The novel The Disappearing Spoon was written by Sam Kean, Sam is an American author, professor, and philosopher who is best known for his exploration of questions regarding love, life, religion, and being a man in contemporary society.In his book, he talks about the history, madness and love of the periodic table and their elements. The chapter that I am going to be reviewing today is chapter 12 of his novel. This particular chapter talks about political elements and about how the elements on the periodic table embody our frustrations and flaws in economics, psychology, arts and politics.
The chapter starts out by describing how Marie and Pierre Curie made if not one of the best collaborations that science has ever seen due to their various
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amounts of achievements such as the Nobel Peace Prize in 1903 “The Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Peace Prize in Physics for making this discovery” (205) . It then goes talking about Marie Curie's discovery of radium and the coining of polonium, after her native Poland, in order to start a debate about Polish independence. As the chapter ends, Kean also goes into stories of Nobel refusals because of the politics during World War II and recalling other named elements and their history. After reading this chapter, I feel like the big picture is to show people that the discovery of elements can affect the world of politics, for example, Marie lived in Poland and this prohibited her to get a higher education which made her moved to paris in 1891 “She finally moved to Sorbonne far away in Paris” (204).
After discovering radium and polonium, she sparked a debate about Polish independence to show that she as a Polish woman could accomplish great things in life. Just this effected a whole country and the world of politics by itself “Tsarist Russia had backward views on educating women” (204). While reading this chapter I felt like the author communicated his message well in a way that the audience could understand and did a good job supporting and backing up his evidence for his claims. Furthermore, I also feel like he did a phenomenal job with his organization and structure of this chapter, It was organized in a way that made the reader seep through the chapter at a steady rate wich felt quite nice at times. Finally I saw some examples of rhetorical devices throughout the chapter such as ethos,logos and language that was used to persuade the audience about Marie's ideas. For example, he uses logos by giving logic and reasoning behind Marie’s Ideas and discoveries.He then used ethos to reference to the Polish independance to make the reader feel sorry and get emotion out of the audience.To add on, he also used a more sophisticated vocabulary such as metabolioze
and quantam to sound more like he new what he was talking about and also to get the auidiences attention. Overall I feel like the structure and the content of the chapter was well thought out and organized. To conclude, this was an formidable read for me, science has never been my strongest subject in school. It was therefore quite hard work at times understanding concepts and ideas that I came upon, definitely not something to read casually. Nevertheless, I found myself fascinated at the really touching stories and ideas that I came upon . Some things I'd heard about before, such as Marie sparking a debate about polish independence which I heard from my grandfather and other historically based books.Other things were totally new. I'm not sure how much I'll remember about all the elements, but certain parts will stay with me. I'm glad I read it. I would only recommend it to science geeks, though, as it did get very complex at times.
Ego is the fall of many. In critical analysis, “Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin’s ‘Story of an Hour’”, Lawrence L. Berkove displays his view of Louise. It is evident in his article that he pays close attention to Chopin’s details of emotion. The article describes how the story forecasts the fatal ending with suspension and clues. He believes that the key to the story is “recognizing this deeper ironic level” (Berkove). Kate Chopin leaves the story up for interpretation concerning theme and the true reason for her death. Berkove, in his article, states that the theme of the story is extreme self-assertion and that feminism shines through the story.
The book became a great source of information for me, which explained the difficulties faced by women of the mentioned period. The author succeeded to convince me that today it is important to remember the ones who managed to change the course of history. Contemporary women should be thankful to the processes, which took place starting from the nineteenth century. Personally, I am the one believing that society should live in terms of equality. It is not fair and inhuman to create barriers to any of the social members.
In this paper I intend to research the death of a character in the short story "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. This story was written in an error when many women was not thought to be equal or was thought to behave a certain way. Earlier in the semester our class had an discussion about feminist criticism. Joyce Karpay felt that men historically had a upper hand on women in society. In “Feminist Criticism” she goes on giving examples how men controlled cultural, social, and economic institution. Joyce felt that dominance and submission were a part of all structures of life. The critics look at the languages and how there are advantages for men
The background of both authors, which was from the South, we can conclude how they could described the situations that they faced such as political and social presumptions problems especially for women at that time. The story explains how Chopin wrote how women were to be "seen but not heard". "The wife cannot plead in her own name, without the authority of her husband, even though she should be a public
Kate Chopin was a woman and a writer far ahead of her time. She was a realistic fiction writer and one of the leaders and inspirational people in feminism. Her life was tragic and full of irregular events. In fact, this unusual life had an enormous effect on her writings and career. She depicted the lifestyle of her time in her works. In most of her stories, people would find an expansion of her life’s events. In her two stories “The Storm” and “The Story of One Hour” and some of her other works she denoted a lot of her life’s events. Kate Chopin is one of those writers who were influenced by their life and surrounded environment in their fiction writing, and this was very clear in most of her works.
If the use of Labov's elements in literary anecdotes were what determined the success of a storyteller, Kate Chopin's The Kiss would not be the famous story it is today. In this piece of literature, Chopin manipulates Labov's elements by using some and removing others to give the story a sense of unpredictability, thus making it easier for Chopin to convey the theme of control, or the lack of, through a turning point that contradicts the reader's, and the character's, expectations.
When most people think of the Scientific Revolution, they think of scientists such as Galileo, Newton, Brahe, and Boyle. However, many people do not even know about the many women who played a vital role in the scientific advancements of this period. Even when these women were alive, most of society either ignored them or publicly disapproved their unladylike behavior. Because of this, these women were often forgotten from history, and very little is known about the majority of them. Although their names rarely appear in history books, the female scientists of the Scientific Revolution still impacted the world of science in several ways. In fact, all of the scientists listed above had a woman playing an influential role assisting them in their research. However, assisting men in their studies was not the only role open to women; several women performed experimentation and research on their own, or advancing science in some other way, even though the society of the time looked down upon and even resisted their studies.
A Woman Far Ahead of Her Time, by Ann Bail Howard, discusses the nature of the female characters in Kate Chopin’s novel’s and short stories. Howard suggests that the women in Chopin’s stories are longing for independence and feel torn between the feminine duties of a married woman and the freedom associated with self-reliance. Howard’s view is correct to a point, but Chopin’s female characters can be viewed as more radically feminist than Howard realizes. Rather than simply being torn between independent and dependant versions of her personality, “The Story of an Hour’s” Mrs. Mallard actually rejoices in her newfound freedom, and, in the culmination of the story, the position of the woman has actually been elevated above that of the man, suggesting a much more radically feminist reading than Howard cares to persue.
...ilms like Ashes and Diamonds and Man of Marble are only praised for their symbolic messages and subversive nature. However, it is worth noting that it is also the women behind the silver screen who contributed to these masterpieces. Krystyna’s role as a symbol of order and stability and Agnieszka’s role as an inquisitive and brave truth-seeker both have extreme importance in the way we perceive Wajda’s work. As a powerful witness of communist oppression and an artist who captures Poland’s yearning for freedom and truth, Wajda was a powerful critic of the communist order through visual presentations that could not be easily censored. Thus, it is also through the role of these women that we are able to understand Poland’s social and national consciousness as Wajda’s heroines either take part in or contribute to bringing questions of moral conscience to the audience.
Chopin’s decision to focus on and emphasize the imbalances between the sexes is heavily influenced by her upbringing, her feelings towards society, and the era she subsisted in. How Chopin was raised and educated not only inspired her, but it also assisted her with her writing capabilities.... ... middle of paper ... ...
There were more clues to unpack than expected but once I realized the writing style of Kate Chopin I enjoyed reading each sentence to pick out the hidden meaning. Xuding Wang’s essay was helpful seeing what I could not see on my own. The point that grabbed me out of Wang’s essay was the critic, Berkove, whom as I mentioned earlier in this analysis seemed to be the same blockade to women that Chopin wrote about in 1894. To know the character in the story you must know the writer. Kate Chopin was called a rebel in her time. Her stories were a call to action by women and to go as far as Berkove did and call those ideas delusional make him seem out dated and controlling. I can only experience what I do in life. I’ll never understand challenges faced by people of other races, cultures, or sex. Reading the original story and another woman’s discussion on it was very enlightening. There were emotions described that I’ve never considered. With a critic like Berkove using language as he did in the critique against Chopin’s work it makes me curious just how far our society has come. Racism is still alive and well, religious persecution and in this story, sexism. It seems to me that the world has never really changed and will continue to bring with it the same problems as the days
.... As a woman who wants what these women wanted, I find this hard to grapple with. I appreciate the fact that this story was written in a time when feminism was unheard of, but I wish that Chopin, who had been liberated enough to conceive of a character who would think like Mrs. Mallard, could also have imagined a situation in which she could have survived.
The time of worldwide integration and technological advancement has adequately changed people’s lives. Science plays a crucial role in society and without each and every one of people that have contributed greatly to its field, the establishment and efficiency would not be where it is today. It is peculiar yet astonishing to think that at one point in time women were not even allowed to pursue an interest in the science field. As women broke through the wall that kept them from allowing science to wander their minds, major grounds were covered and extreme discoveries were revealed. Marie Curie contributed highly to the fields of Chemistry and Physics, regardless of the social impediments placed on women scientists. Marie Curie was the first true scientific pioneers and the first to explore the components and idea of radioactivity. With her persistent attitude, she did not let the social
That same year Marie met Pierre Curie, an aspiring French physicist. A year later Maria Sklodowska became Madame Curie. Marie and Pierre worked as a scientific team, in 1898 their achievements resulted in world importance, in particular the discovery of polonium (which Marie named in honor of Poland) and the discovery of Radium a few months later. The birth of her two daughters, Irene and Eve, in 1897 and 1904 did not interrupt Maria's work. In 1903, Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. The award jointly awarded to Curie, her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, was for the discovery of radioactivity. In December 1904 she was appointed chief assistant in the laboratory directed by Pierre Curie.
Pasachoff, Naomi. "Marie Curie: Her Story in Brief." The American Institute of Physics. 1996. Oxford University Press. 24 Sept. 2006 .