Mesothelioma Abstract

I am doing my research paper on Mesothelioma, which is a terminal type of lung cancer.  My research paper will help people to have a better understanding of what mesothelioma and its effects.  One of the things I will focus on is how this disease can effect a family after a loved one has been diagnosed.  I will do this by interviewing a close friend of mine whose grandpa was diagnosed with Mesothelioma about a year and a half ago and he has recently passed away.  I will talk about the effects that this disease had on his life. I will talk about him before he was diagnosed, while he was being diagnosed, and while he had to finish out his life knowing that he soon would pass away from this disease.  Many people are getting diagnosed with this disease because they did not know that asbestos would later on be killing people.  I think we can use this to help us prevent similar instances like this from happening in the future.

Mesothelioma: Research Topic

I plan to do my research paper on the topic of mesothelioma.  As I have mentioned before a very close family friend of mine recently passed away from this type of lung cancer.  I plan on interviewing his granddaughter and a doctor that has dealt with these cases.  While interviewing his granddaughter I plan to ask questions having to do with how it affected her family throughout the process of diagnosis up until death. From the doctor I hope to just get additional information that can further help me with this research paper.

Mesothelioma is a lung disease that is caused by asbestos, and causes cancer.  I think that this is a problem that can be fixed that is why I want to research this. Asbestos does not need to be used as much as it is so that this disease can be prevented!!!

Heart of Darkness

Thesis: How does Joseph Conrad convey the darkness he is referring to in the novel Heart of Darkness?

Conrad constantly is referring to things on the continent of Africa as dark. He also uses symbolism to show us this darkness, he does this through the black wool that the women he first meets when he goes to his interview for this new job.  It is very ironic that at the start of this journey he ends up going on for this new job he sees this black dark wool.  This could be a symbol of what the whole trip will be like, dark.  As Marlow arrives in Africa he again sees objects that he sees as dark.  He arrives to his first stop where he will be assigned a boat and set out on his first mission he sees a dark forest full of dying African slaves.  They have been worked to death, not only is the dark forest a symbol of the darkness but the fact that they have been worked to death is dark in itself.  “Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.”(Conrad, 67)  This sacred fire that is talked about in this quote is referring to the fire that is in hell.  The way that these people act is quit hellish if I must say so myself.  When doing a trade of two chickens with a group of natives from the land on of these men started to beat their chief and was killed.  I don’t find the death of him hellish I find that him coming back and beating this man was.  Most of their actions are very hellish and they do not even realize.  This is probably due to their different way of life. Conrad does a good job with the repetitiveness of the word darkness throughout this novel helping him convey the title, this land has become a heart of darkness.

Thesis for Rufus at the Door

I am going to compare three short story's from the book Rufus at the Door.  These three stories are Rufus at the Door, The Life and Death of Delano Klein, and Dodgers Return, I will show how each of these stories uses some sort of Marxism and I will analyze the author, Jon Hassler's, purpose in using this literary lens.  In the short story, Rufus at the Door, the author uses Marxism by showing how people are not accepted into their community if they are not normal like the rest. They are rather shunned away into an insane asylum.  The Life and Death of Delano Klein shows us Marxism through the main character Delano.  He is a character that was never accepted for who he was throughout life, he was very reserved and kept to himself.  In his society many people created many relationships with others while he did not, they thought that this was out of the ordinary and so did his parents causing him to not be accepted into this society as others were.  The short story Dodgers Return shows how a boy who was not accepted into his social group uses people to climb that ladder in society that he was at the bottom of and works his way to the top of his social class.

Thesis:  Through the short stories Rufus at the Door, The Life and Death of Delano Klein, and Dodgers Return, Jon Hassler shows us Marxism by the way that each of the characters in these stories fit into their societies.

Fogarty.Anna.Rufus at the Door

In the short story Rufus at the Door the author, Jon Hassler uses postcolonialism to portray how this community and time setting degrades anyone who is not, what they consider, normal by locking them up in an asylum. When the narrators class goes to Rochester their teachers, especially Miss Sylvestri, portray this literary lense very well.  Miss Sylvestri constantly is referring to the people that live in the insane asylum as morons, imbeciles, idiots, and many other names that are very degrading.  “Mr. Lance drove the bus and Miss Sylvestri stood at his shoulder and delivered an unnecessary lecture about how lucky we were to have been spared from craziness and retardation.” (Hassler, 22) This quote is a prime example of how the teachers from the narrator's school, along with the rest of the community treat all of the people who have mental disorders.  Most people in this era thought that if you had anything wrong with you that you needed to be put in a mental hospital.  In this story the students even refer to a character, Henry Ahman who has epilepsy, as a moron.  This goes to show how horrible and degrading the community treats those who they classify as mentally challenged. Rufus and his mother had been one of the only ones in the society that were an exception to thinking that anyone who had a problem had to be kept in the insane asylum. The narrator was the other, he thought that Miss Sylvestri’s speech was “unnecessary.”  Even Rufus’s own family conformed to this degrading way of life that the rest of the community had on those they didn’t think were “normal” and ended up sending Rufus to the asylum.  Throughout this short story Miss Sylvestri and the rest of the community refer to those who live in the insane asylum as morons, imbeciles, idiots, and a lot of other degrading names and references.  By degrading all people who have any sort of problem at all, the community in this short story portrays a sense of postcolonialism.

Review of my short essay Rufus at the Door. To the introduction of this short essay I added in how the author uses postcolonialism, and I used the literary term time setting. Both of these things were suggested by my peers and I think they helped to strengthen my essay. I also added how not only Rufus and his mother are an exception to the community, but also the narrator. I also added the narrators view of how Miss Syilvestri's speech she gave the class was unnecessary. 

 

Fogarty.Anna.The Third Man

How does the film The Third Man treat evil?  One of the main character in this movie is Harry Lime, who's funeral is the scene that starts off the movie.  Harry Lime was a very into some very bad things some of his friends and girlfriend find out.  Things that most normal people would consider evil.  After one of his good friends named Holly Martins found out about Harry's evil ways he was astonished, he had no clue that such things were going on in Harry's life.  After he finds this out something even more astonishing happens, Holly Martins sees his friend Harry, who is supposedly dead, in a very dark corridor.  Harry also happens to be hiding out in the dark underground sewer systems. Harry's girlfriend Anna Schmidt was being sent back to Germany and he wasn't even bothered by this, which shows you how dark and uncaring he was about others. While cinematically analyzing this film you find many ways that it portrays this evil that Harry Lime is involved with.

The first thing that helps portray Harry as a dark and evil person is when his friend Holly, who thought he was dead, sees him in a very dark corridor.  This scene is very eerie in the sense that this man is supposed to be dead and his friend sees him in a dark place with a cat by his feet.  This scene was filmed at night to portray the evil of Harry and his actions.  The cat also makes us think of scary or evil things, just as we associate cats with Halloween and being scary.

Second of all after Harry faked his death he hides out under the town of Vienna in the sewer systems.  This part of the film symbolizes his hellish ways and how he is acting in very evil ways.  Not only were the actions he was doing evil but it's arguable that to fake your own death would also be considered evil.

Last but not least this film shows us how Harry does not care much about many people in his life.  His own girlfriend is being sent back to Germany and he could care less.  So who's to say that he actually cares about any of his friend.  In the film Harry had also shown that he didn't care about anyone by the business that he was running. He was taking medications, diluting them, and then selling them to people who were in great need of them because of the scarcity.  Due to him diluting the medication, Harry was knowingly killing people. This did not at all bother him because he was very successful and was making a lot of money due to this operation.

These are only three things from the film The Third Man that portray the evil that is in this film.  Many other things in this film do help to portray the evil within but these were the three main things that I found. 

Snow White

In the movie Snow White the literary lens of psychoanalysis is used.  Snow White uses Electra complex by creating a relationship with the dwarfs.  Snow Whites father died and she lived with her evil stepmother.  As Freud says when you are young you want to be a daddy's girl or if you’re a boy you want to be a mamma's boy.  This is true in the movie because she had this fixation and was able to fulfill it at a young age, but after her father dies she is unable to. Snow White sings of how she is longing for love and wants to find a husband.  According to Freud when you look for a spouse at a later age, you will look for someone who is like your parent.  Snow White probably longed for love because of the loss of her father.  So when she finds the dwarfs and is able to care for them and clean for them she gets some of that fulfillment out of it.

This wicked witch in this movie uses repression.  She knows she is not beautiful so represses the feelings she has toward her ugly self by casting a spell that made her beautiful.  This is because she wanted to be the fairest of them all.  She can repress this feeling because she is beautiful so she forgets that she really is an ugly witch.