Category Archives: Issue 13

Art: The Imprint of God, The Signature of Man

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Christopher Rush

Father James V. Schall, one of the last great philosopher-theologians of our day, reminds us in his classic work On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs the universe is a work of art.  God did not create the universe out of need.  God never acts out of need.  He only acts out of desire.  As Love itself, God’s acts are always acts of love.  The universe, man, and all else God has made were made by love.  “The act of creation,” says Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy, “is an act of love.”  As an act of love, a creation of desire — the universe filled no need whatever; it exists solely to be itself, to be beautiful, to reflect its maker.  The universe and everything in it are works of art.  “God is the only serious thing,” says Father Schall.  We can relax about the rest.  Now that we are calm, we can begin.

Dorothy Sayers, in The Mind of the Maker, emphasizes the Bible displays God more frequently as a craftsman than a philosopher or thinker.  At the start, God is making things: speaking the universe into existence, fashioning man from dirt, reshaping the rib of man into a woman.  Ideas are substantiated by the linguistic power of Jehovah Elohim.  The things God makes reflect His glory, as Psalms 8 and 19 make clear.  John’s gospel highlights the incarnation of the Messiah as the incarnation of thought, of reason, of language: the Word made flesh.  When Paul in Ephesians calls man God’s “workmanship,” he uses the Greek word poiema: humanity is the poem of God, created to make more good poems.  If everything God has made are works of art, and those works of art glorify and reflect Him, the arts are indeed the imprint of God.

We, then, are God’s poem (some of us are epic poems, some of us are limericks, but still, all poems), and poems created in the image of the Great Poet.  Art is not of secondary importance.  Our purpose here is not to belittle our colleagues, but let us take a moment of contemporary appraisal: how many stories do we hear of orchestras, bands, choirs, art departments shutting down or sacrificed because of tight budgets? budgets that somehow are able to fund athletic teams or purchase the latest technological “necessity” for the classroom or pursue the latest international/competitive fad STEM?  True, we sometimes do hear of schools that can’t fund their sports teams, but those stories are far outnumbered by tales of the Humanities being sacrificed as ancillary or, worse, extraneous to a “real” education.  Now before the engineering majors among you walk out in disgust, I am not opposed to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics or even sports.  I am, though, wholly opposed to the diabolical belief they are superior to or more worthwhile or even more necessary than the Arts.

As poems created in the image of the Great Poet, we not only have a calling to support, delight, enjoy, and further the arts, we have an ontological imperative to do so.  We should all be scientifically astute; we should all be mathematically savvy.  We can all glorify God through the sciences, but science at its best can only tell us how.  The Humanities, the Arts, tell us why: poetry, prose, drama, painting, sculpture, music, dance, acting, architecture — these are the ways humanity understands why we are the way we are, what we can do about it, what works, what fails, how we should live, not just how mechanical effects happen from mechanical causes.

But art, you say, is messy.  Art is subjective.  Science is objective.  We are not here, remember, to posit the sciences against the arts.  This is not a competition.  The objection, though, of art’s messiness is still valid.  Mark Twain threatens us with bodily harm if we attempt to find a meaning or moral in Huck Finn.  Terry Gilliam’s film 12 Monkeys tells us even if we invented time travel, man’s pessimistic fate is inescapable.  Schoenberg’s twelve-tone row is a musical pattern of constant variation without resolution, atonality rejecting outmoded notions such as melody.  If this is art, how can I call this a human necessity?

Art is necessary for man as we are created in the image of the Creator — art was not necessary for God since He was complete in Himself, but man by his very created nature must imitate his creator: the poem must beget more stanzas.  So art for man is necessary — it is not ancillary to politics or economics or even world peace; it is more necessary than those endeavors, as important as they may be.  To be human is to be a work of art — art is a necessary component of the truly full human life.  Perhaps it is time, then, to define “art.”

Art is usually considered a subjective thing.  If we take the position art is subjective, no attempt at definition will get us anywhere.  Even if you don’t approve of my forthcoming definition, we must establish from the beginning one essential idea: not everything can be Art.  If “art” is a limitless category, no definitions will satisfy and “art” as a concept will be meaningless.  Art has boundaries, boundaries I admit that imbricate, and I hereby enumerate those boundaries with the following analytical definition: art is the confluence in sensory form of aesthetics, beauty, and truth.  When this ovation has died down, I shall continue.

By “sensory form” we quickly encompass the plastic arts, the visual arts, the fine arts (classic and contemporary), performance arts — all of ’em.  That is the easy part.  The more difficult part is now, as we say while “art” covers all these things, not every single painting, poem, movie, movement, song, or building is truly a work of art.  As Dr. Schaeffer explain in his classic work we read in 12th grade Bible How Should We Then Live?, some are more akin to “anti-art.”  Some poems, movies, songs (or, rather, collections of sounds or noises) are as he says “bare philosophical statements.”  Not everything can be Art.  A stick banging on a garbage can may be rhythmically intriguing, but it is not a song.  It is not music.  Art, as with everything else God is and does, has absolute, eternal unchanging standards that must be embraced and pursued.  That does not mean all songs must be happy or all movies overt thematically.  Ecclesiastes and Lamentations, Psalm 137 and many others belie the notion art must always be positive or sentimentally sweet.  The output of Robert Mapplethorpe is not art, though.  The songs of John Cage are not art.  Art, real art, pursues beauty and truth through genuine aesthetic standards.

Aesthetics have fallen out of favor in Christian circles.  How many great Christian American poets can you name since T.S. Eliot?  How many truly good Christian movies can you name from the last 50 years?  Before you say Facing the Giants or Fireproof at me, may I suggest you get a copy of The Agony and the Ecstasy starring Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison and a copy of Beckett starring Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton and see which are better movies as movies.  Aesthetics deal with how successfully form and function unite and how well a thing succeeds at being what it attempts to be (such as how well a poem functions as a poem, not a bad group of sentences sloppily chopped up into little lines pretending to be a poem, for example).  Aesthetics remind us a patronizingly obvious Biblical moral stuffed into a shoddily-acted, shoddily-written motion picture does not a good movie make – and it’s certainly not good art.  Christians have abandoned, largely, aesthetic standards in favor of comfortable, sickly-sweet sentimental moralizing in art, music, film and just about everything else, including its sermonizing.  (I am indebted to Frank Gaebelein’s The Christian, the Arts, and Truth for much of this.)

A picture of a fair-skinned Jesus smiling at a lamb is not automatically a good painting simply because of its theme.  A song does not automatically become good music simply because it crams as many attributes of God as it can into three minutes of repetitive chorus.  We need to be far more critical of our aesthetical responsibilities.  A Christian publishing label is not enough.  I don’t begrudge you your positive, encouraging music.  I do reject, however, the assumption a certain label or a certain band or a litany of Bible words somehow automatically means “good music” or “good art.”  They don’t.  Similarly, I don’t begrudge you enjoying a Janette Oke or Francine Rivers book, but you need to know far better authors are out there.  Don’t ever try to excuse your children reading bad books just because it seems Christiany — “at least they are reading” is one of the clearest signs of bad parenting.  You would never excuse your children eating cotton candy for every meal with “at least they are eating,” would you?  You and your children need a healthy intellectual diet as well as bodily diet.  Stop settling for overly-comfortable, enervating moralistic sentimentalizing.  I certainly don’t dislike sentimentality — I believe it is a much underrated component of the human experience, but good music — true artistic music — does not just evoke a chirpy smile and a momentary sense of relief.

Good music, like all good art, evokes thought, interaction, reflection; it challenges as well as enlivens; it demands we test it, it invites scrutiny.  It lives up to aesthetic standards of quality.  Enjoy good movies not only because they have a nice moral but also because they are good movies: engaging dialogue, believable and sincere characters, truthful events, the creation of “the illusion of an experience vivid enough to seem real.”  Enjoy good songs not only because they say true facts about Jesus but also because they are good songs: trenchant lyrics, beautiful melodies and harmonies, complementary rhythmic cadences.  Enjoy good books because they speak timeless truth about the human condition with vivid descriptions and well-drawn characters, regardless of culture of origin or year of publication.  Christians must regain an appreciation for and adherence to aesthetics in art, or the mediocre will overtake our hearts and debilitate our minds, and those are unacceptable for image bearers of Jehovah Elohim.

From aesthetics we move slightly to beauty.  In one of the best poems of all time, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John Keats, one of the best poets of all time, equates beauty and truth.  But as Frank Gaebelein points out, they aren’t exactly the same — related but not identical.

Beauty’s connection to the arts should be obvious, but the last century has seen a drastic rejection of something so basic, beginning in the painting world then continuing in the poetic world, even in the nascent field of motion pictures.  The Modernist period, with a capital “m,” from roughly 1905-1935 depending on who you talk to saw a concerted effort in the artistic world to reject the traditional standards of art and expression, substituting such outmoded bourgeois concepts as unity, objectivity, beauty, meaning, theism, and rationality for fragmentation, subjectivity, relativism, uncertainty, and non-reason.  The cubist paintings of Braque and Picasso, while aesthetically skillful to be sure, fail in their presentation of beauty.  They similarly fail in their presentation of truth, which will be addressed shortly.  As they, and so many of their contemporaries with them, fail to create or reflect beauty, their art is secondary at best, non-art at worst.

Roger Kimball, in his thought-provoking and stomach-churning essay “The Trivialization of Outrage,” describes the present day state of affairs in art, or what passes for art in such cultured places as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.  The nicest thing most of us would say about the pieces Kimball describes in his essay is “grotesque,” but the world around us clamors to call it “art,” and anyone who cannot see it as art is an uncultured backwater imbecile.  In defiance of the inheritors of those who reject traditional aesthetic standards, Kimball concludes art must have “an allegiance to beauty.”  If it doesn’t, the most horrific, nauseous object could have a claim to art.  Reject such a thought.

If art is not subjective, are we saying beauty is likewise not subjective?  We are.  Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder.  Beauty is an objective quality defined as all objective standards are in the person of the Great Poet, God Himself.  All great strands of human experience — truth, justice, love, marriage, art, beauty, purpose, meaning — all of these and more are objectively, absolutely, eternally defined by God’s very being.  Surely this is not a point of dispute for us.  But, you say, what does that really mean?  What is beauty?  Putting it simply, beauty is the sensory and/or spiritually pleasing unity among form, function, and truth.  While that may sound very similar to our understanding of aesthetics, we did mention earlier these categories imbricate.  Aesthetics deals with the unity of form and function and nature: beauty adds the pleasing responses to the audience’s senses and spirit.  Keats was mostly correct: beauty and truth are connected, though they are not precisely the same.  Beauty appeals to the senses as well as the spirit — and if perverted, it appeals to the appetite.  Truth appeals to reason and the correspondence to reality itself.  Aesthetics appeal to the will and sense of order.  Together, they appeal to the imago dei in humanity.  When man participates in the arts — whether by creating art or appreciating art — the imprint of God is translated into the signature of man.

We proceed to the third component of art: truth.  Truth’s connection to art is likewise multifaceted.  Accepting, as I’m sure we do, all truth is God’s truth, regardless of the personal faith of presenter of that truth, thanks to God’s grace upon whomever He wills to dispense it, Frank Gaebelein highlights truth’s connection to art in four ways: durability, unity, integrity, and inevitability.  First, truth is durable: it is unchangeable adamant, as Theodore Roethke calls it in his moving poem “The Adamant” — “Truth is never undone,” he says.  We easily associate this part of truth in art with the classics: Homer, Shakespeare, Dante and the gang, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Bach, and Bono have stood the test of time.  They aren’t classics because they are old; they are classics because their durability, their timelessness, is proven by their enduring truths.  (Perhaps that seems circular, but we’ll let it slide for now.)  The Iliad and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony may not be as overtly Christian as Handel’s Messiah and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but their truths are undeniable and durable.  Don’t be so enamored with the new you forget the great heritage of the arts.  Likewise, don’t be so devoted to the classics you have no awareness of what is artistically good and true today.  After all, Homer and Shakespeare were pop culture once upon a time.

Second, says Gaebelein, truth in art has unity.  Unity, similar to aesthetics, is the congruence of form and structure — and why shouldn’t these hallmarks overlap?  Unity requires order, a task given to man even before his fall.  Gaebelein says, “In the arts, the concept or idea is given definite form; it is embodied in sound, color, or words; in wood or stone, in action or movement, as in drama or ballet.  But embodiment requires unity and order, a body cannot function effectively in a state of disorganization” (89).  Does this not remind us of Christ?  The Word made flesh?  Writers embody ideas in words; musicians embody truth in sounds; visual artists embody truth in color or motion or whatever — you bet your boots truth has unity, and products without this clearly are not worthy of being called “art.”

Third, truth in art has integrity; more than unity, truthful art has a wholeness.  The work must be internally consistent: “integrity demands,” says Gaebelein, “that everything contrived merely for the sake of effect and not organically related to the purpose of the work must be ruled out” (91).  True art does not have to tell the whole story from Genesis to Revelation, but it must be united and tell its story fully.  Ambiguity and uncertainty are fine, but they can’t be the whole point.  Reality has mystery, but it’s not an inscrutable puzzle.  The conclusion need not be happy, the song does not need to end in a major key (let us not forget the artistic value of temporary dissonance), the hero does not have to survive, but true art either provides a meaningful resolution to the problems it poses or enables the attentive audience to provide it properly.  If it exists solely to shock, such as the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, or solely to declare “the universe makes no sense!” like some works by Marcel Duchamp, it fails in its connection to this truth.  Art can be shocking, if the audience needs to be awakened from its complacency, but genuine art does more than shock, just as genuine satire does more than ridicule: it goes the next step and explains “here’s what to do about this surprising thing that, if you had been paying attention all along like you should have been, would not have been so shocking after all.”

Last is the aspect of inevitability.  True art, says Keats, feels “almost a remembrance,” as if viewing a picture or reading a poem even for the first time gives one a sense “this is how it ought to be” (92).  But Gaebelein cautions us this sense may not come immediately, especially with the best art, especially if we are used to an intellectual diet of mediocrity.  The best art demands long, patient attention, revisiting, and reflection.  The best art, as we’ve said, can stand such scrutiny. and after we have done so, we will join the artist and say “yes, this is how it should be.”  Real art has what J.B. Phillips calls “the Ring of Truth” (93).  Truth is the correspondence of reality.  God is Ultimate Reality, and thus the closer a work of art gets to that reality, the truer it is — the better it is as art.

Does this mean science fiction with its non-existent spaceships and time travel, fantasy with its elves and dragons, a painting of a blue tree — these can’t be art because they aren’t “real”?  Of course these can be art.  The “reality” we are speaking of is what the philosophers call “verisimilitude,” the appearance of being true.  Much of the best science fiction addresses truths about humanity in far better ways than much generic fiction, so it’s not just a question of mimicking reality, any more than we would call Elizabethan literature false because people don’t speak that way now.  A world of difference exists between a painting of a blue tree, a genuine representation of the artist’s creative expression, and a deliberate misrepresentation of reality by Jackson Pollock in an attempt to willfully reject the obvious order to reality.

While art is free to have its lesser classics (not everyone can be Shakespeare or Michelangelo), the crafters who overtly reject at least one of these principles should be understood for what they are: bad artists.  At best.  At worst, non-artists.  Intention is a major factor in that distinction.  To be truly in the discussion of art, the work and its crafter must pursue or embrace all three components.  Art is a necessary human endeavor uniting aesthetic standards to the absolute values of beauty and truth.

Aesthetics without beauty, says Kimball, “degenerates into a kind of fetish or idol,” a mere mental exercise devoid of any real meaning.  Beauty without aesthetic standards or truth is formless and void, likewise nothing resembling art.  Truth without aesthetics or beauty sounds a lot like the clanging gongs and clattering cymbals of 1 Corinthians 13 — which, strangely enough, can be heard on most radio and television stations with great regularity today.

But what if these disagree, you ask?  God created the universe and said it was good, yes?  So if the universe is a work of art, why are cockroaches so ugly?  Surely we aren’t saying we have to consider cockroaches beautiful?  The ocean is home to many ugly, ugly fish.  One person is moved to tears by a sunset, another by a Chopin concerto, another is only moved by Larry, Moe, and Curly.  Don’t personal preferences play a role in what we consider beautiful?  Some English majors love The Catcher in the Rye; some, rightly, think it is overrated piffle.

As time is running out, let us cut to the chase.  These arguments, while worth exploring another time, are fundamentally missing the point.  Beauty is not skin deep.  “Good” is not up for grabs.  We have no more authority to define beauty based on our personal preferences or tastes any more than we have the authority to define truth based on our personal preferences or tastes.  Perhaps we don’t have to call cockroaches beautiful in the same way we don’t have to call every square inch of the Sistine Chapel beautiful.  Perhaps we need to step back and take in the whole.

Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Depression Era poverty, surely those are art.  Elie Wiesel’s Night, capturing the horror of his Holocaust experience, surely is art.  I tell you what.  Yes, they are.  Without leaning into the relativism we have been avoiding all night, beauty is more than just prettiness.  Truth is more than just fact.  Aesthetics are more than “things I like.”  Homer never mentions Jesus, and yet his work conveys truth about the futility of seeking one’s own glory at the expense of others and the beauty of sacrificing oneself for loved ones far better than most sermons you or I will ever hear.  Art is necessary for the full, rich human life.

For centuries, critics have been waging a war whether art is a mirror or a lamp: a reflection of the times or a guide to where humanity should go (or is already going).  For Christians, the choice is clear: without trying to sound like a fence rider, good art is indeed both.  Art reflects mankind truthfully, as he is and as he was and as he should and will be.  Art points man back to where he came from and where he belongs.  Art points man back to the Creator.  Art is the imprint of God.  Art done properly is the signature of man, displaying the image of God within.  Through the arts man leaves his best testimony to the future of humanity what he has learned from his past and his present.  Through the arts man best worships and imitates God Himself.  As Gaebelein sums up, “we cannot downgrade the arts as side issues to the serious business of life and service as some Christians do” — a seriousness we take too seriously, as Father Schall so wonderfully reminds us.  Returning to Gaebelein: “When we make and enjoy the arts, in faithful stewardship and integrity, they can reflect something of God’s own beauty and glory.  Through them we can celebrate and glorify the God ‘in whom we live, and move, and have our being’” (97).

Works Cited

Gaebelein, Frank E. The Christian The Arts, And Truth: Regaining The Vision Of Greatness. Portland: Multnomah Press. 1985. Print. All works cited except those listed here were mentioned by Gaebelein in his work and thus taken from him.

Kimball, Roger. “The Trivialization of Outrage.” Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 2000. Print.

Schall, Father James V. On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing. Wilmington: ISI Books. 2001. Print.

King Arthur’s Success and Fall

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Jessica Gromley Bain

King Arthur is a legendary British King found in folklore and mythological literature.  He is looked at as the greatest king of his time.  He ruled over a large portion of Europe (England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and other smaller places not mentioned), and his kingdom was called Camelot.  The kingdom was raised, assembled, and remained powerful as long as Arthur lived.  However, his enemies rose against him, and, after being wounded in battle, Arthur died and in a fit of war the kingdom fell.

The values Arthur’s knights stood for lied in chivalry, loyalty, honorability, and trust.  At the end of “The Wedding of King Arthur,” Arthur set the laws for the knights of the Round Table for each of his knights to follow, and every knight swore to abide by those laws.  “They swore to never use violence without good purpose, never to fall to murder or treason.  They swore on their honor to be merciful when mercy was asked and to protect damsels, ladies, gentlewomen and widows, to enforce their rights and never enforce lust on them.  And they promised never to fight in an unjust cause or to fight for personal gain.  All the knights of the Round Table took this oath.  And every year at the high feast of Pentecost they renewed the oath.”

This code was one of the major factors in the success of Arthur and his knights.  They worked together to achieve a common goal of peace and liberty. They renewed their oath every year to keep their union strong.

Another factor in the success of Arthur’s kingdom was Arthur hand-picked his knights.  He often took into consideration the advice of close friends (as in “The Death of Merlin,” when Arthur asks Sir Pellinore for his help in identifying a selection of honorable knights to fill the empty chairs at the Round Table after having suffered eight losses in battle).  However, the ultimate decision lied with the king.  He chose no knight he did not trust whole-heartedly.

One other point that could potentially be argued is Arthur’s knights followed God.  It is known they believed in God, because it is said in Sir Thomas Malory’s “Merlin” the sword in the stone appeared from Heaven, and all were amazed and eager to see who would pull the sword from the stone.  If they did not believe at all, they would have ignored the sign and continued fighting over who should rule. On this note, if the sword was in fact from God, this suggests that Arthur was specifically chosen by God to be king of England.  The sword said “Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king of all England” and Arthur was the only one able to pull the sword from the stone and therefore he was the rightful king as demonstrated by God.  It is also known the people of the time were Catholic, because Thomas Malory’s “Merlin” mentions several times the characters participated in holy services (“So when all the masses were done”; “On New Year’s Day, when holy service was over”; “And when matins and first Mass was over”).  However, this is not exactly substantial evidence as to whether Arthur and his knights conducted their affairs according to the explicit orders of God.  In fact, whether they were true followers of God is questionable, since they not only consorted with but also took the advice of Merlin the Magician, who was among some peoples referred to as the “Devil’s son.”

Arthur’s success was due largely to the trust and unity between the knights.  This unity was the result of their common oath and Arthur having chosen each personally.  It is true Arthur made no man a knight who he did not fully believe he could trust.

What would be his fall, however, was the fact he did not always put his trust in the correct people.  His most trusted friend had sexual relations with Arthur’s wife, which is a prime example of Arthur’s rather poor taste in friends.  Merlin even told him, “Guinevere will be unfaithful to you with your dearest and most trusted friend—” but Arthur did not listen.  Despite Merlin’s explicit warning, Arthur chose to marry Lady Guinevere and walked right into inevitable heartbreak.  In his defense, Guinevere is said to have been exceedingly beautiful; but that changes little in the final result.  He also chose to trust his son, Mordred, another poor choice.  Granted, Mordred was Arthur’s son, so the mistake is understandable.  Arthur’s end comes in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.  Due to Arthur’s choice to place his trust in the wrong people, he finds himself in battle with Lancelot, because Guinevere’s infidelity has led to her sentence to be burned at the stake.  During the course of this short battle, Arthur’s nephews, Gareth and Gaheris, are killed by Lancelot, unable to defend themselves as they were both unarmed.  Encouraged by Gareth and Gaheris’s brother, Gwaine, to take revenge, Arthur declares war on Lancelot and thus the foundation of the knights is broken up as each knight must choose a side.  On top of all this, while Arthur is off fighting Lancelot, Mordred takes the crown for himself.  Upon hearing of this Arthur must return to Camelot, where in a great battle Mordred mortally wounds Arthur.  With no leader and no strong military to protect it, Camelot falls.  Thus Arthur and his knights fail due to Arthur’s choice to put his trust in the wrong people.  He was a great king who made his kingdom great and prosperous, but it was this one flaw which caused him to fail.

Bibliography

Lawrence-Mathers, Anne. The History of Merlin the Magician. Yale University, Yale University Publications, 2012.

Malory, Sir Thomas. King Arthur and his Knights. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975.

—. Le Morte d’Arthur. Great Britain, Aldine Press, 1976.

Steinbeck, John. The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights. United States of America, Farrar, Staus, and Giroux, 1993.

An Exploration of Genesis 17-22

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Seraphim Hamilton

Genesis 17-22 is set against the backdrop of the Flood. Abram has just fallen, by “listening to the voice of his wife” (compare Genesis 3:17) and broken the covenant. This is part of a pattern in the Bible where the covenant is made and immediately broken. It happens to Adam in Genesis 2-3, it happens to Abraham in Genesis 15-16, it happens to Israel in Exodus 20-32, and it happens to David in 2 Samuel 7-12. Following the breaking of a covenant, God renews the covenant through death and resurrection. In the story of the Flood, the solution was the “cutting off” of all flesh so that the world might be reborn. In Abraham’s case, the solution is the “cutting off” of his flesh in circumcision, which symbolizes death and resurrection. There are many ways we know this, but one way to understand it is by connecting circumcision with Passover.

In Exodus 4:22-23, the Lord comes to Moses in the night and attempts to kill his firstborn son. The boy is immediately circumcised and the blood made visible to the Lord on his leg. This is a type of the next time that the Lord comes to strike down firstborn sons, and only those with blood on the doorposts are saved. Meredith Kline points out that the word “pasah” (from where we get “Pascha”) is actually a parody of an Egyptian word “psah” referring to sacramental tomb temples. The houses of Israel are their tombs, and the Glory of God “covers over” the doors so that when the sun rises, the people of Israel rise from the dead.

So we know that circumcision is about death and resurrection. We know that it is associated with the Flood, which is about the rebirth of creation. And this story continues with the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In order to precisely understand how the two are parallel, it is essential to understand that water and fire are twin symbols in the Bible. For example, in Daniel 7, a throne of fire proceeds from the throne of God. The Garden of Eden corresponded to the Holy Place of the Tabernacle in the middle of the holy mountain. At the very top of the holy mountain was a fountain that flowed into Eden- presumably with a throne, eventually to be occupied by the Last Adam. In Revelation 22, we see Daniel’s vision again, except this time, it is not fire, but water that proceeds from the throne of God.

That is why in the account of the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, we are told that fire “rained from heaven.” Symbolically, this is the glory of God which falls from Heaven and wipes out the wicked. Furthermore, the Flood itself was associated with the exodus. Israel passes through divided waters and comes to the holy mountain, while God redivides the primeval waters and brings Noah to the holy mountain. These types coalesce in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. When the two witnesses come to inspect the city, the people wish to abuse them. Lot (who by this point, was a judge in the city) abhors such violence, but wants to toss his daughters to be abused by the mob instead. We will see what this eventually leads to. As he leaves the city, he bakes unleavened bread- an obvious type of the exodus.

Fire is raining from heaven, and unleavened bread is cooked as Lot flees the city. But here’s the interesting part: Lot is told to flee to the mountain. While most translations render this in the plural, there is no justification for this in the text. After making his exodus, Lot was supposed to join Abraham at the holy mountain. But he’s prideful. He had chosen the land which was “well watered like the garden of the Lord” and now that land was desolate, just as Eden was “because it had not yet rained” (Genesis 2:4). Instead of fleeing to the holy mountain, Lot flees under the Earth — the opposite of the holy mountain. As mountains symbolize exaltation and new life, caves symbolize death.

Echoes to the flood story abound. Noah was exalted by the waters to the holy mountain, planted a vineyard (a New Eden) and drank Wine in Sabbath Rest. While most people tend to read Noah’s “drunkenness” as sin, the word need only mean that Noah enjoyed a couple glasses of Wine and relaxed. He had been exalted. All flesh had been given to him. And the symbol of Sabbath and exaltation is Wine. The sin in Genesis 9 is when Ham seized his father’s robe of authority, just as Adam had seized God’s authority in Genesis 3. Returning to the story of Lot, Lot is now under the Earth instead of on a mountain peak. And his daughters give him Wine to drink. But this isn’t the Wine of Sabbath, it is the Wine of anti-Sabbath. And his daughters abuse him- just as he had tossed them to be abused.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

It’s a sad note for the story of Lot to end on, but we haven’t finished the story of the holy mountain. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has more to do with Abraham than it has to do with Lot. Abraham is the one who had fallen, and the “cutting off” of all flesh in the Flood falls on Abraham in circumcision. But circumcision is merely a sign of the death and resurrection, it is not the substance of death and resurrection. The story of Genesis 17-22 comes to its climax in Genesis 22. God had protected Sarah from Satan’s attempt to prevent the birth of Isaac in Genesis 20. And now the Seed of Promise had arrived.

And where do we find ourselves? The holy mountain, and God wants an ascension (typically translated burnt) offering. When Noah arrived at the holy mountain after the Flood, Noah provided an ascension offering of all creation. Now Abraham is to do the same. He brings his seed, Isaac, to the top of the mountain, and offers him to God- except that Isaac is replaced by a ram. Isaac symbolically dies and rises from the dead. And that is why it is in Genesis 22 that God renews the covenant at last. Covenant renewals come by death and resurrection. David’s covenant was renewed when he lost the kingdom to Absalom and later had it restored to him. Israel’s covenant was renewed when Moses went into the “cleft of a rock” (remember, symbolizing death) and emerged with a glowing face. Abraham’s covenant is renewed when Isaac dies and rises from the dead. This calls is back to the story of the Flood. In Genesis 8, when Noah had been saved from the Flood and arrived on the holy mountain, he offered ascensions to make peace between God and Creation. Isaac fulfills the sacrifice of Noah.

Let’s draw a few more implications from this. First, the story of Genesis 18-22 clarifies and explores the meaning of circumcision. Circumcision was given after Abram broke the covenant, but it also signifies the seed that is coming from Abraham’s own body. The message is thus, when we read the whole story carefully and with attention to detail, that God will “raise up” (resurrect) Abraham’s seed after him and in that way renew the covenant. Circumcision is a profound type of Christ, and the circumcision of the heart is when the shape of the cross is cut into the Christian heart by suffering.

Second, it is a ram who replaces Isaac. In the system of offerings set forth in Leviticus, the ram is the animal used in the trespass offering. One “trespasses” against God when one seizes duties that are not one’s own. A typical punishment for such seizures are leprosy. When Adam trespassed, he was cursed with “garments of skin”, which, while protecting Adam from the full force of the divine glory, nevertheless is associated with leprosy in Leviticus 13-14, as the whole shape of Leviticus 11-15 follows the curses of Genesis 3. When Uzziah attempts to seize priesthood in the Lord’s Temple, priesthood reserved only for the Levites, he is struck leprous. And when Miriam attempts to rise up against Moses as prophet of the Lord, she is struck leprous.

Adam’s sin was a trespass, and a trespass incurs the curse of leprosy (associated with death). The trespass offering is a ram, associating it with Genesis 22. The seed of Abraham was to be offered to God, but God took a ram instead. The incredible thing is that all of these themes meet in Isaiah 53. Isaiah says that the Servant of the Lord became leprous for the sake of His People. He says that the Servant gave himself as a “trespass offering.” Now God has found the true Seed of Abraham, and the true Seed of Abraham is offered to God, bringing creation to its final rebirth, and finally bringing peace between God and mankind, as Noah’s ascensions had typified in Genesis 8.

Aggression and Mortality vs. Immortality

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Nicole Moore Sanborn

Renaissance writers often employ the same theme, simultaneously demonstrating their own unique style and flair. Popular Renaissance themes include love, beauty, and immortality of verse. Although Spenser and Shakespeare write about the same theme of immortality of verse, Shakespeare utilizes animal imagery and a more aggressive tone in his “Sonnet 19”, whereas Spenser utilizes dialogue and a happier tone in his “Sonnet 75”. The varying aforementioned aspects, specific words, and imagery of each sonnet join together to create coherent ideas and reveal the overall themes.

In the first line of each sonnet, the speaker reveals the tone. Although the same theme is employed, the tones are disparate from one another, as Shakespeare is aggressive while Spenser is happy. Shakespeare begins with “Devouring Time,” (19.1) whereas Spenser begins with “One day” (75.1). Devouring is a very strong term. In this case, devouring has a negative connotation, as it is followed by time, as time causes destruction. This means Time is personified here, indicated immediately by the fact that it is capitalized and it is devouring, an aggressive action. The capitalization suggests Time is a name, and nonliving things cannot act or devour. Spenser’s “One day” (75.1) implies a story, as many romances and fairy tales begin with those two words. Spenser’s sonnet reveals a more positive tone in the first two words, as fairy tales are considered to have happy endings and Spenser’s sonnet begins in the same manner as a fairy tale. These tones hold true for the remainder of each sonnet.

Although the first two words of each sonnet successfully and intentionally reveal the respective tones of the poems, these words accomplish different things in revealing the theme. The first two words of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 19” reveal the theme of the sonnet, while the first two words of Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” do not. Shakespeare’s “Devouring Time” (19.1) relates strongly to revealing the theme of immortality of verse. Immortality is the ultimate defeater of time, because immortality lasts forever. Therefore, immortality deceases when time deceases, because the ending of time marks the ending of forever. Although Shakespeare does not fully engage in the theme of immortality of verse in line one, he begins to imply it, whereas the first two words of Spenser’s sonnet imply a story is about to be told and therefore do not relate as strongly to the overall theme. “One day” (75.1) does indeed relate to time, but relates to mortality rather than immortality, as the words refer to one day in mortal human history. Rather, the first two words are a set up for the rest of the sonnet, where the theme is revealed later. Spenser’s first two words set the foundation for the dialogue in the rest of his poem.

Shakespeare uses animal imagery with three specific examples: a lion, a tiger, and the phoenix. These examples lead up to the turn of the sonnet and to the speaker’s confrontation of time (19.8).  As each animal used is a fierce and majestic creature, the specific examples are important to the overall meaning and in providing more evidence for the sonnet’s aggressive tone. The speaker tells time to “blunt the lion’s paws” (19.1) and “pluck” teeth from the “fierce” tiger (19.3). Lions and tigers are both powerful animals, and any human attempting to blunt a lion’s paws or pluck the tiger’s teeth will be mauled in the process, thereby separating time as a transcendent power. Time devours these fierce animals that humans can hardly tame. Shakespeare tells time to “burn the long-lived phoenix” (19.4), which is a reference to the legend that every 500 years the phoenix burst into flames and death, where from the ashes a new baby phoenix would emerge. An aggressive tone and the personification of time are also demonstrated here; as Time burns, which is a verb. The specific examples used mean and demonstrate that time is intently and aggressively devouring and destroying fierce animals on the earth. Personification of Time is also demonstrated here because the imagery declares the physical action of time, as demonstrated through the speaker’s use of aggressive words. Specific examples used here, therefore, are carefully and artfully chosen to relate to the aggressive tone and ideal of the sonnet.

The speaker in Shakespeare’s poem tells time to do whatever it would like “to the wide world and all her fading sweets” (19.7), which sets him up for the turn in his sonnet and the change in argument. At the turn, the speaker expresses the thought that time can do whatever, except for one thing. Forbidding Time to commit one “heinous” crime (19.8), the turn of the sonnet occurs and the theme is revealed. The specific examples and animal imagery used demonstrate clearly the actions of Time, however Time is not tied into writing and verse specifically until later in the poem. The speaker commands Time not to touch his love. “O carve not with thy hours” (19.9) commands time not to touch his lover like it ages the phoenix, preparing the reader for the final line, which explicitly states the theme of immortality of verse. The final line states directly that love shall “ever live young” (19.14) in his verse, implying immortality. He implies immortality through use of “ever” (19.14) meaning forever. These words also specifically defy time, as she shall forever be young in his verse, thereby bringing all of the examples of what time will devour and conquer into fruition through this counterexample. The counterexample also becomes the main theme of the sonnet and brings the reader resolution.

Spenser tells a story in his sonnet rather than directly confronting and personifying time before he reveals his theme. In the first quatrain of Spenser’s “Sonnet 75”, the speaker writes his lover’s name on the sand at the beach twice, but the tide washes it away both times. In story format, these occurrences set up the author’s theme of immortality of verse, revealed more clearly in the first quatrain than in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 19”. Though Shakespeare’s sonnet is clearly about time, time has not yet been related to writing or verse. However, Spenser automatically reveals the theme of immortality of writing and verse because he writes his lover’s name on the sand. Writing on sand is far from immortal as sand shifts and waves crash over the beach, erasing what was once there. Beaches change by the minute and hour, and the beach will hardly look the same after one day. Later in the sonnet, the lover calls the speaker a “vayne man” (75.5) and proceeds to note that just like her name on the sand, “I my selve shall lyke to this decay” (75.7), meaning she will also decay and will not last forever. Here, the speaker immortalizes mortal things purposefully, to prepare the reader for the idea of verse being immortal. That being said, the second quatrain sets up immortality of verse in a different way, by noting the mortality of earthly things such as sand and humanity.

Another interesting aspect of Spenser using the image of writing a name on sand is that it involves sea imagery. In other sonnets by Shakespeare and other authors, sea imagery is used; however it is used more steadfastly as the authors and speakers in the poems allude to steadfastness of a lighthouse or of a strong ship as opposed to gentle sand and writing being washed away. Spenser’s different use of sea imagery sets his theme up well, as it demonstrates that not everything involving the sea and the ocean is steadfast. He essentially uses sand as a counterpoint to the reveal his point that although sand does not last forever, his poetry will.

In the second half of the third quatrain in Spenser’s sonnet, the speaker more directly reveals the theme of the sonnet: immortality of verse. The speaker says, “My verse your vertues rare shall eternalize” (75.11), stating he will write about her not only in the sand but also in his verse. In the couplet ending the sonnet, the speaker mentions that death will swallow up the world, but their love shall live through his verse. The speaker is extremely direct here and states the theme directly, there is no speculation as to what he is saying. The theme is resolved here, as the speaker writes in a non-permanent way, is reminded of mortality, and then directly states that his verse shall live and their love shall live in it, or, his verse shall be eternal after the world is subdued. The idea is that the sonnet will be passed down among generations, thereby immortalizing it.

The turn of Spenser’s sonnet occurs at the beginning of the third quatrain. The turn also takes place when the speaker of the poem engages in dialogue in response to the mistress. The turn begins to direct the reader to the sonnet’s theme, as highlighted earlier. The speaker presents the turn of the poem, as he begins with “Not so” (75.9), indicating a contradiction of belief. The speaker contradicts the mistress’s speech of decay to reveal the theme when he declares she “shall live by fame” (75.10) within his verse in an immortal manner. Though the final line of the sonnet gives resolution to the theme of the poem, the theme begins to flesh out in the third quatrain right after the turn, in the quoted line above. Next, the idea of her living in his verse is directly stated “My verse your vertues rare shall eternize” (75.11), contradicting the earlier decay she mentions in line seven. Spenser’s “examples” and means to reveal the tone and theme of his sonnet is dialogue as opposed to specific animal examples, making it such that Spenser employs his theme in a different manner than Shakespeare.

Shakespeare begins his turn with “But” (19.8). In this line, the speaker directly challenges time and begins his command, indicated by the colon at the end of the line. The use of the colon is very important to the sonnet, as it indicates to the reader that the command to time will be explicitly stated in the next few lines. Beginning in line nine, Shakespeare reveals the theme of immorality of verse more clearly, yet without dialogue. In the rest of the sonnet, Shakespeare acknowledges the ability of time to devour even the fiercest of creatures as well as tarnish the whole “wide world” (19.7), thereby personifying time. The theme is not explicitly stated until line fourteen of the sonnet, where Shakespeare writes, “My love shall in my verse ever live young.” (19.14). Commanding time to leave his lover alone, the speaker hints that he will write about her through using the words “antique pen” (19.10), making a direct reference to writing. Shakespeare’s sonnet differs from Spenser’s sonnet, therefore, in that Shakespeare does not use dialogue but specific examples and in that Shakespeare waits until the very end of the poem to definitely resolve the poem and explicitly state theme of immortality of verse. Both sonnets provide resolution at the end.

Spenser and Shakespeare present two extremely interesting examples of utilizing different means to go about revealing the same theme. Shakespeare uses aggression and fiercely aggressive animals, while Spenser uses dialogue and a happier tone. Both “Sonnet 19” and “Sonnet 75” provide resolution at the end, and both authors use the turn of their sonnet to transition from specific examples or dialogue to a more direct statement of the theme. Fortunately for the reader, both authors resolve the theme of their sonnets. Both brilliant authors, Spenser and Shakespeare are extremely successful at employing the same theme through completely different attitudes, examples, and lenses, and are therefore two brilliant authors among Renaissance writers.

The Social Side of Poverty and Literature in the Industrial Revolution

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Michaela Seaton Romero

Poverty played a major part in Industrial Revolution in British life, as many of the people were poor.  Poverty affected many different aspects of their lives, social, medical, and intellectually.  Being such a hard time to live in, there were people who were inspired by the poverty as it affected their lives.

In Victorian England, 80% of the people were considered working class, at least 25% living below the poverty line.  To become middle class, you had to have at least one servant.  Very few were upper class, and they were also the most literate.  Most everyone was affected by poverty in some way or another.  Factories were the bane of the poor folk.

By the 1800s, factories were the main employer of the poor.  Factory life was appalling.  Often, children worked in such places, and they suffered for it.  Children’s growth was stunted by being forced to stand in one place for hours on end, deprived of sunlight and exercise.  In 1833, P. Gaskell wrote The Manufacturing Population of England.  He described the horrible conditions the workers suffered from as a result of their jobs, like bowed legs, flat feet, curved spines, muscle loss, and other such deformities. 

In the 1800s about 53% of the population was literate, a drastic increase from the 1500s when only 6% was literate.  In a large part, the Gutenberg press helped this happen.  By being able to produce literature much more quickly than before, more people learned to read.  Even still, the poor people had the lowest reading percentage.

Most of the literate people were in the middle or upper class, as the poor people did not have time to go to school, instead working between 48- and 70-hour weeks.  If a person was poor, but literate, he was very unusual.  Usually, the literate person was a male and had been to only some school, going in and out as life allowed.  They probably could not write much, perhaps just their name.  There just wasn’t incentive to learn to read; there was incentive to work and stay out of debtor’s prison.

Until 1870, Britain did not take care of the people’s education; that was the job of the churches and families themselves.  Parents had to pay fees for their children to go to school, and often poor families simply couldn’t pay it.  To the middle or upper class, the fees were minimal, but oftentimes the poorest family couldn’t even put food on the table, so paying for schooling was out of the question, as was buying literature.

Even though literacy was low among the poor, literature still affected their lives through music.  Music and songs were often sung by poor people at any event; even if only a street organ was being played, a whole flock of people might be seen dancing about him.  Poor people had very little free time, working from dawn to dusk, but plays were a popular pastime.  It was cheap, and for a little bit you could squeeze into a gallery seat to see a play.  Seating in the gallery was loud, bad smelling, and crowded, but it still exposed people to literature of the period.

Not only did literature affect poor people, poverty affected literature.  One major author who shows this is Charles Dickens.  He himself worked in a boot blacking factory, and his father had been thrown into debtor’s prison.  He also saw others being horribly treated in workhouses.  Those horrors still haunted him, and his books showed this, such as in Oliver Twist.  Oliver Twist was born into a workhouse, unwanted and unloved.

Literature in the written form was not very common among the poor.  The middle and upper classes were the most literate.  Even still, literature was in people’s lives, through songs and the theatre.  It cannot be said literature never impacted the poor people, nor can it be said poverty never affected literature.  Poverty and literature both fed off each other.

Bibliography

“Biography.” Charles Dickens. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://www.shmoop.com/charles-dickens/childhood.html>.

“British Literature.” Wikipedia. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_literature>.

C. Allen, Robert. “Progress and Poverty in Early Modern Europe.” Nuffield College, 1 Jan. 2004. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/allen/povprog3NEW.pdf>.

“Charles Dickens as Social Commentator and Critic.” The Victorian Web. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/diniejko.html>.

“The Condition of the Working Class in England.” Wikipedia. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England&gt;.

Del Col, Laura. “The Physical Deterioration of the Textile Workers.” The Life of the Industrial Worker in Nineteenth-Century England. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://www.victorianweb.org/history/workers2.html>.

“England Music.” England. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://www.englandforever.org/england-music.php#.VDaSP2BX-uY&gt;.

“Entertainment.” Learning Georgians. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/georgians/entertainment/entertainments.html>.

Lambert, Tim. “Daily Life in 19th Century England.” Web. 7 Oct. 2014. <http://www.localhistories.org/19thcent.html&gt;.

Anarchy in V for Vendetta

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Alex Touchet

The character V from the book V for Vendetta, written by Alan Moore, has become more than just a graphic novel character.  He has grown to be a symbol for freedom; he is the face of rebellion against tyranny.  The “hacktivist” group Anonymous has even adopted the Guy Fawkes mask as their icon.  The visage of the fictional terrorist has evolved beyond a mere picture; Moore’s creation has transcended the world of fiction and become an internationally recognized metaphor for individual rights, activism, and anarchy.  Sadly, many people wrongly associate the word “anarchy” with a mental picture that looks like a scene out of movies such as The Purge or Lord of the Flies.  These people visualize a nation ruled by lawlessness, disorder, and chaos.  This is a fairly shallow interpretation of the goals V intended to achieve in Moore’s dystopian England; in fact, those cinematic examples are not in any way an accurate representation of true anarchy.  What does anarchy really mean?  Does V qualify as an anarchist?  Are his actions in accordance with anarchist values?  Does V intend to institute an anarchist society after the fall of England’s totalitarian government?  This paper will evaluate all of these questions and attempt to provide an objective viewpoint through which the reader can effectively evaluate anarchy as presented in Moore’s novel.

The word “anarchy” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the “absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.”  The word’s roots come from the Greek word “anarkhia.”  The word stems from “anarkhos,” which effectively means “without a ruler.”  It is important to note this explicitly says without a ruler; it does not imply terms like “chaos” or “disorder.”  This correctly contradicts a common view of anarchism, which interprets the political view as promoting a land of “Do whatever you want.”  This should not be defined as anarchy; instead, it is an example of something called “omniarchy.”  An example of this view can be found in the movie The Dark Knight.  The Joker is often called an anarchist.  This is completely incorrect.  “Whereas anarchists want to do away with the coercive hierarchy of any person over any person, the Joker wishes to impose upon all a coercive hierarchy of each person over each person.  In a very literal sense, the Joker wants what Hobbes called the war of all against all, the entire breakdown of society, the reign of chaos” (Peak).

In reality, anarchy’s vendetta is to create a land of “Do whatever you want as long as it does not interfere with the natural rights of other individuals.”  A person who imposes himself as a hierarchical authority over another person is in violation of this basic concept.  The main goal of true anarchists is to create a society in which no individual is imposing himself over another.  Therefore, all anarchists must follow the rule of the nonaggression axiom.

This term essentially means any initiatory violence or violation of another human’s natural rights is prohibited.  However, except in the case of some anarchopacifists such as Leo Tolstoy, most anarchists do not prohibit retaliatory violence.  In the case of person A attempting to rape person B, if person B were to pull a gun on person A, he/she (the victim) would not be in violation of the nonaggression axiom.  It is important to note the retaliatory aggression must be equal to the initiatory aggression, because otherwise, the original victim would be imposing himself or herself upon the aggressor as a hierarchical authority and therefore be in violation of basic anarchist ideology.

Now that the exact meaning of true anarchy has been adequately defined, the next step in understanding it in context of Moore’s novel is to decide whether or not V is a true anarchist, or if he is just attempting to impose an anarchist society upon England.  For V to fit the anarchist prototype, he must meet the previously outlined qualifications.  The most important of these qualifications is his actions in relation to the nonaggression axiom.

For V to be a real anarchist, he must act without initiating a violation of other individuals’ rights.  Remember this does not include retaliatory action, just initiatory action.  It would be easy to claim since V is a terrorist, he immediately violates this precept.  The buildings or locations he destroys, in order, are the Larkhill Resettlement Camp, Parliament, Jordan Tower, and the Post Office Tower.  He generally destroys these buildings during times when he was unaware of any human occupation: for instance, the Parliament building has been unused for years, and most likely unoccupied at the hour at which it was blown up.  When he blows up the Resettlement Camp, it is not specified whether or not anyone is killed or injured, other than in the instance with the mustard gas.

The author of an article appropriately titled “Is V an Anarchist?” claims this terrorism in itself is not in violation of the nonaggression axiom because it does not qualify as theft.  “While the state claims ownership of [the buildings], we must remember that the state acquires all of its property through expropriation, through usurpation, through theft.  The state’s so-called ‘ownership’ over these buildings is, according to the theory of property we posit above, completely illegitimate.  The buildings are actually in a Lockean ‘state of nature,’ and since they are not properly owned by anyone, V’s destruction of them cannot properly be considered theft” (Peak).

The only recorded death via bombing is of the man named Etheridge.  It could be argued he is effectively a criminal because of his involvement with the state, but it is unknown whether or not any of his individual actions are immoral enough to merit death.  Remember retaliatory action should, in violence and/or severity, never surpass the initiatory actions that preceded it.  Since V could not have been aware of this specific man’s acts, his death is not justified in regard to the anarchist theory of retaliatory ethicality.  Would V, still unaware of the man’s acts, have been justified in killing Etheridge if he had indeed committed acts worthy of execution?  This is up for debate.  It is my personal opinion V is indeed guilty of murder in this case, even if unknowingly so, and therefore violates the nonaggression axiom.

Another problem with claiming V is a true anarchist is his treatment of the individuals who were involved with his imprisonment.  He systematically kills many of them in a form that resembles coldblooded murder.  While it is arguable the execution of many of these people is justified retaliation for their actions involving the prisoners at the Larkhill Camp, the novel does not specifically mention their exact actions against specific individuals and so makes it difficult to determine if they meet the non-pacifist anarchist qualifications for execution. 

A third example of V not upholding anarchist values can be seen in his treatment of Evey.  He does not allow her to leave his base of operations, effectively imprisoning her against her will.  This is an obvious violation of her individual rights.  More importantly, V subjects Evey to extensive physical and psychological torture, which, even as an attempt to open her mind, still qualifies as torture.  While V obviously believes his ends justify his means, his actions violate the nonaggression axiom and therefore remain unethical in nature.  It is safe to say V does not personally meet the requirements for a truly anarchist individual; however, this is not to say his intentions for dystopian English society are not anarchistic.

One of V’s most relevant quotations in relation to his intentions for society come from his public announcement during the prologue of Book Three: “For three days, your movements will not be watched….  Your conversations will not be listened to … and ‘Do as thou wilt’ shall be the whole of the law.  God bless you … and goodnight” (Moore 187).  It would be easy to take from this V’s motives are in line with those of the Joker’s, since he apparently wishes to create a state of disorder, confusion, and chaos.

However, V’s endgame is not to create chaos merely for the sake of an omniarchy; instead, he believes it is “a stage … society must go through … before anarchism can be realised” (Peak).  He specifically tells Evey on page 195, “This is not anarchy, Eve.  This is chaos” (Moore).  It is clear V understands the fundamentals of an anarchist society and is attempting to create such a society by teaching its citizens what happens without order.  He believes through this process England will realize the only true path to freedom is through voluntary order, which is an important part of anarchistic values.

In conclusion, V has been shown to violate anarchistic values and therefore does not qualify as a true, purely anarchistic individual.  While this is the case, it is still possible his intentions for a future England are really anarchistic.  This has been shown by his treatment of the general public in England and by his logic he presents to Evey when she confronts him about how he sent English society spiraling into chaos.  It is safe to say V does indeed intend to create a free anarchist society, even if he does not meet every qualification for such a society himself.  This can be quantified as a result of his own personal vendetta against the people who imprisoned and experimented upon him; his violation of anarchist principles stems not from a disregard of anarchy but from V’s own individual motives and prerogatives.  It would be appropriate to conclude V intends to create a truly anarchist society from the remains of the tyrannically-ruled English people; his real endgame is not only to have his vengeance but to free society from those who impose themselves upon it and its citizens.

Works Cited

“Anarchy.” Oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 6 May 2011.

Moore, Alan, David Lloyd, Steve Whitaker, and Siobhan Dodds. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005.

Peak, Alex. “Is V an Anarchist?.” Alex Peak. Web. 6 Oct. 2014. <http://alexpeak.com/twr/vfv/anarchism/&gt;.

—. “The Joker is Not an Anarchist.” Alex Peak. Web. 8 Oct. 2014. <http://alexpeak.com/ww/2008/016.html&gt;.

V for Vendetta: A Synopsis

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Dale Martin

Caveat Emptor: Several plot spoilers occur in the ensuing abbreviated synopsis.  It also contains rather mature content.  Read at your own risk.  Don’t let this spoil you for reading the real thing.  It’s even better.

V for Vendetta is a brilliant book written by Alan Moore.  The setting for the book is a post-nuclear war in the early nineties.  The book presents the reader with an ever-changing plot that ends in the perfect way for this type of book.  V for Vendetta is one of the greatest works of post-apocalyptic comics that has ever come from Britain.

The book starts with a woman who is not yet name getting dressed in rather provocative clothing.  She is listening to propaganda by the ruling government.  The government at this time is called Norsefire.  They have weeded out any potential resistance and have full control of the country.  Norsefire controls people through five branches.  The Eyes see everything that goes on in the city of London.  The Ears listen to all communication throughout the city.  The Nose and the Mouth regulate the air waves.  The Fingers are the enforcers of the other branches.  They truly do the work of the rest of the branches.  They all follow the leader who relies on “Fate,” a computer that tells him how to rule the country.  Another person is preparing to go out as well as the woman.  The woman walks out onto a street known for prostitutes.  She finds a man sitting there waiting and she proceeds to ask him if he wants to have sex.  Now the law at this time forbids prostitution and the punishment was death (and whatever the Fingers did to you before they killed you).  The woman unknowingly had asked one of the Fingers to comply with prostitution.  He proceeds to let her know her mistake and calls over his friends for some pre-judgment fun with the woman.  To the woman’s delight a man with a mask jumps and kills three of the Fingers and saves the woman.  She passes out during the excitement and awakes to the man standing near her, making sure she is all right.  He is still wearing the mask and welcomes her into his home.

The man calls himself V and is in the process of overthrowing the government.  He has started with the abduction of the main voice of the Mouth.  We learn this man once worked at a resettlement camp, which is equal to the Nazi German concentration camps.  We also find V was at one of these camps and was a victim of this man’s ill treatment of the residents at the camp.  We also discover a clue to V’s name: he was in a test room labeled number five in Roman numerals.  V begins to mentally torture the man by making him recall the past, and to culminate the torture he burns the man’s precious collection of dolls in front of his face.  Later we find the man is mentally unstable and is practically useless to the government.  The woman, who by now we know is named Evey, begs V to allow her to help in his work.  V unwillingly allows her to help him. She is to become a play toy to the bishop of the church in England.  She does this and is nearly raped, when she makes a move on the bishop and runs away.  Then comes V to the rescue and takes the bishop to another room to have a talk.  Just before this incident occurs the greatest quotation in the book is said concerning the bishop and his “midnight snacks.”  The butler to the bishop states “The unrighteousness may not have peace but the righteous can get a piece whenever they want too.”  Of course, this not true but this almost makes sense of what the bishop is doing.  He claims to be a teacher of God, yet does the things he wants.  Now the bishop’s punishment administered to him by V is death by a communion wafer poisoned with cyanide.  Evey is distraught to find she was an aide to a murder.  V states she wanted to help despite his warnings.  Evey has an argument with V that ends with V dumping her off on some random street.  She is picked up by a kind man who takes care of her for a while.  They have a relationship, but he was in some shady business and is killed.  Evey, angry at this outcome, attempts to murder the man who killed him.  She is stopped.

During V’s little vacation of sorts we find V has killed a woman who was ultimately the cause for his insanity.  As a result, her lover who works with the government, decides to hunt him down for this.  We also find V has killed every single person who worked at the resettlement camp that were previously thought to be accidents.  We then find Evey about to commit a murder but is stopped by a masked man.  Evey awakes in a jail cell charged with attempted murder, which is true except she is charged as an accomplice of V, which is false.  She is tortured and tortured until finally she would rather have death than to have life through a lie.  Then she is set free.  She finds out V had constructed this to free her from the confinement of happiness.  V, now having finished his theatrical performance of the destruction of the government, has set in place everything and begins to tell Evey things that seem random at the time but come together at the end.  We see the lover of the doctor previously killed has caught up to V and is high on LSD.  To his amazement he succeeds in mortally wounding V.  Now V passes the rights to Evey and asks of her to give him a Viking burial.  This consists of a train packed full of explosives.  The government, which is now in ruins tries to recover now knowing that V is dead, or so they thought, when they see another V continuing the legacy.  The new V in the process of the confusion saves another person and so the story begins again with a new V and a new student.

The Use of Impression Management Tactics

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Nicole Moore Sanborn

As in any industry, many problems exist in the industry of business and in what is commonly referred to as “the business world.” Interviews are a major tool used within the realm of business to get to know people as well as determine job capability. It is important to note here that interviews are widely used, so this is not just an issue within business. Within interviews, it is common for interviewees or applicants to attempt to alter how interviewers perceive them with what are called impression management tactics. Impression management tactics are a concern within interviews and many believe the use of these tactics is a serious problem. Many argue against the use of impression management tactics, saying they sway the interviewer toward the applicant too much and thus alter who is employed. The problem of the use of impression management tactics within interviews needs to be observed more thoroughly and addressed. Once addressed, a solution should be executed. The best and primary solution to the solving the issue of the use of impression management tactics is increasing interview structure, thereby giving the employers more control and ways to better detect the use of impression management tactics.

Some classify impression management tactics in two forms: verbal and nonverbal. Verbal impression management tactics can further be classified into self-focused tactics (directing the conversation towards themselves) and other-focused tactics (directing the conversation to the interviewer or the company). Within self-focused verbal impression managements there are more subcategories: self-promotion (demonstrating qualifications), exemplification (convincing the interviewer that the applicant’s behavior can be used as a model for others), and discussing how the applicant is responsible for past achievements (Chen, Chiu, and Tsai, 2005). According to Aleksander Ellis, Bradley West, Anne Marie Ryan, and Richard DeShon (2002), another definition for impression management tactics is “a conscious or unconscious attempt to control the images that are projected in social interactions” (p. 1200).  Ellis et al. (2002) claims there are two broad categories displaying types of impression management tactics: assertive and defensive. Ellis et al. (2002) defines assertive tactics as self-promotion tactics and ingratiation tactics. The self-promotion tactics are the same as the ones listed above, with the emphasis being to display competence and intelligence and make a favorable impression to the interviewer. Ingratiation tactics are essentially the “other-focused” tactics above, that is, when an applicant seeks to evoke interpersonal liking and establish good rapport with the interviewer. Defensive tactics, however, are designed to protect or repair one’s image. Defensive tactics include excuses, justifications, and apologies. Defensive tactics are used less often than assertive tactics. Defensive impression management tactics are most commonly used to justify past behavior and potentially to spin a negative quality in the applicant’s favor (Ellis et al., 2002). 

The traditional interview has historically been scrutinized and left suspect to whether or not it truly examines and determines the qualifications and the preparedness of the applicant for the job position. More structured interviews are becoming more and more common, and researchers favor them because they are less prone to issues such as impression management (Ellis et al., 2002). A wide array of topics and actions fall under the term “impression management tactics.” They are exactly as they sound: tactics applicants use to manage their impression before their interviewer. What does impression management look like? The first aspect of impression management is in making the first impression. Robert Lount, an assistant professor at Ohio State University, says “First impressions matter when you want to build a lasting trust. If you get off on the wrong foot, the relationship may never be completely right again” (Quast, 2013, par. 3). According to the Image Consulting Business Institute, image management is “the ongoing, pro-active process of evaluating and controlling the impact of your appearance on you, on others, and the achievement of your goals” (Quast, 2013, par. 4). Lisa Quast (2013), contributor to Forbes magazine, lists five things to consider when making a positive first impression: attire, calculated verbal communication, evaluation of non-verbal communication, wariness of attitude, and scrutinization of grooming, including hair, makeup, and cleanliness. 

According to Ellis et al. (2002), the relationship between an applicant’s use of self-promoting tactics and higher interview ratings is a result of a theory called the attribution theory. Attribution theory suggests that humanity has an inherent need to understand the behavior of other individuals and evaluate the cause of other individuals’ actions (Ellis et al., 2002). Thus, the interviewer, when evaluating an applicant, may attribute actions during the interview to the use of self-promoting impression management tactics and maintaining their overall image. Because the interviewer attributes an applicant’s actions to impression management tactics, the theory is titled attribution theory.

Why is the use of impression management tactics an issue? Many believe the use of these tactics is an issue because the use of tactics may sway the interviewer one way or the other in their review of the applicant. Suppose a well-spoken individual applies for a job and uses impression management tactics during their interview. Meanwhile, another individual who is less well spoken but better qualified walks into the interview and either does not use impression management tactics or does not use them as well. If the interviewer favors the first individual over the second individual due to the use of impression management tactics (tactics which made the first individual more likeable or appear more qualified), the use of these tactics could become an issue.

When observing the negative aspects of the use of impression management tactics, one must consider industry. Some employment opportunities have a “customer-contact requirement.” (Chen, Chiu, and Tsai, 2005). Sales representatives must prove job competence when talking to customers. Journalists must be able to present themselves well to conduct interviews. Public relations and marketing employees must network and expand the horizons of the company. Essentially, there is a customer-contact requirement in many job and business settings. However, employment opportunities for scientific research jobs or jobs in the engineering field have less of a customer-contact requirement. While these people must know how to present themselves, they do not go out and talk to the public or other businesses on a daily basis, and thus the ability to use impression management tactics well is far less important. Impression management tactics are also less of a problem in these fields. This paper observes business-specific interviews, where employees are required to be in contact with customers more frequently. Thus, impression management tactics affecting and intervening with employment decisions is more widespread in the realm of business.

This poses an issue for interviewers. If the applicant uses impression management tactics to sway the interviewer to approval, the issue of authenticity within the interview arises. Karl Nunkoosing (2005) discusses the issue of truth and authenticity in interviews. In his essay, the interviewer is considered a researcher. The interviewer is indeed a type of a researcher, gathering information from stories about applicants. Nunkoosing poses the issue of the “researcher” or the interviewer only basing employment decisions off of the stories applicants tell. He argues that not only does the applicant choose the aspects of life he or she is most interested in telling, but also that a person may “have a well-rehearsed story totell” (Nunkoosing, 2005, pg. 701). The issue of impression management even boils down to what stories are told.

Amy Gallo (2012), author in the Harvard Business Review, cites John Lees, a career strategist and author of books about interviews. Gallo says that Lees dismisses the advice to “be yourself” in an interview. He emphasizes being the best version of you. His advice essentially screams the use of impression management tactics to put your best foot forward in an interview setting. However, simply because one is being the best version of themselves does not mean they are being a false version of themselves. It must be pointed out here, however, that impression management tactics do not necessarily fabricate someone’s personality. The issue of the use of impression management tactics swaying the interviewer ties into Lees’ advice to “put your best foot forward” and persuade the interviewer to favorably judge. The issue is that you do not know if the applicant is lying about their personality, tendencies, or capabilities to appear favorable. In some extreme cases, lying is a possibility. Other times, resources could be wasted attempting to figure out whether or not the applicant is lying. Companies have more important issues to attend to than to figure out whether or not an interviewee is being hurtful. Thus, the use of impression management has the potential to be a problem in many facets of business.

Another aspect that must be taken into consideration is the type of questions being asked in an interview. Ellis et al. (2002) divide interview questions into two types: situational and experiential. These two types of questions are commonly referenced in many other sources. Experiential interview questions are questions about an applicant’s past experience and focus on what has already been accomplished. Ellis et al. (2002) hypothesizes that more self-promotion tactics are used in answering experiential questions. This makes sense, as self-promotion tactics include self-promotion (qualification focused) and exemplification (saying they could be a model for behavior) tactics. When an applicant focuses on his or her past achievements they will focus on why they are qualified for the job and look to past achievements to prove he or she can be a model employee. Situational interview questions focus on the future, where the interviewer asks the applicant what they would do if put in a specific future situation. The use of more ingratiation tactics is expected (Ellis et al., 2002) in answering situational questions, specifically justification, where the applicant would justify their behavior in a future situation the interviewer asked about. Because different tactics are used when different questions are asked, it can be difficult to determine the totality of the effects that the use of impression management tactics has on interviewers. The use of impression management tactics is a problem nonetheless that needs to be solved so that interviews are based more on the qualities and qualifications of the applicant rather than on how much the applicant persuaded the interviewer to act favorably toward them.

The best solution to the issue of using impression management tactics in interviews is increasing the structure of interviews. Before interviews can be restructured, the current structure of interviews must be observed. According to Northwestern University (2013), every interview follows a similar structure. In each interview, there is the arrival of the applicant (nonverbal cues are utilized here), the introduction to the interviewer, an information exchange, and the wrap-up. Within the information exchange aspect, four different question types are asked: behavioral, closed-ended, preference, and follow-up questions. Behavioral questions focus more on past behavior of the applicant and experiences, while closed-ended questions typically have brief answers and are where the interviewer has more control. Behavioral and preference questions are more open-ended and are where the applicant can typically take charge. Preference questions are exactly as they sound: the interviewer asking about the preferences of the applicant. Follow-up questions are typically asked in response to an applicant’s answer to a specific question and are where the interviewer can take charge and direct the conversation. The introduction and wrap-up aspects of the interview are quite similar, as both typically involve a handshake and either introductions or farewells. However, in the wrap-up, the employer typically asks the applicant if they have any questions. At this time it is important for the applicant to demonstrate how interested they are in the job position as well as how serious they are about getting hired (Northwestern, 2013). Even in structured interviews the basic layout above remains. According to the online Business Dictionary (2014), a structured interview is a “fixed format interview in which all questions are prepared beforehand and are put in the same order to each interviewee” (BusinessDictionary.com, 2014). Structured interviews are said to provide precision and reliability that is required in certain situation (BusinessDictionary.com, 2014).

One way to decrease the effectiveness of the use of impression management tactics is to know how to spot types of employees the company is not looking to hire. Carol Goman (2013), contributor to Forbes.com, writes about how to spot a liar during an interview. While outright lie detection is not directly related to impression management tactics, some of these tips can also be used to spot the use of impression management tactics. She suggests watching for stress signals and watching the applicant’s eyes. By watching for stress signals, the interviewer can observe when the applicant attempts to calm himself down and attempt to manage the interviewer’s impression of him. When this is observed through noticing the applicant’s eyes, the interviewer can guard himself from impression management tactics. Another tip is to notice when the applicant isn’t really answering the question, but is finding a way to avoid the direct question that was asked. This can be an attempt to cover something up or manage an impression (Goman, 2013).

The final two tips Goman gives are to listen to vocal stress and detect emotions hidden by smiles. If it seems obvious that the applicant is stressed or is covering up a feeling by smiling, impression management tactics are most likely being used to either cover something up about the applicant or give a false impression of who he or she truly is. Admittedly, the interviewer could exaggerate detecting these signals (they could think the applicant is lying and be wrong), and signs of stress could simply be related to the fact that the applicant is in an interview for a position they are trying to obtain. As a result, these tips for lie detection as they relate to impression management tactics are only the beginning of the solution to decrease the efficacy of the aforementioned tactics. 

As previously stated, the best solution to combat the efficacy of impression management tactics is to increase the structure of the interview. Now that the structure of interviews has been explained and tips for interviewers to use to detect the use of impression management tactics have been given, how to structure the interview will be discussed. As explained earlier when defining impression management tactics, the issue is also an issue of industry, and this paper is business specific. Beth Leech of Rutgers University writes about techniques for how to ask questions in interviews (2002). The first step is for the interviewer to establish rapport. Rapport in this sense is not simply making the applicant feel comfortable. The interviewer should appear professional and generally knowledgeable about the applicant, without knowing too many specific details but appearing to know the basics of the applicant. Leech also discussed question wording in interviewers. The words used in the questions being asked should be non-judgmental, non-suggestive, non-presumptuous and non-threatening. If the interviewer knows the applicant did not like their old boss or was in a sticky job situation or maybe messed up in a previous place of employment, the interviewer should watch the question working. If the question seems accusatory, the applicant is likely to put up walls and engage in impression management tactics to attempt to control the situation. When non-suggestive words are used in a question, the applicant is more likely to give the interviewer more information (Leech, 2002). Thus, wording and what angle the interviewer is coming from plays a role in an applicant’s use of impression management tactics. Interviewers should carefully consider how questions are worded to get the most honest answer from their applicants.

When structuring interviews, question type is imperative. Question type can be the key to controlling the interview and can be used to determine whether or not the applicant is engaging in impression management tactics. Pulakos and Schmitt (1995/2006) say that two types of interview questions are experience based questions and situational questions. Situational questions discuss the future, where the applicant explains what he or she would do in a future situation while on the job. Experience-based questions, however, look to past experiences and actions to determine the preparedness of the applicant. An example of a situational based interview question is as follows: “What actions would you take in a situation where you know another employee is faking the books or embezzling money from the company?” An example of an experienced based interview question could be “What have you done in the past that has prepared you to organize the books and financial records of the company?”

Pulakos and Schmitt (1995/2006) conducted a study to determine whether situational questions or experienced based questions are better to determine future job performance. It is important to note here that applicants can and will still use impression management tactics when answering each question type. The goal is to find a solution where the interviewers are more in control and aware of the use of impression management tactics, thereby rendering the tactics less effective. Pulakos and Schmitt (1995/2006) found that although situational questions were viewed as potentially better to determine job performance, their hypothesis was incorrect. Experience-based questions were a better predictor of job performance, according to the meta-analyses and statistical analysis of the data collected (Pulakos & Schmitt, 1995/2006). Therefore, experienced-based questions should be used to better predict job performance. Interviewers should ask these questions and watch for the use of impression management tactics.

Although applicants can choose which experiences to discuss in the interview and manage their impression as such, looking to past experiences is a better predictor of job performance, as previously stated. Employers should be aware that impression management tactics will be used but should be able to detect them better. Therefore, to be more in control of the interview, despite the use of impression management tactics, interviewers should primarily ask experience-based questions. This way the interviewer can close in on the applicant and make a judgment as to whether or not he or she is telling the truth. If enough experience-based questions are asked, the interviewer will get a broader sense of who the applicant truly is by controlling the interview and forcing the applicant to tell of enough past experiences. The interviewer will still have to watch for the use of impression management tactics.

Impression management tactics are commonly used in interviews, specifically in the business world. Impression management tactics have various categories, and applicants apply these tactics depending on the question being asked (situational or experiential). The use of impression management tactics is considered a problem because the use of these tactics sways the interviewer more favorably toward that applicant. This, in turn, raises questions about if the applicant was really a better applicant than those who did not use impression management tactics. There are many tangible solutions to the issue of the use of impression management tactics in interviews, the primary one being interview structure. The use of impression management tactics will not cease to exist because likeability will always play a role in an interviewer’s decision-making. An applicant cannot be chosen based on measurable qualities alone. However, with increasing interview structure, interviewers will be more aware of the use of these tactics and there will be less wondering about whether or not the applicant swayed the interviewer into employing him or her when someone better suited for the job also applied.

References

BusinessDictionary.com. Structured interview. Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/structured-interview.html.

Chen, C., Chiu, S., &, Tsai, W.. (2005). Exploring boundaries of the effects of applicant impression management tactics in job interviews. Journal of Management, 31 (1): 108-125.

Ellis, A., West, B., Ryan, A., &, DeShon, R.. (2002). The use of impression management tactics in structured interviews: A function of question type? American Psychological Association, 87 (6): 1200-1208.

Gallo, A.. (2012). Stand out in your interview. HBR Blog Network. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/09/stand-out-in-your-interview/.

Goman, C.. (2013). Seven tips for spotting liars. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2013/05/20/7-tips-for-spotting-liars-at-work.

Leech, B.. (2002). Asking questions: Techniques for semi-structured interviews. Political Science and Politics, Volume unlisted (4): 665-668.

Northwestern University. (2013). Structure of an interview. Retrieved from http://www.northwestern.edu/careers/students/employment-skills/interviews/structure-of-an-interview-.html.

Nunkoosing, K.. (2005). The problems with interviews. Qualitative Health Research, 15 (5): 698-706.

Pulakos, E., &, Schmitt, N.. (2006). Experience-based and situational interview questions: Studies of validity. First published online 7 December 2006. Reprinted from 1995, Personnel Psychology, 48 (2): 289-308.

Quast, L.. (2013). Five tips to create a positive first impression. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2013/09/09/5-tips-to-create-a-positive-first-impression/.

The Great Depression

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Daniel Coats

The Great Depression is remembered as one of the darkest periods in American history ever.  A period where life was hard and desperate and where there was little hope for recovery.  Consequences and effects from the Great Depression are still affecting America today and America will never be the prosperous flourishing country it used to be.  Instead America is reinventing itself since this horrible era.  The people of America had and still have pioneer spirits and stayed positive throughout the depression and that is how America got through the depression and picked itself back up and darted for the top.  (Although nowadays we are going downhill again.)  This unfortunate tragedy was so devastating that it affected many other countries, especially Europe.  Because of God’s grace, leadership, and a plan, America was able to turn around and recover after many years of unemployment and poverty.

In October 1929 the stock market crashed, which triggered the Great Depression.  This caused investment and consumer spending to plummet which lowers industrial output extremely meaning more unemployed citizens because of failing businesses. The main reasons behind the stock market crashing was actually happening during the “roaring twenties” when America was prospering. During this era income increased from 74 billion dollars in 1923 to 89 billion dollars in 1929.  Although this seems great, the “Coolidge Prosperity” of the 1920’s was not shared evenly among all Americans (McElvaine 38). “According to a study done by the Brookings Institute, in 1929 the top 0.1% of Americans had a combined income equal to the bottom 42%; That same top 0.1% of Americans in 1929 controlled 34% of all savings, while 80% of Americans had no savings at all” (McElvaine 38). While the disposable income per capita rose 9% from 1920 to 1929, those with income within the top 1% enjoyed a stupendous 75% increase in per capita disposable income (McElvaine 39).  As you can see this is a recipe for disaster.

Why was there this large and increasing difference from the rich and the middle class?  Wages for jobs in manufacturing only grew 8% while productivity increased four times as fast.  Production costs dropped and wages grew very slowly.  Corporate gains grew 62 percent!  Obviously money is not being distributed evenly. Henry Ford is a big example of corporate gains over wages growing.  He made 14 million dollars a year while his workers were making an average of 750 dollars.  In today’s money Henry would be making over 300 million dollars while his workers would be making around 18,000 dollars.  This is absurd and was happening all over the U.S during the roaring twenties and into the depression.

Although it seemed that the Depression will finally come to an end with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s social security bill being passed and with industries beginning to hire people, unfortunately it did not work as well as everyone wanted it to.  In fact, it didn’t really improve at all until the United States decided to take action and join forces with the Allies in World War II.  Millions of jobs were created when the United States decided to up their game on defense and when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, millions of more jobs were created when the U.S actually declared war after the fatal attack against the U.S.  By the time the War ended, the U.S was back on top and the Great Depression was pretty much wiped out.

Lessons that can be learned from the Great Depression are when bad times come and there’s not much people can do individually about it, stay active with people and stay active in the community.  It is easier to get through things with fellow friends and people.  That is the main thing that kept people alive and hopeful and strong during the Great Depression.  As well as having a positive mind set through hardships, people need to be wise financially.  Now that Americans have credit, it is easier to have debt.  Back then if you had no money, you had no money.  Nowadays people can borrow and borrow and get deep into debt which not only hurts themselves but also the economy.  We have already almost gotten into another Great Depression in 2007 (The Great Recession).  If America does not want to go through another terrible era like this again Americans must become financially savvy and work together.

Bibliography

“Great Depression, The.” History.com. A+E Networks, 2009. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America 1929-1941. N.p.: n.p., 1984. 38-39. Print.

“Timeline of the Great Depression.” PBS. WHRO, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

The Role of God vs. The Role of the gods

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Sydney Harris

We’ve recently read the Iliad in English class, which is the epic tale of bravery, courage, and vengeance.  The story depicts the quest for honor and glory among the gods and men.  This story is a Greek and Trojan tale, so therefore includes Greek and Trojan gods and goddesses in them.  Divine intervention was a major part in Homer’s Iliad.  The gods that are seen most in this book are Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Poseidon.  Most of the gods have favorites and are on a particular side to win.  Although, as the just and highest god, Zeus is equal in loyalty to both the Greeks and Trojans.  Even when his son Sarpedon is about to die, for example, he lets the outcome go unaltered.  The gods in the Iliad are extremely active in the lives of their people in a very obvious and straightforward way.

As Christians we have one deity we look to for help and wisdom, and that is God.  God is also very involved in our lives and cares deeply for us.  He wants our praise and worship like the Greek gods but doesn’t do harm to us if we don’t.  He is jealous but doesn’t show His wrath upon us like the gods repeatedly do throughout that time period and in the book.  He doesn’t pick sides and is only doing and deciding what is right and good.  He answers our prayers like the gods in the Iliad do but not always the way we want Him to. He has been very evident in the history of this world, nation, and personal lives of everyone who accept Him.

History has opened a lot of doors for questions in relation to where is God when you need Him or how He lets bad things happen.  As Christians we struggle with answering this question for people and frankly ourselves.  In the Bible it states God is all-powerful and wise and just.  So, when bad things happen, we wonder how a wise and loving God would do such a thing.  We also know the earth is Satan’s domain, and he wishes to kill, steal, and destroy.  God doesn’t use His power over Satan because He knows he won’t stop, and He is righteous and will never force us to worship Him.  Bad things happen because sin entered the world through Adam and Eve and cannot be completely removed until Jesus comes back and recreates a new Heaven and Earth.

In history the Greek gods and goddesses have been known to not be perfect and make a lot of mistakes.  They have bad tempers, do what they want with humans, and don’t care for anyone but themselves.  The only way they would show mercy to you is if you were their child (or a demi-god), or you gave them sacrifices.  These gods committed adultery, murder, and a list of other things any normal deity figure would not do.  The Greek and Trojan people had no concept of one god making the whole universe and everything in it, so they made up their own gods.  They knew the stories and theories they made weren’t true, but they compromised the truth so they could do what they wanted.

The Christian God is the only way to Heaven or anything after death through His Son Jesus, who died for our sins.  He made the Heavens, Moon, Stars, and everything in it.  Our God is personal and real, the main difference between the two.  He wants to be involved and relevant in each single person out of the billions of people He uniquely created for a purpose.  He cares enough about us to give us rules and regulations and abides by them, earning our respect.  We have a reverent fear of God, but the gods only create a natural fear in their believers.  A lot of religions today are about works and just the religion, not the relationship.  That’s what Christianity is all about, the relationship we create with our Heavenly Father and how we share His love with others while we are on this planet.