Alexies Flight free essay sample

Officer or Angel A theme of Sherman Alexies Flight is constant change, instability, and violence. The protagonist, Zits, has been shuffled from foster home to foster home since his mother passed and father abandoned him. The homes and people that Zits has been forced into are all unfamiliar. The only place that gives Zits stability and comfort is, oddly, jail. With that, the only person constantly in his life is Officer Dave, a city police officer who has arrested Zits multiple times. Officer Daves is the Juxtaposition to the capricious and magical events of Zits life. Zits has very little in his life. Almost nothing in his life is consistent, IVe lived in twenty different foster homes and attended twenty-two different schools. I own only two pairs of pants and three shirts and four pairs of underwear and one baseball hat and three pairs of socks and three paperback novels and the photographs of my mother and father (Alexie, 7). We will write a custom essay sample on Alexies Flight or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Being tossed from place to place, Zits cannot even recognize where he wakes up in the morning and does not care. He is used to the feeling of instability, therefore he doesnt even try to obtain stability. Instability is his norm and instability, ironically, is the only constant to Zits, which is the reason he acts out. There are no repercussions for his actions. The consequence is a change of scenery, which is a good thing and familiar to Zits. Change is something that Zits can count on. To have the familiarity of change, Zits needs to act out. He resorts to violence and recognizes it; l get into arguments and fistfights with everybody. I get so angry that I go blind and deaf and mute (Alexie, 8). At first, his aggressive behavior seems to come out of inner frustration. However, we soon find that with little control over his own life, the government can put me wherever they want, (Alexie, 9), violence is the only thing in his life that he has complete control of. With no say in where he is placed, behavior is something that is completely up to Zits. Violence is also Zits defense mechanism. With no parents, little say in his life, and thinking that when it comes to foster parents, there are only two kinds (Alexie, 8), his violence is a fuck you to the world. He is rebelling against the bad hand he was dealt. Yet oddly, he befriends Officer Dave who is the fgure of Justice and protects people from violence. Zits doesnt waste his time trying to remember the names of [his] new foster parents (Alexie, 8). Zits does not want anything to do with things that are temporary. In contrast, he easily identifies Officer Dave by voice. The knowledge of names determines whether Zits deems a person worthy of acknowledgement in his life. If he thinks or wants a person to be permanent in his life then he will remember their name, such as Edgar and Officer Dave. For Zits to know Officer Daves name and recognize his voice is ignificant and shows how much Officer Dave means to Zits. Also, Zits has identified himself as Zits since the beginning of the novel and he has not hinted at his actual name. His acne and life blemishes have always defined him. It was not until Officer Dave welcomed Zits into his family that Zits revealed his name. This further indicates how Officer Dave has impacted Zits life. Officer Dave exposes the two sides of Zits life and has successfully pulled Zits to the right one. Zits has finally succeeded in finding his name. When telling his foster mother his name, Zits changes to the person he ants to be. Zits is ready to rid his past and start new by expelling his nickname. Officer Dave is someone that is also a constant in Zits life. Zits craves consistency as much as he seems to reject it. Zits is comforted by Officer Dave even though Officer Dave is essentially the opposite of what Zits stands for. Officer Dave is the nice, understanding, and model citizen that Zits never was. Yet Zits still finds security in him, even in the height of his violence, l recognized his voice I trust, him not to hurt me, so I calm down a little (Alexie, 17). Zits may act out for the regularity of change nd the presence of Office Dave. With the familiarity of Officer Dave, is Jail, which a familiar place that Zits has visited many times. This further proves that Zits wants some persistence in his life. If he is willing to go to Jail for this desire, then he has gone to extremes and is willing scrap the bottom of the barrel to get the minimum. Zits comfort in the familiarity of Jail results in a friend. Who would have thought that somewhere as awful as Jail could produce a friendship? Zits takes the worst place to finding someone who amazes him and couldnt find someone who can talk like im (Alexie, 26). The familiarity of Jail gives Zits the positive experience that allows him to make a friend. However, his friend, Justice, did not make a positive short-term impact on Zits life. With such a name, one would think that Justice would urge Zits to make Just decisions, but ironically he does the opposite. It may have been Justices intention to send Zits into that bank to have an epiphany about the direction of his life. In which case, Justices name would suit him. In comparison, Officer Dave is unquestionably a staple of the law and Justice. He is also the practical, positive, and eal role model, unlike the questionable presence of Zits that compliments the magical realism of portion of the novel. A major advancer of the novel is magical realism. It, again, changed Zits time period, setting, and person, in order to show Zits his history and the different perspectives of violence. After the exhausting and enlightening experience, Zits goes to Officer Dave to confess and repent, l respect you Im raising my hands up because I have two guns inside my coat (Alexie, 163). The fact that Zits nonchalantly goes to Officer Dave after a life changing experience hows how comfortable Zits is with someone who is always present in his life. Officer Dave presents the realistic and practical extremity to the magical elements of the novel. He is the normal, complacent, civil role model that Zits needs. Officer Dave is the voice of reason in the mess that is Zits life. He is the rock that Zits clings to. Officer Dave provides the stability that Zits never had and Zits has recognized it. Some may see them as an odd duo, but they compliment each other. Officer Dave is Zits yin to his yang. They balance each other out. Officer Dave is a major character hat highlights the extremes of the spectrum. When there is erraticism, he is the unchanging staple that Zits counts on and turns to. If violence breaks out, Officer Dave is the calming and authoritative fgure that keeps Zits in line. After the overwhelming magical trip Zits experienced, he came back to Officer Dave who provided the pragmatic view on life. Officer Dave is the salvation that Zits needed. Like magical realism, Officer Dave is the major advancer of the novel and saved Zits from himself. Alexie, Sherman. Flight: A Novel. New York: Black Cat, 2007. Print.

Definition and Examples of Cataphora in English Grammar

Definition and Examples of Cataphora in English Grammar In English grammar, cataphora is the use of a pronoun or other linguistic unit to refer ahead to another word in a sentence (i.e., the referent). Adjective: cataphoric. Also known as  anticipatory anaphora, forward anaphora, cataphoric reference, or forward reference. Cataphora and anaphora are  the two main types of  endophorathat is, reference to an item within the text itself. Cataphora in English Grammar The word that gets its meaning from a subsequent word or phrase is called a cataphor. The subsequent word or phrase is called the antecedent, referent, or head. Anaphora vs. Cataphora Some linguists use anaphora as a generic term for both forward and backward reference. The term forward(s) anaphora is equivalent to cataphora.   Examples and Uses of Cataphora In the following examples, cataphors are in italics and their referents are in bold. Why do we envy him, the bankrupt man? (John Updike, Hugging the Shore, 1984)A few weeks before he died, my father gave me an old cigar box filled with faded letters.In The Pendulum Years, his history of the 1960s, Bernard Levin writes of the collective insanity which seized Britain. (The London Evening Standard, February 8, 1994, quoted by Katie Wales in Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English. Cambridge University Press, 1996)If she were alive today, [Barbara] Tuchman would surely be preparing to pen fresh furious pages tonight, as the president seeks to rally his faltering domestic popularity with summonses of support. (Martin Kettle, If He Resists the Siren Voice of Folly, Blairs Legacy Is Secure. The Guardian, June 25, 2005)You must remember this:A kiss is just a kiss,A sigh is just a sigh. (Herman Hupfeld, As Time Goes By, 1931)This, I now realize, was a very bad ideasuggesting we do whatever Terry Crews wants for the day. (Joel Stein, Crews Control. Time, September 22, 2014) It must have been tough on your mother, not having any children. (Ginger Rogers in 42nd Street, 1933)Too scared to buy before they sell, some homeowners aim for a trade.So I just want to say this to the Congress: An America that buys much more than they sell year in and year out is an America that is facing economic and military disaster. (Congressman James A. Traficant, Congressional RecordHouse, September 25, 1998)After she declared herself broken, betrayed, at bay, really low in another organ yesterday, Im not sure the Diary should even mention poor Bel Mooneys name. (The Guardian, August 9, 1994) Creating Suspense With Cataphora [Cataphora] is in evidence in the next example, which is typical of the opening sentences of books: Students (not unlike yourselves) compelled to buy paperback copies of his novelsnotably the first, Travel Light, though there has lately been some academic interest in his more surreal and existential and perhaps even anarchist second novel, Brother Pigor encountering some essay from When the Saints in a shiny heavy anthology of mid-century literature costing $12.50, imagine that Henry Bech, like thousands less famous than he, is rich. He is not.​[John Updike, Rich in Russia. Bech: A Book, 1970] Here we meet copies of his novels before we know who he is. It is only several lines later that the possessive adjective his links forward to the proper nouns Henry Bech in the text that comes after. As you can see, whereas anaphora refers back, cataphora refers forward. Here, it is a stylistic choice, to keep the reader in suspense as to who is being talked about. More usually, the noun that the pronoun links forward to follows soon after. (Joan Cutting, Pragmatics and Discourse: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge, 2002)Strategic Use of Cataphora [M]ore often than not, protypical cataphora is motivated by a planned or strategic delivery of a referent, such as in news-telling like the following: Listen to thisJohn won a lottery and got a million dollars! Prototypical cataphora thus is rarely associated with problems in lexical retrieval. (Makoto Hayashi and Kyung-Eun Yoon, Demonstratives in Interaction. Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd H. Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. John Benjamins, 2010) Cataphora and Style [S]ome prescriptive grammarians have gone so far as to condemn the practice [of cataphora], for reasons of clarity and, more blandly, good style. So H.W. Fowler declares the pronoun should rarely precede its principal, a view echoed by Gowers . . .. This has led to problems in terminology. The term antecedent, for example, is commonly used to refer to a coreferential NP in an anaphoric relation; there is no equivalent expression for the *postcedent NP, however. But by an odd semantic license, some grammarians, and of different schools of thought, use antecedent in this sense. (Katie Wales, Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English. Cambridge University Press, 1996) EtymologyFrom the Greek, backward carry Pronunciation: ke-TAF-eh-ra

Responses on two posts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Responses on two posts - Essay Example This is just a way that the author of the Washington post tried to show readers that a government, no matter how bad it looks in the eyes of the public would have its own supporters. Reintegration into the Cambodian society became a problem for these loyalists after the Khmer Rouge surrendered to the government. The author also says that the Khmer Rouge fighters have now been living in abject poverty as they no longer get the benefits that they were getting when the Khmer Rouge was in power. This just goes to show that a cry for amnesty would leave few people suffering as they would no longer get the benefits they were getting when the rebel group was in control. This article also lays emphasis to the fact that there is now a breath of fresh air as a result of the surrender of the Khmer Rouge. 1 2. The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) was established in 2009 with the aim of safeguarding the human rights, freedom, peace, prosperity and stability of the people of the Southeast Asian nations. The efforts of the member nations of the commission like Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in ensuring that the aims of the commission are achieved were highlighted in the article.