Market analysis for private investors Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Market analysis for private investors - Essay Example In 2009, the equity investment fell miserably forcing a number of investors undergoing a great loss in their investment. Nonetheless, the performance of the equity investment began to pick from late in the year 2009 to 2010. The performance of the equity investment kept on rising steadily to its peak in 2011. This was a relief to most investors considering most of them underwent a massive loss during recession period (Cherry, 2011, 40). The investment performance of the equity income for the last five years clearly shows how the equity income experienced both a decline and a rise in its market performance. Recession and the hard economic times experienced in year 2008-2009 were responsible for the poor performance of equity income investment. Aberdeen UK equity income A ACC was well managed to ensure its future performance was optimally maintained so that investors can obtain reasonable returns (Cherry, 2011, 41). In addition, history is also well managed so that the trend of investm ent of the equity income can be seen clearly. Therefore, investing in equity income requires a clear focus in investment, management and its growth. Risk averse investors can use this kind of investment income because its investment is diversified around the world. JPM natural resources involve investment in production and marketing commodities around the world. Investing in JPM natural resources guarantees capital growth in the long term. From the year, 2007 to 2011 JPM natural resources experienced a rise and a fall in investment performance (Salih, 2011, 12). J.P For instance, the year 2007 had steady growth in performance of JPM natural resources. The performance of the investment remained between 0-40 percent until 2009 when the investment performance declined to negative. The performance started picking again at the beginning of 2009 and it kept on rising steadily to 2011. Performance of the JPM natural resources can be considered stable in recent years (Salih, 2011, 13). This investment portfolio was also affected by recession and difficult economic times in the year 2008-2009. The investment is expected to benefit its investors after awhile. Therefore, investors considering investing in this portfolio need to be patient with their returns. Fidelity south East Asia is an investment portfolio with an objective of raising long-term capital from diverse companies throughout pacific basin excluding Japan. The investment portfolio is known to favor large companies in addition; the investment portfolio has better investing opportunities with greater risk (Adams, 2007, 95). In the past five years, fidelity south East Asia has recorded constant growth with a number of declines in the investment. The year 2008 recorded a fall in performance of fidelity East Asia investment due to recession and economic downfall of all investments around the world. From year 2009 to 2011, the investment portfolio recorded a steady growth providing investors with recommendable ret urns. Investing in fidelity south East Asia requires an investor to incur some charges (Adams, 2007, 96). In order to invest in fidelity south East Asia one is required to invest a minimum of a thousand pounds and a top up of two hundred and fifty pounds (Adams, 2007, 97). There is a standard charge for all

African American and Their Rights Essay Example for Free

African American and Their Rights Essay Since slavery, African Americans have gone through a lot to reach their current state. In the early 20th century, African Americans faced discrimination, isolation, and were segregated according to their skin color. It started when Europeans brought the first Africans to America, and continued throughout the Civil War. The American government made some changes in policies. A variety of leaders shaped the successful struggle toward black equality in America (Bowles, 2011). Ever since slavery begun, African Americans have been determined to end segregation, discrimination, and isolation. Activists such as, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and others, joined together to put an end to segregation, discrimination, and isolation to attain civil rights and equality. Slavery had changed dramatically in the late 1600s. About this time the slave trade to American colonies also began increasing to meet the demand for cheap labor. Traders sold slaves to the Northern colonies, but English and other European immigrants satisfied the demand for labor there (Echerd, 2009). Slaves in America came from western and central Africa. African tribes sometimes enslaved those defeated in intertribal wars and sold their captives to European slave traders. The tribes raided villages to obtain slaves to trade for European goods. Slave traders had even offered the Africans guns and other goods for the slaves. Slaves lived a rough, hard life. Cheap labor was a huge part of their lives. They had to work from sunrise to sunset. The work consisted of clearing land, tended to fields of tobacco, rice, and vegetables. They also performed many other tasks that had helped make plantations almost completely self-sufficient. No slaves saw any money for their tasks that they had performed, but they did receive food, clothing, and shelter. The slaves had resided in small one-room huts, which had no windows and the floors were all dirt. Most slaves accepted their living condition, however, they knew no other way of life (Koehler, 2009). However, white Southerners regained control of state governments in the South during the late 1870s, however, and reversed most of the previous gains made by former slaves. For example: segregation. What is segregation? According to Webster’s Dictionary, to segregate is defined as to separate or set apart from others; isolate or to require, often with force, the separation of a specific racial, religious, or other group from the body of society. Segregation has been a part of our American heritage, almost from the moment slaves arrived on the shores of the New World (Bowles, 2011). In 17th century Virginia, the theocratic government feared that racial mixing between freed and enslaved blacks and white indentured servants would become a means to usurp government power. They passed laws in which the color line was clearly defined in any criminal punishments. By treating whites and blacks separately and unequally, these Virginian leaders set up a system of white supremacy that would become an essential component of American slavery. Separation and segregation was the order of the day, with African Americans being forced to ride in separate railroad cars, have their own hotels and courthouses, and even get water out of their own drinking fountains. Their children could not attend the same schools with the White children. To further push the color-line, they then added in segregation with the Jim Crow Laws. This is mainly because the Whites were considered to be superior, and hence were thought to deserve better schools with better facilities. African Americans on the other hand were considered inferior, and hence their children attended low-quality schools that lacked adequate facilities (Sitkoff Franklin, 2008). The Northern States, which had grew and prospered during the war, believed the former slaves to be equal as any other person. The Southern States, still angry over the loss of the war and their firm belief in White superiority, took a different approach. They created and enforced what were known as the Black Codes. These were legislations passed in Southern states to control labor, migration and other activities of the freed slaves. Black Codes allowed legal marriage, property ownership and limited access to the court systems. It prohibited them from testifying against whites, serving on juries or militias, voting and publicly expressing any form of legal concerns ( www. history. com). Any former slave that did not sign yearly labor contract with the plantation owners could be arrested and hired out. The Black codes in short allowed for the continued and legal discrimination against the former slaves (www. history. com). Congress quickly responded to these laws in 1866 and seized the initiative in remaking the south. Republicans wanted to ensure that with the remaking the south, freed blacks were made viable members of society. But the strong southern legislatures finally gave in; in 1868 they repealed most of the laws that discriminated against blacks. Things were starting to look up. But by 1877 Democratic parties regained their power of the south and ended reconstruction. In 1882, southern states passed Jim Crow laws that enforced strict segregation between blacks and whites and limited African-American civil rights. This was devastating to the blacks. After all the strides they made were reversed. From holding political offices, the right to vote, and participating as equal members of society was changed. The south gradually reinstated the racially discriminatory laws. The two main goals they wanted these laws to achieve: disenfranchisement and segregation. To take away the power that the blacks had gained, the Democratic Party began to stop Blacks from voting. There were many ways to stop blacks from voting. Some of these things were poll tax, which were fees were charged at voting booths and were expensive for most blacks, and the literacy test. Since teaching blacks were illegal, most adult blacks were former slaves and illiterate. And the other goal, segregation, causes the democrats to create laws that segregated the schools and public facilities. The Northern States, which had grew and prospered during the war, believed the former slaves to be equal as any other person. The Southern States, still angry over the loss of the war and their firm belief in White superiority, took a different approach. They created and enforced what were known as the Black Codes. These were legislations passed in Southern states to control labor, migration and other activities of the freed slaves. Black Codes allowed legal marriage, property ownership and limited access to the court systems. It prohibited them from testifying against whites, serving on juries or militias, voting and publicly expressing any form of legal concerns. Any former slave that did not sign yearly labor contract with the plantation owners could be arrested and hired out. The Black codes in short allowed for the continued and legal discrimination against the former slaves. Just like some African Americans activists fought this segregation, some Whites had some groups of their own to carry the segregation on and on. The Ku Klux Klan was one of them. The Ku Klux Klan, Knights of White Camellia, and other terrorists murdered thousands of blacks and some whites to prevent them from voting and participating in public life. The KKK was founded in 1865 to 1866. They directed their violence towards black landowners, politicians, and community leaders. They also did this to people who supported Republicans or racial equalities (Anti-Defamation League, 2012). After the abolishment of slavery in the U. S. the KKK formed. They hated blacks and would commit crimes against them. Murders, hangings, and lynches are just some of the crimes against the blacks (www. kkk. bz, n. d. ). The Ku Klux Klan claims to be just defending their people like other races do. What is a lynching? Lynching is a form of punishment with no legal permission. Most times lynching occurred against African Americans by hanging them. This was very popular during the Gilded Age after the American Civil War when African Americans were freed from slavery. Many White men would use lynching against Black men for being in a mixed relationship with a White woman. However, because lynching had no legal basis, it was thought to have been a tool that was used against freed slaves that had achieved financial stability and authority in order to remain a White-dominated nation. Lynching was most likely performed by White Supremacy groups like the KKK. Lynching was done by hanging or shooting, or both. However, many were of a more hideous nature. Burning at the stake, maiming, dismemberment, castration, and other brutal methods of physical torture are all part of a lynching. Lynching therefore was a cruel combination of racism and sadism, which was utilized primarily to sustain the caste system in the South. Many white people believed that Negroes could only be controlled by fear. To them, lynching was seen as the most effective means of control. Defending your people is one thing, but to torture another human being is inhuman. The KKK has several stories out there today on how they treated the blacks, whether they did anything wrong or not. For instance, a Louisiana woman is in critical condition after she was set on fire, resulting in burns on roughly 60 percent of her body, and her car appears to have had racial slurs written on it at the time of her attack (Mach, n. d. ). They had even gone as far as church bombings. The KKK launched a bomb into a church during a Sunday service, which left four innocent teenage girls dead. The men responsible hid behind the cloak of secrecy, intimidation and the white robes of the oldest terrorist organization in the world, the Ku Klux Klan (Gado, n. d. ). Therefore, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial discrimination is an issue that was not seriously tackled. The act was a successful result of most wide-ranging civil rights legislation and Civil Rights Movements for close to a century (Finkelman, 2009). The act declared discrimination on the basis of color, race, ethnicity, religion, and many other aspects as unconstitutional. During the critical years from 1954 to 1963, a variety of leaders with different backgrounds, such as lawyers from the NAACP, women sitting on buses, ministers from southern black churches, militants from black power organizations, and youth from colleges had shaped the successful struggle toward black equality in America (Bowles, 2011). In 1896, the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision established that â€Å"separate but equal† facilities for whites and blacks were allowable under the U. S. Constitution. Local governmental officials could designate separate public facilities like drinking fountains, restrooms, and schools. Even courthouses often had separate Bibles according to the defendant’s race. The problem was that separate usually meant unequal, and segregation subverted the freedom of every African American (Sundquist, 1993). Now, it is time for the African- Americans to fight back. The incident that made them want to make a difference was the Rosa Park bus ride. After a long day of work on December 1, 1955, Parks, feet hurt, looked forward to sitting on the bus for her ride home. At the time, there was a city ordinance stating that African Americans had to give up their seats on a train or bus if a white man asked for them. When a white man approached Parks and told her that he wanted her seat, she simply said no. Although she acted as a private citizen, her response was as an informed, committed member of the NAACP movement. The bus driver had asked Parks to move. When she did not, the bus driver said, â€Å"Look, woman, I told you I wanted the seat. Are you going to stand up? † When Parks again said no, the driver threatened, â€Å"If you don’t stand up, I’m going to have you arrested. † She gave no reply but at the next stop, Rosa was arrested (Garrow, 2004). A pastor known as Martin Luther King Jr., organized a boycott, the Montgomery bus boycott. King Jr. took this to a higher level and maintained and organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which coordinated similar bus boycotts in other cities. Shortly after the boycott, King had found a bomb on his porch. King went to Birmingham, Alabama, where he continued his nonviolent protests and marches. However, the police authorized force to disband King’s followers by using electric cattle prods, tear gas, and fire hoses (Bowles, 2011). King was arrested with the others, but upon his release from jail he went to Washington, D. C., where he and demonstrators met at the National Mall and addressed them with his famous â€Å"We Shall Overcome† speech on August 23, 1963. King’s words at the capital that day were a defining moment of the Civil Rights movement. Other demonstrations and civil disobedience campaigns sought to increase African-American voter registration and win better jobs. Malcolm X actively promoted the Black Muslim cause. Even after speaking about non-violence and wanting peace, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The civil rights movement dramatically increased participation of African- American voters in both the South and the North today. By the mid-70s some 4000 African-Americans have been elected to political office at all levels of government. Qualified African-Americans now have a wider range of opportunities than ever before. Whether you are White or African-American, each group has faced its own peculiar challenges on its approach to democracy (Rappaport, 2001). This racism is wrong and unconstitutional. The 13th Amendment is ratified, abolishing slavery, which some people still went against it. The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to the former slaves and forbade states from denying any person life, liberty, or property without due process of the law. The 14th Amendment also guaranteed equal protection of the law for all citizens. The 15th Amendment barred states from denying citizens the right to vote based on race, color, or previous servitude (Hertz, 2009). In a perfect world, everyone would be equal. The color of one’s skin, religious beliefs or sexual preference would mean nothing. We would accept everyone for whom and what they are. We would rejoice in the differences between each other instead of belittling, hating and discriminating against those differences. We don’t however live in a perfect world. We live in a world filled with distrust and hate. If we don’t know or understand it in our society, then it is wrong. It will be discriminated against in one form or another. We as a country have made major strides in overcoming racism, however we still have far to go. In conclusion, African Americans faced isolation, discrimination, and segregation during the post-construction period. Racial discrimination was also prevalent in the military where back soldiers were considered inferior to white soldiers and hence poorly trained and equipped. The issue of racial discrimination, isolation and segregation was not seriously tackled until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. Civil rights activists such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. organized the famous 1963 protest in Washington that eventually forced President John Kennedy to pass the Act. It is therefore, clear that the journey to end isolation, discrimination, and segregation to attain equality and civil rights has been hard but worthwhile. ? References Bowles, M. (2011). American History 1865- Present End of Isolation. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint. Retrieved at: https://content. ashford. edu/books/AUHIS204. 11. 2 Finkelman, P. (2009) Encyclopedia of African American history, 1896-present, Madison Avenue, New York: Oxford University Press Rappaport, D. (2001). Martins Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sitkoff, H. , Franklin, J. (2008) The Struggle for Black equality. Hill and Wang Publication http://www. adl. org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default. asp? LEARN_Cat=ExtremismLEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_Americaxpicked=4item=kkk http://www. history. com/topics/black-codes Civil Rights Act of 1964 http://www. ourdocuments. gov/doc. php? doc=97page=transcript.

Interpretations of William Faulkners A Rose for Emily :: A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner

Interpretations of William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" has been interpreted in many different ways. Most of these rely solely on hints found within the story. I believe that his life can also help one analyze this story. By knowing that Faulkner's strongest influence was his independent mother, one can guess that Miss Emily Grierson's character was based partly on Maud Falkner. William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897. His family moved to Oxford, Mississippi when Faulkner was five years old (Larinde). His parents were Murry and Maud Falkner (Zane 2). Faulkner added the "u" to his last name on his Royal Air Force application for unknown reasons (5). Faulkner's great-grandfather, Colonel William C. Falkner had moved from Tennessee to the Mississippi Delta in 1841. The Colonel was a Civil War hero, plantation owner, railroad builder, and even a writer (Larinde). Faulkner's grandfather and father were both respected, though not wealthy. They were also both alcoholics. Faulkner and his father never had a very good relationship. He and his mother, though, were very close. Maud gave him his love of art and literature. She influenced Faulkner more than anyone else with her strong independence (Zane 3-4). She may have been the inspiration for the strong, independent character, Emily Grierson. "William Faulkner was a quiet but mischievous child, polite and rude, loving and withdrawn" (4). He did well in grade school, but began showing signs of truancy during adolescence. Faulkner dropped out of high school in eleventh grade. In 1918, Faulkner attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army but was turned down. He then applied to the Royal Air Force where he adds the "u" to his last name. He was soon discharged and returned to Oxford, Mississippi. Here he attended the university for two year. "In the decade that followed, Faulkner donned a host of other identities, alternately and aristocrat, a bohemian, or a derelict" (Zane 5). Faulkner established himself as a major novelist in 1929 with the book The Sound and the Fury (Larinde). He wrote twenty novels and many short stories (Zane 1). His greatest achievements were the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, the National Book Award, and Pulitzer Prizes. All of these awards came after he was fifty (7). Although Faulkner lived in Canada, New Orleans, New York, Hollywood, and Virginia, most of his life was spent in his native Mississippi (Faulkner 177).

Impact of Social Networking Sites on First Year Multimedia Arts Program

Introduction Today, young people around the world have been using social networking sites with their own different purposes. The main purpose of social networking sites is communication. It is likely believed that social networking sites have greatly improved communication especially for people who have their loved ones abroad. Some people spend most of their time on social networking sites, specifically Facebook and Twitter. Studies show that most young people or teenagers are addicted to these social networking sites. Needless to say, it is not healthy to spend most of our time on social networking sites, especially for teenagers who are supposedly using their time to study. As Coyne (2010) mentions in his research paper â€Å"It’s hard for most college students to remember a time before social networks. Half of Facebook’s 500 million users will log-in on any given day. On the same day 65 million tweets are sent. The last 10 years have witnessed major advancements in global commu nication. It appears fiction has become a reality.† Social networking sites can also affect social behavior. It can either improve or hinder an individual’s social behavior. In the Philippines, where most teenagers use social networking sites, such as Facebook covered 12 percent of all active users according to statistics. Most of these teenagers are dependent on social networking sites in engaging any kind of relationship with someone. It is often that an individual would be socially awkward in public if he/she is dependent on social networking sites and reluctant to personal interaction. Regardless of being so dependent on social networking sites, this may also improve an individual’s relationship with one another. As said by Boyd (2007), internet... ...ocial Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 13(1) Coyne, E. (2010). http://ecoyne.blogspot.com/ Haythornthwaite, C. (1996). Social network analysis: An approach and technique for the study of information exchange. Library and Infor ¬mation Science Research, 18, 323-342. Kuppuswamy and Shankar. (2012). http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jul07/reid_grey.shtml Ruffes, V. (2010). http://jhands.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/social-networking-research- paper/ Sundà ©n, (2003). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 13(1) Trusov, M., Bucklin, R.E., Pauwels, K. (2009). http://www.emeraldinsight.com/bibliographic_databases.htm?id=1819982 Wiley and Sisson (2006). http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1279&context=gradco nf_hospitality

Case 7: Better Late Than Never

Case 7: Its better late than never! 1. What was Ryan’s starting salary? How much could he have contributed to the voluntary savings plan in his first year of employment? RATE NPR FV PV YEARCONTRIBUTION TO SAVINGS PLAN .05170,00066,6675th$7,333 .05270,00063,4924th$6,984 .05370,00060,4693rd$6,651 .05470,00057,8492nd$6,363 .05570,00054,8471st$6,033 Ryan’s first year salary at this company was $54,847 and he could have contributed $6,033 in his first year of employment. These were found by using the present value formula for all five years. 2.Had Ryan taken advantage of the company’s voluntary retirement plan up to the maximum, every year for the past five years, how much money would he currently have accumulated in his retirement account, assuming a nominal rate of return of 7%? How much more would his investment value have been worth had he opted for a higher risk alternative (i. e. 100% in common stocks), which was expected to yield an average compound rate of ret urn of 12% (A. P. R. )? YEAR SALARIES CONTRIBUTIONCONTRIBUTION TO SAVINGS PLAN 5th66,667Ãâ€"11% =$6,033 4th63,492Ãâ€"11%=$6,363 3rd60,469Ãâ€"11%=$6,651 2nd57,849Ãâ€"11%=$6,984 1st54,847Ãâ€"11%=$7,333 Total$33,364 FV FormulaRate: . 07 NPER: 5 PMT: 0 PV: -33364 Current accumulated in retirement account= $46,794 $46,794- $33,364= $13,430 FV Formula Rate: . 12 NPER: 5 PMT: 0 PV: -33364 Net worth of average retirement account= $58,798 If Ryan had take advantage of the retirement plan, he would currently have accumulated $13,430 assuming at rate of return of 7%. Assuming a rate of 12%, he would have been worth $58,798. 4. How much would Ryan have to save each month, starting from the end of the next month, in order to accumulate enough money for his wedding expenses, assuming that his investment fund is expected to yield a rate of return of 7% per year?Wedding Expense $15,000 x 1. 04= $15,600 PMT Formula Rate: . 07/12 Nper: 12 PV: 0 FV: -15600 How much needs to be saved= $1,258. 82 M onthly 5. If Ryan starts saving immediately for the 20% down payment on his house, how much additional money will he have to save each month? Assume an investment rate of return of 7% per year. 250,000x 1. 04= 304,163 304163x . 20= 60,832 Rate: . 07/12 Nper: 5 PV: 0 FV: -60832 How much needs to be saved= $844 Monthly 6. If Ryan wants to have a million dollars (in terms of today’s dollars) when he retires at age 65, how much should he save in equal monthly deposits from the end of the next month?Ignore the cost of the wedding and the down payment on the house. Assume his savings earn a rate of 7% per year (A. P. R. ). PV= 1000000 x 1. 04 (. 04/12+1) 38 years till retirement FV= 4,438,813 38 Years x 12 Months= 456 Months Iy= 7 FV= 4438000 Cy= 12 Py= 12 Monthly Payments = $1,963. 65 7. If Ryan saves up the million dollars (in terms of today’s dollars) by the time of his retirement at age 65, how much can he withdraw each month (beginning one month after his retirement) in equal dollar amounts, if he figures he will live up to the age of 85 years?Assume that his investment fund yields a nominal rate of return of 7% per year. FV Formula PV: 4438000 n: 240 Months iy: 7 Cy: 12 Py: 12 Withdraw amount each month: 34,414 for 20 Years 8. After preparing a detailed budget, Ryan estimates that the maximum he will be able to save for retirement is $300 per month, for the first five years. After that he is confident that he will be able to increase the monthly saving to $500 per month until retirement. If the account provides a nominal annual return of 7%, how much money will Ryan be able to withdraw per month during his retirement phase?PV Formula Rate: . 07 Nper: 5 PMT 0 PV: 21,478 300x 1. 01 x 396= 200,289 Rate: . 07 Nper: 33 PMT: 0 PV 972,321/ 20 Years x7/12+1= 7,600 Monthly 9. What is the lesson to be learned from this case? Explain. I have learned that you must beginning saving for a retirement plan early because by the time you retire your investment can increase tremendously, allowing a future for the rest of your family as well as to be able to live comfortably while retired.

Robert Redford and Madame Tussauds Wax Museum essays

Robert Redford and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum essays Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum is getting ready to open in New York soon (McShane B3). Madame Tussaud's museums are known around the world for its wax replicas of all sorts of celebrities from Larry King to Meryl Streep. One celebrity that would be a good candidate for the museum is Robert Redford. Throughout the years, he has proven that he is successful in acting, in directing, and in community activism. These are the areas that make him a good candidate for the wax museum. For the past four decades, most people know Redford as one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood ("Robert Redford: Credits"). Redford's most famous role is Harry, the gunslinger, in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). This made Redford an instant star. This film still remains one of the greatest western movies of all time. Another film that made Redford a star is The Way We Were (1973). The charismatic appeal of both Redford and co-star Barbra Streisand makes this film an appealing love story, despite the reviews about the flaws in the script itself. Redford won the hearts of all in the role of a gifted baseball player who hits the famous home run that breaks the lights of the stadium in The Natural (1984). In the film Sneakers (1992), Redford leads a group of hackers who get blackmailed into stealing a top-secret computer decoder program for a group of corrupt government agents. Throughout his career, Redford has proven that his acting is successful in any role th at he chooses to play. Redford has a talent for directing that has surpassed expectations. He started his directing career by winning an Academy Award for Best Director for the film Ordinary People (1980). His brilliant directing is also evident in Quiz Show (1994) where he captured the end of an era of innocence and trust and the bitter class tensions in America. Redford did an amazing job of translating a novel to the silver screen in Horse Whisperer (1998). As a director, Redford...

Insanity Essays - Point Of View, Style, Mental Illness In Fiction

Insanity Essays - Point Of View, Style, Mental Illness In Fiction Insanity English 1B, Professor Greger Essay 2 3/23/15 Insanity What makes people crazy? Does our society make us crazy? Our society can definitely make us crazies for sure. We turn into insane people because of our societys powerful forces. Those forces make us really mad because they prevent us from getting what we want. Emily, the main character from A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner and Jane, the main character from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman were really mad at the society for not giving them what they want. All that Emily wants is the love and all that Jane wants is the freedom. Since they didnt get any love and freedom from the society, they got mad and became crazies. Which one of the need can make you crazier: love or freedom? As you read the two stories, you would learn that the madness of Emilys love from A Rose for Emily is crazier than the need of Janes freedom from The Yellow Wallpaper. In the first story The Yellow Wallpaper, Jane becomes a lunatic because of her madness which is caused by the need of freedom. Her madness is her mental isolation. She stops connecting with outside reality world and she creates herself a new world in her mind where she can escape to get the freedom. She sees a woman behind the yellow wallpapers pattern who is trying to get out of the patterns. She sees women creeping around the room inside of the wallpaper. She sees that one woman finally came out of the wallpaper who is also herself. I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did (6) gives the idea that she finally comes out of the wallpaper. Wallpaper represents as an obstacle which doesnt let her to get the freedom. She sees herself finally got out from the wall is the time her nervous breaks down and she becomes a crazy. Her mental isolation makes her seeing a trapped room which she has to get out to be freed. John, the husband represents as the wall covering her to ach ieve freedom. John is the one who told her not to write because she is not well mentally. It does not make sense for her since she believes that she will feel better if she writes her thought on the paper. Because of that she cant write her thought out on the paper, they are simulated as a reality in her mind and saw a womans action in the wallpaper. John believes that she has the depression so he tells her to do nothing but take a good rest. She believes that doing activities and writing paper will help to feel better. Those are the freedoms she wants which John is the yellow wallpaper forbidding her not to get out of the wall to achieve those freedom. Because of that she is so mad for not getting what she wants; she starts to come out of the wallpaper when she becomes an insane person. As an insane person she creeps around the room as a woman inside the wallpaper creeping around the wallpaper. This kind of madness would not occur if the society is not stopping a person to do what she wants to do. For Jane, her society is her husband. In 1899, women had been oppressed by men. Women had to behave as men wanted them to behave. Women had no right to do what they want to do. It is rational for the society that women have to do as men tell them to do. Thats why Charlotte writes this story so that the society will know what would happen to a woman who is seeking for the freedom from the oppression. The narration of The Yellow Wallpaper is so simple that it is easy to read and understand. It is easy because it uses as a first person perspective. Jane is the narrator and she is using I in the narration which gives the clarity of the story from her perspective. It is much easier when the narration from the start of Janes oppression to the end of Janes insanity instead of going back and forward which we read in A Rose

The Personality Traits of a Man Example

The Personality Traits of a Man Example The Personality Traits of a Man – Article Example ï » ¿The Personality Traits of a Man The personality traits of a man are important factors that have significant influence on the organizational behavior and consequently on the performance outcome of the collective goals of the organization. Indeed, the interaction amongst the workers is greatly impacted by their personality and becomes a decisive factor in the amicable resolution of workplace conflicts and motivation. It is also one of the key factors of competitive advantage because workforce is looked upon as resource that can be tapped to improve and improvise the performance of the organization in the fiercely competitive business setting. Hence, the big five framework of personality traits must become critical issues in the recruitment policy of the organizations. As a Finance and Administration Manager in a medical equipment company in Saudi Arabia, my job was closely linked to the workers’ welfare. I realized the utmost importance of credible personality traits that greatly facilitate better human interaction within the workplace and create conducive environment for sustainable development. Conscientiousness, openness to new experience and emotional adjustment are vital characteristics that not only help the persons to grow individually but also professionally. The other two traits: extroversion and agreeableness are also important as they help in the integration of the person with the system. These are the traits that make a person more flexible and adapt to the fast changing environment of business with ease. They, thus become the enabling factors for organizations to maintain its pace of growth. I have found that using personality assessment test during recruitment and promotion of employees hugely supports the organizational goals and objectives. These tests help us to get some ideas of the traits of the persons and whether those traits would help the persons to adapt to the organizational culture comfortably. We had also used ‘situational analysis’ where the candidates were given case studies and they were asked how they perceived the situation and what would be their reaction to the situation. We often hired or evaluated the person for promotion when their perception of the situation and the results of their personality assessment tests corroborated and were found to be constructive. This methodology greatly facilitated us to recruit and promote persons who were able to take up the challenges of the job and face adverse situation with optimism. While it is true that social scientists are skeptic of the validity of psycho-analytical tools to measure the traits, conscientiousness is still been found to be the major dimension of personality that has proved valid across job specifications. The psycho-analytical perspectives are important tools for understanding the hidden dynamics of human relationship, especially with regard to corporate culture, social defenses, leadership imperatives, motivation and other paradigms associated with organizational behavior. Different organizations use diverse ways to gauge the suitability of the job aspirants so that they are able to meet the challenges of contemporary times with creative input. In our case, the recruitment process has resulted in good retention rate of employees, even during the recessive economy. Hence, it can be concluded that personality assessment is intrinsic part of recruitment of right candidate. (511)

The Life, Work and Influence of Brunel Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

The Life, Work and Influence of Brunel - Essay Example Brunel was born in Hampshire in the year 1806. He was sent to France so that his earlier education could be completed in a good manner. At the age of 20, he was given the post of chief assistant engineer at the Thames Tunnel, which was proclaimed as his father’s greatest achievements. This Thames Tunnel runs between Wapping and Rotherhithe on a river. Brunel worked for a couple of years nearly to create a tunnel under the London’s River Thames, which had tunnellers driving along a shaft which ran in a horizontal fashion from one side of Thames River to another and this was made difficult by extremely demanding conditions which were met all through this way. His father was the chief engineer of this piece of architecture which was later to become a hallmark of courage and state of the art engineering. The composition of the river bed was such that it was filled with water logged sediments and gravels at the Rotherhithe edge plus the difficult conditions added up towards the tunneling machine’s problems since the work required a great deal of courage and determination was hazard was written large on the face of it, right from the beginning. Because of these very reasons, the tunnel was often expected to fall down on its own instable trunks but it was to the management’s considerable thinking that they allowed sp ectators to view it from a lower angle. The workers really had a very incomprehensible time at the time of building up this piece of engineering since in those times Thames was a little better than an open sewer as it contained foul smell with contaminated water running all over it.

Japanese American History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Japanese American History - Essay Example Having taken the usual sciences as its standard in terms of create valid, generalizable and prognostic hypothesis, modern sociology is frequently critiqued for its incapability to produce such hypothesis in relation to the social globe. No doubt, this research is fraught at the start. Social science cannot create this type of hypothetical knowledge and neither be supposed to it effort to as the individual world is far too multifaceted and our sympathetic of it is always context reliant. What is necessary, he goes on to argue, is not a turn towards post positivist or postmodernist reductionism, but a latest way of conceptualizing social science so that it can get back its position as a sensible, thinker action. Furthermore, this topic of Japanese Americans and World War II is obviously the most written regarding episode in Asian American narration and perhaps is the mainly recognized past event of meaning to Asian Americans between modern Americans. That reminiscence is perpetuated, in both books and the public dialogue, in immense part by those who, like Myers, emphasize the past to safe the future. Japanese American To these split ends, a spatial explanation of the Japanese American imprisonment story must generate newest signs, factually, new road signs directly the entire Americans to those unremembered facial appearance of the Southwestern scenery. Those narratives necessitate generating novel chart modalities to meet head-on those available landmarks from side to side which social agendas are required, identities are openness, and precise desires are elicited. At an essential level, these narratives have to forward the tourist's sight. As things place now, tourists often decrease the countryside of the Southwest to something inspiring, religious, or beneficial, all founded on images of sun, desert, blue skies, dramatic gorge lands and mesas, cacti and coyotes, adobe structural design, living Indians, and extra symbols of a unlike civilization. But in addition such bearers of attitude and civilization, the landscape of Southwest are supposed to also be evocative tourists and others of that ap palling Thing, the custody. Internment Activities From the amount of novel literature faithful to the internment, we might believe this facing up to the appalling Thing is charming place. Certainly, there is a rapidly rising body of writing concerning this Japanese American knowledge. For instance, the main collection of Japanese American internment narratives, It exemplify on a diversity of voices of internment; on internees diaries, letters, stories, poems, and biographies; and on information accounts as well as authorized government declarations. In adding up, there have been recurrent sequential studies of and orientation guides to the Japanese American wartime information. These include the Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, Japanese American Internment all through World conflict II. Additional, in the preceding decade, we have seen more than a few more individual accounts of the internment camps, and the list is still increasing. Historical Background At the beginning of 1941, Japanese expansion in the pacific was countered by the USA. Japans profession of northern Indo-China provoked the USA to oblige restriction on Japan; which was hold up by the British and Dutch. The USA ended its trade agreement by means of Japan and decided additional loans to China. A whole halt to all petroleum products by the USA, the British and the Dutch aggravated a main disaster and a argument. Thus, the option appeared to the Japan either obedience to the USA or the use of military force to safe latest sources of oil and raw material. Moreover, Japan chosen second option and ultimately concerned her in to the war. Japan and the allies carried out number of

History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 42

History - Essay Example All adult white males had a right to vote, irrespective of their religion and property ownership. In this era, the older states dropped the remaining religious qualifications for voting (Stephens and David 25). Therefore, there was an increase in the number of eligible voters, as there was the elimination of previous property qualifications. The increase in number of eligible voters resulted to an increase in voter participation. The high rates of participation lead to a change in the campaigning style. The holding of the 1840 elections, both key political parties carried out well-organized national campaigns that comprised of campaign songs, parades, picnics, party newspaper, political speeches and banquets. In the jacksonian era, there was also a change in the political party system. The 1812 war had seriously made the Federalist Party weak, which completely disappeared in 1820s. For sometime, the Democratic Republican Party was the only successful national party. Nevertheless, the coming of Andrew Jackson into power, as a national leader lead to the splitting of the Democratic-Republican Party into the Democrats led by Jackson and Whing party, led by Henry Clay (Stephens and David 25). Following Jackson taking over office in 1929, he used spoils system by giving jobs to his supporters. Although his opponents criticized this move, for not putting the qualified individuals in office, Jackson took this as a democratic reform. According to him, it was a rotation-in-office and he had a belief that in a democracy each white man citizen ought to take part in the services of the government at a time in his lifetime (Stephens and David 25). Also, President Andrew Jackson championed democracy by challenging economic elite who were opposing him to the Second Bank of the United States. He distrusted this bank as an undemocratic instrument and thus he voted a bill to recharter the Bank in 1832 (Stephens and David 25). There are a number of arguments for the westward

Peer response Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 11

Peer response - Article Example re that manager or leaders of nursing homes have comprehensively evaluated techniques and strategies that would ensure continued existence of these nursing homes. Factors that are within management’s control are costs, which they deemed, should be kept at a minimum, to generate profits, as needed. Another comment is that team learning and shared mental models are internal factors that management could tap to increase job satisfaction and productivity (Bossche, Gijselaers, Segers, Woltjer, & Kirschner, 2011). But these alone, could not ensure increased profits, if and when not enough revenues are generated by nursing homes. I share the same contention, however, that ‘in times of economic scarcity, cutting back on teamwork is a mistake, as teamwork is needed then more than ever’. Actually, in diverse settings, regardless of economic condition, organizations should harness the power of teamwork as a means of improving performance and productivity. Teamwork should go beyond teams in respective departments of the organizations; but more so, the collaborative departments that comprise the entire organization. As such, shared decision models would be useful in soliciting responsible inputs from different departments to facilitate achievement of the organization’s

Tttoos as regulr spect of consumer culture Essay

Tttoos as regulr spect of consumer culture - Essay Example ContemporÐ °ry world is experiencing whÐ °t some cÐ °ll Ð ° second "tÐ °ttoo renÐ °issÐ °nce" (DeMello, 2000:58). Ð s pÐ °rt of this revolution in the populÐ °r culturÐ °l significÐ °nce of tÐ °ttooed flesh, tÐ °ttooing is Ð °scending to unprecedented levels of populÐ °rity Ð °mong Ð ° vÐ °st Ð °rrÐ °y of sociÐ °l groups.Ð  long-stÐ °nding symbol cÐ °lled "body project" (Shilling, 1993:18) is now Ð ° floÐ °ting signifier of Ð ° full pÐ °norÐ °mÐ ° of sociÐ °l stÐ °tuses, roles Ð °nd identities. The tÐ °ttoo is blossoming Ð °s Ð ° polysemic symbol of mÐ °ny countries, Ð °nd is Ð °ctively inserted into the identity politics of Ð ° melÐ °nge of Ð °ctors. Even though tÐ °ttoo enthusiÐ °sts promulgÐ °te pro-sociÐ °l constructions of the Ð °ct, mÐ °ny do not wish tÐ °ttooing to Ð °chieve widespreÐ °d culturÐ °l Ð °cceptÐ °nce. In feÐ °ring the tÐ °ttoo will trÐ °nsform into Ð ° vÐ °cuous culturÐ °l commodity through its common usÐ °ge (Ð °nd quickly forgotten Ð °s Ð ° pÐ °sse trend), enthusiÐ °sts stress how tÐ °ttooing is too good for most people. For these people, the historicÐ °lly deviÐ °nt nÐ °ture of the prÐ °ctice is Ð °lluring, exciting Ð °nd chic. Given the ongoing diversificÐ °tion in the culturÐ °l uses of tÐ °ttooing Ð °nd some of the sensitizing theoreticÐ °l principles outlined Ð °bove, sociÐ °l scientists might recÐ °librÐ °te our understÐ °ndings of the sociÐ °l interdependencies Ð °nd Ð °ffective communicÐ °tions embedded in tÐ °ttoos. ... Even fewer juxtpose the booming populrity of tttooing ginst culturl prescriptions to engge in style of body work underpinned by the impetus to disply one's individulism to others. Theorists regulrly ignore whether tttooing my be prt of wht White nd Young refer to s the estblished "middle-clss body scetic," (Shilling, 1993:18) or wht Monghn (2001:330) describes s "vibrnt physiclity." In relted medicl nd epidemiologicl reserch, tttooing is ttributed to youth impetuousness nd irrtionlit. Tttooing indictes immturity mong t-risk youth nd is correlted with other forms of self-hrm such s physicl ggressiveness, promiscuity, substnce buse nd suicide. ccordingly, enthusists exhibit pucity of foresight in their behviours, prefer physicl expression over cognitive or verbl, nd demonstrte feelings of socil inferiority through unhygienic nd physiclly dngerous ptterns of ction. To voluntrily inflict pin on one's body nd mr the skin with everlsting symbols of impurity is described s overtly ntisocil. Such interprettions ring with Judeo-Christin understndings of the body s scred home, nd legitimte Western-scientific theories bout tttoo enthusism prevlent since the turn of the 19th century (tkinson, 2003:92). Sociologicl nlyses of tttooing produce slightly broder spectrum of interprettion thn psychologicl-medicl. Yet despite DeMello's (2000:61) pth-breking nlyses of tttooing s contextul nd negotited signifier of identity, sociologicl sttements on the culturl use of tttoos ultimtely (re)produce conceptuliztion of the prctice s contr-normtive. The symbiotic reltionship between tttooing nd illegl behviour (or otherwise unconventionl lifestyles) still domintes in sociologicl reserch.

Peer response Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 11

Peer response - Article Example re that manager or leaders of nursing homes have comprehensively evaluated techniques and strategies that would ensure continued existence of these nursing homes. Factors that are within management’s control are costs, which they deemed, should be kept at a minimum, to generate profits, as needed. Another comment is that team learning and shared mental models are internal factors that management could tap to increase job satisfaction and productivity (Bossche, Gijselaers, Segers, Woltjer, & Kirschner, 2011). But these alone, could not ensure increased profits, if and when not enough revenues are generated by nursing homes. I share the same contention, however, that ‘in times of economic scarcity, cutting back on teamwork is a mistake, as teamwork is needed then more than ever’. Actually, in diverse settings, regardless of economic condition, organizations should harness the power of teamwork as a means of improving performance and productivity. Teamwork should go beyond teams in respective departments of the organizations; but more so, the collaborative departments that comprise the entire organization. As such, shared decision models would be useful in soliciting responsible inputs from different departments to facilitate achievement of the organization’s

EMPHYSEMA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

EMPHYSEMA - Essay Example The alveoli over-inflate and eventually burst and blend to form fewer larger air sacs, reducing the surface area over which gas exchange can take place. This significantly impairs oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange and the sufferer will have to breathe faster and heavier to compensate for this. Over the years the lungs also become less elastic as the tissue is destroyed due to chemical imbalance and this reduces their efficiency. (Wright, 2007) In fact, nearly 85% of all the cases found have been among cigarette smokers in their 50s or 60s, however, cigar and pipe smokers are also at risk. It has been found that tobacco smoke may damage the elastic fibers that make up the walls of the alveoli cells. This loss of elasticity leads to the retention of air in the lungs, expansion of the rib cage, and the flattening of the diaphragm. Normally, through contraction and relaxation, the diaphragm does most of the work when it comes to breathing. But when it remains flattened due to the effects of the smoke on the alveoli, muscles in the rib cage and abdomen take over the bulk of the work. Greater reliance on these muscles is a less efficient and more tiring way of breathing. (Lucey, 2003)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Emphysema can also be contracted through genetics. An inherited deficiency of a protein known as alpha1-antitrypsin (ATT), which protects the lungs from destructive enzymes, also can cause emphysema, especially in people younger than fifty. Cases of hereditary emphysema are rare but are still a cause for concern.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If a person is having difficulty in breathing or experiencing difficulty in tolerating even mild exercise, they should consult a doctor. The doctor will make a diagnosis of emphysema based on the following factors: the patients symptoms, medical history, results from lung function tests, findings on chest x-rays, and whether or not an increase in chest size has occurred.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The most common symptoms of emphysema

Basic Cash Management Process Essay Example for Free

Basic Cash Management Process Essay Every company can be viewed as a cash pool into which funds flow from various sources. Several techniques are used to speed the collection of such funds. Conversely, cash flows out of the pool for payables and other disbursement reasons. An important aspect of cash management is to control tightly both cash inflows and outflows. When cash inflows exceed cash outflows, surplus cash builds up. This surplus can be used to repay debts or for investment in marketable securities. Alternatively, when outgoing funds exceed the inflow, the firm must raise money by borrowing or by selling some marketable securities. THE CONCEPT OF FLOAT A cash managers job is to make payments to others as slowly as possible and to convert into cash – or clear – payments received from others as quickly as possible. The reason is float, the most important element of cash management. Float is the amount of uncollected funds moving through the financial transfer system. It shows up as the difference between the balance shown on a firms checking account and the balance on the banks books. For example, suppose a firm writes, on average, $100,000 of checks daily. If it takes four days for checks to clear and be deducted from the firms bank balance, the firms own books will show a cash balance that is $400,000 less than the banks records indicate. The firm has the use of these funds, called disbursement float, as long as this situation persists. On the other hand, the firm loses the use of check-clearing float – one component of collection float – on the checks that it has deposited in its account but that have not yet cleared. Suppose the firm deposits $90,000 in checks every day, and these checks clear in three days on average. The firms books then show cash balances that are $270,000 larger than the banks books indicate. Thus, the firms net float – the difference between its $400,000 disbursement float and its $270,000 check-clearing float – is $130,000. This means that the firms actual cash balance is $130,000 greater than its recorded cash balance. The firm can invest or otherwise spend these excess funds. The float on an individual item can be measured in dollar-days and is calculated as the amount of the check multiplied by the number of days of delay until that check clears: Alternatively, the average daily float can be calculated as the average daily receipts multiplied by the average delay in collecting each dollar.   The average delay in collecting a dollar equals the total dollar-days of float divided by the total amount received during the period or Average Delay The existence of float lies at the core of every system designed to accelerate, decelerate, or control corporate funds. By reducing collection float, the corporate treasurer can accelerate cash flow and enhance the return on current assets. Similarly, corporate cash flow may be improved by increasing disbursement float. The value of decreasing collection float or increasing disbursement float is tied to the opportunity cost of funds. It can be measured as   Value of Float = Dollar Amount of Float times Time times Interest Rate For example, suppose a firm can reduce the collection time on $5 million of receivables by three days. Assuming that it will invest this money at an annual interest rate of 10 percent, it will earn interest at a rate of .10/365 per day on the $5 million. Therefore, the value of a three-day reduction in collection float is $5,000,000 times 3 times 0.10/365 = $4,109.59 If collections ordinarily average $5 million daily and the company managed to reduce the float permanently by three days, it would then be able to free up $15 million in working capital. At 10 percent interest, this reduction in float is worth $1.5 million ($5,000,000 times 3 times .10) annually. Using a 10 percent discount rate, the present value of this permanent reduction in float is $15 million ($1,500,000/.10). Reworking this example with a different interest rate, say 6 percent, reveals that if the company can permanently free up $15 million in working capital, its shareholders will be $15 million richer ($900.000/.6), regardless of the interest rate. In other words, the value created by a permanent reduction in float is independent of the interest rate. Collection Float Collection float is the time that receivables spend in the process of being collected. It consists of the following four elements: 1.Invoicing float is the interval from the time a company creates an invoice and mails it to the customer until the customer places the payment in the mail. During this phase of the collection cycle, the cash manager has no control over the funds. 2.Mail float, the next phase in the cycle, is the time taken by the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the customers check. 3.Having received payment, the company experiences processing float, the flow of the check through the companys accounting system on its way to be deposited. 4.Finally, there is check-clearing float. This is the time it takes to clear each check deposited. Invoicing float may be reduced only by changing the payment terms. The other three types of float are controllable. A.2 discusses the various means to accelerate the collection of funds. Exhibit A.1 illustrates the various types of collection float.

Freudian and Jungian Literary Analysis: Under Milk Wood

Freudian and Jungian Literary Analysis: Under Milk Wood Exploration of dreams, symbols and archetypes in Dylan Thomas play for voices Under Milk Wood This paper seeks to assert that Dylan Thomas play Under Milk Wood can be successfully viewed using Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic techniques. It will attempt to not only isolate and highlight many instances of typical psychical symbolism in the work but also what could be thought of as psychoanalytic mechanisms; especially as they relate to Freuds notions of the Dreamwork in his The Interpretation of Dreams (1997) or Jungs archetypes and collective unconscious. By doing this I hope to not only subject Thomas work to a rigorous psychoanalytical exegesis, uncovering hidden personal symbols, structures and images, but also highlight the psychosocial depth of Under Milk Wood; a depth that has hitherto been overlooked by some critics. Through this I hope to assess the notion that Thomas was every bit as influenced by Freud and Jung as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were a generation before. I will begin, in my Introduction, to give an outline of the importance of Freud and psychoanalysis to post-World War One literature and what Dylan Thomas place within that was; paying particular attention to Thomas own assertions on the importance of psychoanalysis in his work and the ways that it was greeted by the literati of the 1930s and 40s. The first chapter will be dedicated to a discussion of Under Milk Wood and its creation, looking at such areas as plot construction, the structural nature of the piece and its creative aetiology. From here I will go on to discuss the notion of the Freudian dreamwork and its manifestations in Under Milk Wood. The dreamwork, exemplified by such concepts as condensation, displacement and secondary revision, is a central concept in the Freudian cannon and, as such, has become an important interpretive tool for both psychoanalysts and literary critics. It is with this in mind that I shall attempt to isolate instances of all four of the major mechanisms of the dreamwork in Thomas play whilst relating them to the wider issues of poetic creativity and narrative structure. I will also offer a brief discussion of how Jungs interpretation of dreams differed from Freuds before going on to examine how both can be used to inform us of Thomas play. The third chapter will be dedicated to Jungian archetypes. I will isolate and discuss the many instances of archetypal imagery in the play, paying special attention to the way in which they fit in with Thomas over all poetic sense as it is displayed in his use of language, narrative and plot. This chapter will also examine the role of the collective unconscious and relate it to the Modernist technique of the stream of consciousness novel and the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. My conclusion will attempt to answer the main hypothesis of this paper, that indeed psychoanalytic techniques and knowledge can be used to understand Dylan Thomass play and also what that says about the playwrights role as a modern day bard. Introduction: â€Å"The Analytic Revelation† Thomas Manns paper â€Å"The Significance of Freud† published in 1936 gives us some indications as to the importance of early psychoanalysis on the literary life of Europe and America: â€Å"The analytic revelation is a revolutionary force. With it a blithe scepticism has come into the world, a mistrust that unmasks all the schemes and subterfuges of our own souls. Once roused and on alert, it cannot be put to sleep again. It infiltrates life, undermines its raw naà ¯vetà ©, takes from it the strain of its own ignorance†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Mann, 1965: 591) As Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane assert in their study Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930 (1991), this â€Å"revolutionary force† was a large constituent of early twentieth century notions of, not only Modernism in literature and the arts but also, what it meant to be a modern man or woman. The early Modernist writers of the inter-war period not only embraced Freud and psychoanalysis as heralding a new paradigm of self-sufficiency and ontological autonomy but also, as a journal entry by Andre Gide exposes, thought themselves part of an existing groundswell of thought that was, above all, quintessentially new: â€Å"Freud†¦Freudianism†¦For the last ten years, or fifteen, I have been indulging in it without knowing.† (Gide, 1967: 349) The connection between psychoanalysis and literature has always been problematic. Freud, himself asserts in the opening paragraphs to his essay â€Å"The Uncanny† (2005) that â€Å"only rarely (does) a psycho-analyst (feel) impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics† (Freud, 2000: 1), however writers, critics and even Freud himself have made extensive use of the interpretive similarities between the two disciplines . Not only are there are a whole host of studies devoted to the use of psychoanalysis in literary criticism but in the Introduction to his novel The White Hotel (1999), D.M. Thomas draws attention to the extraordinarily literary quality of Fr euds case studies; each containing many of the tropes and leitmotifs one would normally associate with a creative work. For Freud, the psychical mechanisms of creative writing and dreaming are in, some senses at least, inextricably linked. Both are based in a tripartite system of ideational fantasy formation consisting of: a current situational issue or concern that provokes the memory of a childhood incident or trauma which, in turn, shapes some future action in the guise of a wish fulfilment. Freud sets out the relationship between this system and literature in his essay â€Å"Creative Writers and Day Dreaming† (Freud, 1986): â€Å"We are perfectly aware that very many imaginative writings are far removed from the model of the naà ¯ve daydream; and yet I cannot suppress the suspicions that even the most extreme deviations from that model could be linked with it through an uninterrupted series of transitional cases.† (Freud, 1986: 150) Freud continues to explain the disparity between the mind of the creative writer and the ordinary day-dreamer, asserting that whereas the latter results in a self-conscious repression of desire (the wishes of the day-dreamer being best left unspoken) the former revels in and promulgates such desire, translated as it is by artistic skill and temperament: â€Å"The writer softens the character of his egoistic day-dreams by altering and disguising it, and he bribes us by the purely formal – that is aesthetic – yield of pleasure which he offers us in the presentation of his phantasies.† (Freud, 1986: 153) This essay, perhaps more than any other work of Freuds, highlights for us the attraction of psychoanalysis to early twentieth century writers. Metaphysically and spiritually sceptical after the mass slaughter of the First World War and the alienation engendered by rise of the industrial paradigm, Freudian theory offered (as testified by Manns essay) a distinctly human, non-metaphysical and wholly scientific explanation for the place of the artist within society. For Freud, the artist was distinct from the rest of the populous but this had a purely psychical aetiology, leaving no imperative for notions of religious or supra-human inspiration. This is undoubtedly some of the attraction of Freudianism for Dylan Thomas who, throughout his letters and early work makes both use and reference to writers and critics that were, themselves, heavily influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis. Francis Scarfe, in the essay â€Å"Dylan Thomas: A Pioneer† (1960) cites Freud as a major influence on the formation of Thomas early poetic voice, derived in the main from his experiences with what Scarfe calls â€Å"Sitwellism† (Scarfe, 1960: 96): â€Å"The dominant points of contact seems to be James Joyce, the Bible and Freud. The personal habits of language and mythology of Dylan Thomas can readily be identified through these three sources.† (Scarfe, 1960: 96) If Joyce lent the young poet some of the lyricism and sense of narrative and the Bible some of the rich cadence and verbal poetics, Freud enabled Thomas to look within his own unconscious and find images and leitmotifs that would find resonance with the rest of humanity as, firstly, personal then increasingly Bardic and archetypal symbols formed the basis of his work. An early poem of Thomas clearly mirrors the hyperbole of Freuds first lectures on psychoanalysis; the poet and the analyst both evoking the image of the journey into an unknown by an antonymous but courageous individual: â€Å"The midnight road, though young man tread unknowking. Harbouring some thought of heaven, or haven hoping. Yields peace and plenty at the end. â€Å" (Thomas, 1990: 119) We can compare this to Freuds famous analogy that is evoked throughout his work: â€Å"The interpretation of dreams is in fact the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious; it is the securest foundation of psycho-analysis and the field in which evey worker must acquire his convictions and seek his training. If I am asked how one can become a psycho-analyst, I reply: â€Å"By studying ones own dreams†Ã¢â‚¬  (Freud, 1957: 60) Interestingly, Thomas himself was reluctant to acknowledge his debt to Freud, choosing instead to suggest a notion that we have already posited here; that Freuds influence is paradigmatic. He says in the collection of interviews â€Å"Notes on the Art of Poetry† (1963) that his writing is influenced by Freud only through the work others , itself a testament to the extent that Freudian theory and, indeed, the whole of psychoanalytic thought has permeated the very fabric of modern literature. Thomas notebooks poems, his earliest poetic statements, are suffused with what we shall see are Freudian images, inspired perhaps not by psychoanalysis itself but by the poets interest in Surrealism and their early antecedents the 18th century Metaphysical poets. Works such as: â€Å"Where once the waters of your face Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows, The dead turns up its eye†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Thomas, 1990: 217) And â€Å"In wasting one drop from the hearts honey cells. One precious drop that, for the moment, quells Desires pain†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Thomas, 1990: 133) Clearly reflect the artistic tenants set out in Bretons Manifestoes of Surrealism (1972) that sought to combine Freudian concepts of the dreamwork with aesthetic creation . As we shall see in the first chapter of this paper, this delight in the surreal as it relates to the Freudian image remained with Thomas throughout all of his working life and, most certainly, manifests itself in Under Milk Wood. The analytic revelations then, of Freud , have not only influenced those writers such as Breton, Auden and Woolf who are were intimately acquainted with his writing but also writers like Dylan Thomas who, by his own admission, came to psychoanalysis through other creative writers works. This paper, like many others, uses psychoanalytic theory as a methodology with which to uncover latent symbols, patterns and structures within Thomas work. It will not only relate such symbols to the poets own poetic vision but will, through Jungian theory, expand these so that they encompass universal archetypes and concepts such as the collective unconscious that structures the unconscious and, inevitably finds its way into works of a creative nature . Chapter One: â€Å"To Begin at the Beginning† Dylan Thomas play for voices Under Milk Wood began life as a small radio broadcast Quiet Early One Morning (Sinclair, 1975, Jones, 1963) and this short piece is easily recognisable as the genesis for the larger work. There are, for instance, many of the same basic characters – the milkman â€Å"still lost in the clangour and music of Welsh-spoken dreams† (Thomas, 1992), the sea captain, the lonely lady â€Å"Miss May Hughes† and even the tragic-comic Mrs Ogmore Pritchard. There is the same sense of poetic cadence that constantly adds to the somatic quality of the writing, lulling the reader into a musical trance as sibilance and assonance is combined with Thomas particular inner rhythms, such as in this extract: â€Å"The sun lit the sea-town, not as a whole, from topmost down reproving zinc-roofed chapel to empty-but-for-rats-and-whispers grey warehouse on the harbour, but in separate bright pieces.† (Thomas, 1978: 15) The story, recited by Thomas himself in 1944 on the BBC, describes the still sleeping town of New Quay in Cardiganshire (Maud, 1992) and weaves external description with internal monologue as the narrator flits in and out of the dreaming consciousnesses of the towns inhabitants. In the story, each paragraph brings a new image or a new perspective but what we are ultimately presented with is the stream of consciousness of the narrator; in the story, unlike in Under Milk Wood, an impersonal but altogether discernable â€Å"I†: â€Å"Quite early one morning in the winter in Wales, by the sea that was lying down still and green as grass after a night of tar-black howling and rolling, I went out of the house, where I had come to stay for a cold unseasonable holiday†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Thomas, 1978: 15) It is this point, this appearance of the personal pronoun that, as we shall see, makes Quite Early One Morning markedly different to Under Milk Wood. Thomas, however, retains the sense of dreamy absurdity, as images are juxtaposed for comic effect amid the repeated refrain of â€Å"The town was not yet awake†. Under Milk Wood grew out of this humble beginning and is both markedly similar and surprisingly different . Both works reflect, as Derek Stanford (1954) suggests, the cadences, characterisation and plot construction of Joyces Ulysses (1979), being as they are the collective narratives of a whole town in the same time period. Both works, however, are also embryonic, Quite Early One Morning obviously being a blueprint for Under Milk Wood but this also being merely a fragmentary snapshot of a larger planned work that was never finished (Jones, 1986: ix). Under Milk Wood also resembles the cyclical structure of Joyces other great work Finnegans Wake (1992). Thomas play abounds with references to beginnings and commencements; we have, for instance, the famous first lines: â€Å"To begin at the beginning: It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless And bible-black†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Thomas, 2000: 1) That not only evokes the biblical â€Å"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth† (Gen, 1:1) but also the creational sense of Joyces reference to the beginnings of mankind in the opening lines of his novel: â€Å"riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth castle and Environs.† (Joyce, 1992: 3) In Under Milk Wood, the cyclical nature of the day is metonymous with the seasonal nature of the year and this with the life of a human being as Thomas juxtaposes images of beginnings, babies and births with ageing, infirmity and death; as in this passage: â€Å"All over town, babies and old men are cleaned and put into their broken prams and wheeled on to the sunlit cockled cobbles or out into the backyards under the dancing underclothes, and left. A baby cries.† (Thomas, 2000: 27) As we shall see, this notion of the circle, of repeating is important to both Freud and Jung; Freud through his insistence on the importance of the return in notions such as repression and the death drive and Jung, through his concept of the mandala as a recurring symbol. Like Joyce, Thomas displays circles within circles, as the plot and structure of the work as a whole mirrors the framework of the characters lives and psyches. We see this reflected in many of the plays most successful characters, witness for instance the constant iteration of Mrs Ogmore Pritchard, as she repeats her life over and over again with different husbands, only to have them revisit her after their deaths: â€Å"Mr Ogmore, linoleum, retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the vacuum cleaner and the fume of the polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a dream and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr Pritchard, ghostly on either side.† (Thomas, 2000: 10) The same can be said, of course, for Captain Cat, whose dreams and waking life are characterised not by the dead per se, but by their return as he witnesses the phantasmatic manifestations of either his repression or the collective unconscious (whether one is citing Freud or Jung). The sense, in Under Milk Wood, is that of a blithe acceptance of the passing of time and the knowledge that things return; the sunrise, the Spring and the dead. This is reflected in many of Thomas poems, for instance in the closing lines of â€Å"I See the Boys of Summer†: â€Å"I am the man your father was. We are the sons of flint and pitch. Oh see the poles are kissing as they cross!† (Thomas, 1990: 219) In this, also, as Karl Jay Shapiro asserts in his study In Defense of Ignorance (1960), Thomas work clearly reflects what was a seminal poem for the young poets generation W.B. Yeats â€Å"The Second Coming† (1987) which contains images of both beginnings and circles within circles. In the next chapter I will look at how these aspects of Under Milk Wood can be interpreted through the psychoanalytical work of Freud and Jung, paying attention specifically to their concepts of dreams and dreaming; again another leitmotif of Thomas play that can be seen to come from Joyces Finnegans Wake. Chapter Two: The Dreamwork, the Symbol and Captain Cat Freud On Dreams As Richard Wollheim suggests, Freuds theories on dreams are the â€Å"most remarkable single element† (Wollheim, 1971: 66) of his psychoanalytical project and Freud himself in his essay â€Å"On Dreams† (1991) stresses the primacy of dream interpretation in his system: â€Å"The transformation of the latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream-content deserves all out attention, since it is the first instance known to us of psychical material being changed over from one mode of expression to another.† (Freud, 1991: 89) For Freud, dreams serve as symptoms of unconscious repression in the same way as parapraxes (slips of the tongue) and instances of forgetfulness. The content of dreams can, he said, be split into the latent and the manifest; the one providing a shield for the other as the Unconscious gives up its fissures and problems that have been repressed by the Ego during waking hours. Freuds work The Interpretation of Dreams attempts to provide a full scale, largely scientific study of not merely the symbolism of dreams but also their mechanism; a mechanism that he termed the ‘dreamwork. The dreamwork can be thought of as a process (Wollheim, 1971) that transcribes the latent content of dreams into the language of the manifest. Freud is clear in The Interpretation of Dreams that psychoanalysis does not deal with the simple ‘translation of images or primitive notions of symbol exchange that sees dreams as merely scripts that can be easily interpreted using a universal dictionary, although he does acquiesce to the point that some symbols recur on a universal level. Instead, Freud sees dreams as the return of repressed desires and their attendant wishes that find a voice in the psychical economy through a process of disguise. The desire, as Richard Stevens (1983) suggests, â€Å"will be fused with experiences and thoughts from the previous day or even events occurring during the course of the night† (Stevens, 1983: 30). The dreamwork, in the Freudian system, is both the mechanism of disguise and the tool of interpretation because it contains an internal logic that can be used by the analyst to trace the source of repression and, through the process of transference, brought into the conscious and rendered harmless (Freud, 1997). Perhaps the most important concept within The Interpretation of Dreams is the four-fold dreamwork mechanism that can be used, not only in dream interpretation but as we shall see, in the critical appreciation of literature. Freud termed these mechanisms condensation, displacement, representation and secondary revision and before I go to look at how each one fits into Under Milk Wood specifically I would like to, briefly, offer up an explanation as to how each effects the manifest dream-content and ergo the literary image or trope. Condensation This is, perhaps, the most common dream feature and is what gives dreams their sparse, confusing quality. For Freud, dream-thoughts are many and varied, each bombarding the dreamwork simultaneously: â€Å"The dream is meagre, paltry and laconic in comparison with the range and copiousness of the dream-thoughts. The dream, when written down fills half a page; the analysis, which contains the dream-thoughts requires six, eight, twelve times as much space.† (Freud, 1997: 170) Condensation manifests itself as images laden with meaning, as the unconscious overlays and condenses two or more dream-thoughts into one motif. Part of the skill of the analyst according to Freud is the extent that such condensation can be unravelled and successive layers of unconscious meaning and repression peeled back and revealed (Freud, 1965: 313). Whereas Freud was dubious as to the possibility of ever reaching a definitive dream interpretation because of the very nature of condensation, he also asserted that the ways in which dream-thoughts are condensed gives the analyst a clue as to their psychical meaning. Freud cites his own dream of the Botanical Monograph as an example of the way in which different dream-thoughts can be condensed into one dream-image; the latent meaning only becoming apparent when this relationship is exposed . Displacement Displacement refers to the substituting of elements within dreams. Due to the nature of the unconscious, elements and images that have a similar psychical economy invariably end up being displaced, one for the other. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud characterises displacement as constituting a de-centring of the dream-thoughts: â€Å"We may have noticed that these elements which obtrude themselves in the dream-content as its essential components do not by any means play this same part in the dream-thoughts.† ( Freud, 1997: 190) Displacement, like condensation, arises from the synchronous nature of the unconscious and manifests itself in two ways; firstly, through the substituting of dream-thoughts, so that dreams can appear absurd and illogical and, secondly through shifting meanings – an image may possess one meaning in one nights dream and another on a different night. Melanie Klein, for instance, in her essay â€Å"Psychological Principles of Early Analysis† (1991) offers us some interesting insights into how displacement works in something other than the dream; the child at play. â€Å"My analyses again and again reveal how many different things, dolls for example, can mean in play. Sometimes they stand for the penis, sometimes for the child stolen from the mother, sometimes for the little patient itself etc.† (Klein, 1991: 134) Both condensation and displacement have been used as the basis for theories of Surrealist aesthetics, as Carrouges and Prendergast assert in their study Andre Breton and the Basic Concepts of Surrealism (1974: 192) which uses seemingly disparate images juxtaposed in order to create an illogical, dream-like tableaux. Representation Representation refers to the dreamworks tendency to present feelings, repressions and notions as images and symbols. Unlike many pre-Freudian systems of dream interpretation such symbolisation is centred, to a very large extent, around the dreamers own personal history and psychology. However as I have already stated there are, due to the inter-subjective nature of the psyche, recurring symbols and motifs that can be found in a great many peoples dreams. Richard Stevens in his Freud and Psychoanalysis (1983) mentions just a few of them: â€Å"small boxes, chests, cupboards and ovens correspond to the female organ; also cavities, ships and all kinds of vessels. The actions of climbing ladders, stairs, inclines or flying may be used to symbolise sexual intercourse; having a haircut, tooth pulled or being beheaded, castration.† (Stevens, 1983: 33) Secondary Revision Secondary revision refers to the mental processes that occur after the dreamer awakes and that organises and places the otherwise absurd and disparate images and themes into a, relatively, cohesive narrative. Wollheim points to there being doubt in Freuds later work as to the place of secondary revision within the dreamwork (Wollhein, 1971: 69) but, as a concept, it has been important in many neo-Freudian systems of aesthetics especially, as Charles Altman points out in his essay â€Å"Psychoanalysis and Cinema† (1986: 526), by the French school of film critics who saw it as, not so much an integral part of the dreamwork, but as the main constituent in narrative formation and the audience/film dialectic. Jung On Dreams Dreams play as important a role in the work of Carl Jung as Sigmund Freud (Fordham, 1964) however the former not only sees their place in the psychical economy differently but has, as he explains in Man and his Symbols (1964), created an entirely separate process of interpretation and translation. Jung disagreed with Freuds notion of the dreamwork and his method of free association whereby the analysand recalls a dream and lets their mind wander through the myriad of different unconscious connections only to be unravelled and assessed by the analyst. For Jung, this process is likely to uncover neuroses and repression but is unlikely to uncover them connected with the dream. For Jung, the further away from the central motifs of the dream-image one gets the further away one travels from the locus of their meaning. Therefore, under a Jungian system, dreams consist not of personal motifs of repression returning through the dreamwork but as expressions of either the personal or collective unconscious. The method of extracting the meaning from dreams is centred around the correct reading of such symbols and an evaluation of how they relate to either the dreamers personal or their phyllogenetic background, as Jung himself asserts: â€Å"Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature, they show us unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature.† (Jung, 1989: 55) Jung viewed the waking, conscious perceptions as having a penumbra of associated psychical meanings (Jung, 1964: 28), even the very simplest of actions, for instance seeing or hearing, can involve a gamut of other ideational and experiential relations and it is this that we witness in dreams; the whole of our unconscious unfettered by the ordering, the siphoning and the categorisation of the conscious mind. For Jung, then, the absurd quality of dreams, their surreal nature comes not from intervention of the dreamwork but from the cultural and personal associations attached to perceptions and experiences. Thomas On Dreams Both Freuds and Jungs systems of dream interpretation offer us important critical tools with which to view Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood both in terms of the images and symbols the playwright uses in order to convey the sense of the somatic and the dream-like and his use of surrealism as a semi-comic trope throughout the piece. The play begins in the collective dream of the town. Just like the short story Quite Early One Morning, the audience is taken on a journey through the consciousnesses of the sleeping townsfolk as they dream their separate dreams, shaped (as both Freud and Jung assert) by their individual consciousnesses and personalities. Captain Cat, for example, experiences the return of the repressed guilt he feels towards his long dead shipmates: â€Å"Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best cabin of Schooner House dreams of Second Voice: never such seas as any that swamped the decks of the S.S. Kidwelly bellying over bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark† (Thomas, 2000: 2) Thomas, here, reflects both Freudian and Jungian dream analysis as Captain Cats dreams abound with symbols of his past and are unmistakably suffuse with the characters own visual lexicon, what Jung calls the â€Å"dream language† (Jung, 1986: 33). The same can be said of Dai Bread who dreams of â€Å"harems†, Polly Garter who dreams of â€Å"babies† and even Nogood Boyo who dreams of â€Å"nothing†. However, within the very text of Under Milk Wood we notice each one of the four elements of the Freudian dreamwork. The dense language is a clear instance of condensation: the vital elements of the imagistic leitmotifs are extracted and pile one on top of another, as adjective combines with adjective to form the quintessentially Thomasian poetics, such as here where the playwright draws a finely tuned portrait of Mrs Dai Bread One, the wife of the baker: â€Å"Me, Mrs Dai Bread One, capped and shawled and no old corset, nice to be comfy, nice to be nice, clogging on the cobbles to stir up a neighbour. Oh, Mrs Sarah, can you spare a loaf, love? Dai Bread forgot the bread. Theres a lovely morning! Hows your boils this morning?† (Thomas, 2000: 22) Thomas both describes the sense of a dream here and, through condensation, utilizes its mechanism. Words and phrases are juxtaposed and their meaning condensed in a way that mirrors almost exactly the workings of Freuds dreamwork. We see this reflected many times throughout the narrative of Under Milk Wood, as the author evokes in a linguistic sense what Freud saw in a psychoanalytic sense. We see, for example a clear literary rendering of displacement in the absurd portrait of Cherry Owen as described by the Second Voice: â€Å"Cherry Owen, next door, lifts a tankard to his lips but nothing flows out of it. He shakes the tankard. It turns into a fish. He drinks the fish.† (Thomas, 2000: 13) Here the incongruous image of a fish replaces or displaces the tankard that Cherry Owen drinks from adding to the dreamy quality of the early passages of the play. As a cultural symbol, the fish also mirrors the third of the Freudian mechanisms, representation, whereby a linguistic notion â€Å"He drinks like a fish† is rendered in a quasi-comic symbolic form. Of course, the ultimate use of dreams and dreaming in Under Milk Wood is the plot itself. Both Freud and Jung rely heavily on the concept of the return within their respective dream philosophies (Stevens, 1983; Fordham, 1964) and this is reflected in the very structure of the play that could, after all, be thought of as merely the manifest dream-content of the First Voice, or perhaps even Thomas himself. Like a dream, the text iterates, as we shall see in the next chapter, the same basic images and archetypes; the symbols are at once full of meaning in themselves and signifiers for other things. The First Voice can be seen as the voice of God but also of secondary revision, knitting disparate elements together to form a narrative that can be followed and engaged with. As the characters awake, their lives, as they are described by the First and Second voice, are shown to be no less absurd than the irrationality of their dreams. This is perhaps because the entire play can itself be seen as a dream of the authors in which he creates, as he states in a letter to A.G. Prys Jones, â€Å"a never-never Wales† (Thomas, 1985: 848) that, like its Peter Pan counterpart, is as much a manifest wish of its author as anything else. Chapter Three: The Shadow, T Kelloggs Business Strategy: Success Factors and Barriers Kelloggs Business Strategy: Success Factors and Barriers Introduction: The importance of customers and their value plays a major role and cannot be neglected by the companies in todays business world. The implementation of different new strategies and marketing plans will not help if the companies do not pay attention to the customers. Any companys marketing plan agenda should and will always include customers. Customer focus and retention is a powerful strategic advantage that helps to increase the profitability of the company and to survive in the high competitive environment. The different consumers across the world might lead to varying consumer behaviours which result in identifying varying concepts by decision making units to sell the products. In a company like Kelloggs the purchasing process is dependant on consumer behaviour. The buying pattern of the consumers has an influence on directly related phenomena as well as post marketing phenomena. Kelloggs has seen a downfall in sales in the past decade and still continues to see. There is a huge discussion in the EU market about the food nutrition and labelling and the negative media image produced about the products of the company. The Kelloggs products are criticised by food standard agency (FSA) as red products and junk food. They said that the company is trying to show their products healthier than they actually are. These statements and actions of FSA has not only affected the overall business and its image but also the consumer attitude towards the products. This report talks about how Kelloggs can resolve the issue by using marketing research and customer focused strategy. Company Profile: Kelloggs is the worlds largest cereal maker since 1906 and is located in the United States. Kelloggs products has become a part of the delicious mornings for the people around the world since a century. Its business is operated in two segments: Kelloggs North America and Kelloggs International. 66% of the revenue to the company comes from North America region which consists of the Canada and the United States. The remaining 34% comes from the Kelloggs international market which consists of Europe (20%), Latin America (8%) and Asia Pacific (6%). The products vary from ready-to-eat cereals to convenience foods such as cereal bars, cookies, toaster pastries, crackers, frozen waffles, snacks and veggie foods. Obesity and Health Wellness is the primary concern for people in the world today. Kelloggs has invested on this trend by introducing many health focused products like Kelloggs ®, Pop-Tarts ®, Cheez-It ®, Mini-Wheats ®, Nutri-Grain ®, Rice Krispies ®, Keebler ®, Specia l K ®, Chips Deluxe ®, Famous Amos ®, Morningstar Farm ®, Sandies ®, Eggo ®, Austin ®, Club ®, Murray ®, Kashi ®, Bear Naked ®, Gardenburger ®,All-Bran ®,and Stretch Island ®. The demand for its products came from the continuous advertising since 1906. The main competitors are General foods, Quaker Oats, General Mills and Ralston-Purina. It started out in Battle Creek, Michigan with 44 employees which eventually has grown into a multinational company with 30,000 employees. The manufacturing of its products is taking place in 18 countries and selling them over 180 countries successfully with the implementation of intelligent strategies and leadership. Key Success Factors: The main key factors for Kelloggs Success are it perceived to have a healthy image when compared to other daily breakfasts and snacks like chocolates and crisps. They made the products convenient enough so that they can be carried anywhere easily. They offer a range of cereal bars which are quite useful for people on the morning rush. Few Kelloggs products are really versatile as moms can give them as a snack between breakfast and lunch to their kids. Sodium content in the food is a major issue that the company has to deal with. Kelloggs are trying to develop products with less salt content and including more amount of fruits in the bars and cereals for people with health concerns. They have created a high level of brand awareness in the people which allowed them to win the customer loyalty. They have designed various products since a century for all age groups from childrens to adults. Innovation has influenced Kelloggs market to a greater extent. Introducing new products according to the changing markets and tastes of people from time to time has made Kelloggs to win the customers. They offered the products at a lower price which made an average household to afford, hence retaining the customers at large. Kelloggs market its products itself. It do not manufacture cereals for any other company who sells them under their own brand. All these factors added for the company to run successfully and become the world market leaders in the highly competitive market. Strategy: Kelloggs aim was to be the food company of choice and also make customers understand the importance of a balanced lifestyle which can be achieved by their products. The mission is to drive sustainable growth through the power of the people and brands by better serving the needs of customers, consumers and communities. Based on their vision and mission they crafted their strategy to achieve aims and objectives with the power of position and brand image. Kelloggs targeted various groups of people and deigned the products accordingly to attract their mind sets. Balanced Lifestyle is the broad strategic objective of the company. It implemented these strategies by some tactical plans like supporting the physical activity among all age groups and to sponsor these activities with the use of companies resources, the communication of the balance diet to consumers using the cereal packs, and also introduction of food labelling which would allow consumers to understand the balanced diet content of their products. Kelloggs has introduced the recommended Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) to their packaging labels. This allowed the customer to have a knowledge of the amount of nutrients in take in a serving of Kelloggs food. Their strategy is to attract customers by encouraging them to take part in the swimming programs organised by the company in relationship with the Amateur Swimming association (ASA). Kelloggs has sponsored almost 1.8 million awards every year to the swimmers. This idea of teaming up with ASA has helped the company to reinforce its brand image. It also has started many community programs and breakfast clubs to create awareness of their products in people. By all these activities it shows that the company is trying to create a good CSR image in the industry. Kelloggs believed that if consumers are given proper information about their products, they can retain them. So, they chose various methods to communicate their objectives to the world such as using cartoo n characters, and also through effective advertising. It also distributed nutrition magazines for the employees to make them better understand about the objectives. Solution: In a major business study about Kelloggs, it is seen that their consumers buying behaviour is mostly dependant on the companys focus towards customers and how well they treat them rather than manufacturing, pricing or merchandising of the products. Consumers tend to purchase the products which are more healthy. Hence they want to know all the available information about the products they want to buy or consume. The products information, beliefs, intentions and attitudes of the customers influence the decision process. So Kelloggs has to perform a market research on whether the consumers buy their products based on the label information or not. The visual inspection of the product or the experience of purchasing the product play a major role in the decision making of the consumer. Advertising and promotion of the product might as well have a greater impact on the buying pattern. It is difficult enough to understand the consumer behaviour within the borders of a single country. Underst anding and serving the needs of consumers from different countries can be daunting. The values, behaviours and attitudes of the consumers vary greatly across the world. Kelloggs must design the marketing programs and products according to the peoples needs. For example, in the United Kingdom where most people eat cereal regularly for their breakfast, Kelloggs should try persuading consumers to buy their brand rather than a competitors brand. In France, however where most people prefer croissants and coffee or no breakfast at all, it should advertise to convince people to eat cereal for breakfast and in India, where many consumers eat heavy fried breakfasts and skip meal all together, the company should make attempts to convince the buyers to shift to a lighter, more nutritious breakfast diet. To cover up the damage caused due to the labelling issue by FSA, Kelloggs Should determine the customers needs and convert them into requirements. In order to fulfil them, it should fully understand the current and future needs of the customers, identify the customers, determine their key product characteristics, identify and assess market competition, identify opportunities and weakness, define financial and future competitive advantages, ensure that it has sufficient knowledge about the regulatory requirements, identify the benefits to be achieved from exceeding compliance and also identify their role in the protection of community interests. Kelloggs can start launching some new products aimed at the health conscious consumers. They can start selling them for a lowest price in the market and satisfy them with a good value products for every penny they spend. They can concentrate more on three groups of people like individuals, families and supermarkets who wanted to have a healthy diet. They can focus more on health conscious people from age group from 25-50 by promising them healthy diet with their products. By the introduction of these products in the market they can show the customers that Kelloggs is being paid attention to what they want and how important their health is to the company. They can start collecting information from consumers and people by conducting surveys about what kind of products they are actually looking for and based on that they can prepare them and position them to win the competitive advantage. So the only mantra to attract the customers again and to cover up the loss created by FSA is obsessive customer attention. Even though making health conscious customers happy might affect the short term profits, yet it helps to acquire a loyal customer base which pays off in the future. Making these products available at all consumer stores and super markets at a lower retail price might assist in building up the brand image yet again. Adv ertisements play a crucial role in winning the brand image and loyalty of the customers. If the company tries to create an awareness about the product and the low price buying strategy, it would encourage the consumers to buy them that results in the greater sales of the product. Potential advantages by focusing on customers: Awareness of changing dynamics of the consumer market will definitely help Kelloggs to gain a competitive edge in the cereal industry. The increasing trend of health consciousness and the changing tastes can be known time to time by extensive market research. The feed back from consumers and the surveys conducted will allow the company to learn about their drawbacks and work up on them. It enables the business to minimize price sensitivity, improve profitability, differentiate itself from the competition, improve its image in the eyes of customer, achieve a maximum number of advocates for the company, increases customer satisfaction and retention, enhance its reputation, improve staff morale, ensure products and services are delivered right first time, increase employee satisfaction and retention, encourage employee participation, increase productivity and reduce costs, create a reputation for being caring customer-oriented company, foster internal customer / supply relationships and also bring about continuous improvements to the operation of the company. Barriers to overcome: For Kelloggs to win back its brand and image customer loyalty and becoming customer focused organisation there are some barriers to overcome Internal Focus: Rather than focusing on improving the output measures like revenue, cost and returns, the firm should pay attention to input measures like staff satisfaction and customer experience. Command and Control Culture: A command and control culture in the organisation creates internal conflicts, poor communication and mistrust. This constrains the freedom of building customer relationships and also the exchange of knowledge for better growth of the company. Short Term Approach: The company should not tend to fall back to the product-thinking strategy, instead it should hold on to the customer focus strategy and treat it as a long term initiative which might help acquire customer loyalty and retention to the firm. Inadequate Customer Data: With small volumes of customer data it is difficult to analyse customers behaviour and manage relationships. So, they should always make sure that adequate amount of data is available on the customers to understand the buying behaviour patterns. Understanding the customers: Though the company has gathered enough information, it is sometimes difficult to harness it. So it should try understanding the attitudes and beliefs of the customer. Conclusion: Labelling on food products plays a major role in the decision making process of a consumer. The buying behaviour of consumers is richly embroidered by the labels available on the product. In the Kelloggs case labelling issues created a damage to the company. The best way for Kelloggs to recover from this situation is to use the launch of the new products as a strategic technique to win back the customers it has lost. The glue that hold the organisation together is strong customer focus. It acts as a fuel for an improving the brand image of the company. Every employee should be committed and dedicated towards their work in order to build a customer focused organisation. If Business neglects to create a true customer focus, they need to face huge unnecessary costs for poor service raised due to the active promotion of the customers who are dissatisfied. This might result in investing extensively in marketing and advertising by the company to gain back the customers attention. The life blood of the organisation are the customers who allows the firm to realise their main goals and objectives to survive in the market and also to make a profit. Their behaviour helps the products to attain a recognition and allow them to last for longer periods. Consumer behaviours keep changing from time to time and the best thing the company could do is to develop strategic ways that make the consumers buy the products may it be old or new. So, customer focused strategy is the only thing which keeps the companies alive and growing in this highly changing competitive market.