desperate to find out what it was. â€Å"It looks like a house. A mansion.† Seth answered in an uncertain tone. â€Å"Let's go and check it out,† Ruth suggested positively as if she knew exactly what it was. Peter made a left turn and slowly drove down in the open space towards the secluded, big mansion. When they reached the faded, rusty gate, they stepped out of the car and put their coats on. It was open so it made it easier for them to get to the mansion. In approaching the mansion, there was a chill in the air as they hurriedly walked to the door. Ruth knocked on one of the huge oak doors although they were slightly open. She knocked five times and waited but there was no response. â€Å"Hello, is anybody here?† Ruth shouted as she echoed repeatedly and as water dripped from her round face. â€Å"Did you hear that? Someone just repeated what Ruth just said,† Seth said sarcastically. â€Å"Are you stupid? That was her echo, you fool,† Peter said in a rather unimpressed high pitch voice. Helplessly desperate for shelter, they decided to step inside. The view captured their eyes. Joined cobwebs smeared the walls and an unidentified smell of rot filled their nostrils. The dusty, mouldy ceilings dripped with water. Peter seemed to be more fascinated by the unusual scene than the other two, so without them noticing, he decided to take a tour around. The door creaked behind Peter as he escaped into the next room. With their heads held up high, Seth and Ruth looked to see where the sudden noise had come from. Just as they turned round, they were horrified by a dead bat, which had fallen two metres above their heads from the spider web that hung under the ceiling. They heard a loud scream coming from the next room on their left that sounded as if someone was being tortured. They fled into that treacherous room as fast as they could. On its walls were skulls portrayed in a devilish appearance splashed with rotten blood. When they looked down, they saw a half naked body viciously assaulted dripping with blood on the black tiled floor. The floor was littered with bones and headless skeletons that were gathered through the courts of time. Satanic crosses were marked all over the ceiling and the atmosphere was heinous. Seth and Ruth could not believe the monstrous view in front of their eyes. Horrendous injuries covered the body and the eyes had popped right out of the skull. They were wide open, stony with the glassiness of death. Only one nostril was left of the nose and was dripping with mucus and blood. The lips were deformed. With a grimace of his face, Seth wondered what kind of a vicious, menacing sinister who would do such a terrible act. The slimy small and large intestines were noticeable and cut open that they dared not to look at the brutal stomach, which looked as if it had had an abdominal surgery. â€Å"I'm so sorry Peter,† said Ruth in a petrified voice trying her hardest not to burst out in tears. â€Å"Who could do such damage to an innocent soul?† Seth questioned silently as tear drops fell from his eyes. Seth noticed a sombre shadow with an axe in its hand on the wall at his right hand side. At first, he did not say anything because he was not sure where it was coming from. â€Å"Ruth look out!† shouted Seth. â€Å"Where?† Ruth shouted back. â€Å"Behind you!† Seth answered in a despairing voice. Ruth looked behind her, widened her blue eyes in terrified horror while her jaw nearly dropped on the ground and screamed, â€Å"No!† At this moment, Seth had nothing else to say or do but save himself. He ran out of the room as fast as he could and raced to the other side of the mansion as if chased by hideous demons. This end had autumn leaves on the floor that two open triangular windows had let in. He fled into the nearest room that he believed was safe as he had the intension to hide. Although it was not as bad as the previous one, this room was damp and infested but with a gnaw feeling, Seth did not take any notice. There was a rustling noise; it grew louder and more persistent. When it started, Seth had thought that leaves were blowing in the sweeping wind but now it was far too loud for that. It sounded like someone stomping through crisp packets. The rustling turned to crunching, as if some huge animal was munching on a giant creamcraker. Seth shivered. He pulled his coat tightly around him because he was cold. He clenched his fists in his pockets. He stared at the floor in front of him and occasionally glanced nervously at the door handle. â€Å"You must keep calm,† Seth repeatedly said to his self as he breathed heavily as if he was starving from oxygen. Seth desperately looked at the impenetrable window wishing he were small enough to fit through so he could escape the haunting poltergeist. In the darkness of the fading light, the poltergeist's face had the pallor and sheen not so much of flesh so much of bone itself. Seth stared at it until his eyes ached in their sockets in surprise and bewilderment at its presence. With the combination of the peculiar, isolated room, the appearance of the poltergeist and the dreadfulness of its expression began to fill Seth with anxiety. Indeed Seth, never in his life was so threatened by anything like that. He had never known his heart to give such a great lurch, as if it would almost leap out into his shivering, dry mouth and then begin pounding in his chest like a hammer hitting an anvil. Seth never thought that a dose of fear would make his knees tremble and his flesh creep. He never imagined himself daunted and held fast by such dread, horror and apprehension of evil. His worst nightmares had resurrected.

Reality vs. Pretense: the Leading Binary Opposition in Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner”

â€Å"You can bend it and twist it; you can misuse and abuse it, but even God cannot change the reality,† the famous Michael Levy once said. This emblematic quotation assigns the pivotal basis for human beings upon which all other concepts are measured. It is the â€Å"reality† that none pursue but all worship. Since literary works spot the light on realities that people conceal, it is where binary oppositions are truly presented. D. H Lawrence's â€Å"The Rocking Horse Winner† is no exception. By presenting two main mythemes â€Å"Reality/Pretend† under the concept of attitudes, Lawrence shows how family members, society citizens and even inanimate objects prefer inferior pretense over superior reality. To begin with, the binary opposition of â€Å"Reality/Pretense† is intensively elaborated on by the attitudes of Paul's family. The mother, the uncle and Basset continue putting masks so as to obscure their real intentions towards Paul. The structure of the mother resides in her snake-changing conduct which perfectly conveys contradiction between authenticity and acting as if. She continually behaves as if she loves her children sincerely while â€Å"at the centre of her heart [there is] a hard little place that could not feel love. † The unstable make-believe deeds allow only for herself and her offspring to realize her real inner feelings even though not in front of others. The lack of verbal communication illustrates weakness within the family bonds substituting it with Paul's disapproving glares. By preferring silence over speaking, Paul himself portrays the unprivileged part of another binary: â€Å"presence/absence. The sky blue color of his eyes foreshadows his final end in which he leaves the earth to the skies. However, the uncle's role accumulates this pretend-you-care strategy in order to achieve maximum exploitation out of the child. Oscar shows care for the kid when asking Basset about the reason for Paul being interested in derbies. But digging deeper, one finds that it's the uncle who accompanies him to the derby and offers him five dollars. Furthermore, Basset alleges that he sympathizes with the child's interest. However, the hidden goal is no longer veiled; it's to squeeze out the little child for the sake of money. None of the family members acts in a real manner except Paul himself. What he has in pops out through his speech. Even this soothing reality changes at the end as the narrator says, â€Å"he [has] a secret within a secret, something he [has] not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar. † Just like his rocking horse, none of Paul's family experiences stability but take the side of inferior part of the binary opposition as their personality determiner. Secondly, pretending a higher status in society is the focus of the mother for which she emotionally abandons her family. As evidence, the narrator declares, â€Å"there [is] always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style [is] always kept up. † Camouflaging the real entitled financial status that the family maintains is what the mother approaches because such a reality would place her on the margins of society. The social networks are obviously built up according to pretended realities. This oxymoron is highly inflected in the way she and her husband expensively dress though the former only obtains â€Å"several hundred† as a salary. The mother's obsession with materialistic possessions forbids her from declaring the reality that they â€Å"are poor members of the family. † Instead, she incessantly pretends to have a prestige she doesn't really afford. The mother's egocentricity structure disintegrates the family and drives Paul to pay his life for her sake. Nevertheless, she quests a luxurious house to secrete their real pecuniary capabilities from society. For instance, the narrator asserts, â€Å"they live[s]in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they ha[ve] discreet servants, and [feel] themselves superior to anyone in the neighborhood. The inferior part of the binary opposition â€Å"Reality/Pretend† is what being avoided to speak about in public confirming the fact that unprivileged mythemes are not praised by society. This life-leading binary opposition is a core principle upon which all other binaries are measured including â€Å"satisfaction/ dis-satisfaction. † This is how readers are introduced to two complex binaries when the mother pretends satisfaction and hides the bona fide discontent. Structuralist Barthes emphasizes that binary oppositions are so etched in humanity's mind to the extent that one cannot conquer. Whether it's the plot structure or the characters’, they all confirm one fact: the quest for money to obey society ends up in a mother's guilt and a child's death. Last but not least, the spine-chilling means, by which inanimate objects in the house act, also contribute to the overall binary opposition that collapses the family. The house and toys pretend a realm of characteristics which are not taken for granted as real ones. The objective reality of the corruption of Paul's environment is based on the personified structures of those inanimate tems. The deluxe-looking house repeats â€Å"there must be more money† twelve times throughout the story leading Paul to a traumatic fall-down. A more convincing clue is illustrated by the fact that only at Christmas parties and birthdays, the house goes crazy and becomes haunted by the phrase. D. H Lawrence is actually intensifying the extreme contradiction between what characters are and what they do by delivering the binary op position under the concept of attitudes. It sounds as a plague moving from animate to inanimate ones. To add, the â€Å"big doll sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram† plays an important role in explaining the binary. â€Å"Smirking† is a sign in which the signified is â€Å"smiling,† and it also contrast reality with pretense. The denotation is to smile offensively with self-satisfied manner, and the connotation is about knowing the eerie truth of the house but not sharing it. It is the structure of the word that exposes unknown truths. Moreover, the puppy â€Å"look [s] so extraordinarily foolish† although it knows what the house breathes. That is related to another second-rate element in â€Å"wise/foolish† binary opposition. The idiotic acts of all residents of the house help them to accept pretense. Briefly, the binary isn't only engraved in humans, but also inanimate objects are affected by the ruined deception demonstrated by the house inhabitants. To conclude, the clashing attitudes which govern the relationship between family members, society citizens and non-living residents of the house add an emphasis to the inferior part of all binary oppositions; therefore they experience a deplorable end as a corollary for their un-approved choice. Structuralism doesn't allow for a truth on boundaries but for a conceivable objective accuracy. What manipulates humanity is made by humans themselves. We create and follow it regardless of our understanding or ignorance, thus preventing ourselves from finding a more productive reality. It's â€Å"Reality† which is the privileged in Barthes`s methodology, but Paul's surroundings don’t follow the center affecting him devastatingly. Back to Levy's first quotation, Lawrence's characters tries to misuse and abuse reality, but they cannot change it. Instead, they bury it and become ill-fated.