Prostate Cancer Causes And Treatment Health And Social Care Essay

This paper will look into several different academic diary articles and some popular media articles that are about prostatic malignant neoplastic disease. These articles discuss prostate malignant neoplastic disease causes, ( conjectural and known ) , sensing methods, and intervention options. A twosome of the articles besides focus on the cost of intervention for patients, every bit good as the hazards involved with the differing methods of intervention. Several intervention options for prostate malignant neoplastic disease are still being studied. This essay will critically analyse and compare prostatic malignant neoplastic disease sensing methods, ( such as Prostate-specific antigen or ( PSA ) trials ) intervention options, and the differing success or failure of each method, every bit good as concentrating on the increasing cost of intervention that patients are forced to pay. Some of the articles besides suggest that more resources and more instruction are needed to assist take down the mortality rate from prostate malignant neoplastic disease. This paper will research what is being done to assist take down the mortality rate every bit good as what is being done to assist increase the rate of early sensing of prostate malignant neoplastic disease. Keywords: Prostate-specific antigen Prostate Cancer: Causes and Treatment Options Available in Today ‘s Scientifically Advanced Society Harmonizing to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, prostate malignant neoplastic disease occurs when cells within the prostate grow uncontrollably, making little tumours. The term â€Å" malignant neoplastic disease † refers to a status in which the ordinance of cell growing is lost and cells grow uncontrollably. Prostate malignant neoplastic disease is a disease of epidemic proportions. 1 in 6 American work forces will be diagnosed with prostate malignant neoplastic disease and new instances are diagnosed every 2.7 proceedingss ( Charles 2009 ) . As prostatic malignant neoplastic disease airss such a menace to work forces worldwide, more clip and money should be spent to better upon the bing methods and engineering every bit good as invested towards instruction and consciousness plans. The fact that these statistics are existent is why prostatic malignant neoplastic disease consciousness and instruction is so indispensable because many deceases could hold been prevented if the in stances had been detected at earlier phases of the malignant neoplastic disease. Prostate malignant neoplastic disease ‘s specific cause is still unknown, nevertheless scientists hypothesize that cistrons play a function, because the hazard factor for acquiring prostatic malignant neoplastic disease is well higher if you have a household history of it. The two chief methods used for prostate malignant neoplastic disease testing are rectal scrutinies and prostate-specific antigen ( PSA ) blood proving. Rathus, Nevid, and Rathus ( 2008 ) remind work forces 50 old ages and older that the American Cancer Society recommends that work forces receive one-year rectal scrutinies and PSA blood trials. Treatment methods for prostate malignant neoplastic disease are limited, but new engineering has allowed for a higher endurance rate because of early sensing. The first point of involvement is that the costs of prostatic malignant neoplastic disease intervention have gone up well in the last 20 old ages harmonizing to USA Today reporter Lisa Szabo. In her article entitled â€Å" Patients bear brunt as malignant neoplastic disease disbursement hits $ 90 billion † she discusses how â€Å" these lifting costs have been driven by forces such as new drugs, robotic surgeries, and radiation techniques † ( 2010 ) . In her findings she discovered that from 1991 to 2002 the cost of intervention for malignant neoplastic disease doubled. â€Å" These additions are unsustainable † claims John Seffrin, CEO of the American Cancer Society. Because of the increasing costs of intervention the American Cancer society can merely assist 1 out of 6 patients as opposed to in the yesteryear when they were able to assist 1 in 5. When one takes into history how many malignant neoplastic disease patients are in the United States, so they can rec ognize how many people are waiving intervention because they are uninsured and can non afford intervention. It is tragic that the rise costs are ensuing in preventable deceases. In another article reviewed, Krahn, Zagorski, Laporte, Alibhai, Bremner, Tomlinson, Warde, and Naglie, ( 2009 ) set out to detect health care costs in relation to prostate malignant neoplastic disease. They researched direct medical costs for around 42,000 work forces over the patterned advance of the disease. The costs they found were between $ 2,000 to around $ 16,000 dependant on where the single patient was in the intervention procedure and how advanced their malignant neoplastic disease was. The ensuing decision was that prostatic malignant neoplastic disease costs â€Å" are highest around two events, malignant neoplastic disease diagnosing and malignant neoplastic disease decease † ( Krahn et Al ‘s. 2009 ) . The 2nd point of involvement is that drug company Roche ‘s â€Å" Avastin † a prostatic malignant neoplastic disease drug late hit headlines and non in a good manner. Harmonizing to the Wall Street Journal, Roche Holdings released a statement that said that Avastin had failed in late phase prostate malignant neoplastic disease tests. This intelligence was non good for shareholders who are estimated to hold lost jutting gross revenues of 7.48 billion dollars. The other bad intelligence is that people who have been utilizing Avastin an antibody for intervention of malignant neoplastic disease, are besides paying for something that is non every bit effectual as they have been lead to believe. The 3rd point of involvement is that although scientists know what causes malignant neoplastic disease, new stairss are being made to detect what specifically causes prostatic malignant neoplastic disease, and other types of malignant neoplastic disease. In an exciting article in Science News, writer L. Sanders reviews a new survey that suggests likely links between â€Å" self-renewing root cells † and prostatic malignant neoplastic disease ( 2010 ) . The survey suggests that cistrons are the perpetrator. â€Å" Think approximately malignant neoplastic disease as a disease of root cells, Mutants in these cells can do normal root cells to lose their regularized behaviour and alternatively turn into an inchoate malignant neoplastic disease † ( Sanders 2010 ) . The research workers besides found that prostatic tissue cells called â€Å" Basal root cells † are the most likely perpetrator in research lab trials done on mice. In all the research they have done,  " Basal root cells are what drives the malignant neoplastic disease, irrespective of the type of mutant † says Owen Witte, a research worker at the University of California. â€Å" A specific cistron called Bmi-1 plays a important function in â€Å" Basal root cells † reclamation procedure, when Bmi-1 activity was reduced, the cells were no longer able to self renew, nor did they organize tumours † ( Sanders 2010 ) . The 4th point of involvement is that surveies show household history of prostate malignant neoplastic disease as one of the taking hazard factors associated with prostate malignant neoplastic disease. As Damber and Aus ( 2008 ) discovered while researching prostate malignant neoplastic disease, household history is a big factor when measuring 1s single hazard factors. They hypothesize that one evident ground for this is that cistrons are passed down biologically from male parent to boy. They besides believe that the malignant neoplastic disease doing cistrons mutate, but the ground ( s ) why are still unknown. Harmonizing to the text edition writers, Rathus, Nevid, and Rathus ( 2008 ) devouring high sums of animate being fats has been shown to increase 1s hazard of acquiring prostatic malignant neoplastic disease. They besides discuss how the opportunities are higher in black males than in white males. One thing Damber and Aus ( 2008 ) did note in their survey was that the figure of instances of prostate malignant neoplastic disease was higher in work forces in urbanised states as opposed to Asiatic work forces. The ensuing surveies showed that lifestyle differences every bit good as exposure to radiation were the grounds for the different statistics between Asiatic work forces and those in more urbanised states. They besides discuss how PSA and other showing methods are still being studied excessively analyze merely how effectual they really are. Once work forces are suspected of holding prostate malignant neoplastic disease, the most common method of diagnosing is a biopsy which is surgically taking a little part of the suspected tumour for proving. Most patients once they are diagnosed with the disease, are concerned with how concentrated the malignant neoplastic disease is, because it is this factor more than any other that determines how long they have to populate. â€Å" In other words, the disease establishes the forecast more than the pick of intervent ion. † ( Damber and Aus 2008 ) Treatment methods are varied and all have hazards involved, but as the writers pointed out, most intervention programs are based on factors such as the PSA figure, ( how high or low ) the degree is, the size and arrangement of the tumour, every bit good as the patients single life anticipation. Treatment plans besides vary depending on if the malignant neoplastic disease is localized to merely the prostate, or if it has advanced ( grown ) within the prostate, or if the cancerous cells have spread to other parts of the organic structure more serious intervention options will be considered. Damber and Aus ( 2008 ) speculate that intervention methods for both localized and advanced prostate malignant neoplastic disease will stay the same for the clip being. The 5th point of involvement is the existent intervention processs that are presently used. Harmonizing to K. Charles in her article about prostate malignant neoplastic disease in the Daily News, NY, she discusses the three major ways to handle prostatic malignant neoplastic disease. Surgery, external beam radiation, and radioactive seed implant therapy. A 4th new and extremist intervention option is known as â€Å" active survellaince, which is fundamentally making nil but invariably supervising the malignant neoplastic disease. She discusses in her article that physicians have non yet been able to make up one's mind which intervention option is more effectual than another, as they say that the consequences of each intervention option vary instance to instance. These discrepancies besides depend on how progressed the malignant neoplastic disease is and how healthy the patient was before they got malignant neoplastic disease. The 6th point of involvement is a possible prostate malignant neoplastic disease intervention that is still being researched called Cryotherapy. In an article by A. Gardner, she discusses how several prostatic malignant neoplastic disease patients had successful cryoblation and their tumours were successfully thwarted. The method is still in research nevertheless, and as Dr Debra Monticciolo said, â€Å" The construct is good, but we need a bigger survey with longer follow up. It takes a piece for a twosome of tumour cells left behind to garner adequate steam to be noticed † ( Gardner 2010 ) . One of the most controversial methods of intervention is to make nil and merely look into in on the malignant neoplastic disease often, to guarantee that it has non grown or spread. In an article by Johnsun and Treurnicht, they claim that, â€Å" The bulk of work forces with low-risk prostate malignant neoplastic disease will decease of unrelated causes † ( 2009 ) . They besides d iscuss how this newer method of intervention, officially known as â€Å" active surveillance † challenges the old method of radiation, and alternatively speculate that attentive non-action, with merely minimum interventions is perchance more effectual. Johnsun and Treurnicht researched a group of 549 malignant neoplastic disease patients who were offered â€Å" active surveillance † or surgery. The patients chose the surgery. Over an 8 twelvemonth clip span, it was discovered that the lone manner to guarantee if â€Å" active surveillance † is an effectual method of intervention is by perennial surveies of work forces who have had biopsies. In another article I reviewed, writer R. Lane and C. Metcalfe looked into a survey that is being conducted in the UK. The survey is a â€Å" randomised controlled test measuring different prostate malignant neoplastic disease interventions † ( 2008 ) . In the article, they claim that repetition PSA testing is one of the most effectual methods for make up one's minding if one needs surgery. Harmonizing to the article, work forces whose Prostate specific antigen degrees are between 3.0 and 19.99 ng/mL are all campaigners for intervention and most likely, a biopsy. Besides harmonizing to Lane and Metcalfe, in the test referred to in the article, the participants were between 50 and 70 old ages old. The decisions of the writers was that â€Å" reiterate PSA blood testing, peculiarly in work forces aged & lt ; 60 old ages, may assist place those with high hazard malignant neoplastic disease who would profit from aggressive intervention, every bit good as forestalling over-diagnosi ng work forces with clinically undistinguished disease and avoiding biopsy in those with no malignant neoplastic disease † ( 2008 ) . The 7th point of involvement in respects to Prostate Cancer sensing methods is the struggle over PSA proving and its accurate consequences, or is it every bit accurate as one would trust? Nogueira, Corradi, and Eastham ( 2009 ) explore other biomarkers besides PSA trials. They believe that â€Å" although PSA is the best malignant neoplastic disease biomarker available, it is non perfect. It lacks both the sensitiveness and specificity to accurately observe the presence of prostate malignant neoplastic disease † ( Nogueira et al. , 2009 ) . In their article, they evaluate the advancement that is being made towards being able to utilize freshly discovered biomarkers to assist screen for prostate malignant neoplastic disease. The surveies that they review show that Human Kallikrein 2 or ( hK2 ) is a serine peptidase that is closely related to PSA in sequence. The surveies have revealed nevertheless, that ( hK2 ) is non ready to be used yet as it can bespeak that there are malign ant neoplastic disease cells active in the blood, but non accurately plenty. This is similar to the job that research workers run into with PSA proving. Several other membrane antigens and antibodies are besides being studied, but none of them are yet ready to be used as farther research and testing is still needed. In the text edition, Rathus, Nevid, and Rathus ( 2008 ) agree with this article that PSA testing is the best method available. This should non be seen as though no advancement has been made nevertheless, because as Dr. Richard Stock said, â€Å" The past 40 old ages have seen a revolution in prostatic malignant neoplastic disease intervention. Not merely are 90 % of instances caught before they metastasize, but physicians have immensely improved engineering for contending malignant neoplastic disease in the other 10 % of patients † ( Charles 2009 ) . The 8th point of involvement is the recent intelligence that the American Cancer Society has released new guidelines on prostate malignant neoplastic disease showings. In the article by A. Gardner, it discusses how the American Cancer Society is now seting less accent on everyday PSA testing and more accent on doctor-patient conversations and determinations. These new guidelines are issued as a consequence of research and the on-going struggle over how accurate PSA proving truly is. Harmonizing to a statement issued by the American Cancer Society, â€Å" work forces with no symptoms of prostatic malignant neoplastic disease who are in comparatively good wellness and can anticipate to populate another 10 old ages should do an informed determination with their physician about prostate malignant neoplastic disease showing after larning the uncertainnesss, hazards, and possible benefits associated with such showing † ( Gardner 2010 ) . These new statements disagree with with what Rathus, Nevid, and Rathus ( 2008 ) , province in the text edition, â€Å" The American Cancer Society recommends that work forces receive one-year digital rectal scrutinies get downing at the same age as PSA trials † ( Rathus et al. 2008 ) . They are now proposing that PSA proving should non be a demand for all work forces over 50. The 9th point of involvement, nevertheless, is that many agree that PSA testing is still non a really dependable or effectual method of sensing. In an article in Practical Nurse, urologist Professor Roger Kirby, manager of the Prostate Centre in London, states that, â€Å" PSA testing is enormously controversial because the figure of false positives and lost diagnosings of prostate malignant neoplastic disease generated by the trial raises inquiries about its utility † ( 2009 ) . In the article Kirby besides points out that although PSA testing is so unelaborated, that unluckily work forces do non hold many other options for sensing. He calls for more research into alternate proving methods for the presence of cancerous cells in 1s blood. He besides calls for more instruction among work forces, to do them aware of their hazard of undertaking prostate malignant neoplastic disease. Personal instruction and personal consciousness are cardinal elements in contending the mortality rate of prostate malignant neoplastic disease. The 10th point of involvement is the advancement being made towards educating the populace on prostate malignant neoplastic disease. In the European Journal of Cancer Care, lending writer S. Bowen, discusses a public wellness plan in Ireland called the National Cancer Information Service. It was developed because of the National Cancer Forum ‘s, â€Å" concern that high quality, accurate information and resources should be available to the populace † ( Bowen 2010 ) . The bulk of people who called in to the service concerned about prostate malignant neoplastic disease were work forces in their 50 ‘s to mid 60 ‘s. The service besides found that most work forces were naming to happen out how and where to acquire screened for prostate malignant neoplastic disease. Bowen thinks this is due to non adequate public consciousness of prostate malignant neoplastic disease, he believes that, â€Å" as the public becomes progressively cognizant of malignant neoplastic di sease, it is of import that they have entree to unclutter indifferent information from a responsible quality service informed by ongoing rating † ( 2010 ) . Overall, the popular media articles that I reviewed did look to hold with the academic diary articles. In respects to the cost of prostatic malignant neoplastic disease intervention, the text edition did non truly travel into deepness on the subject, but the two articles that I reviewed did look to hold with the consensus that prostatic malignant neoplastic disease intervention is expensive, and that the cost of intervention is lifting. Another issue that I reviewed was besides non truly covered by the text edition, but the article that I reviewed was converting in that it shows that more research is needed for prostate malignant neoplastic disease drugs. Another issue that I reviewed was besides non covered by the text edition, but I found it intriguing that scientists are coming so near to happening a manner to bring around malignant neoplastic disease. Another issue I reviewed was agreed upon in my text edition, the academic article and the popular media that risk factors for pros tate malignant neoplastic disease are pretty consistent. Another issue that I reviewed was the existent processs which did hold with my text edition. Another issue I reviewed was Cryotherapy, which is an experimental method, non covered in the text edition. Another issue was conflict over PSA testing, and I found that the academic and popular media did hold chiefly when it came to this issue. I do non experience that anything was left out in these articles or the text edition. I did experience that the academic surveies were and are legitimate. I believe that future surveies should concentrate on prostate malignant neoplastic disease sensing and intervention. The articles that I reviewed were really assuring as they show that a batch of advancement has already been made in mention to prostate malignant neoplastic disease intervention and sensing. I think that scientists and research workers should go on what they are making, particularly with the research on root cells and their direct connexions to malignant neoplastic disease. I think that happening the cause of prostate malignant neoplastic disease should be the figure one precedence of research workers. I besides feel that happening the future remedy to malignant neoplastic disease can merely be done if much more extended root cell and cistron research is conducted. Until that remedy is found howver, I believe it is of import to concentrate today ‘s research on happening more accurate methods of proving, as PSA blood testing has been shown clip and clip once more to non be every bit dependable as medical professionals would wish it to be. The new findings that I discussed are rather exciting though, and the possibility of happening a 100 % accurate trial for cancerous cells in the blood stream is most likely shortly to be a world. The find of a new and more accurate testing method for prostate malignant neoplastic disease would assist increase the figure of subsisters every bit good as lessening the figure of false readings and incorrect diagnosings. I feel that the of import message throughout the articles and research that I conducted is that work forces need to be more educated and more cognizant of prostate malignant neoplastic disease and its symptoms and that physicians need to pass more clip with their patients who are diagnosed with prostate malignant neoplastic disease. I think that households with a history of prostate malignant neoplastic disease demand to hold father-to-son treatments about prostate malignant neoplastic disease and that they might desire to cut down on their consumption of carnal fats and their exposure to radiation as that raises their hazard. Black work forces who consume a batch of ruddy meat with a household history of prostate malignant neoplastic disease should be particularly concerned. The other of import thing is that work forces who are diagnosed with prostate malignant neoplastic disease demand to be informed of all their options, non merely the options that benefit and are profitable to th e medical establishment supplying the intervention, or the drug company supplying the drugs for intervention. The new â€Å" active surveillance † prostate malignant neoplastic disease intervention method is still under examination as to whether it is every bit effectual as medical professionals are trusting it will be. I besides think that reform is needed in respects to the hideous cost of intervention, which for the mean individual, is really difficult to afford. The general public needs to be more cognizant and educated ; more societies such as the American Cancer Society are needed to assist raise consciousness and to supply valuable information, resources, and support to those who are affected. The fiscal load on those with prostatic malignant neoplastic disease is besides something that needs to be addressed. The hereafter of prostate malignant neoplastic disease is one that is difficult to foretell nevertheless, because cancerous cells and cistrons are invariably mutating and altering coevals from coevals. The sheer sum of clip, money, and resources that have been put into malignant neoplastic disease research and interventions is unbelievable. I think that the hereafter of prostate malignant neoplastic disease will hopefully be cut short by the find of a manner to forestall the cancerous cells from mutating, whether it is from radiation, antibodies, or remotion of the cancerous cells. I besides feel that the of import message to anyone reading this is personal duty and personal consciousness and instruction. It is non groups such as the American Cancer Society ‘s duty to educate and assist those who are contending prostate and other signifiers of malignant neoplastic disease, it is the person ‘s duty to make all that they can, within ground, to forestall and observe malignant neoplastic disease early, before it is excessively late. Fear, cunctation, ignorance, and deficiency of wellness attention and coverage are large issues when it comes down to the truth. The fact of the affair is that many people who are deceasing and have died from prostate malignant neoplastic disease could hold been saved if they had detected it earlier. The importance of acquiring everyday showings for work forces over 50 old ages old is important. The proving methods may non be 100 % accurate, but it is better to be informed than to merely take a opportunity with your life.

Personal Selling

Personal Selling, relationship building and sales management Personal selling, unlike advertising or sale promotion, involves direct relationships between the seller and the prospect or customer. In a forma sense, personal selling can be defined as a two-way flow of communication between a potential buyer and a salesperson that is designed to accomplish at least three tasks: (1) identify the potential buyer’s needs; (2) match those needs to one or more of the firm’s products or services; (3) on the basis of this match, convince the buyer to purchase the product.Finally, it is a complex communication process, one still not fully understood by marketers. Importance of personal selling The importance of the personal selling function depends partially on the nature of the product. As a general rule, goods that are new and different, technically complex or expensive require more personal selling effort. The salesperson plays a key role in providing the consumer with informat ion about such products to reduce the risks involved in purchase and use.Insurance, for example, is a complex and technical product that often needs significant amounts of personal selling. It is important to remember that for many companies the salesperson represents the customer’s main link to the firm. In fact, the salesperson is the company. Therefore it is imperative that the company take advantage of this unique link. Through the efforts of the successful salesperson, a company can build relationships with customers that continue long. Personal selling is an integral of the marketing system, fulfilling two vital duties: one for customers and one for companies.Lacking relevant information, customers are likely to make poor buying decisions. For example: Doctors would have difficulty finding out about new drugs and procedures were it not for pharmaceutical salespeople. Second, salespeople act as a source of marketing intelligence for management. Marketing success depends on satisfying customers needs. If present products don’t fulfill customer needs then profitable opportunities may exist for new or improved products. If problems with a company’s products exist, then management must be quickly apprised of the fact.In either situation, salespeople are in the best position to act as the intermediary through which valuable information can be passed back and forth between product providers and buyers. The sales process Personal selling is as much an art as it is a science. The word art is used to describe that portion of the selling process that is highly creative in nature and difficult to explain. Before management selects and trains salespeople, it should have an understanding of the sales process. Obviously, the sales process will differ according to the size of the company, the nature of the product, the market and so forth.Sales objectives: 1. Information provision: Especially in case of new products or customers, the salesperson nee ds to fully explain all attributes of the product or service, answer any questions and probe for additional questions. 2. Persuasion. Once the initial product or service information is provided, the salesperson needs to focus on the following objectives: – Clearly distinguish attributes of the firm’s products or services from those of competitors. – Maximize the number of sales as a percent of presentations. Convert undecided customers into first-time buyers. – Convert first-time customers into repeat purchasers. – Sell additional or complementary items to repeat customers. – Tend to the needs of dissatisfied customers. 3. After-sake service. Whether the sale represents a first-time or repeat purchase, the salesperson needs to ensure the following objectives are met: – Delivery or installation of the product or service that meets or exceeds customer expectations. – Immediate follow-up calls and visits to address unresolved or n ew concerns. Reassurance of products or service super priority through demonstrable actions. The Sales Relationship-Building process For many years the traditional approach to selling emphasized the first-time sale of a product or service as the culmination of the sales process. Marketing concept and accompanying approach to personal selling view the initial sale as merely the first step in a long-term relationship-building process, not as the end goal. The relationship-building process which is designed to meet the objectives contains six sequential stages.These stages are (1) prospecting, (2) planning the sales call, (3) presentation, (4) responding to objections, (5) obtaining commitment/closing the sale and (6) building a long-term relationship. When a buyer and a salesperson have a close personal relationship, they both begin to rely on each other and communicate honestly. When each has a problem, they work together to solve it. Such market relationships are known as functional relationships. A person may have such a relationship with along-term medical or dental practitioner or hair-cutter.When organizations move beyond functional relationships, they develop strategic partnerships or strategic alliances. These are long-term, formal relationships in which both parties make significant commitments and investments in each other in order to pursue mutual goals and to improve the profitability of each other. Marketing managers and sales managers must make some very important decisions regarding how the sales fore should be organized. Most companies organize their sales efforts either by geography, product or customer.There are two obvious reasons why it is critical that the sales force be properly controlled. First, personal selling can be the largest marketing expense component in the final price of the product. Second, unless the sales force is somehow directed, motivated and audited on continual basis, it is likely to be less efficient than it is capable o f being. Controlling the sales force involves four key functions: (1) forecasting sales; (2) establishing sales territories and quotas, (3) analyzing expenses and (4) motivating and compensating performance.Conclusion We attempted to outline and explain the personal selling aspect of the promotion mix. An emphasis was placed on describing the importance of the relationship-building aspect of the personal selling process. For organizations that wish to continue to grow and prosper, personal selling plays an integral part in the marketing of products and services. As long as production continues to expand through the development of new and highly technical products, personal selling will continue to be an important part of marketing strategy.

An Analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969 to wide acclaim. Atwood continued teaching as her literary career blossomed. She has lectured widely and has served as a writer-in–residence at colleges ranging from the University of Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia. Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The novel, published in 1986, quickly became a best-seller. The Handmaid’s Tale falls squarely within the twentieth-century tradition of anti-utopian, or â€Å"dystopian† novels, exemplified by classics like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. Novels in this genre present imagined worlds and societies that are not ideals, but instead are terrifying or restrictive. Atwood’s novel offers a strongly feminist vision of dystopia. She wrote it shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the â€Å"sexual revolution† of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this â€Å"religious right† heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in previous decades would be reversed. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights. In the novel’s nightmare world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists has taken power and turned the sexual revolution on its head. Feminists argued for liberation from traditional gender roles, but Gilead is a society founded on a â€Å"return to traditional values† and gender roles, and on the subjugation of women by men. What feminists considered the great triumphs of the 1970s—namely, widespread access to contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the increasing political influence of female voters—have all been undone. Women in Gilead are not only forbidden to vote, they are forbidden to read or write. Atwood’s novel also paints a picture of a world undone by pollution and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears about declining birthrates, the dangers of nuclear power, and -environmental degradation. Some of the novel’s concerns seem dated today, and its implicit condemnation of the political goals of America’s religious conservatives has been criticized as unfair and overly paranoid. Nonetheless, The Handmaid’s Tale remains one of the most powerful recent portrayals of a totalitarian society, and one of the few dystopian novels to examine in detail the intersection of politics and sexuality. The novel’s exploration of the controversial politics of reproduction seems likely to guarantee Atwood’s novel a readership well into the twenty-first century. Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson and their daughter, Jess. Her most recent novel, The Blind Assassin, won Great Britain’s Booker Prize for literature in 2000. Plot Overview Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America. Because of dangerously low reproduction rates, Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving. Offred serves the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, a former gospel singer and advocate for â€Å"traditional values. † Offred is not the narrator’s real name—Handmaid names consist of the word â€Å"of† followed by the name of the Handmaid’s Commander. Every month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she must have impersonal, wordless sex with the Commander while Serena sits behind her, holding her hands. Offred’s freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely restricted. She can leave the house only on shopping trips, the door to her room cannot be completely shut, and the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police force, watch her every public move. As Offred tells the story of her daily life, she frequently slips into flashbacks, from which the reader can reconstruct the events leading up to the beginning of the novel. In the old world, before Gilead, Offred had an affair with Luke, a married man. He divorced his wife and married Offred, and they had a child together. Offred’s mother was a single mother and feminist activist. Offred’s best friend, Moira, was fiercely independent. The architects of Gilead began their rise to power in an age of readily available pornography, prostitution, and violence against women—when pollution and chemical spills led to declining fertility rates. Using the military, they assassinated the president and members of Congress and launched a coup, claiming that they were taking power temporarily. They cracked down on women’s rights, forbidding women to hold property or jobs. Offred and Luke took their daughter and attempted to flee across the border into Canada, but they were caught and separated from one another, and Offred has seen neither her husband nor her daughter since. After her capture, Offred’s marriage was voided (because Luke had been divorced), and she was sent to the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, called the Red Center by its inhabitants. At the center, women were indoctrinated into Gilead’s ideology in preparation for becoming Handmaids. Aunt Lydia supervised the women, giving speeches extolling Gilead’s beliefs that women should be subservient to men and solely concerned with bearing children. Aunt Lydia also argued that such a social order ultimately offers women more respect and safety than the old, pre-Gilead society offered them. Moira is brought to the Red Center, but she escapes, and Offred does not know what becomes of her. Once assigned to the Commander’s house, Offred’s life settles into a restrictive routine. She takes shopping trips with Ofglen, another Handmaid, and they visit the Wall outside what used to be Harvard University, where the bodies of rebels hang. She must visit the doctor frequently to be checked for disease and other complications, and she must endure the â€Å"Ceremony,† in which the Commander reads to the household from the Bible, then goes to the bedroom, where his Wife and Offred wait for him, and has sex with Offred. The first break from her routine occurs when she visits the doctor and he offers to have sex with her to get her pregnant, suggesting that her Commander is probably infertile. She refuses. The doctor makes her uneasy, but his proposition is too risky—she could be sent away if caught. After a Ceremony, the Commander sends his gardener and chauffeur, Nick, to ask Offred to come see him in his study the following night. She begins visiting him regularly. They play Scrabble (which is forbidden, since women are not allowed to read), and he lets her look at old magazines like Vogue. At the end of these secret meetings, he asks her to kiss him. During one of their shopping trips, Ofglen reveals to Offred that she is a member of â€Å"Mayday,† an underground organization dedicated to overthrowing Gilead. Meanwhile, Offred begins to find that the Ceremony feels different and less impersonal now that she knows the Commander. Their nighttime conversations begin to touch on the new order that the Commander and his fellow leaders have created in Gilead. When Offred admits how unhappy she is, the Commander remarks, â€Å"[Y]ou can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. † After some time has gone by without Offred becoming pregnant, Serena suggests that Offred have sex with Nick secretly and pass the child off as the Commander’s. Serena promises to bring Offred a picture of her daughter if she sleeps with Nick, and Offred realizes that Serena has always known the whereabouts of Offred’s daughter. The same night that Offred is to sleep with Nick, the Commander secretly takes her out to a club called Jezebel’s, where the Commanders mingle with prostitutes. Offred sees Moira working there. The two women meet in a bathroom, and Offred learns that Moira was captured just before she crossed the border. She chose life in Jezebel’s over being sent to the Colonies, where most political prisoners and dangerous people are sent. After that night at Jezebel’s, Offred says, she never sees Moira again. The Commander takes Offred upstairs after a few hours, and they have sex in what used to be a hotel room. She tries to feign passion. Soon after Offred returns from Jezebel’s, late at night, Serena arrives and tells Offred to go to Nick’s room. Offred and Nick have sex. Soon they begin to sleep together frequently, without anyone’s knowledge. Offred becomes caught up in the affair and ignores Ofglen’s requests that she gather information from the Commander for Mayday. One day, all the Handmaids take part in a group execution of a supposed rapist, supervised by Aunt Lydia. Ofglen strikes the first blow. Later, she tells Offred that the so-called rapist was a member of Mayday and that she hit him to put him out of his misery. Shortly thereafter, Offred goes out shopping, and a new Ofglen meets her. This new woman is not part of Mayday, and she tells Offred that the old Ofglen hanged herself when she saw the secret police coming for her. At home, Serena has found out about Offred’s trip to Jezebel’s, and she sends her to her room, promising punishment. Offred waits there, and she sees a black van from the Eyes approach. Then Nick comes in and tells her that the Eyes are really Mayday members who have come to save her. Offred leaves with them, over the Commander’s futile objections, on her way either to prison or to freedom—she does not know which. The novel closes with an epilogue from 2195, after Gilead has fallen, written in the form of a lecture given by Professor Pieixoto. He explains the formation and customs of Gilead in objective, analytical language. He discusses the significance of Offred’s story, which has turned up on cassette tapes in Bangor, Maine. He suggests that Nick arranged Offred’s escape but that her fate after that is unknown. She could have escaped to Canada or England, or she could have been recaptured. Character List Offred – The narrator and protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale. Offred belongs to the class of Handmaids, fertile women forced to bear children for elite, barren couples. Handmaids show which Commander owns them by adopting their Commanders’ names, such as Fred, and preceding them with â€Å"Of. Offred remembers her real name but never reveals it. She no longer has family or friends, though she has flashbacks to a time in which she had a daughter and a husband named Luke. The cruel physical and psychological burdens of her daily life in Gilead torment her and pervade her narrative. Read an in-depth analysis of Offred. The Commander – The Commander is the head o f the household where Offred works as a Handmaid. He initiates an unorthodox relationship with Offred, secretly playing Scrabble with her in his study at night. He often seems a decent, well-meaning man, and Offred sometimes finds that she likes him in spite of herself. He almost seems a victim of Gilead, making the best of a society he opposes. However, we learn from various clues and from the epilogue that the Commander was actually involved in designing and establishing Gilead. Read an in-depth analysis of The Commander. Serena Joy – The Commander’s Wife, Serena worked in pre-Gilead days as a gospel singer, then as an anti-feminist activist and crusader for â€Å"traditional values. In Gilead, she sits at the top of the female social ladder, yet she is desperately unhappy. Serena’s unhappiness shows that her restrictive, male-dominated society cannot bring happiness even to its most pampered and powerful women. Serena jealously guards her claims to status and behaves cruelly toward the Handmaids in her household. Read an in-depth analysis of Serena Joy. Moira – Offred’s best friend from college, Moira i s a lesbian and a staunch feminist; she embodies female resourcefulness and independence. Her defiant nature contrasts starkly with the behavior of the other women in the novel. Rather than passively accept her fate as a Handmaid, she makes several escape attempts and finally manages to get away from the Red Center. However, she is caught before she can get out of Gilead. Later, Offred encounters Moira working as a prostitute in a club for the Commanders. At the club, Moira seems resigned to her fate, which suggests that a totalitarian society can grind down and crush even the most resourceful and independent people. Read an in-depth analysis of Moira. Aunt Lydia – The Aunts are the class of women assigned to indoctrinate the Handmaids with the beliefs of the new society and make them accept their fates. Aunt Lydia works at the â€Å"Red Center,† the re? education center where Offred and other women go for instruction before becoming Handmaids. Although she appears only in Offred’s flashbacks, Aunt Lydia and her instructions haunt Offred in her daily life. Aunt Lydia’s slogans and maxims drum the ideology of the new society into heads of the women, until even those like Offred, women who do not truly believe in the ideology, hear Gilead’s words echoing in their heads. Nick – Nick is a Guardian, a low-level officer of Gilead assigned to the Commander’s home, where he works as a gardener and chauffeur. He and Offred have a sexual chemistry that they get to satisfy when Serena Joy orchestrates an encounter between them in an effort to get Offred pregnant. After sleeping together once, they begin a covert sexual affair. Nick is not just a Guardian; he may work either as a member of the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police, or as a member of the underground Mayday resistance, or both. At the end of the novel, Nick orchestrates Offred’s escape from the Commander’s home, but we do not know whether he puts her into the hands of the Eyes or the resistance. Ofglen – Another Handmaid who is Offred’s shopping partner and a member of the subversive â€Å"Mayday† underground. At the end of the novel, Ofglen is found out, and she hangs herself rather than face torture and reveal the names of her co-conspirators. Cora – Cora works as a servant in the Commander’s household. She belongs to the class of Marthas, infertile women who do not qualify for the high status of Wives and so work in domestic roles. Cora seems more content with her role than her fellow Martha, Rita. She hopes that Offred will be able to conceive, because then she will have a hand in raising a child. Janine – Offred knows Janine from their time at the Red Center. After Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren. She has a baby, which makes her the envy of all the other Handmaids in the area, but the baby later turns out to be deformed—an â€Å"Unbaby†Ã¢â‚¬â€and there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child. Janine is a conformist, always ready to go along with what Gilead demands of her, and so she endears herself to the Aunts and to all authority figures. Offred holds Janine in contempt for taking the easy way out. Luke – In the days before Gilead, Luke had an affair with Offred while he was married to another woman, then got a divorce and became Offred’s husband. When Gilead comes to power, he attempts to escape to Canada with Offred and their daughter, but they are captured. He is separated from Offred, and the couple never see one another again. The kind of love they shared is prohibited in Gilead, and Offred’s memories of Luke contrast with the regimented, passionless state of male-female relations in the new society. Offred’s mother – Offred remembers her mother in flashbacks to her pre-Gilead world—she was a single parent and a feminist activist. One day during her education at the Red Center, Offred sees a video of her mother as a young woman, yelling and carrying a banner in an anti-rape march called Take Back the Night. She embodies everything the architects of Gilead want to stamp out. Aunt Elizabeth – Aunt Elizabeth is one of the Aunts at the Red Center. Moira attacks her and steals her Aunt’s uniform during her escape from the Red Center. Rita – A Martha, or domestic servant, in the Commander’s household. She seems less content with her lot than Cora, the other Martha working there. Professor Pieixoto – The guest speaker at the symposium that takes place in the epilogue to The Handmaid’s Tale. He and another academic, working at a university in the year 2195, transcribed Offred’s recorded narrative; his lecture details the historical significance of the story that we have just read. Analysis of Major Characters Offred Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel, and we are told the entire story from her point of view, experiencing events and memories as vividly as she does. She tells the story as it happens, and shows us the travels of her mind through asides, flashbacks, and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She possesses enough faults to make her human, but not so many that she becomes an unsympathetic figure. She also possesses a dark sense of humor—a graveyard wit that makes her descriptions of the bleak horrors of Gilead bearable, even enjoyable. Like most of the women in Gilead, she is an ordinary woman placed in an extraordinary situation. Offred is not a hero. Although she resists Gilead inwardly, once her attempt at escape fails, she submits outwardly. She is hardly a feminist champion; she had always felt uncomfortable with her mother’s activism, and her pre-Gilead relationship with Luke began when she became his mistress, meeting him in cheap hotels for sex. Although friends with Ofglen, a member of the resistance, she is never bold enough to join up herself. Indeed, after she begins her affair with Nick, she seems to lose sight of escape entirely and suddenly feels that life in Gilead is almost bearable. If she does finally escape, it is because of Nick, not because of anything she does -herself. Offred is a mostly passive character, good-hearted but complacent. Like her peers, she took for granted the freedoms feminism won and now pays the price. The Commander The Commander poses an ethical problem for Offred, and consequently for us. First, he is Offred’s Commander and the immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he also bears responsibility for the entire totalitarian society. In person, he is far more sympathetic and friendly toward Offred than most other people, and Offred’s evenings with the Commander in his study offer her a small respite from the wasteland of her life. At times, his unhappiness and need for companionship make him seem as much a prisoner of Gilead’s strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself feeling sympathy for this man. Ultimately, Offred and the reader recognize that if the Commander is a prisoner, the prison is one that he himself helped construct and that his prison is heaven compared to the prison he created for women. As the novel progresses, we come to realize that his visits with Offred are selfish rather than charitable. They satisfy his need for companionship, but he doesn’t seem to care that they put Offred at terrible risk, a fact of which he must be aware, given that the previous Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to the Commander were discovered. The Commander’s moral blindness, apparent in his attempts to explain the virtues of Gilead, are highlighted by his and Offred’s visit to Jezebel’s. The club, a place where the elite men of the society can engage in recreational extramarital sex, reveals the rank hypocrisy that runs through Gileadean society. Offred’s relationship with the Commander is best represented by a situation she remembers from a documentary on the Holocaust. In the film, the mistress of a brutal death camp guard defended the man she loved, claiming that he was not a monster. â€Å"How easy it is to invent a humanity,† Offred thinks. In other words, anyone can seem human, and even likable, given the right set of circumstances. But even if the Commander is likable and can be kind or considerate, his responsibility for the creation of Gilead and his callousness to the hell he created for women means that he, like the Nazi guard, is a monster. Serena Joy Though Serena had been an advocate for traditional values and the establishment of the Gileadean state, her bitterness at the outcome—being confined to the home and having to see her husband copulating with a Handmaid—suggests that spokeswomen for anti-feminist causes might not enjoy getting their way as much as they believe they would. Serena’s obvious unhappiness means that she teeters on the edge of inspiring our sympathy, but she forfeits that sympathy by taking out her frustration on Offred. She seems to possess no compassion for Offred. She can see the difficulty of her own life, but not that of another woman. The climactic moment in Serena’s interaction with Offred comes when she arranges for Offred to sleep with Nick. It seems that Serena makes these plans out of a desire to help Offred get pregnant, but Serena gets an equal reward from Offred’s pregnancy: she gets to raise the baby. Furthermore, Serena’s offer to show Offred a picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with Nick reveals that Serena has always known of Offred’s daughter’s whereabouts. Not only has she cruelly concealed this knowledge, she is willing to exploit Offred’s loss of a child in order to get an infant of her own. Serena’s lack of sympathy makes her the perfect tool for Gilead’s social order, which relies on the willingness of women to oppress other women. She is a cruel, selfish woman, and Atwood implies that such women are the glue that binds Gilead. Moira Throughout the novel, Moira’s relationship with Offred epitomizes female friendship. Gilead claims to promote solidarity between women, but in fact it only produces suspicion, hostility, and petty tyranny. The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain from college onward does not exist in Gilead. In Offred’s flashbacks, Moira also embodies female resistance to Gilead. She is a lesbian, which means that she rejects male-female sexual interactions, the only kind that Gilead values. More than that, she is the only character who stands up to authority directly by make two escape attempts, one successful, from the Red Center. The manner in which she escapes—taking off her clothes and putting on the uniform of an Aunt—symbolizes her rejection of Gilead’s attempt to define her identity. From then on, until Offred meets up with her again, Moira represents an alternative to the meek subservience and acceptance of one’s fate that most of the Handmaids adopt. When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been recaptured and is working as a prostitute at Jezebel’s, servicing the Commanders. Her fighting spirit seems broken, and she has become resigned to her fate. After embodying resistance for most of the novel, Moira comes to exemplify the way a totalitarian state can crush even the most independent spirit. Themes, Motifs Symbols Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments Because Gilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by dramatically ecreased birthrates, the state’s entire structure, with its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy, is built around a single goal: control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become subv ersive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands or the state. Despite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman. They are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the next generation. Language as a Tool of Power Gilead creates an official vocabulary that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs of the new society’s elite. Having made it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are defined by their military rank, women are defined solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. Stripping them of permanent individual names strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated as subhuman, denoted by the terms â€Å"Unwomen† and â€Å"Unbabies. † Blacks and Jews are defined by biblical terms (â€Å"Children of Ham† and â€Å"Sons of Jacob,† respectively) that set them apart from the rest of society, making their persecution easier. There are prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as â€Å"Prayvaganzas,† â€Å"Salvagings,† and â€Å"Particicutions. † Dystopian novels about the dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the connection between a state’s repression of its subjects and its perversion of language (â€Å"Newspeak† in George Orwell’s 1984 is the most famous example), and The Handmaid’s Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its control over women’s bodies by maintaining control over names. The Causes of Complacency In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure oppression willingly as long as they receive some slight amount of power or freedom. Offred remembers her mother saying that it is â€Å"truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. † Offred’s complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the truth of this insight. Her situation restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former life allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her former existence. The physical affection and companionship become compensation that make the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes when Ofglen asks her to gather information about the Commander. Women in general support Gilead’s existence by willingly participating in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian state. While a woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises authority within her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred. She jealously guards what little power she has and wields it eagerly. In a similar way, the women known as Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule. Atwood’s message is bleak. At the same time as she condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered strength and stopped complying, they would likely fail to make a difference. In Gilead the tiny rebellions of resistances do not necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck rather than resistance. Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes. Rape and Sexual Violence Sexual violence, particularly against women, pervades The Handmaid’s Tale. The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment of the new order. The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a supposed rapist (actually a member of the resistance). Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it, as we see at Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite. Most important, sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders. Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes Gilead is a theocracy—a government in which there is no separation between state and religion—and its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. Domestic servants are called â€Å"Marthas† in reference to a domestic character in the New Testament; the local police are â€Å"Guardians of the Faith†; soldiers are â€Å"Angels†; and the Commanders are officially â€Å"Commanders of the Faithful. All the stores have biblical names: Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people, ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible itself. Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan â€Å"God is a National Resource† predominates. Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist Ideologies Although The Handmaid’s Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities between the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offred’s mother. Both groups claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves willing to restrict free speech in order to accomplish this goal. Offred recalls a scene in which her mother and other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of Gilead, these feminists ban some expressions of sexuality. Gilead also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and â€Å"sisterhood† to its own advantage. These points of similarity imply the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric. Despite Atwood’s gentle criticism of the feminist left, her real target is the religious right. Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Cambridge, Massachusetts The center of Gilead’s power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, but a number of clues mark it as the town of Cambridge. Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and Massachusetts as a whole were centers for America’s first religious and intolerant society—the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this history with the ancient Puritan church that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the novel, which Gilead has turned into a museum. The choice of Cambridge as a setting symbolizes the direct link between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt harshly with religious, sexual, or political deviation. Harvard University Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand. The Handmaids’ Red Habits The red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the caste’s primary function. Red suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At the same time, however, red is also a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back to the scarlet letter worn by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids’ reproductive role supposedly finds its justification in the Bible, in some sense they commit adultery by having sex with their Commanders, who are married men. The wives, who often call the Handmaids sluts, feel the pain of this sanctioned adultery. The Handmaids’ red garments, then, also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of the Handmaids’ position in Gilead. A Palimpsest A palimpsest is a document on which old writing has been scratched out, often leaving traces, and new writing put in its place; it can also be a document consisting of many layers of writing simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center as a palimpsest, but the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead. The old world has been erased and replaced, but only partially, by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead days continue to infuse the new world. The Eyes The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same. Chapters 1–3 Summary: Chapter 1 The narrator, whose name we learn later is Offred, describes how she and other women slept on army cots in a gymnasium. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrol with electric cattle prods hanging from their leather belts, and the women, forbidden to speak aloud, whisper without attracting attention. Twice daily, the women walk in the former football field, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Armed guards called Angels patrol outside. While the women take their walks, the Angels stand outside the fence with their backs to the women. The women long for the Angels to turn and see them. They imagine that if the men looked at them or talked to them, they could use their bodies to make a deal. The narrator describes lying in bed at night, quietly exchanging names with the other women. Summary: Chapter 2 The scene changes, and the story shifts from the past to the present tense. Offred now lives in a room fitted out with curtains, a pillow, a framed picture, and a braided rug. There is no glass in the room, not even over the framed picture. The window does not open completely, and the windowpane is shatterproof. There is nothing in the room from which one could hang a rope, and the door does not lock or even shut completely. Looking around, Offred remembers how Aunt Lydia told her to consider her circumstances a privilege, not a prison. Handmaids, to which group the narrator belongs, dress entirely in red, except for the white wings framing their faces. Household servants, called â€Å"Marthas,† wear green uniforms. â€Å"Wives† wear blue uniforms. Offred often secretly listens to Rita and Cora, the Marthas who work in the house where she lives. Once, she hears Rita state that she would never debase herself as someone in Offred’s position must. Cora replies that Offred works for all the women, and that if she (Cora) were younger and had not gotten her tubes tied, she could have been in Offred’s situation. Offred wishes she could alk to them, but Marthas are not supposed to develop relationships with Handmaids. She wishes that she could share gossip like they do—gossip about how one Handmaid gave birth to a stillborn, how a Wife stabbed a Handmaid with a knitting needle out of jealousy, how someone poisoned her Commander with toilet cleaner. Offred dresses for a shopping trip. She c ollects from Rita the tokens that serve as currency. Each token bears an image of what it will purchase: twelve eggs, cheese, and a steak. Summary: Chapter 3 On her way out, Offred looks around for the Commander’s Wife but does not see her. The Commander’s Wife has a garden, and she knits constantly. All the Wives knit scarves â€Å"for the Angels at the front lines,† but the Commander’s Wife is a particularly skilled knitter. Offred wonders if the scarves actually get used, or if they just give the Wives something to do. She remembers arriving at the Commander’s house for the first time, after the two couples to which she was previously assigned â€Å"didn’t work out. † One of the Wives in an earlier posting secluded herself in the bedroom, purportedly drinking, and Offred hoped the new Commander’s Wife would be different. On the first day, her new mistress told her to stay out of her sight as much as possible, and to avoid making trouble. As she talked, the Wife smoked a cigarette, a black-market item. Handmaids, Offred notes, are forbidden coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol. Then the Wife reminded Offred that the Commander is her husband, permanently and forever. â€Å"It’s one of the things we fought for,† she said, looking away. Suddenly, Offred recognized her mistress as Serena Joy, the lead soprano from Growing Souls Gospel Hour, a Sunday-morning religious program that aired when Offred was a child. Analysis: Chapters 1–5 The Handmaid’s Tale plunges immediately into an unfamiliar, unexplained world, using unfamiliar terms like â€Å"Handmaid,† â€Å"Angel,† and â€Å"Commander† that only come to make sense as the story progresses. Offred gradually delivers information about her past and the world in which she lives, often narrating through flashbacks. She narrates these flashbacks in the past tense, which distinguishes them from the main body of the story, which she tells in the present tense. The first scene, in the gymnasium, is a flashback, as are Offred’s memories of the Marthas’ gossip and her first meeting with the Commander’s Wife. Although at this point we do not know what the gymnasium signifies, or why the narrator and other women lived there, we do gather some information from the brief first chapter. The women in the gymnasium live under the constant surveillance of the Angels and the Aunts, and they cannot interact with one another. They seem to inhabit a kind of prison. Offred likens the gym to a palimpsest, a parchment either erased and written on again or layered with multiple writings. In the gym palimpsest, Offred sees multiple layers of history: high school girls going to basketball games and dances wearing miniskirts, then pants, then green hair. Likening the gym to a palimpsest also suggests that the society Offred now inhabits has been superimposed on a previous society, and traces of the old linger beneath the new. In Chapter 2, Offred sits in a room that seems at first like a pleasant change from harsh atmosphere of the gymnasium. However, her description of her room demonstrates that the same rigid, controlling structures that ruled the gym continue to constrict her in this house. The room is like a prison in which all means of defense, or escape by suicide or flight, have been removed. She wonders if women everywhere get issued exactly the same sheets and curtains, which underlines the idea that the room is like a government-ordered prison. We do not know yet what purpose Offred serves in the house, although it seems to be sexual—Cora comments that she could have done Offred’s work if she hadn’t gotten her tubes tied, which implies that Offred’s function is reproductive. Serena Joy’s coldness to Offred makes it plain that she considers Offred a threat, or at least an annoyance. We do know from Offred’s name that she, like all Handmaids, is considered state property. Handmaids’ names simply reflect which Commander owns them. â€Å"Of Fred,† â€Å"Of Warren,† and â€Å"Of Glen† get collapsed into â€Å"Offred,† â€Å"Ofwarren,† and â€Å"Ofglen. † The names make more sense when preceded by the word â€Å"Property†: â€Å"Property Offred,† for example. Thus, every time the women hear their names, they are reminded that they are no more than property. These early chapters establish the novel’s style, which is characterized by considerable physical description. The narrator devotes attention to the features of the gym, the Commander’s house, and Serena Joy’s pinched face. Offred tells the story in nonlinear fashion, following the temporal leaps of her own mind. The narrative goes where her thoughts take it—one moment to the present, in the Commander’s house, and the next back in the gymnasium, or in the old world, the United States as it exists in Offred’s memory. We do not have the sense, as in some first-person narratives, that Offred is composing this story from a distanced vantage point, reflecting back on her past. Rather, all of her thoughts have a quality of immediacy. We are there with Offred as she goes about her daily life, and as she slips out of the present and thinks about her past. Chapters 4–6 Summary: Chapter 4 As she leaves the house to go shopping, Offred notices Nick, a Guardian of the Faith, washing the Commander’s car. Nick lives above the garage. He winks at Offred—an offense against -decorum— but she ignores him, fearing that he may be an Eye, a spy assigned to test her. She waits at the corner for Ofglen, another Handmaid with whom Offred will do her shopping. The Handmaids always travel in pairs when outside. Ofglen arrives, and they exchange greetings, careful not to say anything that isn’t strictly orthodox. Ofglen says that she has heard the war is going well, and that the army recently defeated a group of Baptist rebels. â€Å"Praise be,† Offred responds. They reach a checkpoint manned by two young Guardians. The Guardians serve as a routine police force and do menial labor. They are men too young, too old, or just generally unfit for the army. Young Guardians, such as these, can be dangerous because they are frequently more fanatical or nervous than older guards. These young Guardians recently shot a Martha as she fumbled for her pass, because they thought she was a man in disguise carrying a bomb. Offred heard Rita and Cora talking about the shooting. Rita was angry, but Cora seemed to accept the shooting as the price one pays for safety. At the checkpoint, Offred subtly flirts with one of the Guardians by making eye contact, cherishing this small infraction against the rules. She considers how sex-starved the young men must be, since they cannot marry without permission, masturbation is a sin, and pornographic magazines and films are now forbidden. The Guardians can only hope to become Angels, when they will be allowed to take a wife and perhaps eventually get a Handmaid. This marks the first time in the novel we hear the word â€Å"Handmaid† used. Summary: Chapter 5 In town, Ofglen and Offred wait in line at the shops. We learn the name of this new society: â€Å"The Republic of Gilead. † Offred remembers the pre-Gilead days, when women were not protected: they had to keep their doors closed to strangers and ignore catcalls on the street. Now no one whistles at women as they walk; no one touches them or talks to them. She remembers Aunt Lydia explaining that more than one kind of freedom exists, and that â€Å"[i]n the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. † The women shop at stores known by names like All Flesh and Milk and Honey. Pictures of meat or fruit mark the stores, rather than lettered signs, because â€Å"they decided that even the names of shops were too much temptation for us. † A Handmaid in the late stages of pregnancy enters the store and raises a flurry of excitement. Offred recognizes her from the Red Center. She used to be known as Janine, and she was one of Aunt Lydia’s favorites. Now her name is Ofwarren. Offred senses that Janine went shopping just so she could show off her pregnancy. Offred thinks of her husband, Luke, and their daughter, and the life they led before Gilead existed. She remembers a prosaic detail from their everyday life together: she used to store plastic shopping bags under the sink, which annoyed Luke, who worried that their daughter would get one of the bags caught over her head. She remembers feeling guilty for her carelessness. Offred and Ofglen finish their shopping and go out to the sidewalk, where they encounter a group of Japanese tourists and their interpreter. The tourists want to take a photograph, but Offred says no. Many of the interpreters are Eyes, and Handmaids must not appear immodest. Offred and Ofglen marvel at the women’s exposed legs, high heels, and polished toenails. The tourists ask if they are happy, and since Ofglen does not answer, Offred replies that they are very happy. Summary: Chapter 6 This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. (See Important Quotations Explained) As they return from shopping, Ofglen suggests they take the long way and pass by the church. It is an old building, decorated inside with paintings of what seem to be Puritans from the colonial era. Now the former church is kept as a museum. Offred describes a nearby boathouse, old dormitories, a football stadium, and redbrick sidewalks. Atwood implies that Offred is walking across what used to be the campus of Harvard University. Across the street from the church sits the Wall, where the authorities hang the bodies of executed criminals as examples to the rest of the Republic of Gilead. The authorities cover the men’s heads with bags. One of the bags looks painted with a red smile where the blood has seeped through. All of the six corpses wear signs around their necks picturing fetuses, signaling that they were executed for performing abortions before Gilead came into existence. Although their actions were legal at the time, their crimes are being punished retroactively. Offred feels relieved that none of the bodies could be Luke’s, since he was not a doctor. As she stares at the bodies, Offred thinks of Aunt Lydia telling them that soon their new life would seem ordinary. Analysis: Chapters 4–6 The theocratic nature of Offred’s society, the name of which we learn for the first time in these chapters, becomes clear during her shopping trip. A theocracy exists when there is no separation between church and state, and a single religion dominates all aspects of life. In Gilead, state and religion are inseparable. The official language of Gilead uses many biblical terms, from the various ranks that men hold (Angels, Guardians of the Faith, Commanders of the Faith, the Eyes of God), to the stores where Offred and Ofglen shop (Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Loaves and Fishes), to the names of automobiles (Behemoth, Whirlwind, Chariot). The very name â€Å"Gilead† refers to a location in ancient Israel. The name also recalls a line from the Book of Psalms: â€Å"there is a balm in Gilead. This phrase, we realize later, has been transformed into a kind of national motto. Atwood does not describe the exact details of Gilead’s state religion. In Chapter 2, Offred describes her room as â€Å"a return to traditional values. † The religious right in America uses the phrase â€Å"traditional values,† so Atwoo d seems to link the values of this dystopic society to the values of the Protestant Christian religious right in America. Gilead seems more Protestant than anything else, but its brand of Christianity pays far more attention to the Old Testament than the New Testament. The religious justification for having Handmaids, for instance, is taken from the Book of Genesis. We learn that neither Catholics nor Jews are welcome in Gilead. The former must convert, while the latter must emigrate to Israel or renounce their Judaism. Atwood seems less interested in religion than in the intersection between religion, politics, and sex. The Handmaid’s Tale explores the political oppression of women, carried out in the name of God but in large part motivated by a desire to control women’s bodies. Gilead sees women’s sexuality as dangerous: women must cover themselves from head to toe, for example, and not reveal their sexual attractions. When Offred attracts the Guardians, she feels this ability to inspire sexual attraction is the only power she retains. Every other privilege is stripped away, down to the very act of reading, which is forbidden. Women are not even allowed to read store signs. By controlling women’s minds, by not allowing them to read, the authorities more easily control women’s bodies. The patriarchs of Gilead want to control women’s bodies, their sex lives, and their reproductive rights. The bodies of slain abortionists on the Wall hammer home the point: feminists believe that women must have abortion rights in order to control their own bodies, and in Gilead, giving women control of their bodies is a horrifying crime. When Offred and Ofglen go to town to shop, geographical clues and street names suggest that they live in what was once Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that their walk takes them near what used to be the campus of Harvard University. The choice of Cambridge for the setting of The Handmaid’s Tale is significant, since Massachusetts was a Puritan stronghold during the colonial period of the United States. The Puritans were a persecuted minority in England, but when they fled to New England, they re-created the repression they suffered at home, this time casting themselves as the repressors rather than the repressed. They established an intolerant religious society in some ways similar to Gilead. Atwood locates her fictional intolerant society in a place founded by intolerant people. By turning the old church into a museum, and leaving untouched portraits of Puritan forebears, the founders of Gilead suggest their admiration for the old Puritan society. Chapters 7–9 Summary: Chapter 7 I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. (See Important Quotations Explained) At night, Offred likes to remember her former life. She recalls talking to her college friend, Moira, in her dorm room. She remembers being a child and going to a park with her mother, where they saw a group of women and a few men burning pornographic magazines. Offred has forgotten a large chunk of time, which she thinks might be the fault of an injection or pill the authorities gave her. She remembers waking up somewhere and screaming, demanding to know what they had done with her daughter. The authorities told Offred she was unfit, and her daughter was with those fit to care for her. They showed her a photograph of her child wearing a white dress, holding the hand of a strange woman. As she recounts these events, Offred imagines she is telling her story to someone, telling things that she cannot write down, because writing is forbidden. Summary: Chapter 8 Returning from another shopping trip, Ofglen and Offred notice three new bodies on the Wall. One is a Catholic priest and two are Guardians who bear placards around their necks that read â€Å"Gender Treachery. † This means they were hanged for committing homosexual acts. After looking at the bodies for a while, Offred tells Ofglen that they should continue walking home. They meet a funeral procession of Econowives, the wives of poorer men. One Econowife carries a small black jar. From the size of the jar, Offred can tell that it contains a dead embryo from an early miscarriage—one that came too early to know whether it was an â€Å"Unbaby. † The Econowives do not like the Handmaids. One woman scowls, and another spits at the Handmaids as they pass. At the corner near the Commander’s home, Ofglen says â€Å"Under His Eye,† the orthodox good-bye, hesitating as if she wants to say more but then continuing on her way. When Offred reaches the Commander’s driveway she passes Nick, who breaks the rules by asking her about her walk. She says nothing and goes into the house. She sees Serena Joy out in the garden and recalls how after Serena’s singing career ended, she became a spokesperson for respecting the â€Å"sanctity of the home† and for women staying at home instead of working. Serena herself never stayed at home, because she was always out giving speeches. Once, Offred remembers, someone tried to assassinate Serena but killed her secretary instead. Offred wonders if Serena is angry that she can no longer be a public figure, now that what she advocated has come to pass and all women, including her, are confined to the home. In the kitchen, Rita fusses over the quality of the purchases as she always does. Offred retreats upstairs and notices the Commander standing outside her room. He is not supposed to be there. He nods at her and retreats. Summary: Chapter 9 Offred remembers renting hotel rooms and waiting for Luke to meet her, before they were married, when he was cheating on his first wife. She regrets that she did not fully appreciate the freedom to have her own space when she wanted it. Thinking of the problems she and Luke thought they had, she realizes they were truly happy, although they did not know it. She remembers examining her room in the Commander’s house little by little after she first arrived. She saw stains on the mattress, left over from long-ago sex, and she discovered a Latin phrase freshly scratched into the floor of the closet: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Offred does not understand Latin. It pleases her to imagine that this message allows her to commune with the woman who wrote it. She pictures this woman as freckly and irreverent, someone like Moira. Later, she asks Rita who stayed in her room before her. Rita tells her to specify which one, implying that there were a number of Handmaids before her. Offred says, guessing, â€Å"[t]he lively one . . . with freckles. † Rita asks how Offred knew about her, but she refuses to tell Offred anything about the previous Handmaid beyond a vague statement that she did not work out. Analysis: Chapter 7–9 Atwood suggests that those who seek to restrict sexual expression, whether they are feminists or religious conservatives, ultimately share the same goal—the control of sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality. In the flashback to the scene from Offred’s childhood in which women burn pornographic magazines, Atwood shows the similarity between the extremism of the left and the extremism of the right. The people burning magazines are feminists, not religious conservatives like the leaders of Gilead, yet their goal is the same: to crack down on certain kinds of sexual freedom. In other words, the desire for control over sexuality is not unique to the religious totalitarians of Gilead; it also existed in the feminist anti-pornography crusades that preceded the fall of the United States. Gilead actually appropriates some of the rhetoric of women’s liberation in its attempt to control women. Gilead also uses the Aunts and the Aunts’ rhetoric, forcing women to control other women. Again and again in the novel, the voice of Aunt Lydia rings in Offred’s head, insisting that women are better off in Gilead, free from exploitation and violence, than they were in the dangerous freedom of pre-Gilead times. In Chapter 7, Offred relates some of the details of how she lost her child. This loss is the central wound on Offred’s psyche throughout the novel, and the novel’s great source of emotional power. The loss of her child is so painful to Offred that she can only relate the story in fits and starts; so far the details of what happened have been murky. When telling stories from her past, like the story of her daughter’s disappearance, Offred often seems to draw on a partial or foggy memory. It almost seems as if she is remembering details from hundreds of years ago, when we know these things happened a few years before the narrative. Partly this distance is the product of emotional trauma—thinking of the past is painful for Offred. But in Chapter 7, Offred offers her own explanation for these gaps: she thinks it possible that the authorities gave her a pill or injection that harmed her memory. Immediately after remembering her daughter, Offred addresses someone she calls â€Å"you. † She could be talking to God, Luke, or an imaginary future reader. â€Å"I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling,† Offred says. â€Å"Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance . . A story is a letter. Dear You, I’ll say. † In the act of telling her imagined audience about her life, Offred reduces her life’s horror and makes its oppressive weight endurable. Also, if she can think of her life as a story and herself as the writer, she can think of her life as controllable, fictional, something not terrifying because not real. We learn in Chap ter 8 that Serena used to campaign against women’s rights. This makes her a figure worthy of pity, in a way; she supported the anti-woman principles on which Gilead was founded, but once they were mplemented, she found that they affected her as well as other women. She now lives deprived of freedom and saddled with a Handmaid who has sex with her husband. Yet Serena forfeits what pity we might feel for her by her callous, petty behavior toward Offred. Powerless in the world of men, Serena can only take out her frustration on the women under her thumb by making their lives miserable. In many ways, she treats Offred far worse than the Commander does, which suggests that Gilead’s oppressive power structure succeeds not just because men created it, but because women like Serena sustain it. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum—the Latin phrase scrawled in Offred’s closet by a previous Handmaid—takes on a magical importance for Offred even before she knows what it means. It symbolizes her inner resistance to Gilead’s tyranny and makes her feel like she can communicate with other strong women, like the woman who wrote the message. In Chapter 29 we learn what the phrase means, and its role in sustaining Offred’s resistance comes to seem perfectly appropriate. Chapters 10–12 Summary: Chapter 10 Offred often sings songs in her head—â€Å"Amazing Grace† or songs by Elvis. Most music is forbidden in Gilead, and there is little of it in the Commander’s home. Sometimes she hears Serena humming and listening to a recording of herself from the time when she was a famous gospel singer. Summer is approaching, and the house grows hot. Soon the Handmaids will be allowed to wear their summer dresses. Offred thinks about how Aunt Lydia would describe the terrible things that used to happen to women in the old days, before Gilead, when they sunbathed wearing next to nothing. Offred remembers Moira throwing an â€Å"underwhore† party to sell sexy lingerie. She remembers reading stories in the papers about women who were murdered and raped, but even in the old days it seemed distant from her life and unrelated to her. Offred sits at the window, beside a cushion embroidered with the word Faith. It is the only word they have given her to read, and she spends many minutes looking at it. From her window, she watches the Commander get into his car and drive away. Summary: Chapter 11 Offred says that yesterday she went to the doctor. Every month, a Guardian accompanies Offred to a doctor, who tests her for pregnancy and disease. At the doctor’s office, Offred undresses, pulling a sheet over her body. A sheet hangs down from the ceiling, cutting off the doctor’s view of her face. The doctor is not supposed to see her face or speak to her if he can help it. On this visit, though, he chatters cheerfully and then offers to help her. He says many of the Commanders are either too old to produce a child or are sterile, and he suggests that he could have sex with her and impregnate her. His use of the word â€Å"sterile† shocks Offred, for officially sterile men no longer exist. In Gilead, there are only fruitful women and barren women. Offred thinks him genuinely sympathetic to her plight, but she also realizes he enjoys his own empathy and his position of power. After a moment, she declines, saying it is too dangerous. If they are caught, they will both receive the death penalty. She tries to sound casual and grateful as she refuses, but she feels frightened. To revenge her refusal, the doctor could falsely report that she has a health problem, and then she would be sent to the Colonies with the â€Å"Unwomen. † Offred also feels frightened, she realizes, because she has been given a way out. Summary: Chapter 12 It is one of Offred’s required bath days. The bathroom has no mirror, no razors, and no lock on the door. Cora sits outside, waiting for Offred. Offred’s own naked body seems strange to her, and she finds it hard to believe that she once wore bathing suits, letting people see her thighs and arms, her breasts and buttocks. Lying in the bath, she thinks of her daughter and remembers the time when a crazy woman tried to kidnap the little girl in the supermarket. The authorities in Gilead took Offred’s then-five-year-old child from her, and three years have passed since then. Offred has no mementos of her daughter. She remember

Draft of your File-Sharing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Draft of your File-Sharing - Essay Example Ultimately this hurts the musical artist because the artist does not receive the profit they deserve from this exchange. This downloading is illegal and should be banned. However, no solid action has been taken thus far. Moral dilemmas in addition to monetary issues develop over these infractions of copyright laws. If law enforcement as well as the general public does not do something, the artists will continue to not profit by the P2P software. Something concrete must be done to protect these artists and stop people from downloading music illegally. It is apparent that album sales have been reduced drastically because of P2P software. This action only hurts the artists and destroys their ability to earn their livelihood. It is time to stop this menace. Strict actions must be taken to ensure that no illegal copies of any music album are made. It seems like nothing has been done to eliminate P2P websites and software in the past, but necessary steps must be taken now in order to protect the artists. Examples of peer-to-peer software include, but are not limited to: music-oasis, bearshare, frostwire, and ez-tracks. The idea behind the software is that users contribute their own songs to other users while downloading new music in the process. It is based on the concept of sharing: you give me your Elton John song and I will give you my Cher song. In these circumstances, there is no exchange of money involved. The artist does not benefit from this software in any way. Consumers have always shared music- when cd’s were popular, it was common to borrow a cd from a friend and put the songs on the computer. The concept of mass communal sharing via the Internet is clever, and it must be nice to not have to pay for music. However, in the end the consumer is only hurting himself. For instance, an artist distributes a single. The song becomes popular. The radio plays it all the time, people hum it absentmindedly while they are at

Reflections Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Reflections - Essay Example I do not own a car. I neither turn off my computer nor do I have any energy saving features. My diet is usually assorted meat, grains and vegetables that make me an Omnivore. I mostly obtain food from supermarkets. I occasionally select organic food. I usually have two large meals a day. These facts it leaves my food footprint at 100.7 global acres and the country average at 65.74 ga. I own a 4-bedroom house, which is built from concrete. Inside the house, I own a little furniture made from sustainably produced materials. I sometimes use cleaning products that are non-toxic. I often buy new furniture every one year. If everyone on the planet lived the way I do, we would need 6.02 Earths. This result is quite surprising and exaggerated. It clearly shows that I have a high consumption of global resources. This is not quite a good indication since I am using up the resources that I do not own and do not have. I believe the footprint of an individual in a less developed country has a smaller ecological count than mine. This calls for measures to be taken immediately since if this goes on I will be wasting resources that could have been shared by others. During the past week, I have had to cut down on food consumption to one large meal per day. I have developed a habit of switching off lights that are unused. In addition, I have learned to switch off electronic that are not in use. This has decreased the number of Earths required to 3.4. Ecological footprint analysis is an environmental accounting tool that estimates resource consumption. It also involves waste assimilation requirements of any population in terms of the corresponding productive land and water area. The following are waste materials I have thrown in the thrash can for the past one week: It is surprising how much garbage can accumulate with time. We do not realize it in day-to-day life. When my sister was an infant, we had to decide whether to

Managing Conflict Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Managing Conflict - Essay Example If these three issues are addressed the department will have an increased output on performance. These three points advocate for both good working relationships and performance. The bad working relationship in the department is the cause of the not sufficient performance. I would address the issues in the meeting since supervisors in the organization would be looking for a better working relationships and an improvement in performance. The issue on performance will be focused on having nothing short of the best performance from each employee. This will help shift their focus from disagreement to working. Freedom of speech will be addressed to all employees who have the feeling that they have been segregated from decision making and opinions in the department (Priscoli & Wolf, 2009). This increases the working efficiency and relationship since all employees regardless of race will feel that they are considered as important in the organization. A good working relationship will be a promotion of harmonious working between the employees. To affect the three points, stern warnings and punishment should be implemented. Termination of working contracts and departmental transfers are examples of punishment (Mullins, 2005). Employees will respond positively to the improvement requirements since their working environment and overall performance will be improved significantly (Levine, 2005). Management of conflicts is the best way to promote performance and productivity of an organization. All departmental heads and managers require conflict resolution skills to lead an organization to expected