Hilton, James. Lost Horizon. New York:
William Morrow and Company,1939.
I read Lost Horizon for my book report. The main characters in this story are Conway, Mallinson, Barnard, and Miss Brinklow. Conway was a man of thirty-seven years old who didn’t have a wife or any other family. Mallinson was a young man of about twenty or so who was not married yet either. Barnard was a middle-aged man that was without a wife or family also. Miss Brinklow was a woman of around the age of fifty.
This story was about four passengers on an aeroplane that was supposed to be going to Peshawar from Baskul. While they were on the trip, they noticed that the pilot wasn’t keeping a straight course to Peshawar, so they went to the front to ask the pilot what was happening and they noticed that it wasn’t the pilot who was supposed to be flying the aeroplane. When they tried to ask the pilot what was going on, he pointed a gun on them, so all they could do was ride the plane until he stopped.
They finally came to a land after they had flown many hours. The pilot was dying and in his last words he told them that there was a place not far from where they were and that they could go there. Not long on their journey they met some people who were from this place, which is called Shangri-La, and these people led them there. When they got there, they were told that it would be about two months before there was a way for them to make the journey back to civilization.
In these two months Conway and Chang, who was a guy that made their stay comfortable, talked a lot. In these talks Conway would ask many questions that Chang could not answer and this got Conway puzzled and made him think that there was something that was being hidden.
Almost after these two months were up Chang told Conway that the High Lama wanted to see him and that this was an honor because he had never seen anyone that quickly after arriving there. When Conway was talking with the High Lama, he told him the story of the place and about the person who founded it. He also told him about the legend that this guy had never died and that when someone came to this place that there was a drug that they took that made them live longer than a normal person would.
We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn 't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.’ (25) This complete sheltering leaves Emily to play into with in her own deprived reality within her own mind, creating a skewed perception of reality and relationships”(A Plastic Rose,
Having been the only daughter of a noble family, Emily was overprotected by her father who had driven away all the young men wanting to be close to her. As a result of that, when she got to be thirty, she was still alone. It was Mr. Grierson who alienated his daughter from the normal life of a young woman. If she weren?t born in the Grierson, if she didn?t have an upper-class father, she could have many relationships with many young men in order to find herself an ideal lover. Then she might have a happy marriage life with a nice husband and children.
The protagonist of this story is Miss Emily Grierson, an old maid spinster without family who becomes a “tradition” and a “sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 299). The story begins with the death of Miss Emily, so I will rearrange my analysis of the character to begin with what we first know about Miss Emily.
As the blood trickled down the flight attendant’s neck, they all prayed that they wouldn’t die. A dark skined man headed toward the front of the plane to claim his next victim. He slowly pressed the cold, red blade of a knife into the pilot’s neck. Many of those who saw screamed. They all knew, then, that they would die. Passengers felt the plane take some wild turns and they realized that they had turned around. Not long after this occurred to four planes, every single passenger died. Terrorists had taken over planes in America. Four planes, nineteen terrorists, and almost 3,000 dead people later, the United States of America has been changed forever.
On March 26, 1997, in what has become known as one of the most noteworthy mass suicides in history, thirty-nine men and women affiliated with the Heavens Gate cult took their own lives by ingesting a combination of Phenobarbitals mixed with applesauce and alcohol. Each was dressed all in black, their faces covered by a purple shroud. Those who wore glasses had them neatly folded next to their body, and all had identification papers for the authorities to find. The house was immaculate, tidier even than before the victims had moved in. It was as if, in preparing for their death, they were heeding the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” And while their abrupt end may seem rather strange, the way they lived is even more perplexing.
William Faulkner introduces us to a number of characters but the most involved being Emily Grierson, Homer Barron, Tobe, and the ladies of the town; who are not named individually. Emily Grierson was once a beautiful and wealthy upper class young women who lived with her father, who has since died, on the towns,
When we mention the word ‘privacy’, we mean that there is something very personal about ourselves. Something that we think others are not supposed to know, or, we do not want them to. Nevertheless, why is it so? Why are people so reluctant to let others know about them entirely? This is because either they are afraid of people doing them harm or they are scared that people may treat them differently after their secrets are known. Without privacy, the democratic system that we know would not exist. Privacy is one of the fundamental values on which our country was established. Moreover, with the internet gaining such popularity, privacy has become a thing of the past. People have come to accept that strangers can view personal information about them on social networking sites such as Facebook, and companies and the government are constantly viewing a person’s activity online for a variety of reasons. From sending email, applying for a job, or even using the telephone, Americans right to privacy is in danger. Personal and professional information is being stored, link, transferred, shared, and even sold. Various websites, the government and its agencies, and hospitals are infringing our privacy without our permission or knowledge.
Privacy is a value we hold close and dear as a society. We do not advertise to others of our weaknesses or our confidential personal interactions. Most of the population does not want to get involved or want to know about other private issues. So privacy can protect the rest of us from being exposed of too much personal information. Autonomy allows us to speak out about injustices and ability for self-expression. The irony is that we feel safest when we know everything about them but they know nothing about you. Here is where a fine line is drawn between privacy and security. Privacy is built from a level of trust. As one’s trust level increases through ongoing relations, the self-guarded privacy begins to fade. When privacy and/ or trust have been compromised then relations are broken and the safe-guards are back in place.
Right to privacy is meant to protect us all. Without invading personal lives, the laws are in place. When people are being felt violated that when they know the right to privacy has been invaded as well. This man, Jonathan Franzen has said about his feeling of privacy; “One of my neighbors in the apartment building across the street spends a lot of time at her mirror examining her pores, and I can see her doing it, just as she can undoubtedly see me sometimes. But our respective privacies remain intact as long as neither of us feels seen.” Privacy is not a concern if people feel safe with their surroundings. There are also people feel that their right to privacy is violated for the most random issues. (Right to Privacy)
All humans have some desire for privacy, but people have different boundaries to what information about them should be private. Problems arise with these widely varying definitions. What one person may define as a casual curiosity, another may define as a blatant invasion of privacy. Often, these disagreements find themselves in court rooms, and have been subjects of some of the most controversial court cases ever.
The story is very short, but every word has import in the story and each line has great depth of meaning. It is possible to infer a great deal about the woman's life, even though we are given very little on the surface. A telegraph and a railroad are mentioned in the first paragraph, so there is some idea of the time the story takes place. We are also given her married name and the full name of her husband. The fact that she is referred to only as "Mrs. Mallard", while her husband's full name is given, coupled with what we learn on the second page, gives some indication of the repression she's had to suffer through and the indignity society placed on woman in those times. We also learn in the first paragraph that she lives in a man's world, for, though it is her sister that tells her the news, it is her husband's friend who rushes over with the story. Even after his death, she is confined to the structures she adopted with married life, including the close friend's of her husband.
Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry with the assembly line invention; this new factory idea came from him observing the continuous-process production. “The most significant piece of Ford's efficiency crusade was the assembly line. Inspired by the continuous-flow production methods used by flour mills, brewer...
The automobile changed American life, but the process was gradual. Though historians argue the date and inventor of the first automobile, we can say that Henry Ford’s creation of his Ford Motor Company in 1903 marked perhaps the major milestone of the early twentieth century automobile industry in America and around the world. Five years after the company’s inception, Ford’s legendary Model T of 1908 would revolutionize transportation and the world economy. Before the Model T, automobiles in the US were associated with only the wealthier class. Ford sought to make cars available to every American. His cars would assume the general build that continues to characterize automobiles today, and his innovation and system of production would make him a legend.[i] The automobile led to an extremely advanced system of roads and contributed to an American mentality of freedom to move.[ii] Early drivers saw both benefits and difficulties as the automobile became the standard American mode of transportation.
“Miss Emily constantly for fifty or sixty years; they are anonymous townspeople, for neither names nor sexes nor occupations are given or hinted at; and they seem to be naïve watchers, for they speak as though they did not understand the meaning of events at the time they occurred. Further, they are of undetermined age. By details given the story there neither older nor younger nor of the same age as Miss Em...
Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...