Separate Peace Essay Example for Free

Separate Peace Essay Gene has a huge ego. His life revolves around competition. Everyday life is transformed to a constant war with everyone around him. He sees everyone he encounters as his rivals and enemies. He says about sports, â€Å"It was as though football players were really bent on crushing the life out of each other†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦as though even a tennis ball might turn into a bullet†. (Knowles pp. 84) Gene sees matters of life and death in harmless games of sports. Gene is never comfortable with his own identity. He is envious of those who are better than him and treat them as enemies. He grows extremely jealous of Finny for his athletic talents and ability to flout the rules. He cannot bear to feel inferior to anyone, even his friend; they are all his enemies. He is determined to be better than Finny in academics, in order to not feel inferior to Finny. Being the best in academics would equate Gene with Finny, who was best in athletics. Gene imagines that Finny is no less selfish than him and that they both hated each other in their rivalry. He imagines Finny is only pretending to be his friend to sabotage him. Gene interprets all of Finny’s actions as made in rivalry to him. Finny actually thinks of him as his best friend and never saw him as an enemy. Gene’s later discovery that Finny genuinely wants him to do well destroys the balance of his world, in which they both are enemies competing against each other. So Finny is better not only athletically but as a good person. Always feeling inferior, Gene is jealous and envious to the point that a codependent relationship is made possible. Lacking an identity and enviously seeing only Finny’s superior morals and talents, he would give anything to not feel inferior to Finny. Gene is in a position hat he desires Finny’s identity so much that he would enter into a codependent relationship with Finny to obtain his identity. Gene wants the qualities of Finny that he lacks. At the same time, Finny struggles with insecurity after his fall. Having shattered his leg, he cannot help but feel insecure about himself. His identity is shattered by the reality that he can no longer continue being the s tar athlete he was and achieve his dream of being a soldier. Being unable to carry out his dreams in his own physical body, he is forced to carry them out through the medium of Gene as an extension of himself. Throwing himself into a codependent relationship is Finny’s way of ridding himself of his insecurity and living a normal life through Gene. It would be as if the accident had never occurred. Finny needing to live his former life through someone and Gene’s desire to take on Finny’s identity makes way for a codependent relationship to form. Codependency becomes an obstacle to the creation of a separate identity. Finny’s fall provides the perfect time for the codependency to start. Both sides have something they want and can give in return. Gene wants Finny’s identity for the qualities that he admires in Finny but lacks himself. Finny wants to be able to live his life as an athlete through someone who acts as extension of Finny. Gene and Finny can satisfy each other’s desires. Since both people are receiving what they want in a codependent relationship they are content and happy with their life. There is no need to look inwards and examine oneself or improve oneself. After putting on Finny’s pink shirt, Gene says, â€Å"When I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character out of daydreams. I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but it seemed, standing there in Finny’s triumphant shirt, that I would never stumble through the confusion of my own character again. † (pp. 62). Gene feels happy that he has completely taken on Finny’s superior identity and escaped from who he is with all his issues. A false feeling of completeness and contentment prevent Gene from forming his own identity. Only after codependency is broken, can an individual identity emerge. Gene and Finny’s codependency is ended after Finny’s sudden death. Gene starts to re-examine himself, his thoughts and his emotions. Finally Gene puts things into perspective (Slethaug). Gene’s life from the start of his friendship with Finny has revolved around Finny. Everything he did, felt, thought about regarded Finny. His goal of becoming best in the class, and his envy were the result of Finny. Finny was the column, the foundation that supported and shaped his life. The foundation crumbles away with Finny’s death and Gene’s life comes crashing down. He can no longer depend on Finny to dictate his emotions, his thoughts and to serve as an idol he must surpass. With Finny gone, Gene now sees the foolishness and illusion he had been living in and the reality of life. He realizes that many of the enemies he had seen were the product of his own fear. He knows that Finny was a genuine and true friend who meant the best for him. Gene realizes that fear of everything had led to his seeing enemies in friends and that it was harmful. He sees that his fear had led him to feel threatened by a fearless Finny and his jealousy. His fear had made him feel that everyone was out to get him. Most importantly this fear had led him to seriously cripple Phineas and in the end led to Finny’s death. His guilt at having had a direct role in Finny’s death leads to him seeing the illogicality of fearing the world, the unknown, the imaginary enemy. He has escaped from his fear of the world, and matured into an adult in the process. Only now when he no longer fears anything or anyone, can Gene focus on himself and forge an identity. Only now when he does not see in everyone some quality that he lacks can he truly sees his own strengths and vulnerabilities and take them lightly. Gene can focus on forging his own identity when he other people’s identities no longer interest him. Phineas teaches Gene that in this world there is more than just evil, and war but also peace and good. Everyone is capable of good and evil. When Gene discovers that he like Finny is capable of good, he can overcome his guilt about his sin and find lasting peace within himself. Gene realizes that his hatred and jealousy is â€Å"something ignorant in the human heart† and is within him and also brings about wars. Only by reconciling himself with the fact of the existence of this evil within him can Gene realize that his own true enemy is not someone like Finny but in fact himself. He knows now that he had been seeing himself in everyone else. By coming to know his evil, he can come to know himself and his own identity. Gene by coming to know this evil within him can understand now the ideas of peace and love and the true value of friendship. Gene says of his time at Devon, â€Å"my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there. † (pp. 204) Gene has killed the hate, the evil, the fear within his heart that often causes wars. By killing the fear within him, he has defeated his own private demons. Gene has come to see that this enemy never comes from without, but always from within. He knows, moreover, that there is no defense to be built, only an acceptance and purification of oneself through love. (Ellis) Gene has matured and discovered his own identity after his codependent relationship is forcibly severed. In A Separate Peace, the author first shows how the codependency between Gene and Finny is formed. Later the author shows how Gene finally finds his own identity after the codependency is broken. Works Cited Knowles, John. A Separate Peace.

Shakespeares Hamlet - Observations of Madness Essay -- Madness and I

Hamlet: Observations of Madness One of the most analyzed plays in existence is the tragedy Hamlet, with its recurring question: "Is Hamlet’s 'antic disposition' feigned or real?" In truth, this question can only be answered by observing the thoughts of the main characters in relation to the cause of Hamlet real or feigned madness. In the tragedy Hamlet, each of the main characters explains Hamlets madness in their own unique way. To discover the cause behind the madness of Hamlet, each character used their own ambitions, emotions and interpretations of past events. Characters tried to explain Hamlet's "antic disposition" by means of association to thwarted ambition, heartbreaking anguish, and denied love. In the workings of their thoughts, the characters inadvertently reveal something about their own desires, emotions and experiences to the reader. The thoughts of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz present the reader with one possible factor for the cause of Hamlets supposed madness. The two men believe that the cause for Hamlets madness is his lack of â€Å"advancement† or thwarted ambition. In a conversation with Hamlet in Act II scene II, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz come upon this idea: Hamlet: Denmark's a prison. Rosencrantz: Then is the world one. Hamlet: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst. Rosencrantz: We think not so, my lord. Hamlet: Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison. When the heir apparent calls his heritage a prison, something must be seriously wrong, and it is not difficult for th... ...rman N. Holland, Sidney Homan and Bernard J. Paris. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 175-190. Leverenz, David. 1980. 'The Woman in Hamlet: An Interpersonal View.' In Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays, edited by Coppelia Kahn and Murray M. Schwarz. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 110-128. Levin, Richard. 1990. 'The Poetics and Politics of Bardicide.' PMLA 105: 491-504. Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Watson, Robert N. 1990. 'Giving up the Ghost in a World of Decay: Hamlet, Revenge and Denial.' Renaissance Drama 21:199-223. Wright, George T. 1981. 'Hendiadys and Hamlet.' PMLA 96:168-193. Shakespeare, William. The Tradegy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992

A Multimodal Learning Strategy Essay

How do you learn best? Do you rely on written instructions that outline details or processes? Do you physically test and try something out to see how it works? Do you learn through observation, by seeing someone else demonstrate? Do you rely on diagrams and visual aids to help you understand? If you answered mostly â€Å"yes† to the above questions, chances are, you have a multimodal learning preference. The majority—approximately 60%– of any population, group, or demographic fall into the category of multimodal learning. Multimodal learning takes from each of the four sensory modalities—the VARK learning style—used for learning information. The VARK learning style was developed by New Zealand educator Neil Fleming (1987) as a model that assesses how different people have different learning preferences. VARK is an abbreviation for visual (V), aural (A), read/write (R), and kinesthetic (K)—the four modes of learning strategies that he believed categorized how people learned and gathered knowledge. A multimodal learning strategy is a learning preference that combines two or three out of the four basic learning preferences. Finding out what one’s learning preference is promotes a more effectiveness in learning, as it gears one’s study habits towards their preferred method. Assessing the Method A VARK questionnaire is an effective method in assessing what a person’s learning preference is. A survey of approximately 15 to 16 questions would be given to a group of mixed background profiles, which would later be broken down into categories relating various social categories. The goal of the questionnaire or survey is to come up with a mean score which would be the standard for comparison and action. This score will is used to initiate a joint effort involving varying parties to determine strategies that would enhance learning for the groups (Murphy, Gray, Straja and Bogert, 2004). The VARK Four To better understand what multimodal learning strategies take from, it is important to discuss and differentiate between the four modes of learning strategies (Fleming, 1987). Visual learning styles highly prefer illustrated information over presentations or explanations in word. People who are â€Å"visual† rely heavily on drawings, maps, diagrams, symbols, and the like to gather information and learn. Aural or Auditory learners prefer to gather information that is spoken or heard. These types of learners acquire information best by listening to lectures, talks, discussions—even from e-mails, chats, texts and phone calls. Those with the Read/Write learning style process information best when it is written or displayed as text. The emphasis of this preference not only considers the input (which in this case is reading), it also looks at the output, which is more often than not, also in written form. Kinesthetic learners gain knowledge and information through practice and experience, real or simulated. This â€Å"experiential learning† may involve simulations, demonstrations, case studies and applications. The discussion of each of the four modes of learning preferences gives an idea of how learners with multimodal learning strategies absorb and understand information. Multiple preferences take factors from each of the four learning styles and incorporate them into an interesting formula that varies from user to user. As an example, you may have strong visual and aural preferences, or read/write and kinesthetic. It is also possible for a person to have three strong preferences, while some may also exhibit no particular inclination towards any single preference, and instead would have equal learning strategies in all four (Hong and Milgram, 2000). The multimodal learning style uses at least two types of strategies for learning. Unlike those with single preferences who deduce concepts by using their strategic style, multimodal learners often feel the need to â€Å"counter-check† the facts they obtained from a single set of strategies with the other types of learning styles (Fleming and Bonwell, 2002). Case Study: Myself as a Multimodal Learner I obtained the following scores using the VARK questionnaire found on www. vark-learn. com (Fleming, 2006): V=5, A=1, R=9 and K=7. This shows that I have a multimodal learning preference, with strengths in both Read/Write and Kinesthetic areas. Top R and K scores allow me to learn effectively using a combination of written reference and hands-on experience (Vierheller, 2005). My capacity to gather information would be greatly influenced by references, textbooks, lists, notes and readings. They would likewise be enhanced by using sensory observations, trial and error experiences, and hands-on approaches like computing, field trips and laboratory work. Alternately, I should theoretically be able to produce valuable output by writing information and lists, and by doing a mock-up or by physically recreating experiences and observations. To concur with my test results, I have personally found written information coupled with hands-on testing to be a most effective strategy. Also, while scoring only a 5 on the visual mode, I have always found visual study strategies to be effective in supplementing the information that I am able to collate using my supposed strong styles. The use of pictures, diagrams, charts, symbols and the like provide significant assistance in my personal learning preference. Users like myself, who have a three-dimensional multimodal learning preference have the fortunate advantage of easily adapting to various assessment methods and techniques required. References Fleming, N. (n. d. ) VARK: A Review of Those Who Are Multimodal. Web site: http://www. vark-learn. com/english/page_content/multimodality. html Hong, E. and Milgram, R. (2000). Homework: Motivation and Learning Preference [Electronic version]. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Murphy, R. , Gray, S. , Straja, S. , and Bogert, M. (2004). Student Learning Preferences and Teaching Implication. Journal of Dental Education. 68(8). 860-861. Retrieved from www. jdentaled. org.

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