A Study of a Dionysiac Sarcophagus :: Art

A Study of a Dionysiac Sarcophagus In the Los Angeles County Art Museum A man dies. He winds his way down into the underworld to reach the banks of the river Acheron where he meets the ferryman Charon. He takes a coin from his mouth to pay the toll across. On the opposite bank he is greeted by a Maenad or perhaps Bacchus himself who offers him a kylix of wine. Drinking deep, the man is transformed and resurrected from death to a higher plane. Instead of living a miserable dream in the underworld he receives redemption from his god Dionysos, the Savior. In Roman imperial times there was a great resurgence of the "Mystery" cults of Greece fueled by the hope of a life after death. In funerary monuments there can be seen the tenets of the religion as well as how it views the afterlife. Within the Los Angeles County Art Museum stands such a vessel created to facilitate this journey to eternal bliss. A gift from William Randolph Hearst, the piece is a sarcophagus from the Severan period of the Roman empire near the end of the second century detailing a procession of Dionysos, the god of wine, and his followers. Such a procession could be from Dionysos's messianic journeys or from his triumphal return from spreading the wine cult. Originally in the mausoleum of a wealthy family in Rome, the sarcophagus was in later times used as a planter for a flower bed(Matz, 3). This "misuse" of the piece explains the deterioration of the marble which necessitated extensive restoration in the 17th century(4). It is tub shaped with dimensions of 2.1 meters long and 1 meter wide, standing 0.6 meters from the ground. The shape is similar to tubs used for trampling grapes which had spouts ornamented with lions' heads to vent the wine(3). Being shaped like a wine vat makes the sarcopagi a transformative force in its own right by symbolically turning the person interned within into wine ! bringing hi m closer to the god. Unlike other sarcophagi of the period the back of this piece has not been left unhewn, but instead a strigal pattern of repeating "S" shapes has been carved, suggesting that the piece may have stood in the center of the mausoleum. Unlike other more famous and elaborate Dionysiac sarcophagi, such as the Seasons sarcophagi and the Triumph of Dionysos in Baltimore which portray specific pivotal events in the mythos of Dionysos, this piece gives us instead a somewhat generic slice of Bacchic life(Matz, 5).

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah Essay -- chasing hope, happiness

Hope enables people to move on by providing the thought that maybe tomorrow’s events will be better than today’s. Hope is a theme that remains constant in every part of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael begins the novel optimistic, believing he will find his family again. This optimism is later lost when Ishmael is recruited by the army to fight against the rebels, causing him to become addicted to drugs and the thrill of killing. Three years after his recruitment, Ishmael is rescued by UNICEF-a group dedicated to rehabilitating child soldiers. During his rehabilitation, Ishmael discovers hope once more by relearning how to trust, love, and have the will to survive. The presence of hope throughout A Long Way Gone enables Ishmael to have an ability to move on and a will to survive that he lacks when he loses hope. Ishmael starts his journey with a will to escape and survive the civil war of Sierra Leone in order to reunite with his mom, dad, and younger siblings, who fled their home when his village was attacked by rebels. Having only his older brother, who he escaped with, and a few friends by his side Ishmael is scared, but hopeful. When the brothers are captured by rebels, Ishmael’s belief in survival is small, as indicated by his fallible survival tactics when he â€Å"could hear the gunshots coming closer†¦[and] began to crawl farther into the bushes† (Beah 35). Ishmael wants to survive, but has little faith that he can. He is attempting to survive by hiding wherever he can- even where the rebels can easily find him. After escaping, Ishmael runs into a villager from his home tells him news on the whereabouts of his family. His optimism is high when the villager, Gasemu, tells Ishmael, â€Å"Your parents and brothers wil... ...ploys children rather than men. He is subjected to the violence of the war for more than three years before he is finally rescued by an organization dedicated to rehabilitating child soldiers. Once Ishmael discovers happiness, affection, and a will to survive, he regains what hope he had lost. No matter the circumstances concerning it, hope has always been the trigger for events in Ishmael’s life, thus making hope a theme present throughout the entirety of A Long Way Gone. Hope allows Ishmael to bounce back from the tragic events that marked his teenage years and discover a will to survive. Works Cited Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print. HaÃŒ £nh, NhaÌ‚Ì t, and Arnold Kotler. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Bantam, 1991. Print.

A Look at Healthypeople 2020 Health Disparities

Healthy People 2020 Laura Siegel Do you know someone with a mental illness? Do you know someone who has been turned down for employment because of having a mental illness? Do you have a family member or a patient that has a mental illness and has experienced the challenges of trying to find a service that hasn’t been reduced or completely cut? The challenges of dealing with mental illness in our country are among the highest of all diseases, and the vast array of mental disorders are one of the most common causes of disability.According to Healthy People 2020, 1 in 4 adults in the United States had a mental disorder in the past year typically being either depression or anxiety and 1 in 17 had a serious mental illness. * Reading the above statistics was the catalyst for my decision to choose mental illness as my leading health problem for this paper. In addition, I have experienced mental illness in my family and all too aware of many of the challenges that come with having or knowing someone with a mental illness.Also, working in an Emergency Department setting, patients with mental illness frequently come to the ED in crisis and it seems that much of the time, their crisis due to practical or logistical reason. * As a nurse working in the emergency room, having the tools needed to effectively respond to the needs of patients with mental illness is crucial. These patients often present to the ED because of medication noncompliance or lack of proper information or resources.As a result, these same patients also present with medical problems, because without appropriate resources or medication, people with mental illness often engage in high risk behaviors that might involve self destruction, drug abuse or violence. * Dealing with patients with mental illness can often be challenging, scary and leaving healthcare workers feeling burned out.It is my belief that if nurses, physicians and ancillary staff are properly educated, resulting in people with mental illness being de-stigmatized, everyone will be better off. Laura Siegel CINAHL

Love In The Time of Cholera Analysis Paper Essay

In the novel, Love in the Time of Cholera written by Gabriel Garcà ­a Mà ¡rquez, there are many symbols to represent, literally, love in the time of cholera. These symbols are flowers, birds, and rain. Mà ¡rquez uses these similar terms to describe the effects of love and cholera throughout the novel by using all of those symbols ultimately represent or foreshadow anguish and unfortunate disasters that Cholera can bring. Cholera was a contagious disease affecting most of the population in where the story takes place. Though, this book is heavily centered on the disease and love, the author is primarily focusing on literal â€Å"lovesickness†. One generally does not associate sweet and pure love with diarrhea, infections, or a painful death, which is why cholera is used to depict the lovesickness in this novel. Cholera is a disease, like falling in love (lovesickness), drives you crazy, you suffer, and you could die without ever being content with the life you’ve had so far. An example of lovesickness in the novel, is when Florentino is driven crazy by falling in love with Fermina. Instead of being a physical illness like cholera, lovesickness is a mental disease. See more: analytical writing Florentino was so crazy in love with Fermina,the only way he could deal with this love was to eat flowers. Flowers represent the anguish of love and further suffering.Though flowers represented hope and love for Florentino, it ultimately lead to disaster of suffering, just like how cholera suddenly ends a life. It was as if Fermina was the flower petals, and Florentino consumed the flower petals to consume all the affection and rejection he was receiving from Fermina. Until Fermina can be with him, the only thing that Florentino has of Fermina are those flower petals he is consuming. Florentino also suffers from physical pains of lovesickness. The flower petals he consumes make him so violently ill, that his mother thought he had cholera, which is ironic considering the parallel of the two. Florentino feels the anguish of love and the only for him to express that was to consume flower petals. This was necessary for Florentino because he was suffering so much emotional pain he almost felt dead, and physical pain was imperative for him to feel alive. Birds, like Cholera, lead to death. Mà ¡rquez uses the birds in the novel as an ironic message of love that soon leads to a disastrous end. Birds were the reason why people died, just like Cholera will make people die. In the novel, Mà ¡rquez does not include a character that actually died from Cholera. However, he does include characters that die from â€Å"love sickness† at the hands of birds. Since lovesickness serves as a parallel to Cholera, we can assume that birds also represent Cholera, which is the fate of death. The most prominent example is when Dr.Urbino tried to catch his beloved parrot and eventually fell to his death. The parrot that Dr. Urbino spent countless hours of dedication and the bird that he had paid more attention than he did to his own children, that lead ironically to his death. Another example when Olimpia Zuleta gave Florentino a carrier pigeon as a thank-you for rescuing her and her parasol. Florentino sent back the carrier pigeon with an unsigned love note, and thus the romance between the two began. The Pigeon that lead to a romance between the two soon ended when the husband discovered her infidelity and Olimpia was killed. Both Dr.Urbino and Olimpia lose their lives to love, whether it be because of a bird or for a bird. I believe that the birds also And last but not least, rain (or any type of water) finally represents a point in the book when a barrier has been overcome and there is a renewed chance for love. Rain represents the drastic change in a book, just like how Cholera can bring about a drastic change in one’s life. The first downpour of rain brings about two critical changes, which is when Dr. Urbino dies and the reappearance of Florentino in Fermina’s life. The rain not only symbolized a tragic and sad death, which is what Cholera is, the rain symbolized a new renewed hope of love between Florentino and Fermina. The rain is possibly the only â€Å"positive† symbol Mà ¡rquez uses in order to portray Cholera as a drastic change in the novel. Throughout Love in the Time of Cholera, Mà ¡rquez uses symbols such as cholera, flowers, birds and rain, to symbolize important aspects of love and to describe Cholera. Though these symbol may seem little or no significance in the beginning, a reader can clearly see and understand the importance, effect, and deeper meaning of these symbols and how they tie together to figuratively portray Cholera.-KC .

All Work and No Play Makes a Dull Life

Imagine a world without leisure and enjoyment! We would all be drudges and consequently would be no better than animals. I can only imagine people with bowed shoulders and lowered eyes, people who have no light in their eyes and no hope in their world. As it is. things are pretty had. People are always busy – busy with work and busy with idleness. No – No. I'm not trying to be witty but people are busy with nothing to do because they do not know how to make use of their leisure. But of that later, for the time being let me stick to the point – all work and no play would he a monotonous existence. Man has always been busy with the effort of fulfilling his needs. In the early stages man spent his time hunting and then ploughing. but these activities did not fill up his whole day. Today man is busy keeping up with the Joneses. he is the company of his kind in the rat race that he runs. It is no longer a question of survival but a question of acquisition – acquiring more worldly goods, having more money to hoard and to spend. Most of us do not feel happy when there is nothing to do. Those who are able to enjoy what they do and those who are able to do what they enjoy are indeed very lucky. But even these people need a change. A person who is doing an office job or busy with books welcomes a walk in the evening, half an hour in the garden, a drink with a friend. And a person who has been working in a factory or in a field would definitely enjoy a visit to a restaurant, an hour to go through the newspaper. watch television. It is not only the nature of one's work which conditions one's choice of recreative activity; intellectual and cultural development is also an important factor. Those people who do not know how to enjoy their leisure and do not allow themselves to recoup lose their efficiency. No one can continue at the same rate of efficiency over an indefinite period. Just as the body needs sleep, the mind needs rest and change. That is why the hobbies which one cultivates and the activities which keep one busy are referred to as recreative; they help to recreate something which has been spent and utilized. People who only know about their work and are perpetually engrossed in it do not recreate that part of themselves which is spent. Thus they either break down under the strain or merely tag along automatically. They make very poor conversationalists and do not have well-integrated personalities. Over the years they lose their mental alertness and become confined to the narrow limits of their jobs. This is not to decry hard work. Work is necessary and only those who work hard are able to achieve something. But at the same time one must know how to relax no matter for how short a period. Relaxation does not mean only sleeping or idling; it also means finding something satisfying and meaningful to do. Otherwise life becomes monotonous and dull.

"Development is only concerned with the economic growth of a Essay

"Development is only concerned with the economic growth of a country" discuss - Essay Example Another aspect of development concerns the policies and programs to deliver services to members of a society. It may also be measured through business strategies for a given economy such as offering finance and expansion of the markets for produced goods. The primary objective of economic development is to ensure the improvement of society members’ well-being through strategies that involve job creation, improvement of quality of life, and improve government revenue. In most developed economies, several of the aforementioned factors exist in major sectors (International Economic Development Council 3). Economic development and growth vary. Usually, they are measured based on the effects that they create on the population (La 1). For most instances, economic growth measures a generalized increase in the levels of national income and Gross Domestic Product. The method of measurement does not cater for the quality of life of the population. Such a statement means economic growth does not measure the quality of life of the society members. It is possible to realize economic growth without economic development. The rationale for such an argument is that the latter aspect of the economy weighs human capacity development. The main human factors for this case sum to both the quality of life and the standards of living. An economy can grow without catering for aspects such as reduced illiteracy, poverty elimination, creation of sufficient goods and services among others. It would therefore, imply that the economy exploits the citizens by unfair means such as long hours of working with low payments. Sustainable development gives economic development a task of improving the qualities of lives of citizens. The approach of sustainable economic development targets an increased production of goods and services to the growing population. There was, therefore, a need that the economists devise a method that would see the dreams of economic plans. Consequently, after the

Business Environments in the Single European Market Essay

Business Environments in the Single European Market - Essay Example The common market refers to a phase in the process of international integration, which according to a ruling of the Court of Justice, aims at doing away with all the barriers to trade between communities with a view of bring together national markets into one large market, forming conditions that are as close as possible to a legitimate internal market. It is important to tone that the Lisbon Treaty does not take into consideration the ‘single market’ concepts and those of the ‘common market.’ The words ‘common market’ were replaced the outcome of this stage of the process of integration, by the treaty, which on the operations of the European Union, according to the Treaty’s Article 26 is composed of an area that do not have internal frontiers whereby the free movement of individuals, capital, services and goods is ensured according to the Treaties’ stipulations (Barnard, 2012, p.99). There are several challenges that the community had to deal with during the stage of common market so as to attain the objective of single market. First, the formation of the common market needed the eradication of all export and import duties that existed between the member states of the community before the European Economic Community was formed. The member states successfully eliminated the custom obstacles even before the deadline set by the Treaty had expired and how they begun to put up some other barriers between them, immediately after they dismantled the tariffs, especially the technical barriers that were even more hard to deal with in some instances (Blanpain, 2012, p.65). The formation of a common market that looked like an internal market does not only mean that there was the trade liberalization among the member states that were taking part but also called for free movement of individuals, factors of production such as services, capital and labor. Furthermore, it involves a free formation of corporations and indivi duals in all the boundary of the member states so as to be in a position of exercising their business or professional activities (Rogovsky and Salais, 2012, p.73). Therefore, in order to talk about a common market, there has to be the availability of four major freedoms between the participating member states, including freedom of movement of services and goods, due to the eradication of the barriers of trade; freedom of movement of workers who are salaried and those that are not, as a result of the eradication of all the barriers to their entrance together with residence in the other member states; the freedom of formation of corporations and persons within the boundaries of the member states as well as of the offering of services by them within the countries that host them; and the freedom of movement of capital for the purposes of business and individual. Freedom seems like the key or main word of the common market (Lejour & Mooij & Nahuis, 2001, p.65). This paper will also raise awareness about the enlargement of