Atlantic Stingray (Dasyatis Sabina) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Atlantic Stingray (Dasyatis Sabina) - Essay Example DESCRIPTION: The Atlantic stingray, Dasyatis sabina (Lesueur 1824) has a disc shape typical to all stingrays, and it is one of the smallest in its family (Piercy). It has a spade-like body form, having a relatively long snout and a long, slender, whip-like tail (McEachran 177). It has a brown to or yellowish coloration on the dorsal side which goes lighter near the edges and white or light gray on the ventral side (Passareli). To distinguish it from other similar genera, characters such as a certain ratio of snout length (25-27% of the total disc width) and snout angle (maximum of 107-122Â °) confirm its species identity. The outer corners of the disc body are broadly-rounded, while the posterior margin is moderately convex. The floor of the mouth has a row of three stout papillae, and has 28-36 rows of teeth. Both males and females have similar-looking teeth, rounded and having flat, blunt surfaces, except during mating season when the males develop sharper and narrower sets for cl asping the female during copulation (Tricas 224). The tail is similar to a whip, long and tapered with a barb measuring up to 25% of the disc width, and this modified scale secretes venom from both the dorsal and ventral sides (Passareli). Maximum disc size could reach up to 12.8 inches in males and 14.6 inches in females living in coastal or brackish lagoons, while for freshwater rays sizes reach up to 8.7 inches for females and 8.3 inches for males. Like other members of the cartilaginous fishes, the Atlantic stingray is capable of generating weak electrical fields, both in finding prey and females at the benthic zone. FOOD: Food can be primarily anything that can be caught near the bottom of the habitat or the benthic zone, and these are mostly polychaetes, crustaceans, and bony fishes (McEachran 177). Other reported organisms that are hunted include bivalves, tube anemones, clams, nereid worms, and amphipods (Passareli). HABITAT: Atlantic stingrays live in brackish benthic water systems, where the saltwater meets fresh waters coming from estuaries (Johnson 75). There is a preference for sandy bottoms but with water depths less than 25m (Piercy). These fish migrate from brackish waters to fresh waters and back again, depending on the climate of the areas, which shows that they have varying but wide degrees of salt tolerance. Water temperature ranges for the species is around 24.5Â °C-31.0Â °C (Wallman 259). MATING: Initial studies mentioned that Atlantic stingray mating seasons start from late March when ovulation in females begin and lasts up to July (Johnson 74). Later studies indicated that the mating season could last as long as nine months, from August to April of the following year (Tricas 209). Changes seen in the males such as sharper teeth happen during the breeding season in order to clasp the females during copulation, which is comparable to some mating behavior of related species like in some sharks. PREDATORS: Predators depend on the location of the Atlantic stingrays. In brackish to coastal areas, sharks such as white shark, tiger sharks and bull sharks are the major predators (Passareli). In freshwaters, alligators are reported to be the major stingray predators. BEHAVIOR: Atlantic stingrays are non-aggressive fish, and only attack when stepped on (Passareli). When hunting for food, rays swim slowly near

Dystopian Society Present in 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 Essay Example for Free

Dystopian Society Present in 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 Essay The idea of a dystopian society is that of complete control, either through the use of a police state that has ultimate control over humanity and or the idea of man abusing technology to further gain control of its subjects. These ideas are very present in both novels. In 1984, the totalitarian state is technically and urbanely engineered to spy on and see peoples very thoughts. In Fahrenheit 451 a similar idea is used in the outlawing of literature and the use of denunciations to capture and punish those deemed to have broken the law. This essay is going to explore the idea of Man’s struggle against the society which seeks to break him, erasing the individual, resulting in the mindless slaves to society, the very idea that the authors warn against. In 1984, the constant barrage of information regarding the greatness of the state and Big Brothers supremacy over the common man forces everyone to consent and believe in the totalitarian state. The party justifies itself by eliminating the individual, giving power to everyone as being part of the collective power of the party as O’Brien mentions  «if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the party so that he is the party, then he is all-powerful and immortal  » the party’s belief that they control everything even human reality portrays how far a totalitarian government can go in achieving complete control of humanity. This can be clearly seen in 1984, where O’Brien tortures Winston to the point where he is capable of relinquishing all humanity, all common sense until the point where O’Brien tells Winston that two and two make five. Winston loses all sense of individuality to the point where conforms to the party and denounces his true love Julia. Through the use of fear and crushing oppression, the idea of love apart from love for big brother and the party is all that remains. Therefore the Party succeed in their aims, obedience through the use of force and fear. The central conflict of the novel is Man-vs. Society, as with Fahrenheit 451. Winston constantly struggled for individuality in a society were there is no â€Å"I† there is only ‘we†, individuality and freedom of expression is forbidden, punishable by death. The party wishes to control all of humanity, eradicating the â€Å"sex instinct†, O’Brien says  « we will abolish the orgasm  »  « there will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the party. There will be no love, except the love of big brother†¦ there will be no art, no literature, no science  », in this, the party’s aims are clear. They seek to destroy what it is to be human, to create a population of hollow men, loyal to none but the party, un-thinking, un-loving slaves of the party, tools. As in 1984, the state in Fahrenheit wish to crush creative thinking, eradicating humanity in the process. The burning of books, similar to the book burnings of Nazi Germany show the totalitarian, dystopian need to control the thoughts of the masses. By doing this, they control the past, and therefore the future. They are able to rewrite history to justify their acts, indoctrinating the youth to believe in their cause, just as the Nazis did. In Fahrenheit 451, as in 1984, symbolism and reversible meanings are present which can also be seen as conflicting emotions in the protagonist and the struggle to find a place in society. In 451, the contrasting ideas of fire and water are very interesting. The firemen are not as tradition tells, protectors of the people, putting out fires and saving lives, but using fire to burn and destroy literature. Their role is to destroy, to burn human creativeness. Captain Beatty, chief of the fire department, believes that fire is bright and fire is clean. This idea contradicts the norm of fire is destructive and evil. This represents the twisted ideas of authority, reversing the meaning of words, rewriting them to justify their aims of total control over humanity. The masses fail to see the true meaning of these words, or perhaps they have forgotten. This shows how far the totalitarian government has succeeded in indoctrinating people into believing what ever they wish them to. However, the protagonists in both novels are depicted as being marginalised because they do not share the same ideas, due to morals and ideals that they can only express in their minds, far from the reach of the state, a lonely free island in a sea of relentless waves. The idea of water by Bradbury is used to cleanse montag’s soul. The water saves Montag, cleansing him of the scent of society, he is thus reborn. In addition, when Montag is trying to escape the helicopters and the mechanical hound, the tools of the totalitarian government, the stream hides and saves him until it is safe to return to land. Montag indulges himself in the water and there was only the cold river and Montag floating in a sudden peacefulness, away from the city and the lights and the chase, away from everything in this the water saves him, purifies him, the opposite of the dystopian symbol, fire. Water is portrayed as the flow of humanity. In 1984, the party uses contrasting ideas in their party slogans such as  « War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength  » these contrasting ideas represent perfectly the party’s ideals. The individual and the freedom that comes with it actually results in slavery in the dystopian society, ignorance of the truth of what the party is really about protects you from persecution of the thought police. The use of these contradicting words and the lack of opposition, mean that the party have succeeded in their indoctrination of the masses as no one has the ability to see past the words to see their true sense, even Winston and Julia remain troubled by it. In a dystopian society, the state exerts complete control over its population through oppression, terror and the constant use of propaganda. This is apparent in both novels. Both novels are predictions of a future controlled by totalitarian states. The thoughtpolice in 1984 use brainwashing, spies and denunciations to control the party however the proles are generally untouched. This is similar to Nazi Germany in that only those who rebelled or were undesirables in society were quashed, the general population remained untouched. By comparing Nazi Germany and the era in which this novel was written, we can see the blatant warning against future governments similar to the National Socialists led by Hitler and the state of terror and oppression and ethic cleansing which was deemed for the greater good. O’Brien says to Winston â€Å"perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the party. † This shows the view that the totalitarian government controls all that is humanity and the lower classes remain irrelevant because they have neither the knowledge nor the power to overthrow those who control reality. They control the laws of nature, the past, the present and the future. However, Fahrenheit 451 does not elaborate on the political aims of the ruling party apart from their desire to quash human creativity and the ideas of individuality. Yet it remains a typical part of dystopian ideology to desire to control every aspect of the masses and even humanity itself. The use of the  « telescreen  » is an interesting concept that is abundant in both texts. The use of the telescreen in Fahrenheit 451 is that this became the populaces way of interacting with others without physically interacting with them, as people became detached from literature, from freedom. The people on these televisions were your family, who would keep you company and be your friend, spurting propaganda and essentially keeping people in check. The telescreen in 1984, shared the same idea but consisted of other more sinister uses such as spying on those suspected of thoughtcrime, revolutionary thoughts against the party, overhearing conversations and playing militaristic key speeches and propaganda techniques seen in Nazi Germany with the peoples radio. However this form of propaganda could never be switched off. This shows the ingsoc party’s ability to penetrate every single aspect of humanity and society, the idea that  « big brother is watching you  « is very well demonstrated. This of course being the reason why Winston and Julia were captured and tortured by the state. The use of the Telescreen can be noted in Winston and Julia’s struggle in that they are constantly bombarded by party propaganda, possibly overheard by the party through speakers hidden in the screen. This creates pressure to conform for fear of being found out and sent to the ministry of love for reconditioning. The underlying fear of the unknown bound them to neither conform nor rebel. They are lost in a society which they cannot escape and do not wish to be a part of, yet they have no choice. I believe that under this amount of pressure, anyone would fall and conform to whatever the Party demands, as the individual is no match for the collective power of the Party. Winston is not just a character in the story, but an idea. Winston is an anachronism. His mind and personality are not defined by the Party slogans, by the Party’s ideas of what he should be. From his own point of view he is an individual; from the Party’s point of view he is a flaw in the reality it is creating. The story follows Winston and his struggle for individualism and his overpowering feelings of humanity, the very feelings that the party try to destroy, which they eventually do through horrific torture spread over months. O’Brien says to him whilst trying to brainwash him  « you are the last man†¦you are the guardian of the human spirit.  » Winston then looks into the mirror and sees the frail creature that he had become. O’Brien does this to show the extent to which his party can destroy humanity and rebuild it to their designs. He then goes on to say  « Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.  » Convincing Winston that his struggle in futile, the control of the party is infinite, they create the law around them to meet their ends of controlling everything, and everyone. Winston is eventually brainwashed and ends up loving bigbrother, thus the aims of the party complete. In conclusion, the extent to which 1984 refers to a dystopian society compared to Fahrenheit 451 is at once different yet similar. The ideas of the party relate to those of the Nazis and soviet Russia; the lies, the oppression, the propaganda, the removal of civil liberties and the crushing of humanity. However 1984 is an extreme version of this prediction of the future. Fahrenheit explores more the emotional changes in Montag that convinces him to relinquish his part in destroying freedom of expression enforced by the fireman and the state and to embrace his curiosity and his humanity. 984 ends with the destruction of Winston, finally loving bigbrother, his love for Julia destroyed, his individuality crushed they had both failed themselves and each other and lost to power of â€Å"Big Brother. † Orwell was a firm believer in Marxism and the need for the proletarian to rise up and equalise society. These two tales are a warning of the dangers of dystopian societies, the need f or humanity to shed this society that has become so desensitised and to be aware of the reliance on technology, before it is too late.

The Perceptions Of Sexual Health Services Young People Essay

The Perceptions Of Sexual Health Services Young People Essay Objective: To investigate young peoples perceptions of sexual health services that they demand and sex education provided children. Design: Questionnaires based on open-ended questions. Setting: 30 young people (aged 19-21 years) surveyed at Anglia Ruskin University. Method: I interviewed young people using the questionnaires. Results: 80% young people think that Confidentiality and Friendly atmosphere and staffs easy to talk to are the important factors, when they ask someone sexual questions. On the other hand, they dont think that general advice about sexual health and other health matters is important factors. Also, they think that children should be taught different sexual health educations, such as How to say no to sex, Contraception, and Sexuality, Religious and Morality, at around 13 years old at school. Conclusion: I identified that young peoples demands towards sexual health services are comfortable atmosphere and reliable staffs, not sexual health knowledge and counsellors advice itself. Also, I felt that young peoples versions of the proper ages that children should learn each sex education are almost the same as that of general Japanese through this study. [Definition] The  World Health Organisation (WHO)  define sexual health as Sexual health is a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected and fulfilled. (1) According to AVERT which is an international AIDS charity define sex education as Sex education, which is sometimes called sexuality education or sex and relationships education, is the process of acquiring information and forming attitudes and beliefs about  sex, sexual identity, relationships and intimacy. Sex education is also about developing young peoples skills so that they make informed choices about their behaviour, and feel confident and competent about acting on these choices. It is widely accepted that young people have a right to sex education. This is because it is a means by which they are helped to protect themselves against abuse, exploitation, unintended pregnancies,  sexually transmitted diseases  and  HIV  and  AIDS. It is also argued that providing sex education helps to meet young peoples rights to information about matters that affect them, their right to have their needs met and to help them enjoy their sexuality and the relationships that they form. (2) [Introduction] Nowadays, the attentions on sexual health services and sex education towards young people have been increasing, because there are facts that the concept of sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS, Chlamydia, and Syphilis, has become more familiar to young people, and the number of unwanted pregnancies is increasing. Governments and organisations try to deal with the problems through providing places where people can learn sex education, or establishing special institutions providing sexual health services. In fact, there is The Sydney Sexual Health Centre in Sydney, Australia. They state on their site, The Sydney Sexual Health Centre provides a confidential and comprehensive service that helps put you in control of your sexual health. We do this by providing screening, vaccination and management of sexually transmissible infections (STIs) including HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, womens and mens sexual health care, education, individual and couple counselling, and needle and syringe program. The service is free and a Medicare card is not required. (3) They supply people with knowledge, advice, and testing for different sexually transmitted diseases for free. As a matter of course, there are many similar institutions in the UK, and such sexual health services are provided by National Health Service in each area. According to AVERT, the purpose of sex education is the following. Sex education aims to reduce the risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behaviour, such as unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and infection with sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. It also aims to contribute to young peoples positive experience of their sexuality by enhancing the quality of their relationships and their ability to make informed decisions over their lifetime. Sex education that works, by which we mean that it is effective, is sex education that contributes to both these aims thus helping young people to be safe and enjoy their sexuality. (2) I think that the supplies of sexual health services and sex education to young people are important for their health and future, so I decided to investigate whether they were taught about sex education at their school or not, and what images young people in Cambridge have regarding it. [Method] I created questionnaires which are consisted of open-ended questions, and those questionnaires are based on questionnaires designed by C Reeves, R Whitaker, R K Parsonage, C A Robinson, K Swale, L Bayley in their research paper, Sexual health services and education: Young peoples experiences and preferences. (4) I asked respondents to comment on services they expect counsellors or facilities providing sexual health services, and the right ages that children should be taught sexual relationship education at school. I interviewed 30 young people at Anglia Ruskin University. I tabulated the data, and I assessed the differences between groups. [Results] Young peoples demands towards sexual health services I asked young people, If you went for information/advice regarding contraception/health matters, how important would each of the following be to you? For your information, you can choose as many as you feel appropriate. Table 1 showed the results. According to the table 1, 80% young people answered that Confidentiality and Friendly atmosphere and staff easy to talk to are the significant aspects. Surprisingly, they replied that counsellors character and comradely atmosphere are more important than their advice or knowledge. As the third best answer, Tests for HIV and other sexual infections were an important factor for young people. 63% respondents agreed Emergency contraception is also a weighty factor. Those two aspects were concrete and visible rather than abstract and sensuous such as top two factors. Following that, Not telling your parents without your permission was the fifth best factor. This might mean that young people are afraid of their parents views of their sexual lives. Unplanned pregnancy counselling, and Pregnancy testing, were important factors, with 53% and 50% respectively. These results might show that young peoples contraceptive use is low when they have sexual relationships wi th their partner. Also, they look that they understand a risk of having a sexual relationship without a contraceptive item, such as a condom. Next, Young people answered that Being able to go without an appointment and General advice on sexual health are less important that above sections, with 33% and 30% each. Last, Advice on other health matters was the least important element for them. As I told above, to sum up, young people put importance on sexual health professionals character and the mood. On the other hand, they dont care about advice or knowledge from sexual health professionals. [Table 1] The proper ages of being taught each sex education Table 2 shows that the proper ages that children should be taught different sex education topics from the views of young people. According to the table 2, young people think that children should be taught the following sex education at around 13 years old. Interestingly, each age of Homosexuality and lesbianism, Sexuality, religions and moral values, HIV/AIDS and other STDs, Rape, Abortion, and Sexual abuse was slightly higher than other items. All of these items are related to individual belief regarding sexual relationships, or solemn problems, such as sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual violence. On the other hand, the ages of children being taught Contraception, How to discuss contraceptive use, and How to say no to sex were marginally lower than above one. Also, young people answered that children should be educated Role of emotions in sexual relationships sooner than others. According to the table 2, these 4 topics under 13 years old are more basic and central topics than the one over 14 years old. To sum up, young people believe that children should be taught sex education around 13 years old, but they also feel that there are proper stages of being taught each sexual education topic. [Table 2] [Conclusion] I found out that young peoples perceptions of sexual health services and sex education through this study. Firstly, I discovered that the strongest demand of sexual health services of young people is the mood and personality of counsellors providing sexual health services, not their knowledge and their advice itself. I think that the reason is young people can get information on sexual problems itself through the Internet, TV, and books. Therefore, I feel that they need the environment and people that provide them with the sense of safety and a feeling of trust in the counsellors. Similarly, their concern about sexually transmitted diseases was a high score, so this might mean that sexually transmitted diseases spread young people. According to the Health Protection Agencys report in the UK between 1999 and 2008 (5), the number of Syphilis rose dramatically from 223 to 2524. In the same way, there was a striking increase in the number of Chlamydia from 56991 to 123018. Also, the patients caused by herpes considerably increased from 17509 to 28957. Total number of patients went up by appro ximately 150000 only 10 years. In 1999, similarly, just over 3000 people were diagnosed with HIV in the UK. However, there were 7298 new diagnoses of HIV in 2008, so the increase was more than twice. On the other hand, young people dont need advices of sexual health and general health so much. As I stated above, I think that the reason why they dont put importance on these aspects is that they can get similar advice or much better information which are related to their problems through different ways, such as the Internet, magazines, and TV. Hence, they demand friendly atmosphere and conversable staffs on sexual health services. When I was 11, 12 years old, I studied sex education at my elementary school. So, I found that the ages that young people in Cambridge were taught sex education at school is almost the same as that of general Japanese people experienced at school. According to the table 2, young people think that children should be taught primary and fundamental sex education, such as Role of emotions in sexual relationships, Contraception, How to say no to sex, faster than others. I think that it is hard for children who are around 12 years old to understand completely the meaning of taking sex education, because most children dont have an interest in sexual activities at the age. However, sex education would be important for them in a few years later, so they should be taught basic sex education at the early stage. After that, they should learn more ethical and serious sex education, such as Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Abortion, and Rape. In my opinion, at the same time, I feel that governments and organisations should establish institutions providing sexual health services and sex education for some children who want to study and need it. In a consequence, childrens understanding about sex education would improve, so unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases would decline from a long-time point of view. I found out that young peoples demands towards sexual health services and the staffs, and their notion of the ages when children should be taught sex education at school through this study. However, I didnt explore the differences between gender, generation, and countries on this time. As future prospects, I feel that I should increase the number of respondents, and ask their gender, religion, gender, and nationality, and analyse the data. As a consequence, I could get more interesting and broad information regarding the perceptions of young peoples sexual health services and sex education.

Essay on Lust and Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Campion’s There

Lust and Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Campion’s There is a Garden in Her Face  Ã‚     Ã‚   When a comparison is made between There is a Garden in Her Face by Thomas Campion and Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare, the difference between lustful adoration and true love becomes evident. Both poems involve descriptions of a beloved lady seen through the eyes of the speaker, but the speaker in Campion's poem discusses the woman's beautiful perfections, while the speaker in Shakespeare's poem shows that it is the woman's faults which make her beautiful. In There is a Garden in Her Face, the subject of the speaker's affection is idolized beyond reality and is placed so high upon a pedestal that she is virtually unattainable. Campion uses metaphors and similes to compare the lady to the splendors of nature. Roses and cherries are repeatedly used to describe various parts of the lady, like her rosy cheeks and luscious lips. Her teeth are said to be made "[o]f orient pearl a double row" (line 8). The white of the pearl, the lilies and the snow build the image of a woman of purity and virtue. This notion of the lady as a divine creature is further emphasized by the many references to heaven. Her face is seen as "[a] heavenly paradise"(3), her eyes are "like angels"(13), and her lips are called "sacred cherries"(17). They are a forbidden fruit, similar to those of the garden of Eden, that no one may touch or even look at "[t]ill 'Cherry ripe!' themselves do cry" (5). The lady is viewed to be unapproachable unless she gives her permission to be approached. She seems cold and unfeeling when her brows are described as "bended bows" (14) ready to kill with "piercing frowns"(15), so it is likely that she does not give her permission easi... ...uty which is impossible for any woman or man to match. Campion's poem reflects this impossible ideal that society inflicts on us. This woman in There is a Garden in Her Face could never really live up to the image that the speaker has created of her. The image is false, and so is his love because he is only focusing on her outward appearance. The speaker in Shakespeare's sonnet clearly is not in love with his mistress' looks. Everything about her is contrary to society's standards, but he understands the absurdity of these standards and rejects them. There is more to his mistress than meets the eye, and that is why he truly loves her.   Works Cited Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: Norton, 1993. Campion, Thomas. "There is a Garden in Her Face." Abrams 1044. Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 130." Abrams 820.       Essay on Lust and Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Campion’s There Lust and Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Campion’s There is a Garden in Her Face  Ã‚     Ã‚   When a comparison is made between There is a Garden in Her Face by Thomas Campion and Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare, the difference between lustful adoration and true love becomes evident. Both poems involve descriptions of a beloved lady seen through the eyes of the speaker, but the speaker in Campion's poem discusses the woman's beautiful perfections, while the speaker in Shakespeare's poem shows that it is the woman's faults which make her beautiful. In There is a Garden in Her Face, the subject of the speaker's affection is idolized beyond reality and is placed so high upon a pedestal that she is virtually unattainable. Campion uses metaphors and similes to compare the lady to the splendors of nature. Roses and cherries are repeatedly used to describe various parts of the lady, like her rosy cheeks and luscious lips. Her teeth are said to be made "[o]f orient pearl a double row" (line 8). The white of the pearl, the lilies and the snow build the image of a woman of purity and virtue. This notion of the lady as a divine creature is further emphasized by the many references to heaven. Her face is seen as "[a] heavenly paradise"(3), her eyes are "like angels"(13), and her lips are called "sacred cherries"(17). They are a forbidden fruit, similar to those of the garden of Eden, that no one may touch or even look at "[t]ill 'Cherry ripe!' themselves do cry" (5). The lady is viewed to be unapproachable unless she gives her permission to be approached. She seems cold and unfeeling when her brows are described as "bended bows" (14) ready to kill with "piercing frowns"(15), so it is likely that she does not give her permission easi... ...uty which is impossible for any woman or man to match. Campion's poem reflects this impossible ideal that society inflicts on us. This woman in There is a Garden in Her Face could never really live up to the image that the speaker has created of her. The image is false, and so is his love because he is only focusing on her outward appearance. The speaker in Shakespeare's sonnet clearly is not in love with his mistress' looks. Everything about her is contrary to society's standards, but he understands the absurdity of these standards and rejects them. There is more to his mistress than meets the eye, and that is why he truly loves her.   Works Cited Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: Norton, 1993. Campion, Thomas. "There is a Garden in Her Face." Abrams 1044. Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 130." Abrams 820.      

The Glass Menagerie (Critical Article #1)

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association http://apa. sagepub. com Tennessee Williams: The Uses of Declarative Memory in the Glass Menagerie Daniel Jacobs J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2001; 50; 1259 DOI: 10. 1177/00030651020500040901 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apa. sagepub. com/cgi/content/abstract/50/4/1259 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: American Psychoanalytic Association Additional services and information for Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association can be found at: Email Alerts: http://apa. agepub. com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://apa. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations http://apa. sagepub. com/cgi/content/refs/50/4/1259 Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 jap a Daniel Jacobs 50/4 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: THE USES OF DECLARATIVE ME MORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE Tennessee Williams called his first great work, The Glass Menagerie, his â€Å"memory play. The situation in which Williams found himself when he began writing the play is explored, as are the ways in which he used the declarative memory of his protagonist, Tom Wingfield, to express and deal with his own painful conflicts. Williams’s use of stage directions, lighting, and music to evoke memory and render it three-dimensional is described. Through a close study of The Glass Menagerie, the many uses of memory for the purposes of wish fulfillment, conflict resolution, and resilience are examined. T he place: St. Louis, Missouri.The year: 1943. Thomas Lanier Williams, age thirty-two, known as Tennessee, has returned to his parents’ home. He has had a few minor successes. Several of his shorter plays have been produced by the Mummers in St. Louis. For another, staged by the Webster Grove Theater Guild, he was awarded an engraved silver cake plat e. He has retained Audrey Wood as his literary agent and with her help had several years earlier won a Rockefeller fellowship to support his writing. But Williams’s Fallen Angels bombed in Boston the previous summer.Its sponsor, the Theater Guild, decided not to bring the play to New York. Since obtaining a B. A. from the University of Iowa in l938, Williams has been broke more often than not. He has no home of his own. He’s led an itinerant existence, living in New Orleans, New York, Provincetown, and Mexico, as well as Macon, Georgia, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; faculty, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.Submitted for publication October 12, 2001. Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1260 Culver City, California. He has subsisted on menial jobs—waiting tables, op erating an elevator, ushering at movie theaters—tasks for which he is not f itted and from which he is often f ired. His vision in one eye is compromised by a cataract that has already necessitated surgery. And just before moving back home from New York, he was beaten up by sailors he took to the Claridge Hotel for a sexual liaison.Arriving home in 1943, Tennessee f inds many things unchanged: his parents, Cornelius and Edwina, remain unhappily married and their bitter quarrels f ill the house. Williams must again deal with the father he despises. Tennessee is pressured by Cornelius, who opposed his return home, to f ind a job. If Tennessee will not return to work at the International Shoe Company, as Cornelius advises, then he must earn his keep by performing endless domestic chores. But it is the changes in the family that are even more troubling. Williams’s younger brother Dacon is in the army and may be sent into combat after basic training.His maternal grandparent s have moved in because Grandma Rose, now conf ined to an upstairs bedroom, is slowly dying. Most important of all, Tennessee’s beloved sister, also named Rose and two years older than he, is no longer at home. She has in fact been at the State Asylum in Farmington since l937. Diagnosed schizophrenic, she has recently undergone a bilateral prefrontal lobotomy to control her aggressive behavior and overtly sexual preoccupations. During this stay at home, Williams visits Rose for the f irst time since her surgery.He f inds her behavior more ladylike, but she remains clearly delusional. The lobotomy, Williams realizes, was â€Å"a tragically mistaken procedure† that deprived her of any possibility of returning to â€Å"normal life† (Williams 1972, p. 251). â€Å"The poor children,† he will write of his St. Louis childhood, â€Å"used to run all over town, but my sister and I played in our own back yard. . . . We were so close to each other, we had no need o f others† (Nelson 1961. p. 4). Now, for Tennessee, Rose is irretrievably lost except as a memory, alternately recalled in pain and shut out in self-defense.Williams cannot abide his situation, thrown amid his parents’ bitter quarrels, the slow death of his grandmother, and the terrible absence of his sister. His only escape: the hours of writing he does every day in the basement of the family home. Here, between washing garage windows and repairing the gutters on the back porch, he writes the â€Å"memory play† that he f irst calls The Gentlemen Caller and then Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE The Glass Menagerie.The play is a brilliant, profound, and intricate study of declarative memory and its psychological uses. DECLARATIVE MEMORY Declarative memory is the system that provides the basis for conscious recollection of facts and events. But this system, we know, is not just a warehouse of information, of veridical memories of actual happenings that can be retrieved at will. Rather, like an autobiographical play, declarative memory is a creative construction forged from past events and from the fears, wishes, and conf licts of the one who is remembering.As Schacter (1995) notes, â€Å"The way you remember depends on the purposes and goals at the time you attempt to recall it. You help paint the picture during the act of recalling† (p. 23). It was just this complex and creative aspect of memory formation that led Freud (l899) to write that â€Å"our childhood memories show us our earliest years but as they appeared in later periods when memory was aroused† (p. 322). The stories we tell of our lives are as much about meanings as they are about facts. In the subjective and selective telling of the past, our histories are not just recalled, but reconstructed.History is not recounted, but remade. Williams understood this when he wro te, in the stage directions of The Glass Menagerie, that â€Å"memory takes a lot of license, it omits some details, others are exaggerated to the emotional value of the article it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart† (p. 21). Williams has Tom Wingf ield, the play’s protagonist, tell us this. In his opening speech, Tom is both creative artist and unreliable rememberer: â€Å"I have tricks in my pockets. I have things up my sleeve. . . . I give you truth in the pleasant guise of illusion† (p. 2). In this way, Williams warns us from the play’s beginning that memory is a tricky business—f ickle, changeable, susceptible to distortion and embellishment, but always true to the current emotional needs of the rememberer. This paper is an exploration of the emotional needs of the rememberer—of Tom Wingfield, the rememberer in the play, and Tom Williams, the rememberer as writer. Williams could have chosen any f irst name for his protagonist. He chose his own to emphasize the loosening of boundaries between fact and f iction.It is as though he is telling us that autobiography—which is, after all, organized declarative memory—is Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1261 Daniel Jacobs 1262 an elaborate f iction based on facts. And that f iction (the creative use of memory) is at its heart emotional autobiography. Both Tom Wingf ield and Tom Williams carry a burden of guilt for leaving the family, especially a disabled sister, and have a need to justify their behavior through the use of recollection.Both Toms live with deep sorrow alongside a wish to retaliate against loved ones who have disappointed them. Remembering is for both Toms, as for all of us, a coat of many colors, worn to set us apart from others as well as link us to them, to justify our choices, to take revenge on others, to compete with them, to kill them once again, or to resur rect them from the grave. The distortions and selective uses of memory are as manifold as the needs of the rememberer. Williams endows each character in his play with his or her own dynamic uses of memory.Amanda can escape the harshness of her current situation by evoking memories of a triumphant past. She is like a patient Kris (l956b) describes who â€Å"while the tensions of the present were threatening . . . was master of those conjured up in recollection† (p. 305). Amanda’s use of memories is aggressive as well, used as a weapon against her husband and children. In constantly contrasting the memories of a happy youth with the unhappiness of her marriage and the bleakness of her children’s lives, her anger and competitiveness take a brutal form. Unlike Amanda, her daughter Laura, who is crippled, has relatively few memories.But the memory of Jim, the gentleman caller, provides her a modicum of comfort. In a pale and pathetic imitation of her mother’s recollections of a house f illed with jonquils, she recalls that Jim gives her a single bouquet of sorts, the sobriquet â€Å"blue roses. † It is a nickname derived from his psychologically intuitive misunderstanding of the illness â€Å"pleurosis,† which had kept Laura out of school. She cannot compete with her mother in the fond memory department and retreats to the concrete but fragile satisfactions of her glass menagerie, where memory and imagination are safely stored—until Jim arrives.The gentleman caller is a man who lives in the present and seems to have little use for the past. It is the future to which he looks. In fact, one feels that memory of his high school greatness are both a satisfaction and a threat to him. For he, like John Updike’s Harry Angstrom (1960) will never experience the glory days of the past. He says as much to Laura: â€Å"But just look around you and you will see lots of people disappointed as you are. For instance, I had h oped when I was going to high school that I would be further along at this time, six years later, Downloaded from http://apa. agepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE than I am now. You remember that wonderful write-up I had in ‘The Torch’ † (p. 94). While Amanda revels in her triumphant past as a way of dealing with the present, Jim runs from his into the future. Seeing in the crippled Laura some aspect of his own feared limitations, he tries to help her overcome hers through encouragement and f inally a kiss. His inability to help her in the end may be a harbinger of his own failures.MEMORY AND LOSS Williams was aware also that declarative memory is paradoxical in that it resurrects and keeps alive in the present what is dead and gone forever. Referring to this paradoxical aspect of memory, he wrote that â€Å"when Wordsworth speaks of daffodils or Shelley of the skylark or Hart Crane of the delica te and inspiring structure of the Brooklyn Bridge, the screen imagism is not so opaque that one cannot surmise behind it the ineluctable form of Ophelia† (Leverich 1995, p. 536). The very presence of memory implies loss.Memory, if you will, is the exquisite lifelike corpse that both denies and acknowledges what has passed away. There is for all of us that double vision that memory imparts, one that at once has the capacity to help and to hurt. Declarative memory provides coherence and direction to our lives, but also reminds us that our path inevitably leads to disintegration and death. The daffodils recollected in tranquility are, at the same time, Ophelia’s garland. Amanda Wingf ield’s recollection of her past social triumphs only reminds us of how much time has passed and how many hopes have been dashed.Laura’s attachment to the happy memories of childhood innocence represented by her glass menagerie only makes harsher the realities of her adult life an d the bleakness of her future. Laura and Amanda are represented as having a choice between the infantile omnipotence of their past or a feeling of victimization in the present. When Amanda stirs up old memories as a hedge against the painful present and uncertain future, they are only partially effective. For the contrast between past and present, and the knowledge that what is past will never come again, lead only to further depression and anxiety (Schneiderman 1986).Similarly, behind Tom the protagonist’s memory of Laura at home lies, for Tom the author, the real Rose in a current state of institutionalized madness. Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1263 Daniel Jacobs MEMORY AND RESILIENCE 1264 Davis (2001) points out the contribution declarative memory can make to resilience â€Å"through soothing af fects that are evoked in recalling a declarative memory of a loving relationship with a parent or other important pe rson† (p. 459).Such memories can grow directly out of warm relationships or â€Å"they can be achieved through retrieving and modifying memory of more problematic attachments† (p. 466). Davis illustrates his point with the example of Mr. Byrne, a subject in a longitudinal study of adult development. Davis focuses on the fact that in interviews at different times in adult life, Mr. Byrne’s memories of his father changed. At age forty-six, surrounded by a supportive community and family, Mr. Byrne had no memories of his alcoholic and neglectful father and did not think his father’s being a f ireman had inf luenced his own decision to become one.At sixty-six, retired and with his children grown, Mr. Byrne â€Å"had succeeded in ‘f inding’ his father inside as a sustaining inner object in declarative memory (p. 465). He did so through creating or retrieving warm memories of their times together in the f irehouse and by ‘misrememberingâ€⠄¢ the humiliating events of his father’s death so as to have a more positive image of him. Mr. Byrne’s father had committed suicide, alone and away from the family. But late in life, Mr. Byrne spoke frequently of his father’s having taken him to the f ire station when he was a youngster.He was now sure these happy times with his father had inf luenced his decision to become a f ireman himself. He placed his father’s death in a family setting and claimed to have been the one who found him. Davis points out that we often create the memories we need in order to maintain psychological resilience and mental health. Whatever good experiences Mr. Byrne did have with a diff icult and neglectful father seem to have been magnif ied through the lens of memory aided by imagination in the service of wish fulf illment.It is an example of what Kris (1956a) meant by describing autobiographical memory as telescopic, dynamic, and lacking in autonomy: â€Å"our autobiogra phical memory is in a constant state of f lux, is constantly being reorganized, and is constantly being subject to the changes which the tensions of the present tend to impose† (p. 299). In a way, Williams does the same thing by creating a memory play. Lonely, guilty over his sister’s fate, f inding St. Louis and his family unbearable, Williams begins writing a play that both ref lects his current Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. om at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE suffering and at the same time assuages it. In writing The Glass Menagerie, he creates for himself one of those delicate glass animals— a small tender bit of illusion that relieves him of the austere pattern of life as it is lived in the present and makes it more bearable. He does so not by setting his play in the harsh realities of the present, too painful to write about, but in creatively altered memory. Sitting at his writing table, Wil liams reclaims his sister (Laura in the play) from the State Asylum and places her at home again.She is not frankly delusional and lobotomized. She is not even in Rose’s presurgical state of illness—a state of aggressiveness and talkativeness made worse by utter and unending vulgarity. Instead, she is portrayed as painfully shy, weak, and schizoid. And Cornelius, the real-life father he must face daily, is gone. Gone from the play for dramatic purposes to be sure: the play would lose a certain edge were there another breadwinner in the house. But in the play, Williams expresses his wish to reconstruct reality and, in this play of memory and desire, rid himself of the old man.Yet he is not entirely gone, for the father’s picture hangs on the wall, like Hamlet’s ghost, reminding us of a son’s ambivalent longing for a father. For in 1943 and throughout his life, Williams longed for some man to comfort and help him. In the play, his own wish for a supp ortive, loving father is transformed into the wish for the gentleman caller—someone who, unlike his father, will help Laura, satisfy Amanda, and, by his assuring presence, bless Tom’s own departure. He is not only the person Williams longs for, but also the one he longs to be, though he knows it is a role he can never play.It is no accident then that Jim, the gentleman caller, conveys an uncomfortable uncertainty about his future. He is, in a sense, the failed high school â€Å"hero,† with perhaps unrealizable dreams for the future. Jim already hints that the realities of life may not meet his expectations. He expresses resentment at having to work at two jobs: his work and his marriage, in which he has to â€Å"punch the clock† every night with Betty. He is f lirtatious with Laura, even going so far as to kiss her, showing a clear sympathy and attraction to women other than his f iancee.Tennessee’s father, a bitter man from a prominent Southern fa mily, a heavy drinker and a womanizer, while banned from the play, haunts it through his portrait and is resurrected in the f lesh in Jim, who is likewise disappointing and cannot be counted on and who, in the future, may come to resemble Cornelius. In his own life, Williams found and lost gentlemen callers hundreds of times over. And when he was Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1265 Daniel Jacobs ot looking for the gentleman caller, he was being one, abandoning and disappointing those who loved him. The only one he was truly faithful to was Rose. Memories are like dreams or fantasies in that all the characters remembered at a particular moment may represent aspects of the rememberer’s own personality. Amanda’s steely will to survive is ref lected in Tom’s stubborn insistence on leaving. Laura’s fragility and submissiveness are what he must try to get away from in himself. Jim is the artist manque , the average joe Tom fears he will become if he doesn’t leave. THE STAGING OF MEMORY 1266Through the very structure of his play and the physical placement of its characters, Williams shows us that we cannot have a past without a present or a present uninf luenced by the past. He takes us back and forth in time as Tom Wingf ield literally steps in and out of the railroad f lat of his memory. He both ref lects on his past and participates in it, as his memories come alive. All the play’s characters slip in and out of memory, from present to past and back again, as they interact with one another, forging their current identity and present relationship in the anvil of a past they selectively remember.The stage set that Williams proposed concretizes the alternating forward and backward movement of time that takes place in the characters’ and in all of our minds. Tom’s opening soliloquy is stage front in the present and is often played outside the apartment. T he scene that follows is from the past, set in a dining room at the back of the stage, as if to emphasize the remoteness of memory. The f igures move backward and forward on stage, like memories themselves, coming into consciousness and then receding. Lighting is used in a similar way: to emphasize through spotlighting the highly selective and highly cathected aspects of memory.Lightness and darkness, dimness and clarity, play an important role in the ambience of the play, heightening the shifting play of memory. Williams is specif ic about the use of lighting in his production notes for The Glass Menagerie: â€Å"The lighting in the play is not realistic. In keeping with the atmosphere of memory, the stage is dim. Shafts of light are focused on selected areas or actors, sometimes in contradistinction to what is the apparent center. . . . A free and imaginative use Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. om at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE G LASS MENAGERIE of light can be of enormous value in giving mobile, plastic quality to plays of more or less static nature† (Williams 1945, p. 10). By commissioning an original musical score, Williams makes a deliberate attempt to evoke memory in members of the audience— memories of their own youthful stirrings, with all the fears and pleasures that attend them. Schacter (1996) notes that it is the memories of adolescence and early adulthood that are most often retained as we grow older.In asking Paul Bowles to write a new piece of music for his play, Williams, I think, is playing with the notion that memory is a new creation, similar to Bowles’s new music, Williams counts on the fact that while the score has never been heard before by the audience, it nevertheless feels familiar and seems a part of one’s previous experience. While the music may stimulate declarative memories of young adulthood in the audience, by its wordlessness it is designed to evoke no ndeclarative memory experienced as a feeling state (Davis 2001).By using a new score rather than relying on familiar tunes, Williams insists that memory is an invention of the present rather than a reproduction of the past. CONCLUSION 1267 So we have Tom Williams in his basement room writing about Tom Wingf ield. His protagonist is thrust both forward and backward in time: Tom Wingf ield in 1945 is ref lecting on a time before World War II began. Tom Wingf ield is Tennessee and not him at the same time. The memories Williams calls forth from his own experiences are transformed in ways that are not only dramatically but psychologically necessary for the author.Rendering the truth through selective and transformed memory, Williams creates his own glass menagerie to which he could each day retreat from the harsh realities of his life in St. Louis in l943. He creates fragile f igures he can control, moving them around the imagined setting of creative memory. In creating the play, he can always be near Rose. On the page and on the stage, the two are bound forever, like f igures on a Grecian urn. At the same time, the play is a justif ication for Tennessee’s departure from the family, a plea for understanding as to why he must leave the altered Rose (his castrated self) behind and pursue his own path.Freud (1908) pointed out how both in creative writing and fantasy â€Å"past, present, and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1268 them† (p. 141). In the process of writing The Glass Menagerie, the infantile wish to reunite with Rose, to rid himself of a hateful father, and to overcome the threats of castration that Rose’s situation and his own imply, f inds a solution to his torments.He does what Tom Wingf ield does in the play. He leaves. By May of l943, Tennessee is on his way to Hollywood to b ecome, for a short time, a screenwriter. But like Tom Wingf ield, Tennessee cannot leave his past behind. He will be as faithful to Rose as Tom Wingf ield is to Laura when at the play’s end he says, â€Å"I tried to leave you behind me, but I am much more faithful than I intended to be† (p. 115). Of their relationship, Rasky (l986) wrote, â€Å"Just as Siamese twins may be joined at the hip or breastbone, Tennessee was joined to his sister, Rose, by the heart. . . In the history of love, there has seldom been such devotion as that which Tennessee showed his lobotomized sister† (p. 51). Peter Altman, former director of Boston’s Huntington Theater, points out how with the writing of The Glass Menagerie Williams blows out the candles on an overtly autobiographical form of writing and moves on to create full-length plays less obviously reliant on the concrete details of his own history (private communication, 1997). While he could never psychologically free h imself from the traumatic events of his upbringing, artistically he was able to move ahead.By creating within and through the play his own glass menagerie, where the characters are f ixed and can live forever in troubled togetherness, he grants himself permission to leave St. Louis once again. Such a creation is akin to Kris’s description of the personal myth (1956a): â€Å"A coherent set of autobiographical memories, a picture of one’s course of life as part of the self-representation [that] has attracted a particular investment, it is defensive inasmuch as it prevents certain experiences and groups of impulses from reaching consciousness. At the same time, the autobiographical self-image has taken the place of a repressed fantasy . . † (p. 294). But in the patients Kris described, sections of personal history had been repressed and the autobiographical myth created to maintain that repression. In Williams’s case, he is quite conscious of the distortions in his â€Å"memory play,† but creativity serves a function for the artist similar to that served by personal myth in Kris’s patients. Williams is able to separate further from his family by keeping himself, through his memory play, attached to them forever, selectively remembered and frozen in time in a way painful, yet acceptable, to him.By writing the play, a visual representation of memory and Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE wish, Williams creates a permanent wish-fulf illing hallucination providing gratif ication and psychic survival (see Freud 1908). Of his sister Rose’s collection of glass animals, which was transformed into Laura’s glass menagerie, Williams wrote that â€Å"they stood for all the small tender things (including, I think, happy memories) that relieve the austere pattern of life and make it endurable to the sensitive.The areaway [t he alley behind his family’s f lat in St. Louis, where cats were torn to pieces by dogs] was one thing—my sister’s white curtains and tiny menagerie of glass were another. Somewhere between them was the world we lived in† (Nelson 1961, p. 8). What enables Williams to survive psychically and adds to his resilience in St. Louis in l943 is, I believe, his ability to create a space between the bitter realities of family life and his impulse to f lee and forget it all—to blow out the candles of memory.That space was his memory play, a space he inhabited daily through his writing, a space of some resilience where psychologically needed memories are created amid the pain and sorrow of the present. And in so doing, he reminds us all of the role memory plays in our survival. Our memories are like glass menageries, precious, delicate, and chameleonlike. We can become trapped by them like Laura and Amanda. Or, as in the case of Tennessee and Mr. Byrne, we can gain resilience from their plasticity that allows us to move forward psychologically.Williams wrote, in his essay â€Å"The Catastrophe of Success† (1975), that â€Å"the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition† (p. 17). Tennessee felt that for him the heart’s opposition could best be expressed through writing. He felt that the artist, his adventures, travels, loves, and humiliations are resolved in the creative product that becomes his indestructible life. (Leverich 1995, p. 268) I think he might have agreed that while creative work plays that role for the artist, memory and fantasy are its equivalent for all of us.Williams knew that it is through the creative transformation of experience, sometimes in verse, sometimes in memory, that we draw nearer to that â€Å"long delayed but always expected something we live for† (1945, p. 23). REFERENCES 1269 DAVIS, J. (2001). Gone but not forgotten: Declarative and non-declarative memory processes and their contribution to resilience. Bulletin of the Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1270 Menninger Clinic 65:451–470. FREUD, S. (1899). Screen memories. Standard Edition 3:301–322. ——— (1908). Creative writers and day-dreaming.Standard Edition 9:143–153. K RIS , E. (1956a). The personal myth. In The Selected Papers of Ernst Kris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 272–300. ——— (1956b). The recovery of childhood memories in psychoanalysis. In The Selected Papers of Ernst Kris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 301–340. LEVERICH, L. (1995). Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: Norton. NELSON, B. (1961). Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work. New York: Obolensky. RASKY, H. (1986). Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation. Niagara Falls: Mosaic Press . SCHACTER, D. (1995).In Search of Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. SCHNEIDERMAN, L. (1986). Tennessee Williams: The incest motif and f ictional love relationships. Psychoanalytic Review 73:97–110. UPDIKE, J. (l960). Rabbit, Run. New York: Knopf. WILLIAMS, T. (1945). The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Direc-tions, l975. ——— (l972). Memoirs. New York: Doubleday. ——— (l975). The catastrophe of success. In The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions, 1975, pp. 11–17. 64 Williston Road Brookline, MA 02146 E-mail: [email  protected] com Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009

American Online Case Study

Q1: The major explanations to the reason why AOL was so successful in the commercial online industry comparing to its competitors CompuServe and Prodigy are as follows:  · AOL offered the unique and board range of features such as Online Community, Computing and the like, so their services are relatively differentiated  · AOL kept good relation with its customer because of the easy access to AOL’s online service which only required to have a personal computer, a telephone line, and a computer, and also reflected in AOL’s rate structure which was the easiest for consumers to understand and anticipate, relative to its competitors  · The bargaining power of AOL with supplier is achieved by making strategic partnership with American Express, and so on; and completing its acquisitions of Internet software developers, along with AOL’s growing membership base, in order to strengthen its new interactive services industry by means of pursuing a number of initiatives .  · The threat of new enchant is low, since there is not much service providers, like AOL, acted as middlemen between thousands of content providers and millions of customers, which provided lucrative profits prior to 1995. Q2: There are several crucial changes happened in the commercial online industry in the year of 1995 and after:  · With the advent of the Internet World Wide Web and the entrance of Microsoft Network, content providers had substitution distribution channels that offered greater control over their products  · Under the background that the migration of proprietary services and content to Web sites, the exclusive offerings of AOL was declining, thus it was likely reduce the market share of AOL in the industry and subsequently posed negative effect on its profitability  · Since everyone with a PC was his/her own publisher, customers would sign up for an Internet on-ramp service provided by other companies and they were tend to use the other companies’ browsing software to surf the world’s database, resulted in the situation that content providers were starting to make use of these distribution channels. Q3. Based on the annual reports and footnotes, AOL’s accounting policy was to capitalize subscriber acquisition costs prior to 1995, which in my view, was not likely to be justified in that period based, for the uncertainty whether ts customers could migrate to the internet still remained since this would probably affect the growth in its subscriber and the profit of its services, although the CFO of AOL attributed the choice to the explanation that the period over which the revenue would be received was matching with the timing the expense, yet there was a rising gap between the reported income and its tax income, except for a big change in its service quality, these two numbers bear a consistent relationship to each other. Q4. The company should shorten the length of amortisation of the acquisition costs instead of extending it. The reason of this assertion are based on the life cycle of the industry which was supposed to be relatively short and because of the constantly cha nging environment of the commercial online industry with huge uncertainties, which was likely to require conservative accounting policy to reflect the financial figures so as to better match revenues with expense. Nevertheless, AOL even extended the amortization period for its subscriber acquisition cost from about 15 months to 24 months, which made it would be tend to face big risks when customers switched to other online service under uncertainty. Therefore, the company’s response seems to be inconsistent with my view. Q5. If AOL followed the policy of expensing subscriber acquisition outlays rather than capitalizing them, there would be a huge amount of subscriber acquisition costs, leading to a comparatively decreasing profit and increase operating loss in the income statement as well as lower equity in the balance sheet for the last same period or compared to its peers, which might lose the attractive looking of the accounting figures when it was eager to raise money from the public market so as to pay its bill.