Effective Communication Essay Example for Free

Effective Communication Essay For the past six weeks being back in the classroom has help me to shift my focus when it comes to communicating. There was a point and time when I felt like what I said and how I said it was the only thing that mattered. However, I have learned throughout this course that Communicating an authentic self requires consistency between your presentation of self and your self – concept. Our presentation of self depends on whom we are communicating with and is called facework (Dobkin (2006). Communication in a Changing World). In this essay, I am prepared to show evidence of how I have learned to communicate better as well as the things that I need to improve within my methods of communication. After reviewing my Personal Skills Inventory Chart, I am not where I want to be but I am better than what I use to be six weeks ago. These changes will not happen overnight but, I am bound to improve them prior to me advancing to my next level as a student of Walden University. My grandmothers always use to tell us that there are three sides to every story, your story, the other person story and then the truth. This old age theory still holds truth when communicating whether, it’s online or face-to-face. I have learned that in order for me to be effective in communicating that I have to be face-to-face with an individual so that the other person would be able to see and notice the sincerity that I pose within the conversation. While communicating face-to-face, I can feel assured that my point is being communicated with validity as well as the other person(s) can know that I have received their message as well. I have notice that when online I can hide my true feelings, emotions and persona. The hidden quadrant represents those things that you know about yourself but that others do not (Dobkin (2006). Communication in a Changing World) is what I find that I am able to hide behind when communication online. When communicating online whether if it is in an email or chat communication for me personally is rather difficult because there are time that the message you are typing could not be received in the manner that you intended to say it. I often communicate with my wife throughout the day via email and depending on the nature of the conversation she tries to read between the lines of the email to find my emotion in what I am saying. When she or other persons do this they tend to think that I feel a certain type of way about the conversation and most likely that is not the case. When communicating online I am also able to hide behind those emotions and not say what I really would like to say to the person. However, when communicating face-to-face that emotion cannot go unnoticed and the receiving party would have to respect your stance. As I plan to move ahead within my course of degree work, I am hoping to improve my writing skills. For some time I have always struggled with grammar and writing to be proficient and professional whether if it was an email or a paper due for class. While in seminary, we were taught to write our sermons as we would be speaking to someone so therefore you conversation style would not always match your grammar. To help me to improve in my writing I am going to continue using the tools provided for me as a student of Walden such as Grammarly. Grammarly (formerly Sentenceworks) is an automated grammar and writing revision tool for academic writing (Walden Writing Center. (2009). Scholarly writing). I have started to use this tool since week 3 of this course and I have found it to be a great help prior to submitting papers to be graded. There is another source that I would continue to use which is turnitin  . This tool has become a valuable tool for me because it assures that I am submitting my assignments to the highest degree of academic integrity that is expected of me as a student of Walden. Lastly, I would continue to employ the help of my wife who has looked over majority of my assignments to assure that I am writing with clarity and my grammar is in order. In the next term I have been enrolled in an English Composition course that I am certain is going to challenge not only my thinking but, my writing as well. I am looking forward to challenge as this is one of my main goals and focal point at this time. While Walden University offer persons like me who have a very busy personal, family and career life the opportunity to learn from home and at your time schedule it can still be a change. Therefore, going forward I plan to improve my Time Management Skills. Since this was my first time back in the classroom in 12 years, I found it hard in the beginning balance my job, family, church and other social outlets that I belong to while trying to complete assignments. My enrollment advisor was very effective in helping me manage getting assignments in on time. Going forward, I plan on working ahead, reading the material and having an understanding of the assignment prior to the due date. Now that my children are back in school that would help me out a lot as well because we can all sit down at a designated time to complete assignments instead of me trying to complete mine and entertain them while they were on summer break. In my household we have a standard of Academic Excellence that everyone who is in class is upheld to. So with this charge to my children I plan to lead by example which would help me to improve in the area of time management. Even though this course only lasted for six weeks, I am very grateful for the knowledge and information that I have learned about communication. I am now more aware of verbal and non-verbal communication and also how other people can perceive information just by â€Å"judging a book by its cover. † The challenge has presented itself in completing assignments on time while trying to manage other areas of life but for the most part I have adhered to those deadlines but look forward to improving in that area as well. Lastly, I am excited about using the tools and methods that are provided to me to help me along the way with my writing skills. I recall one the first couple days of class and looking at some other classmates discussions, at first I felt bad because I thought my writing was horrible but, then I realize I wasn’t alone. However, in due time I plan to be very proficient in my writing skills that I would only produce scholarly work.

Jean Baudrillards Disneyworld Company Theory Analysis

Jean Baudrillards Disneyworld Company Theory Analysis In his essay Disneyworld Company (1996), Jean Baudrillard suggests that we are living within an immediate synchronism of all the places and all the periods in a single a-temporal virtuality. Please explain this statement, referencing at least two contemporary digital examples. In his statement ‘an immediate synchronism of all the places and all the periods in a single a-temporal virtuality‘, Baudrillard is addressing the gap between what we can see as the known and the experienced (Baudrillard, 1996). It is in this sense that Baudrillard is writing against the notion of human nature and revealing only experience as the real and knowledge as merely the imagined. It is due to this gap that Baudrillard is then able to show that virtuality has begun to replace our real perceptions. To understand this in full we must investigate his and other philosopher’s thoughts regarding the digital age in greater detail. Informed primarily by the role that intelligence and sensual perception plays as it is applied to experience and knowledge, Baudrillard looked at the role of subjectivity as it related to both the objective and the phenomenological world. Beginning his enquiry into humanity and reality and its relationship to the world, Baudrillard focused upon the condition of the free world and its growing technologies with an emphasis that its Medias had placed upon commercialisation, imagery and art consumption. Baudrillard spoke of the new emphasis on the philosophy of self fulfilment suggesting that, ‘Through planned motivation we find ourselves in an era where advertising takes over the moral responsibility for all of society and replaces a puritan morality with a hedonistic morality of pure satisfaction, like a new state of nature at the heart of hyper civilisation’ (Baudrillard, 1968, p.3) After prescribing this current philosophical and moral reality that he believed informed the condition for humanity in the west, Baudrillard then turned to a notion of subject / object consciousness in an attempt to define a link between our knowledge and our experience. Detailing a consumer-able condition that pertained very strongly to post modern, capitalist living, Baudrillard concluded that the relationship between the subject and object now formed the living consciousness of an abstracted life between what he/she identifies with and what is signified in the actual consummation of any chosen object, such as an image, by stating that, ‘We can see that what is consumed are not objects but the relation itself signified and absent, included and excluded at the same time it is the idea of the relation that is consumed in the series of objects which manifests it.’ (Baudrillard, 1967, p.11) What Baudrillard does here is implement the idea of a simulated code acting as our knowledge, rather like that of a robot with artificial intelligence, that works by replacing the old humanised ideological frameworks that once informed society and acted as the gel between experience and knowledge / subject and object. These driving forces once born of experience communicated through culture and language in the forms of social exchange and communal ideology were seen by Baudrillard as being the premise of the image. In this we see that Baudrillard is showing how this simulated code informs a new humanity, devoid of natural origin, that does not live out a life according to cultural meaning that is supported by a communal language, but instead acts out an imagined life that can be understood and identified by its relationship to the values apparent within the code or what Bakhtin called the ‘relationship of the other’ essentially, placing life itself as a simulated relati onship to a tructural code of knowledge. (Bakhtin, 1993). Writing on the subsequent implications of this reality that he defined as hyper-reality and documenting the cultural shift that supported the change from registering external behaviour of a subject as an indication of a subjective response to the recognition of the other as an objective image of simulated experience, Baudrillard suggested that, ‘A whole imagery based on contact, a sensory mimicry and a tactile mysticism, basically ecology in its entirety, comes to be grafted on to this universe of operational simulation, multi-stimulation and multi response. This incessant test of successful adaptation is naturalised by assimilating it to animal mimicry. , and even to the Indians with their innate sense of ecology tropisms, mimicry, and empathy: the ecological evangelism of open systems, with positive or negative feedback, will be engulfed in this breach, with an ideology of regulation with information that is only an avatar, in accordance of a more flexible patter.’ (Baudrillard, 1976, p.9) With this we can see that all cultures have become divorced from a natural reality born of experience and that the ideas of a structured culture have become replaced by a gap that is filled with the virtual. In this sense, life, according to Baudrillard, is one of virtual imagery that is then rationalised against a simulated code rather than an intrinsic relationship with nature. Essentially, this ideological code acting as virtual knowledge informs us of linear time and space and so distorts our experience of life and existence. The virtual imagery presented to us via global technology and media, such as the internet, then reinforces our application to this reality and gives us our user identity that replaces the old systems devised of actual or phenomenological reality. Scepticism towards global medias, technologies and the growing dependency that humanity and society had begun placing upon the cultural apparatus of the globe was put forward by Marxist philosopher Seigfried Kracaue rs in his concerns about the mass consumption of art. This indicated that reality of the working masses was hidden under the illusion (or virtuality) of mass produced, distributed and unrelated art (Kracauer, 1963). Expanding upon the ideas of mass consumption and art put forward by Kracauer, contemporary Walter Benjamin introduced the notion of time and space to this idea. Focusing upon the history of technological progression and its relationship to art and social reality, Benjamin suggested that, ‘Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element its presence in time and space, its unique existence as the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of existence. This includes the charges which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes of its ownerships. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analysis which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original’ (Benjamin, 1935, p.1) Bringing the role of time and space into the capitalist reproduction of art, Benjamin was able to expand upon Kracauer’s notion that this art was resistant to nature, the individual, the nation and the community. What Benjamin was then able to suggest was that firstly, any one piece of culture belongs to the mass production of art that determines it, and that secondly, every cultural artefact cannot stand free of the time and space in which it was presented as without its mass, it has no meaning or cultural apparatus from which it can be signified or understood (Benjamin, 1935). We can see from this that both Kracauer and Benjamin devised a rationale that applied to the placing of the ideological and virtual conceptual framework within the technological reality of global production. More contemporary thinkers and writers that have concerned themselves with this role of global media and their advancing technologies in the current global condition, hae often supported these view s providing evidence for the onus placed upon imagery in the process. For instance, in his text War and Peace in the Global Village writer Marshall McLuhan commented directly upon the growing dependency of western cultures mass media technologies. The global village mentioned in the title referred to the relationship between the people of the global cities and the mass culture that they consumed and were informed by. In particular, this text observed the actual impact that new technologies such as television and news had on cultural perception and indicated how it affected the perception of time within that perception, suggesting that it was being used to artificially construct a regional global identity based upon a virtual history and world based upon linear time and imagined geographies. For instance, information readily received from actual and real events in the world made the concept of a world and its state of being a direct part of one’s own naturalised condtion and e xperience. Essentially, as this mass of information could be freely accessed by anyone among the global village at any time, then the information could be seen as a virtual universalising reality. Furthermore, using an example of contemporary war coverage, McLuhan was able to demonstrate a clear biasness that was present in the then contemporary manipulation of mass technologies so that invading troops could be portrayed as ‘military contractors‘. He termed this as ’dichotomization’, which would offer two points of view both pertaining to the culture / counter culture of the presiding mass (McLuhan, 1963). This is the gap between knowledge and experience that Baudrillard was referring to, in which he believed synchronisation could flood the space now rendered free of actual time and actual space and portray the virtual as the real. Although we can see that both Kracauer and Benjamin’s theories of mass reproduction and McLuhan’s findings on the perceptions of technological medias are still relevant and apply to the presentation of the global world that we now find ourselves deeply immersed in, other theorists have offered another approach, implying that Kracauer and Benjamin’s theories contained a fatalistic scepticism that was born of the early twentieth century western modernist perspective. For instance, concerned with the notion of technological expansion, mass culture and the effects of globalisation, contemporary cultural theorist Homi Bhabha engaged in a global perspective that aimed to critique the notion of mass reproduction and its over riding condition. Considering Kracauer and Benjamin’s conceptual analysis of the reproduction of the mass and observing the colonial effects placed upon other cultures, Bhabha positioned this dimension in the conemporary sense by emphasising that it also formed a part of the dichotomy of the mass. Having placed their theory of mass reproduction as one of global scepticism, that was bound by the cultural historicity of their western heritage as is represented by Baudrillard’s positioning of Disney Land as a producer of virtuality within the contemporary age, Bhabha then suggested a third way approach that stood outside of the virtual mass and could observe it organically, either as individual or as a community. Having positioned Kracauer and Benjamin’s theories as part of the dichotomy of the mass, Bhabha was then able to indicate that the essence of a true global perspective was born of organic community that could be found somewhere outside of the global mass; somewhere away from the ‘imaginary’ virtual debates of global inter-national territories and free of their dependencies upon linear and grand concepts of history and time elase (Bhabha, 1994). He suggested that the location of this else where was within the unbound psychology of the individual and not in the construct of their ideological positioning within the virtual time and space created by global media, technology and information. Engaging with Benjamin’s notion of time and space in this cultural reproduction, Bhabha reasoned that, ‘The temporality of negotiation or translation has two main advantages. First, it acknowledges the historical connectedness between the subject and object of critique so that there can be no simplistic, essentialist opposition between ideological misrecognition and revolutionary truth. The progressive reading is crucially determined by the adversarial or agonistic situation itself; it is effective because it uses the subversive, messy mask of camouflage and does not come like a pure avenging angel speaking the truth of a radical historicity and pure oppositionality. If one is aware of this heterogeneous emergence (not origin) of radical critique, then and this is my second point function of theory within the political process becomes double edged. It makes us aware that our political references and priorities the people, the community, class struggle, anti-racism, gender difference the assertion of an anti-imperialist, black or thir perspective are not there in some primord ial, naturalistic sense. They make sense [only] when they come to be constructed in the discourses of feminism, Marxism.’ (Bhabha, 1994, p.23) It is from this idea of mass, global communication and its accessible depictions of regionalism and linear time that Baudrillard states that there is a synchronism. This synchronism is understood by Baudrillard as the thing that is manipulated by Disneyland to enforce and reinforce an idea of what is real and what is not that as part of the process negates the actual experience of the object itself. Essentially for Baudrillard, through image Disneyland is set within an ideological and conceptual framework reinforced by mass imagery and perceived as being real rather than being virtual. Through the mass image, the reality of Disneyland appears to us as real as it accords to the simulated code that acts and has replaced our naturalised and cultured knowledge structures, without the real experience itself being captured within an experiential temporality. Therefore, it is through the ideology of image that we view the notion of Disneyland as being fixed and constant and not in a transie nt state of natural and ultural change as pertains to objects of the organic or civilised worlds. Essentially, it is through a display of established imagery that Disneyland can synchronise all the places and all the periods of the virtually known globe, and its many cultures, in a single a-temporal virtuality and replace any reality in the process. Bibliography Bakhtin, M., (1993) Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Ed. Vadim Liapunov and Michael Holquist. Trans. Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press Baudrillard, J., (1968) The System of Objects Taken from: The Order of Simulacra (1993) London: Sage. Baudrillard, J., (1976) Symbolic Exchange and Death Taken from: The Order of Simulacra (1993) London: Sage. Benjamin, W., (1935) The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction London: Harcourt. Bhabha, H., (1994) The Location of Culture New York: Routledge Kracauer, S., (1963) The Mass Ornament London: Harvard University Press. McLuhan, M., (1968) War and Peace in the Global Village Washington: Washington Post. Web Links Baudrillard, J., (1996) Disneyworld Company Paris: Liberation. Taken from: www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=158 Jean Baudrillard

The Power of T.S. Eliots The Waste Land Essay -- T.S. Eliot Waste Lan

The Power of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land       T. S. Eliot, perhaps one of the most controversial poets of modern times, wrote what many critics consider the most controversial poem of all, The Waste Land.   The Waste Land was written using a fragmented style.   This is a style that is evident in all of Eliot's writings.   There are several reasons for his using this approach, from a feeling of being isolated, to a problem articulating thoughts (Bergonzi 18, Cuddy 13, Mack 1745, Martin 102).      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   What influenced Eliot the most in writing poetry was a book he read written by the English critic, Arthur Symon, titled The Symbolist Movement in Literature.   This book is about French symbolist writers of the 19th century.   From this book, the author who had the greatest influence on Eliot is by far   Jules Laforgue.   Laforgue's influence is evident in many of Eliot's poems, sometimes to the point of plagiarism.   Like Laforgue, Eliot uses dialogue between men and women that doesn't seem to communicate a thing.   Other author's had an influence on Eliot as well, like Henry James and Joseph Conrad.   All of these poet's had the common themes of estrangement from people and the world, isolationism, and the feeling that they were failing to articulate their thoughts (Bergonzi 7, 50, Cuddy 30, Mack 1743, Martin 41, Unger 8).      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Henry James influence on Eliot's poetry is evident in the Jamesian qualities he uses.   For example, the opening verse of   The Waste Land   ends with the Jamesian note, "I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter" (Mack, 1751).   Although Lafourge, Conrad, and James were used as sources... ... real influence on mankind's morals, but he certainly impacted modern literature (Unger 36).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Works Cited    Bergenzi, Bernard. T. S. Eliot, Collier Books, New York New York, 1972    Cuddy, Lois A., and David H. Hirsch, eds. Critical Essays on T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land.   G. K. Hall & Co., 1991.    Kenner, Hugh, ed. T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays.   Prentice Hall Inc., 1962.    Mack, Maynard. ed.   The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces Sixth Edition. W. W. Norton and Company, 1992: 1743 - 1770.    Martin, Graham. ed. Eliot in perspective.   Humanities Press, 1970.    Ricks, Christopher.   T. S. Eliot and Prejudice.   University of California Press, 1988.    Unger, Leonard.   T. S. Eliot.   University of Minnesota Press, 1970.

Creating a Writing Technolgy :: Invention Inventing Writing Essays

Creating a Writing Technolgy This paper is an analysis of the assignment given to "create" a writing technology. The attempt must be made to write a twenty (or fewer) word text using natural materials only, that is, materials that have not been processed, produced, or man-made. The goal is to create a writing technology that uses natural materials, that has permanence, that is legible, and finally, that is creative. I stumbled onto my "paper" when I found large pieces of bark that had fallen off tall trees on campus. The piece I collected was approximately three feet long by one foot wide. The condition of my "paper" was rather poor. The exterior surface was rough and gnarled - impossible to write on - and the interior surface, though while overall it was smooth, was rusty brown with various discolorations and had slight raises and bumps in its surface. The bark was cracked along the length of it in many places and ready to break apart if it were to be dropped. With such a unique surface, I found it interesting that I had taken the quality of good paper for granted. Mark Twain describes his experience of buying a new writing device - a typewriter. Yet he makes no comment on the paper he used (500-3). No doubt the paper he used was of much poorer quality than the paper found today, yet Mark Twain makes no mention of how the typewriter worked on the paper of his day. Perhaps it was a nonissue, that in the same way that I take for granted the good quality of paper today, Mark Twain also took for granted the paper he had available. This experience is consistent with Dennis Baron's view that "we have a way of getting so used to writing technologies that we come to think of them as natural rather than technological" (51). Whether it was paper produced today or in the day of Mark Twain, respectively we were so familiar with the quality of the existing writing mediums that little consideration is given to the materials themselves - as long as they work. Now faced with a project of writing on a piece of bark, my assumptions were suddenly removed and I was able to examine writing as a truly laborious process. In choosing my "ink", I desired a fruit or vegetable that would be easily obtainable, and that would permanently stain the bark.

See-Through Society :: essays research papers

Introduction Governments like to think they’re in control. Especially in times of crisis, they try hard to portray an image of being one step ahead of their enemies, wanting us to think they are able to take decisive action that will solve problems once and for all. Since 9/11 in particular, western governments have reasserted their commitment to monitoring the movements, conversations and keystrokes of anyone they suspect of posing a threat to national security. One of the most high profile examples of this has been the US Government’s proposed Total (later renamed ‘Terrorism’) Information Awareness (TIA) scheme created by DARPA . Ambitious in scope, one of projects stated aims is â€Å"to create a counter-terrorism information system that increases information coverage by an order of magnitude.† The TIA project quickly sparked controversy and it didn’t take long for a response to the idea. Government Information Awareness (GIA) is a website that allows anyone to post and retrieve information about members of the executive, legislature, judiciary and senior executives from US companies . Set up by a group at MIT’s Media Lab, it plays the numbers game, believing that millions of eyes can outperform the efforts and resources of a few thousand experts. Their stated goal is to, â€Å"develop a technology which empowers citizens to form a sort of intelligence agency; gathering, sorting, and acting on information they gather about the government.† This short paper argues that GIA is part of a wider dynamic, towards enforced transparency of institutions that have traditionally held positions of control. It focuses not so much on the information gathering activities of traditional institutions such as governments, law enforcement agencies or multinational companies but instead on the activities of non-institutional actors such as NGOs, activist networks and individual members of the public. It doesn’t focus on privacy (that important topic is left to other contributors to the Foresight exercise), but instead on openness. Back to the hackers To look forward, it is often useful to look back and when it comes to thinking about the future of the internet it is especially instructive to look back to its origins. Despite its military funding and early applications, the internet wasn’t really created with military objectives in mind. Instead it was created by hackers – not the stereotyped teenagers bringing down the Pentagon’s computer system from their darkened bedrooms, but clever programmers for whom a ‘hack’ is just a neat programming trick.

Slave Boy – Creative Writing

Today, my brain is a whirlwind of emotions: memories from my past. A past I would like to forget but can't. I will begin my story, my story, from when I was just six years of age and taken from my family. It feels strange to look over the shores of my native lands, the same land on which I was sold to white men to work as a slave. We the, Africans were seen as an inferior and uncivilised race, enough justification to be enslaved and treated little better than animals.My real name was Nkauwa but they called me Sam. My identity; my family; my culture; my freedom; they took everything from me and changed it. My life would never be the same again. It was Nigerean slave dealers who rounded us up like cattle. The vast majority of us were caught during fighting against other African groups, prisoners of war. The rest were criminals like me, but my only crime was stealing fruit from the market, my punishment? a lifetime of enslavement. Our hands were tied behind our backs with pieces of rough string that stopped the blood from reaching our fingers. Being six at the time I did not understand why women were crying, their shrieks of horror threw me off-balance and I panicked, I did not understand what was going on, nor did I recognise any faces around me. I asked a man behind me why they had brought us here and he told me sadly, † to learn the ways of the white-faced people.† I felt so alone for the first time and I had a feeling I would be alone for a long while. I started to cry. When the ship rose up through the horizon, all commotion stopped at the magnificent yet terrifying sight, I had seen boats but never on that scale before. The silence was tense with apprehension and fear of the unknown. When the ship had anchored, twenty of so rowing boats came to shore, filled with crates of guns, cloths and lead. It was the first time I had seen white flesh, by no means was it to be the last. Time was spent by both parties inspecting each others goods, as if we were merely objects of little value. They looked in our mouths and felt our muscle-span to see if we would be strong efficient workers. The white men showed the slave dealers how to operate thier new weapons and then we were rowed to the ship; little did I know of the conditions that would face me for the ten week voyage of hell. I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received a stench in my nostrils I had never experienced in my life; we were packed so tightly we had just enough room to turn to turn ourselves and I could not stand up without my head touching the ceiling. The air was fetid, it nearly suffocated me. I began to vomit before the ships anchor had even been raised. It was a scene of horror for the worst ten weeks of my life. The conditions and our hunger brought on sickness amongst us, many of whom died. The crew of the ship cleared the dead in the morning and fed us barely edible, meagre meals. The wretched situation was aggravated by the chains and filth we were living in . At some point in the journey the crew must have realised that if they kept us under the deck for the whole journey there would be no slaves left, so they let small groups on the deck every few days. I sobbed to myself most nights but no one comforted me apart from the groans of the dying. At times I wondered to myself, if this is just the journey, what would the destination be like? The suffocating smell brought sharp, stabbing pains upon my lungs. When we were finally taken off the boat, I was almost too weak to move and I felt terrible. Welcome to America! As I was carried off the boat, the wind hit my face like an explosion and my body siezed up with pains shooting through my muscles. We stood in a yard in the docks, suddenly the doors were thrown open and a considerable number of men waving money and rope rushed towards us in a scramble. The men had the ferocity of brutes as they grabbed frantically at us; again I experienced the touching of muscles and inspecting our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse. It is scarcely possible to describe the confusion and fright I felt as a small child. A tall, scruffy man with a long beard and hat grabbed my shoulders and shoved me in a corner with the rest of his chosen purchases, grumbling † This one looks like and investment.† The choas continued as we were led away and put on the back of his horse and cart. The man was swearing and smoking his pipe when in a temper, he whipped the horses into a trot. We were off! I was still adjusting to the change of environment from the ten weeks under deck and my body was in a lot of pain. As we travelled through the hustle and bustle of the Southern town of Missisippi, Louisiana, we entered the rural countryside and after an hour or so we stopped at a large, wooden farmhouse, complete with a mill that was spurting out clouds of white smoke from its chimney into the clear blue sky. Aproaching closer I noticed behind the mill, a small village of huts and a huge open plantation with with cotton plants growing in thick formations. We were escorted off the cart and brought into another yard outside the farm house from where we were called up one by one to enter the house. It was a very nervous wait and I noticed lots of other black workers already in the fields. I had no idea what was going on but when I was called up I knew something terrible was going to happen by the way the man looked at me with a mean and menecing smile which sent shivers down my spine that I can still remember to this day. He walked towards me and grabbed me by my ear and dragged me inside, to a room containing a large fire place with a crackling fire. Next to the fireplace stood an African house servant and in the centre of the room a desk with the tall, bearded man who drove the cart. He stopped writing, looked up at me, poured himself a glass of whiskey and drank it in one go. The man proceeded to talk to the servant in English, and in turn the servant translated it into Nigerean and repeated it to me. â€Å"Your name's Sam, call me boss, you'll work only for me now, pickin' cotton on my plantation, sunrise to sunset.† He paused and then said † If I catch you slacking or even worse, trying to escape, you will be whipped till the skin falls off your back, do you understand, me?† I looked at the man behind the desk blankly, he nodded to the servant who in turn advanced behind me and pinned me to the desk. I desperately tried to wriggle out of his firm grip but, it was useless, the more I struggled the more the boss laughed, he strolled to the fireplace and reached inside to reveal a red-hot branding iron which he used to torment me by holding it close to my face, making beads of sweat form from the heat and from fear. I was begging, pleading for his mercy but he didn't listen, he pushed it hard against my forehead, producing a horrifying hissing noise and the foul smell of burning flesh. It would be a mark that would never leave me, It hurt physically and mentally; to be branded like cattle, an act of pure evil. The pain was unbearable. For days I couldn't concentrate on anything but the burning sensation, it made me violently sick with fever but I was expected to start work straight away. I was given a huge hand woven basket to fill, I watched to learn the correct technique, a fairly simple task; picking the white flowers by twisting the stems on which they form along the main branches. The plants grew in dense lines which were the same height as me, it was very easy to get lost in the endless jungle of the plantation fields. As the day turned into night and there was not enough light to work in we were given a form of corn meal in tin bowls, it had been produced cheaply with few nutrients. I was also issued with new clothing made from very coarse cotton; uncomfortable to wear but much better than the filthy rags I wore on the ship. No shoes were issued, I still walked barefooted, everywhere I went. The new slaves were put into the accommodation of the already over-crowded huts. The tiny wooden, dank huts were set out in rows and contained no sanitation at all. The huts were filthy a perfect breeding ground for disease. They were window-less and smelly, with broken glass, old shoes and rags that littered around the floor. I squeezed into a hut, with ten people, cold and in a place thousands of miles from our homes. I missed my family. I felt the power of death over life , I knew what I had to do, I had to escape. I lay awake for the best part of the night, planning for the best method and timing for my escape. After hours of thought I realised, there was no easy way out and now was as good a time as any other. At this point everyone in my hut was asleep. My heart was racing, I sat up, took a deep breath and opened the creaking, rotting door, I started to run, passing the house, then the gate and then the sign post. I ran like the wind and I didn't slow down. I was running on nothing but the fuel of my anger, the anger I had built up inside me, since the very first moment I was captured. I didn't stop until I felt safe and my lungs were gasping for air. I kept a steady pace up and by the time I reached the town the sun was rising in the East but it was far too early for people to be out and about. As I entered the wharf I remembered the fact I still had no idea how I was to get on a ship heading back to Africa. My heart sank and I slumped down behind some crates and began to cry. I was convinced I would not get any further until†¦. suddenly I heard a voice getting closer, it sounded like two English sailors talking but one had a strong African accent. I tried to stay hidden but they picked up the crate I was behind and spotted me. â€Å"Hey, what you doing ‘ere, Your not supossed to be round ‘ere,† The white sailor said in a gruff voice. The African was quick to notice I had already been branded and must have ran away from my master. He asked me, in Nigerean, my name and what I was doing here. I told them my story and they it turned out we were from the same part of Nigeria and were stopping there on their way back there for some illigitimate trading of tea leaves and tobacco. They were both kind men and disagreed with the principle of slavery, they were quick to take pity on me and put me in an empty crate to hide me until on the ship. The trip back was much more comfortable than before. Although I slept below deck with the crates, I was allowed on deck whenever I wanted. I never went hungry for that ten week trip and rebuilt much of my strength. I showed gratitude for my rescue by doing odd jobs around the boat, usually cooking for the crew or scrubbing the deck. When we reached the main port of Nigeria I was so happy, it was a terrible ordeal for anyone to go through and something I was lucky to survive. The scar on my forehead is a constant reminder and my mental scars will never go away but I learnt many things during that time. I will never again take my freedom for granted and I cherish every moment of life with my family in the place where I truly belong.

How I Became Hettie Jones with Two Secondary Sources…

How I Became Hettie Jones. The skin color of a person used to be a big issue in America, which appeared to have been resolved; however, it is still a big issue today. Although there is no longer slavery, a number of people continue to act in a racist fashion. They pass on these thoughts of prejudice and racism to their children, who then pass it on to their children and so forth, therefore it becomes extremely difficult to prevent it. Prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason. There are still numerous stereotypes that can be associated with a person's skin color.Stereotypes are regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type. However, there is not only prejudice towards the black community, but also a prejudice against the white community. Hettie Jones tells the story of her life as an unconventional woman during the 50s and 60s, struggling to find her place and role in the world in New York City during the Be at generation. She was originally born as Hettie Cohen. This changed after meeting a fellow employee destined to become her spouse. She knew that their romance would cause criticism and discomfort with some people, as any interracial romances with â€Å"Negros† would at the time.He simply had too much going for him, being a â€Å"warm, funny, voluble, tender, wildly ambitious, supremely confident†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Hettie became pregnant twice, one child aborted, the other she kept as the two wed. Both of their parents were simply heartbroken to hear about them being together. Ultimately however, the Jones family gave Hettie acceptance, welcoming a white daughter-in-law to the family. As for Hettie Jones, she did not consider herself white, because she didn't know what that meant anyways which is the reason that made her marry a black person even if everybody around her gave her weird looks.She quoted â€Å" For being someone these people could not influence, or hold, forgive me , but this is America†¦.. Sometimes you have to go on the road. †(62). But after their first major fight, during which Roi slaps her, Hettie notes, â€Å"Do you see race in this? Have you forgotten? It would get worse. † Many years and two children later, it does: under the influence of the Black Power movement, Roi grows increasingly ambivalent about the fact of his wife's race, finally refusing to take her to the opening of his play, Dutchman.The marriage, mirroring the times, dissolves; as Jones notes: â€Å"It fit right in with dissolving black-white political alliances. † In Andrew Hacker's book, Two Nations:Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. Hacker argues that blacks and whites live in two different worlds. Hacker believes that race plays a larger role in America than it does anywhere else in the world. The title has many sources and foreshadows some of the conclusions he makes in the book. The â€Å"Two Nations†being discussed are the White nation and the African-American (Black) nation.It has been said many times in history that the two major races in this country have been separate, hostile and unequal. This book is Hacker's opinion as to the real dimensions of race and how it controls lives and divides society. The integration issue was raised in the chapter of the book: Being Black in America. In thischapter, the author tries to describe in detail what an African-American goes through and has to deal with simply because of the color of his/her skin.Hacker illustrates how black people feel they are looked at and treated by white America. He seems to really want to stress to white people that they should try to see things from a black perspective. He wants whites to try to imagine what it is like to have a stigma attached to you because of the color of your skin. He talks about issues that range from housing, to police, to their family structure, to blatant discrimination, to having to explain and defend thems elves (and sometimes all blacks in general) intellectually to white people.