Contrasting Friendship Essay -- essays papers

Contrasting Friendship â€Å"The two ladies, who had been intimate since childhood, reflected how little they knew each other†. This is how, author, Edith Wharton shows the relationship of two characters, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade, in the short story â€Å"Roman Fever.† These two women who are supposed to be friends, led envious lives of each other, and because of the way they lived they were very contrasting and conflicting characters. In the end, I believe Mrs. Slade was guiltier for her actions and in fact the whole incident would have never happened if it weren’t for her. Before there widowhood these two ladies led very envious and superficial lives. In describing her friend Mrs. Slade says, â€Å"Mrs. Horace Ansley, twenty-five years ago, had been exquisitely lovely†¦though, of course, still charming, distinguished†¦far more beautiful than her daughter. Horace Ansley was just the duplicate of his wife. Museum specimens of old New York. Good-looking, irreproachable, exemplary†. In return, when Mrs. Ansley was asked about or spoke about Mrs. Slade she would reply, â€Å"Alida Slade’s awfully brilliant; but not as brilliant as she thinks. Mrs. Slade had been an extremely dashing girl; much more so than her daughter who was pretty, of course, and clever in a way, but had none of her mother’s—well vividness†. These two ladies had a friendship based upon nothing but there own jealous and arrogant behavior; as if the only reason they spoke was in spite of one another. As Wharton describes them, â€Å" these tw o ladies visualized each other, each through the wrong end of her little telescope† (258). Wharton realized that these fragments composed the only true communication about their friendship and therefore told the real story of Mrs. Slade and ... ...hat Mrs. Ansley finally decided to shut Mrs. Slade up of her arrogant, superficial talk and she nonchalantly turned to Mrs. Slade and said, â€Å"I had Barbara†. In the end, I believe, it was Mrs. Ansley who had the ultimate revenge. While Mrs. Slade had planned to get rid of Mrs. Ansley that night, Mrs. Ansley not only answered the letter, and had a night of passion with Mrs. Slade’s husband, but she also had his child. Each time Mrs. Slade tried to make Mrs. Ansley feel like she meant nothing, Mrs. Ansley came back with a harsher reality for Mrs. Slade. Throughout the whole story, I believe Mrs. Slade is ultimately at greater fault because she was the one who brought up the letter and she wouldn’t let it go. She felt she had to top Mrs. Ansley each time. Though both women were at fault, in a way, Mrs. Slade had no one to blame for the consequences but herself.

Interpersonal Communication Case study Essay

#1.) After reviewing the information in this case study, you find that Parris’ husband, Lavar, was not listening when Parris first told him to pick their daughter up from school. Explain how Lavar and Parris should use effective empathic listening and responding skills to discuss this issue. I think that Parris should talk to Lavar and see why he is forgetting, they should talk it out and not get mad and yell, maybe Lavar is so swamped with work he has all his attention focused on work that he forgets. Likewise Parris works all the time and she does not forget so maybe Lavar isn’t really paying attention to Paris in what she is saying or he is generally forgetting what Parris is asking him to do. #2.) What are the five activities that make up the process of listening? Using the case study scenario, describe how Lavar might not have listened properly because he did not focus on one or more of five steps of the listening process. The five activities that make up the process of listening are: Selecting, Attending, Understanding, Remembering, and Responding. Lavar did not listen properly because he did not remember and probably wasn’t attending, his mind was probably elsewhere thinking about something else when Parris was talking to him. #3.) What are four common listening styles? Which listening style does Lavar employ? What about Parris? Can you foresee problems with a couple who have different listening styles? Why? 1) Relational-oriented 2) Critical-oriented 3) Analytical -oriented 4) Task-oriented. I think that Lavar employs the Task- oriented one the most because he seems to be interested in focusing more on accomplishing a task  than on focusing on the communication relationship when listening to others. Paris could be more a critical listener she seems to be good at evaluating information she hears, and is able to hone in on inconsistencies in what someone says. I think that there could end up being a lot of problems for these two if they do not figure out how to communicate and listen to each other properly. #4.) Using the specific examples from the case study, list and discuss at least three listening barriers that may cause conflict between Lavar and Parris. 1) Distractions: We get distracted by what is going on outside (our surroundings) and inside ourselves. 2) Attachment to personal beliefs and values: We tend to find facts and evidence that support our views and we dismiss anything that weakens them. 3) Misinterpretations: When we add an interpretation to what someone’s saying or doing, we introduce possible errors in communication. I think that for Lavar, his problem could be distraction. He is not really paying attention to what Parris has asked of him. #5.) Given the path you choose in the case study, do you believe Parris’ reactions will help Lavar and her overcome their listening differences or is she just masking the problem? What might she do differently to enhance their communication? I think that Parris is just masking the problem she is not really looking at why they are not communicating well enough she just thinks it is all on him, when it is not it is on both of them to be able to communicate effectively to each other. She can talk to Lavar and find out why he is not doing what she asks, is he ignoring her or is he not sure of what she wants because of bad communication?

American Indian Women and Community Issues

America, where representations of Indian men and women perform stereotyped Noble/Savage or Princess/Squaw functions, depending on their relationships with whites. The â€Å"princess† figure is a â€Å"convert† who rejects or is rejected by her own people for her transgressive attraction to white culture or white individuals, and who may die as a result. The â€Å"squaw† denotes a shameful sexuality that taints the men she associates with (hence the derogatory term â€Å"squaw man†).Mixed-race relationships, especially those between Indian women and white men, are one way in which the landscape and resources of the American West were represented cinematically as available for sexual, economic, and sociopolitical exploitation. Silent Westerns and†Indian dramas† from 1908 to 1916 provide a remarkable window on Euro-American popular culture representations of the encounter between tribal peoples and the United States military and educational establ ishments.These early Westerns, many of them now unknown or unavailable outside of archives, provide a composite narrative that depicts the white â€Å"family on the land† emerging from the â€Å"broken home† of a previous mixed-race marriage, and that equates children, land, and gold as the spoils of failed romance, not of war. The ordeal of separating children from their families and cultures through the Indian boarding school policy and the trauma of their return home as outsiders is fully recognized in silent Westerns, which were produced during a time when federal Indian policy encouraged both assimilation and removal from the land.In these tales of interracial romance, captivity, and adoption, defining narrative features include doubling, mistaken identity, and the social and geographic displacement and replacement of persons. Such narrative strategies reflected the physical acts of displacement and replacement that have been hallmarks of U. S. American Indian pol icy, from Indian Removal and the Indian Wars through the slow erosion of reservation lands in the twentieth century.Indian men and women ultimately choose to return to their tribes, depicting a latent, racially based â€Å"call of the wild† that could reclaim eastern-educated Indian and mixed-blood children from their new lives. Another turn-of-the-century catch-phrase for this idea that the assimilated or educated Indian would simply return to the reservation and abandon white teachings was â€Å"back to the blanket,† again emphasizing clothing as an indicator of racial and cultural allegiance.The Derelict, emphasize the strength of Indian women and moral weakness of white men in cross-racial relationships. Hollywood's silent era did not change the prevailing negative cultural stereotypes about Native Americans, but it did produce a large number of Westerns and documentaries that offered alternative viewpoints influenced by the indigenous writers and filmmakers, refor m movements, and racial theories that were widespread at the time.Films about mixed-race romance and mixed-race children in the first and second decades of the twentieth century articulated and influenced public opinion about Native American assimilation (particularly about the taking of land and children through the Dawes Act and the boarding-school system), as well as public and academic speculation about the nature of race and culture. The films consistently contrast the acquisition of land and export of gold, oil, and children from the West with the importance and value of family and even tribal obligationsWORKS CITED Aleiss, Angela. 1995. †Native Americans. The Surprising Silents. † Cineaste . Allred, Christine Edwards. 2001. Harper’s Indians: Representing Native America in Popular Magazine Culture: Los Angeles, Babcock, Barbara. 1996. †First Families: Gender, Reproduction and the Mythic Southwest. † The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway. Ed. Barbara Babcock and Marta Weigle. Phoenix: Heard Museum. 207-17. Bataille, Gretchen M. , and Charles P.Silet, Eds. 1980. The Pretend Indians: Images of Native Americans in the Movies. Ames: Iowa State UP, Bergland, Renee L. The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. Hanover: UP of New England, 2000. Berkhofer, Robert F The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Random House, 1979. Bernardi, Daniel, Ed. The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U. S. Cinema. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996. Bhabha, Homi.1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bolt, Christine. 1987. American Indian Policy and American Reform: Case Studies of the Campaign to Assimilate the American Indians. London: Allen & Unwin. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Polity. Brownlow, Kevin. 1979. The War, the West, and the Wilderness. New York: Knopf. Butler, Judit h. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge.