Turn of the Screw In Turn of the Screw by Henry James, there is a question of whether the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are real. They seem to only appear to the governess and she is the only one who admits to seeing them. F. W. H. Myers recognized apparitions as "a manifestation of persistent personal energy, --or an indication that some kind of force is being exercised after death which is in some way connected to a person previously known on earth." (P. 141) This fits the story perfectly for the ghosts appear to be nothing, just a "manifestation." The governess swears that Miles and Flora see the ghosts too, but that they refuse to admit it. She says, "whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw more-- things terrible and unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the past." (P.53) They are scared or intimidated. Some of the places the governess appears show many parallels to the sightings of the ghosts as well. The governess sees Quint in the glass door and up on the tower, a place where Mrs. Grose notices the governess. And the governess sees Miss Jessel sitting at her desk. She recalls, "In the presence of what I saw I reeled back upon resistance. Seated at my own table in the clear noonday light I saw a person" (P. 59) These reflections of herself upon the ghosts portray an idea that she is a ghost or it is in her conscious and Bly is driving her mad. This leads the reader to believe that the governess is actually a reflection of the ghosts. When she sees the ghosts, it's like a mirror image. And mirrors ultimately just show you yourself in full, obvious form. They are an ultimate reality. When the governess sees Miss Jessel across the lake, it could be her mirror image reflected in her mind. "Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank" (P. 71) the governess recalled. "Where on earth do you see anything?" (P. 72) replied Mrs. Grose. However, sometimes mirrors show you what you want to see, for example, in Something Wicked this Way Comes. Or mirrors could portray a brutal reality like in Fall of the House of Usher. Reflections other than mirrors have the same meaning, for example, seeing yourself in water. In the end, neither the governess nor we the reader are certain that these ghosts are out to get the children. Being the one who sees them, the governess might actually be the victim.
In conclusion, it is not the ghosts, as the governess suspected, that are corrupting the children, but the governess herself, through her continually worsening hysteria that is corrupting the children. Both Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not real ghosts that have the peculiar habit of appearing before the governess and the governess alone but they are merely the signs of the fragmenting mental state of the governess.
Gains, Bruce. “Inside the Mind of Joran Van De Sloot : The Noose Tightens.” Crime
Ghost- a vision of a dead person that is believed to appear or become visible to the living as a vague image. There have been many cases in reality where one sees the ghost of their deceased loved ones or encounter some sort of paranormal activity in their life. “Proof” by David Auburn plays around with the “Ghost story” in his play to represent identity, memory of Catherine.
The book, What’s So Super About the Supernatural tells of well known stories about poltergeists. A poltergeist is a noisy or high energy ghost who might perform violent activity. A young girl by the name of Tina Resch lived in Ohio and is known to be a poltergeist. “No ghost was ever seen or heard on camera; however when the camera was inadvertently left running, the tape showed Tina surreptitiously pulling over a lamp” (Gardner). The evidence was found after people were reporting the activity. Newspaper reporters went to the scene to check out the action only to find evidence of Tina throwing objects violently around the house. Another example of proof that ghosts exist goes back to a case involving a poltergeist in England. An eleven-year-old boy by the name of Matthew Manning performed several violent actions that his dad had noticed and reported. Gardner writes, “ On one occasion, Matthew’s bed was thrown about and left leaning at an angle against the wall” (Gardner). These examples are not the only reported cases regarding ghosts and paranormal activity. Many stories about the supernatural have been told and passed down for several generations. Spirits are even mentioned in well known religious books that have been passed down for hundreds of
One issue which, like the rest, can be answered in more than one way is why Mrs. Grose believes in the Governess when she tells her about her ghost encounters. Usually one would second-guess such outlandish stories as the ones that the governess shares throughout the story, yet Mrs. Grose is very quick to believe our borderline-insane narrator. One of the explanations for such behavior could be the underlying fact that Mrs. Grose and the governess have a similar socio-economic background, therefore making them somewhat equal even if the governess does not always seem to think that way. This fact makes them susceptible to trusting and believing each other, and to believing that the ghosts are there, for the people that the ghosts are presenting used to be servants and therefore from a similar socio-economic background. To add on to that, Bruce Robbins proposes in his Marxist criticism of The Turn of the Screw that the idea of a ghost is synonymous to that of a servant, subconsciously making the two lower-class workers of Bly more vulnerable to believe that the ghosts were real; in other words, servants were ghosts....
The governess sees a woman on the other side of the lake and jumps to the conclusion that Flora has seen her and is choosing to act like she didn’t. The child was playing with a boat and had her back turned to the lake. Why would she think that she had to have seen her? There is no proof and does not even ask the child if she saw anything. She automatically assumes it’s Miss Jessel, the previous governess who died and that she is after Flora. She tells her story to Mrs. Grose drawing her in more deeply into believing her crazy hallucinations and Mrs. Grose asks her if she is sure its Miss Jessel and the governess replies “Then ask Flora—she’s sure!” and then immediately comes back to say “no, for God’s sake don’t! She’ll say she isn’t—she’ll lie” ((James 30). She comes to the conclusion that the child will lie about it when there is no reason to suspect that she would. Again, this is her jumping to conclusions, because there is not any proof to say that the children have seen or know anything about the ghost’s. “Thus a very odd relationship develops between the governess and the children, for the more she loves them and pities them and desires to save them, the more she begins to suspect them of treachery, until at last she is convinced that they, in league with the ghosts, are ingeniously tormenting her’ (Bontly 726). “The ghosts appear, thus, when the governess is both aware of the corruption which threatens the children and convinced of her own power to preserve them untainted” (Aswell 53). It’s the governess fabricating all this up in her mind again so she can play the part of
In the 1920s America’s economy was rocketing. In this decade, America became one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The Average Joes had well paid jobs, and people had leftover money to spend. The industries sold more products than ever before and one example of this is the T-Ford. In 1928, a T-Ford had a price of $295, while the same car in 1909 had the insane price of $1200. (This would be $4000 versus $30.000 in today’s value.) There is one keyword: Mass production. Since the prices on items were lower, more people could buy such items. This resulted in more sales and expansion of factories and jobs. There were people with insane amounts of money. The characteristics of this era was that the rich became immensely rich. Bootlegging were a shadowy business that made a great deal of money. There is a connection between bootlegging and mafias. Al Capone were one of the most significant mafia leader and without doubt participated in selling illegal liquor. As a result of the prohibition era federal prison population increased by 366%, as well as police funding increased by $11.4 million. Some made their money fair and square; others were bootleggers and made a great amount of money.
Party identification is the political party that an individual categorizes them self with. Political parties came about as a way to organize citizens with similar beliefs and attitudes. These parties then attempt to influence the government by electing members into office. Today there are two main parties people can identify: Republican and Democrat. There is also a third choice, being an Independent, but for the purpose of this paper this group will not be recognized as a political party. These reasons will be discussed later. There are many different theories as to why people do or do not identify with a political party, including social psychology, issue related, and psychological attachments. I believe the social psychology theory has the right idea. Sociology is about studying human society and how it develops and functions. So, it makes sense that social factors would have a big impact on whether we identify with a political party or not.
...t want to be the only one who does. It is another feeble attempt to prove her sanity to herself and to others. However, because she “is so easily carried away”, she soon believes that the children do in fact see the ghosts by reading into their every remark and behavior. By piecing all of this together, the governess proves to herself that she is not insane. The governess in The Turn of the Screw, is a highly unreliable narrator. From the beginning of the story, her energetic imagination is displayed to the reader. With this knowledge alone, it would not be irrational to conclude that she had imagined the appearances of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. However, these facts in addition to her unsubstantiated inferences allow the reader to intelligently label the governess as an unreliable narrator. Works Cited Poupard, Dennis. “Henry James.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: Volume 24. Ed. Paula Kepos. Detroit: Gale research.; 1990. 313-315.
Today more and more people are agreeing that college athletes should be paid for their work. In reality, it is in the best interest of everybody if they were not directly paid for playing. If they were to get paid, where would you draw the line? If you pay one specific group of athletes, all of the sports and all the different divisions in college athletics would want paid. This is just not financially possible. People think that it would be only the lower divisions that would not be able to pay because of the amount of revenue that the bigger schools bring in. Texas, in 2012, had revenue of $163,295,115 with $138,269,710 in expenses. (Berkowitz et al. 2012) Texas has a large number in net income that would allow them to pay their athletes. There are many schools that have a negative income. These schools include Iowa, Oklahoma State, West Virginia, Kansas, Arizona State, and Missouri. (Berkowitz et al. 2012) There are many more schools that are barley positive if not right at even. Also the majorit...
It is said that 70% of all the food produced within the United States is actually genetically modified. Some people claim that this has contributed to allergen and pollution increases over the past 10 years (William, and David Schubert). Studies have shown different genetically modified foods have attributed to many different health symptoms, such as intestinal damage, allergic reactions, enlarged pancreas and liver, as well as decreased ...
Due to the subjective nature of the impressionistic art and literary style, both mediums possess an ambiguous quality. According to Bernard Dunstan, in Painting Methods of the Impressionists, impressionism “has come to have overtones and associations which can obscure its true meaning,” (11). This is also true for impressionistic literature. However, Metz argues that “ambiguity surrounds the process through which the impre...
Moore. 2013. CNET. World’s first approved bionic eye to launch in U.S. [online]. Available from: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/worlds-first-approved-bionic-eye-to-launch-in-u-s [Accessed 3rd March 2014].
Throughout The turn of the Screw by Henry James, the theme of ambiguous issues is constantly leaving the reader on their own. The ambiguity and uncertainty within this text causes the readers to come up with their own theories as to what the text really means. The ghost story perspective only adds to the infuriating vagueness. The title itself is about all of the twists within this story and basically foreshadows the confusion that the text will cause.
All people deserve the right of education equality no matter gender, race or financial income. According to the daily star, by 2015 only seventy percent of countries will have achieved equality between the sexes in primary education and fifty six percent will have achieved equality in lower secondary education. Education equality is one of the main problems in school systems.