John F Kennedy Profile of President - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 1 Words: 401 Downloads: 7 Date added: 2019/05/13 Category Politics Essay Level High school Tags: John F Kennedy Essay Did you like this example? John F. Kennedy Mini- Profile of President First Lady- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Nickname- Jack President- 1961- 1963 Political Party- Democrat Served- 1 term Chief executive January 20, 1961- Victory! This is the era of the youth. But, we still need the power of older generations to help us lead the way. Like my friend Dean Rusk as someone in my cabinet. Definitely, someone, I can trust! Commander-in-chief October, 1962- It is for sure a shame that people have started to lose humanity. Thanks, McGeorge Bundy for bringing the high altitude pictures taken from U-2 planes flying over Cuba. Just want to set this straight that IF the Soviets ever introduced defensive weapons, The gravest issues would arise. Chief Diplomat October 7, 1963- Why would anyone not want to have a ban on limited nuclear tests? Well as the president I have decided for the betterment of America I am going to sign the limited nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. This is a fight which I will conquer to keep America safe! Chief of State May 29, 1961- Who agrees the American flag should be everywhere including the moon? It is an honor of mine to announce the fact that my goal is to have a landing man on the moon before the joint session of Congress. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "John F Kennedy Profile of President" essay for you Create order I will be very glad to see if our nation can make it to the moon with the flag. Go America! Chief Legislators October 31, 1963- Who gives someone the right to control over someones life? No one has this right. Today, I am so glad to announce that I am signing a bill that frees thousands of Americans with mental illnesses from life in institutions. Instead of having big institutions they will be provided with community-based care instead. This gives them a better chance to recover. I have full faith that people will want this to happen. Chief of the Economy 1961- Passed a $451 million program in an effort to aid in alleviating the suffering in distressed areas hit by the unemployment where it is substantially a continuous not temporary and seasonal. As promised, will try very hard to have equal opportunities and create more job opportunities. Everyone should a way of income. Works Cited John F. Kennedy. Biography.com, AE Networks Television, 27 Oct. 2017, www.biography.com/people/john-f-kennedy-9362930. John F. Kennedy: Domestic Affairs. Miller Center, 10 Apr. 2018, millercenter.org/president/kennedy/domestic-affairs.

President John F. Kennedy And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Former President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., gave the world two of the most iconic and historic speech in American history. In January of 1961, John F. Kennedy gave his infamous Inaugural Address. Not even heavy snow fall could deter JFK’s inaugural address. His mission was to reassure the American citizens their strengths and at the same time, motivate them to inspired the world. One of the most famous phrases for Kennedy’s speech, â€Å"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. One the other hand, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speech â€Å"I Have a Dream† is a public speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. King was one of the most famous American civil rights activist. His mission for this iconic speech, was a call for an end to racism in the United States of America. Thus, this speech was a defining moment in the civil rights movement and was done so , at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King was a Baptist minister and was the driving force behind the civil rights movement. He demanded justice for the unjustly. Mainly the people of color. Both men, Dr. King and Mr. Kennedy, had some what of the same visions of America. Their goals for America in their speech demanded peace and prosperity. Kennedy said, â€Å"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure theShow MoreRelatedMartin Luther King And The White House922 Words   |  4 PagesMartin Luther King and The White House Throughout the Civil Right Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and other civil rights leaders worked with the executive branch to move towards equal rights. Though the civil rights movement spanned many administrations, the most progress occurred during the terms of President Kennedy and President Johnson, thus we will examine the relationship between two different Presidential administrations Martin Luther King, Jr. Each correspondence between the two groupsRead MoreJohn F. Kennedys Agenda in Civil Rights Address1133 Words   |  5 PagesWhen John F. Kennedy took the presidential office in January of 1961, the United States was at the forefront of the civil rights movement. Kennedy inherited a country that was mostly segregated in the southern states. African American civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. were busy trying to unify the south to allow for all equal rights. Protests, sit-in’s, and demonstrations became a common occurrence as African American p eople were being discriminated against. President Kennedy usedRead MoreJohn Grisham s The Pelican Brief884 Words   |  4 PagesIn John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief, two supreme court justices are assassinated, which the reader can compare to other assassinations in history. With former president John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the reader can connect the political aspects of the book to a real life situation, and with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the reader can see how sometimes your very own opinions can get you killed (Grisham). The reader can also compare John Grisham himself to both Kennedy and King becauseRead MoreAfter slavery was abolished, African Americans never had the same rights as other U.S. citizens. In800 Words   |  4 Pagesthe United States. For the most part, there were three presidents that had the most impact on the civil rights movement; D. D. Eisenhower, J. F. Kennedy, and L. B. Johnson. During the events that unfolded in the time period that these three men were presidents, Kennedy impacted the movement the most, Johnson continued that success, and Eisenhower was silently opposed but made a few contributions to supporting the civil rights movement. President Eisenhower was elected into office in 1952 and beganRead MoreJohn Grisham s The Pelican Brief885 Words   |  4 PagesIn John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief, two supreme court justices are assassinated, which the reader can compare to other assassinations in history. With former president John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the reader can connect the political aspects of the book to a real life situation, and with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the reader can see how sometimes your very own opinions can get you killed (Grisham). The reader can also compare John Grisham himself to both Kennedy and King becauseRead MoreThe Selma Incident Of The Civil Rights Movement1320 Words   |  6 Pageselected Barack Obama president of the United States, the first time an African American candidate has been elected to the office of the presidency. This historic election was described by John Lewis, a longtime civil rights activist as â€Å"what comes at the end of the bridge in Selma†. (413) This was a reference to the incident on March 7th, 1965 when â€Å"police officers used clubs and tear gas against a group of civil rights demonstrators led by the reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as they protested theRead MoreRacism And Social Discrimination Essay835 Words   |  4 Pagesdocument, I will be analyzing the sources â€Å"Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail† and â€Å"John F. Kennedy, Televised Address Promoting the Civil Rights Act†. These sources show the courage and determination of a powerful leader and speaker that paved the way for equal rights and exhibited changed that were beneficial to society. First I will be analyzing the first document by Martin Luther King, â€Å"Letter from a Birmingham Jail†. In this letter Dr. King addresses several clergymen who had writtenRead MoreA Life Well Lived By Martin Luther King Jr.1535 Words   |  7 Pagesthreat to justice everywhere.† Expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King wasn’t always interested in leading others and seeking peace but everything changed in college. He lived his whole life by leading others to stand up and peacefully fight against injustice. Martin Luther King Jr. was a humanitarian and leader who fought for American rights and for peace, fairness, and kindness. To begin with, Martin Luther King Jr, originally born as Michael King Jr, was born on January 15, 1929. He was bornRead MoreWhat I Found in a Time Capsule in the Year 2325854 Words   |  3 PagesThe very first item that we found was a news paper clipping about the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. John F Kennedy, affectionately known by his family as Jack, and by the nation as JFK; was the 35th president of the United States beginning in January 1961 up until November 1963 when he was tragically shot down during a motorcade in downtown Dallas Texas Dealey Plaza. The President was beginning to work on his presidential campaign for the next term, he had not officiallyRead MoreLetter From Birmingham Jail By Dr. Martin Luther King1510 Words   |  7 PagesBirmingham Jail was a letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from a solitary confinement cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Some portions of the letter were written and gradually smuggled out by King s lawyer on scraps of paper including, by some reports, rough jailhouse toilet paper. Violent racist terror against African Americans was so horrible in Birmingham in the summer of 1963 that the city was being referred to by some locals as â€Å"Bombingham†. King had been arrested while participating in

The Loons Free Essays

string(178) " a Metis through the social rejection which characterizes Manawaka’s view of her family:   Ã¢â‚¬ËœI bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh\? ’ I began respectfully\." Journal of the Short Story in English 48   (Spring 2007) Varia †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Jennifer Murray Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢ € ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Electronic reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English [Online], 48  |  Spring 2007, Online since 01 juin 2009, Connection on 01 avril 2013. URL  : http:// jsse. revues. We will write a custom essay sample on The Loons or any similar topic only for you Order Now org/index858. html Publisher: Presses universitaires d’Angers http://jsse. revues. org http://www. revues. org Document available online on: http://jsse. revues. org/index858. html Document automatically generated on 01 avril 2013. The page numbering does not match that of the print edition.  © All rights reserved Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 2 Jennifer Murray Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† : p. 71-80 1 2 3 4 5 â€Å"The Loons† belongs to Margaret Laurence’s story-sequence A Bird in the House which is built around the character Vanessa MacLeod and her growing-up years in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba. Following on from the collection’s title story which has the death of Vanessa’s father as its central event, â€Å"The Loons† is set in a time prior to the father’s death and is the first of three stories which deal with Vanessa’s progressive opening up to the world around her and her increasing awareness of the suffering, poverty and forms of oppression outside of her family circle (Stovel 92). More specifically, â€Å"The Loons† gives u s Vanessa’s perception of a young girl called Piquette Tonnerre who is of Metis descent and who accumulates the social disadvantages of poverty, illness, ethnic discrimination and being female. The story has been taken to task for the questionable values attached to its use of Piquette as the stereotype of the doomed minority figure, most notably by Tracy Ware who asks: â€Å"To what extent [does this short story] confirm a debased master narrative that regards Natives as victims of a triumphant white civilization? † (71). At the same time, Ware recognizes the â€Å"enduring sense of [the] aesthetic merit† (71) of this story which so clearly has its place within the canon of Canadian literature. Evaluating the text against its depiction of the Metis can only lead to the negative conclusions that Ware arrives at, namely, that Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† falls ideologically short of the expectations of today’s politically-conscious reader. What this reading of â€Å"The Loons† does not take into account is that the â€Å"aesthetic merit† of the story is situated elsewhere—not in the portrait or role of Piquette as such, but in the story’s treatment of loss and in the central role of the father in the symbolics of this particular knot of meaning. In the context of the full story-sequence, loss and the father would seem more naturally associated in â€Å"A Bird in the House,† where the death of the father is the central event. In â€Å"The Loons,† the death of the father is recalled and reactivated as an informing event related to other moments in Vanessa’s life and to her relationship to others, Piquette bearing the weight of this role as ‘other’. On one level—that of Vanessa’s childhood perception of Piquette2—the story is about incomprehension, misconstruction, defensiveness and the impossibility of communication between the two girls. But the entire history of this failed relationship is revisited through the narrating voice of the adult Vanessa; in the telling of the story, she reshapes past events through the experience of loss provoked by her father’s death and invests them with symbolic value. Like the dreamer and the dream, Vanessa’s story is more about Vanessa than about those around her; it is her attempt to fit her own sense of loss into a world which is, more than she knows, beyond her. The father’s role in giving Vanessa access to symbolic values is central to the story; indeed, the first ‘event’ in the story is the father’s announcement of his concern (as a doctor) for the health of the young Piquette, who is in his care. After having prepared the ground briefly, he asks his wife: â€Å"Beth, I was thinking—what about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer? A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance† (110). This act of social generosity, which is to involve his whole family, introduces the reader to the father’s values; it also inaugurates the continuing association in the text between the father and Piquette. The father is a reference point for Piquette; she invokes him to justify her refusal to accompany Vanessa on a short walk: â€Å"Your dad said I ain’t supposed to do no more walking than I got to† (113), and in later years, Piquette tells Vanessa, â€Å"Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me† (116). This positive assessment of the father is Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 3 6 the only shared ground between the girls. In response to the comment above, Vanessa â€Å"nodded speechlessly [†¦ ] certain that [Piquette] was speaking the truth† (116). In the name of her love for her father, Vanessa will make several attempts at approaching Piquette: these attempts are regularly met with rejection, leading to a moment of hurt for Vanessa: ‘Want to come and play? ’ Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn. ‘I ain’t a kid,’ she said. Wounded, I stamped angrily away [†¦]. 112) 7 8 This pattern recurs twice on the following page, with Piquette’s â€Å"scorn† taking on other forms —â€Å"Her voice was distant† (113); â€Å"her large dark unsmiling eyes† (113)—and her refusals becoming more verbally aggressive: â€Å"You nuts or somethin’? † (113); â€Å"Who gives a g ood goddamn? † (114). The impossibility of sharing between the girls is seen both from the perspective of the child Vanessa, who is mystified, â€Å"wondering what I could have said wrong† (113), and from the more experienced perspective offered by the narrated construction of events. This double vision allows the reader to see the misperceptions and involuntary insensitivity on which Vanessa’s attempts at communication are based. Where Vanessa fantasizes Piquette into â€Å"a real Indian† (112) and projects onto her the knowledge of the ‘secrets’ of nature, Piquette lives her identity as a Metis through the social rejection which characterizes Manawaka’s view of her family:   Ã¢â‚¬ËœI bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh? ’ I began respectfully. You read "The Loons" in category "Papers" †¦] ‘I don’t know what in hell you’re talkin’ about,’ she replied. [†¦] If you mean where my old man, and me, and all them live, you better shut up, by Jesus, you hear? ’ (113) 9 While the child cannot understand the defensiveness of Piquette, as readers, our knowledge of Piquette’s social conditions, outlined in the opening paragraphs of the story, leads us to a pos ition of empathy with the offended girl. Similar effects are produced by Vanessa’s enthusiasm about her summer cottage, —â€Å"‘I love it,’ I said. We come here every summer,’† (113)—expressed in the face of Piquette’s poverty, which habitually excludes her from the world of lakeside summer homes. Just as much as Piquette’s social disadvantages, Vanessa’s self-absorbed immersion in the comforts of middle-class Manawaka is the source of the girls’ mutual wariness. As the narrator of the story, the older version of Vanessa puts forward expressions of regret at the failure of the relationship between herself as a child, and Piquette. This regret, however, is not distinct from childhood, but a part of it, recounted in the past tense: â€Å"Piquette and I remained ill at ease with one another. I felt I had somehow failed my father, but I did not know what was the matter, nor why she would not or could not respond† (115). The linguistic markers â€Å"somehow† and â€Å"did not know† suggest that the emotional experience of failure remained confusing for the child, but the ability to formulate this metadiscourse indicates that things have become clearer to the adult Vanessa. This acquired comprehension allows the narrator to develop the expression of failure once again, two pages further on, including, this time, more details about the possible expectations of the father: Yet I felt no real warmth towards her—I only felt that I ought to, because of that distant summer and because my father had hoped she would be company for me, or perhaps that I would be for her, but it had not happened that way. (117) 10 Through the voice of the more experienced Vanessa, the regret of the past is understood to have been intimately related to a sense of having failed not herself, nor Piquette, but her father. The focus is on the father’s symbolic role in attributing potential value to the possibility of their friendship. Along with the father’s generosity towards Piquette, a series of other values related to the father are offered in the short story. The father’s name, MacLeod, is also the name which designates the family cottage (111), which itself is associated with nature and authenticity: it Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 4 11 s the father who comes and sits by the lake with Vanessa to listen to the loons (114); the lake, the nighttime, the loons, all come to signify intuitive communication (â€Å"we waited, without speaking†), mystery and transcendence (â€Å"They rose like phantom birds†), a reproach to human civilization (â€Å"Plaintive, and yet with a quality of chilling mockery, those voices belonged to a world separated by aeons from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home†) (114). The idea that the loons belong to a separate world is reinforced by the father’s comment that the loons had been there â€Å"before any person ever set foot here† (114). The loons are both a form of access to the continuum of natural time as opposed to civilized time, and a reminder that man cannot bridge that gap; there is therefore a form of retrospective loss attached to the image of the loons: the imagined loss of what came before and is now inaccessible. However, the birds also prefigure future loss—the enduring presence of the loons is endangered, as Vanessa tells Piquette: My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away. 114) 12 We can also see the metonymic association between this loss and the approaching end of the permanence of Vanessa’s world; her father, associated with the loons in Vanessa’s childhood, is soon to disappear: â€Å"Neither of us suspected that this would be the last time we would ever sit here together on the shore, listening† (115). The symbolic charge of the los s of the loons is therefore great for Vanessa, but meaningless to young Piquette, who, on learning of the precarious situation of the birds, says: â€Å"Who gives a good goddamn? (114). For Piquette, they are literally, â€Å"a bunch of squawkin’ birds† (115). Meaning is to do with symbolic construction and â€Å"The Loons†, for all of its focus on Piquette, is about Vanessa’s construction of personal meaning. Coral Ann Howells notes that Vanessa’s choosing to write about Piquette is a way of â€Å"silently displacing her own feelings into [Piquette’s] story† (41). This process is clearest in the paragraph which announces the father’s death: That winter my father died of pneumonia, after less than a week’s illness. For some time I saw nothing around me, being completely immersed in my own pain and my mother’s. When I looked outward once more, I scarcely noticed that Piquette Tonnerre was no longer at school. (115) 13 14 The words which tell of the loss of the father are almost immediately followed by words which tell of the disappearance of Piquette. This is given in the form of a negation: â€Å"I scarcely noticed†¦,† but what the young Vanessa had â€Å"scarcely noticed,† the narrating Vanessa gives weight to by placing it in verbal proximity to the death of the father, obliquely associating the two events. Through indirection, therefore, Vanessa speaks of her own loss. But the process is not entirely parasitic; in the telling, she also constructs Piquette. Piquette is, in some ways, a difficult character for today’s reader to take on board: like Pique, the daughter of Morag Gunn in the final Manawaka story, â€Å"The Diviners†, she â€Å"suffers from the weight of too much thematic relevance† (Howells 51) since, as I noted earlier, she accumulates an extraordinary number of handicaps, all of which are seen to be indirectly related to her Metis origins. In spite of the older Vanessa’s gentle mocking of her earlier self in her desire to ‘naturalize’ Piquette into a folkloric Indian, the story does imply that part of Piquette’s tragedy is that, like the loons, she belongs to a more ‘authentic’ heritage which has been/is being destroyed. 3 The romanticism which the narrating voice mocks is nonetheless supported by the story’s symbolism, as is the attempt to fix Piquette into a sterile, stereotyped role of ‘representativity,’ something that Piquette’s direct discourse has violently rejected. Yet, we do have access to a more tenacious Piquette; in her silences, rejections, and refusals, she is a character who is fighting for her own survival in a world clearly divided along class lines and this tenacity is seen principally in her rejection of Vanessa’s self-satisfaction. Vanessa’s sense of superiority over Piquette is implicit in the narrator’s comments about the Metis girl’s invisibility to her younger self; at that time, Piquette was but â€Å"a vaguely embarrassing presence† who â€Å"moved somewhere within my scope of vision† (109). Moreover, Piquette can drop out of sight for years without notice: â€Å"I do not remember seeing her at all Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 5 until four years later† (115). It would seem to be the total separateness of their social worlds that creates and sustains what might be experienced as a ‘lack of affinity’. Whereas these social differences remain unformulated to the child Vanessa, they are close to the surface for Piquette whose discourse refuses to endorse the smugness of the well-off Vanessa: ‘Do you like this place,’ I asked [†¦] Piquette shrugged. It’s okay. Good as anywhere. ’ ‘I love it,’ I said, ‘We come here every summer. ’ ‘So what? ’ (113) 15 Other details suggest a Piquette who has dreams of her own, but who cannot allow herself to expose them to others: â€Å"When she saw me approaching, her hand squashed flat the sand castle she had been building, and she looked at me sulle nly, without speaking† (113). For Piquette, the child Vanessa is a potential enemy, someone to guard oneself against. Dreams cannot be shared, and cannot even be envisaged within the society of which Vanessa is a part. Indeed, even in her later teenage years, Piquette holds no hope of improvement for herself within the confines of small-town Manawaka: â€Å"Boy, you couldn’t catch me stayin’ here. I don’ give a shit about this place. It stinks† (116). Piquette knows that Manawaka holds nothing for her in the sense that no one there believes in her chances for a better future. When she becomes engaged to be married, she remarks that, â€Å"All the bitches an’ biddies in this town will sure be surprised† (117). The implication that the town gossips have nothing good to say about Piquette is underscored by Vanessa’s own reactions. On seeing Piquette several years after the summer at the cottage, Vanessa is â€Å"repelled† and â€Å"embarrassed† by her, and although she is â€Å"ashamed† at her own attitude, she gives way to an emphatic outpouring of animosity towards the teenage girl:   Ã‚  Ã‚  I could not help despising the self-pity in her voice. I wished she would go away. I did not want to see her. I did not know what to say to her. It seemed that we had nothing to say to one another. (117) 16 The force of this expression suggests a negative identification with Piquette on Vanessa’s part. It is as if Piquette represents the photo negative of Vanessa’s life; the result of poverty, illness, and lack of education made flesh and standing there as a threat to the integrity of Vanessa’s identity as a middle-class, reasonably well-educated girl with a future. There is no indication in the story that Vanessa ever overcomes this violent rejection of Piquette during the Metis girl’s lifetime. This moment of intense emotional confrontation is followed by what may be seen as the story’s signature moment: For the merest instant, then, I saw her. I really did see her, for the first and only time in all the years we had both lived in the same town. Her defiant face, momentarily, became unguarded and unmasked, and in her eyes there was a terrifying hope. (117) 17 These last two words encapsulate the relative positions of the two girls. Where Piquette ‘reveals’ her most guarded treasure—hope, arguably the most positive emotion which exists, Vanessa reproduces the condemning judgement of the town; with the word â€Å"terrifying,† she declares this hope to be without any ground. It is therefore coherent with Vanessa’s view of Piquette’s life that the Metis woman should be left as a single mother, follow in the drunken path of her father, and finally die in a house fire along with her two children. Vanessa’s reaction to this news is, â€Å"I did not say anything. As so often with Piquette, there did not seem to be anything to say† (119). It is not that there is ‘nothing to say’ about Piquette, but rather, that what there is to say would involve a questioning of community values which would also have to be a form of self-questioning. The narrative does not take the direction of a critique of human and social relationships; it deals with the vague sense of guilt expressed by the narrator—â€Å"I wished I could put from my memory the look that I had seen once in Piquette’s eyes† (119)—by sublimating Piquette into the symbol (along with the loons) of something lost. The ground is prepared through the falling action of the story which lists the avalanche of losses which Vanessa experiences after having heard about Piquette’s death: â€Å"The MacLeod cottage had been sold after my father’s Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 6 death†; â€Å"The small pier which my father had built was gone†; â€Å"Diamond Lake had been renamed Lake Wapakata†; and finally, â€Å"I realized that the loons were no longer there† (119). These different elements reinstall the triad of the father, the loons and nature as the paradigm of loss and the narrator then brings Piquette into this sphere of symbolism: I remember how Piquette had scorned to come along when my father and I sat there and listened to the lake birds. It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognised way, Piquette might have been the only one, after all, who had heard the crying of the loons. (120) 18 19 â€Å"Piquette,† â€Å"father,† â€Å"lake,† â€Å"birds,† â€Å"loons†: all of these words are given a place in the final paragraph. The narrator too, is present amongst these elements, and her place as the one who reconstructs meaning is affirmed: â€Å"I remember how [†¦]. † But it is affirmed, finally, as a process of questioning: in the phrase, â€Å"It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognised way,† (where it is uncertain as to whether it is the narrator’s unconscious or Piquette’s which is being invoked), the narrator seems to romanticize Piquette’s Metis status into the ‘natural’ world and confer on her the positive charge of nostalgia related to loss. In this statement of restricted awareness, it would seem that the narrator is trying to resolve the problem of her own position in relation to Piquette; the irreconcilable distinction between how she felt towards Piquette and how she felt she should have felt, if only for her father’s sake. The solution to this is to transform Piquette from the living girl—judged by so ciety, including Vanessa and her mother—as â€Å"sullen and gauche and badly dressed,† â€Å"a real slattern,† â€Å"a mess† (118), into a symbol: a young girl, representative of an oppressed minority, with a tragic destiny, doomed to die. In this form, the loss of Piquette can be associated with both the death of the father and the disappearance of the loons; the desire to bring Piquette into this association suggests an unresolved sense of guilt—towards the girl character, on the level of the diegesis, but also towards the Metis people, whose â€Å"long silence† (108) is echoed in the â€Å"quiet all around me† experienced by Vanessa (119) as she becomes aware of the disappearance of the loons. Silenced by death, Piquette’s ‘otherness’ can be neutralized and romanticized into nostalgia. The contradictions which structure â€Å"The Loons† give the story its force. In spite of the control of the adult narrator in the choice and ordering of memory, there is no attempt to beautify the emotions of her childhood self. The limited, often egocentric aspects of her childhood perspective are rendered, so that the reader’s sympathy goes out towards the other girl, Piquette. This construction of perspective may be een as a form of generosity, whereby, in spite of Vanessa’s statement that â€Å"there was nothing to say,† the narrator’s rendering of the past has allowed the reader to achieve an awareness of Piquette’s specificity as a character: she has moved from the general sense of absence which characterizes her in Vanessa’s memory, to a form of visibility in which the reader may see her as the victim of multiple ve ctors of oppression; in this context, her ‘defiance’ and ‘sullenness’ become the marks of a fighting spirit, and her ‘hope,’ the sign of her humanity. Through these effects constructed by the narrating voice, the earlier generosity of the father is ultimately echoed and loss takes on its complex human dimension. Bibliography Howells, Coral Ann. Private and Fictional Words : Canadian Women Novelists of the 1970s and 1980s. London: Methuen, 1987. Laurence, Margaret. A Bird in the House (1970). Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Stovel, Bruce. â€Å"Coherence in A Bird in the House,† in New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence : Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Ed. Greta McCormick Coger. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. Vauthier, Simone. â€Å"‘A Momentary Stay Against Confusion’ : A Reading of Margaret Laurence’s ‘To Set Our House in Order. ’† The Journal of the Short Story in English vol. 3 (1984): 87-108. Ware, Tracy. â€Å"Race and Conflict in Garner’s ‘One-Two-Three Little Indians’ and Laurence’s ‘The Loons. ’† Studies in Canadian Literature vol. 23:2 (1998) : 71-84. Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 7 Notes   I am grateful to my colleagues in Besancon who participated in a discussion on â€Å"The Loons. † 2   See Vauthier (96-99) for a detailed analysis of Vanessa’s function as narrator (based on the short story â€Å"To Set Our House in Order,† but equally valid here). 3    Indeed, Tracy Ware argues that the associat ion of Piquette with nature, on the basis of her Metis origins, â€Å"den[ies] Piquette her full humanity, [and it also] makes a tragic outcome inevitable. We will never be able to imagine a future for people whom we regard as separate[d] from us ‘by aeons’† (80).   Margery Fee’s comment, quoted in Ware, that â€Å"Native people [†¦] are so rarely depicted as individuals, because they must bear the burden of the Other—of representing all that the modern person has lost† (Ware 82), seems relevant to the construction of Piquette as a character who comes to bear the symbolic weight of the very idea of loss. 5   Ware declares that this symbol is â€Å"a misrecognition because it ignores the historical struggles of both Natives and Metis† (79). References Electronic reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English [Online], 48  |  Spring 2007, Online since 01 juin 2009, Connection on 01 avril 2013. URL  : http://jsse. revues. org/index858. html Bibliographical reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English, 48  |  2007, 71-80. Jennifer Murray Jennifer Murray is an associate professor at the University of Franche-Comte. Her research is focused primarily on Canadian literature and on American writers from the South. Ms. Murray’s publications include articles on Margaret Atwood, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor and Tennessee Williams. She is currently working on the short stories of Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro. Copyright  © All rights reserved Abstract Je me propose ici d’etudier l’impact symbolique de la disparition du pere dans â€Å"  The Loons  Ã¢â‚¬ , une nouvelle de Margaret Laurence. Au niveau de l’intrigue, l’histoire est celle d’une amitie impossible entre la narratrice, Vanessa, fille de medecin, et une jeune metisse, Piquette, soignee par le pere de Vanessa. Les differences de niveau social, d’education et d’origine ethnique creent une incomprehension fondamentale entre les deux filles et vouent a l’echec les tentatives de Vanessa de sympathiser avec Piquette. Cet insucces attriste Vanessa  ; elle pense avoir decu son pere qui esperait que le sort de sa jeune patiente serait adouci par le contact avec sa famille. Devant son incapacite a transformer la realite et le remords qu’elle en eprouve, la narratrice transforme son souvenir de Piquette, l’exclue, en symbole. Ce symbole se developpe autour d’un noyau d’elements semantiques associes a l’authenticite, la nature, et la nostalgie du passe  ; des concepts valorises par le pere, et qui, pour la narratrice sont lies au sentiment de perte occasionne par sa mort Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 How to cite The Loons, Papers

Subject Development Task Pgce free essay sample

Exploring Subject Pedagogy. French- past tense I have addressed French as an area that needs further development. I have highlighted in my weekly evaluations my concerns about teaching a year 9 class as I strongly feel that my knowledge would be stretched far beyond its limits. However, as I am keen to improve and enhance my linguistic skills, I have taken on board the challenge and done my most to ensure that pupils are given ample opportunity to understand and manipulate the language. Given that the pupils are a bottom set, I eave found it even more challenging to cater for their needs, however, I have created a lot of authentic resources, been proactive in terms of seeking advice from other members of staff and made full use of my subject knowledge audit as a way to enhance my knowledge and understanding of French. I used the current unit of work provided by the department and made some amendments with the permission of the main teacher. We will write a custom essay sample on Subject Development Task Pgce or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page I explored the different assessments (formative and summarize) that the unit of work aimed to incorporate by the end of the term and made note of hither the activities incorporated in the unit of work addressed all four skill areas. I also made sure that the activities detailed were appropriate for their current level. Once I had obtained sufficient information, I decided to look at the resources available (textbooks) and used this as a tool to help me understand the vocabulary and structures that pupils needed to know for each unit. As aforementioned, pupils were working towards a level 4 which is way below the national level for their age group. To ensure that the content of the work illustrated in the textbook was appropriate for their level, I had to adapt all the material and create my own resources and power points to water-down the text so that it was do-able but at the same time presented opportunities for a challenge. Once I had a sound understanding as to what topic I was expected to teach, what the content of the topic entailed, the levels the pupils expected to achieve and the vocabulary used, I decided to draft a lesson overview and calculate approximately how long each topic would take to deliver in the given timeshare (Easter). Once the lessons had been mapped ND the direction confirmed, I decided to analyses the vocabulary for each unit and highlight the potential difficulties that pupils may encounter so that I could use my knowledge to find an appropriate solution such as making flashcards so that pupils could have more opportunity to practice challenging concepts, making sure that my explanations are concise and clear, making provisions for reinforced activities and extension tasks etc. I regularly conversed with my subject mentor and identified areas in which I had concerns. Based on her advice, I was about to reflect on how articulacy grammatical concepts in French should be delivered to the class. It was thought that the best way to introduce the past tense to weak students was via constant repetition and reinforcement activities. I decided to use a lot of hands-on activities to help pupils engage in the task and to more importantly, understand the concept. In addition, I used a lot of questioning techniques and made sure that pupils were given sufficient opportunities to work together to solve tasks instead of the exercise being completely teacher-led. Even though this is a bottom set class, I eave always maintained the belief that pupils should take more accountability and responsibility for their learning irrespective of their ability. Therefore, I tried to devise ways in which pupils could become more independent and less needy. I shared my ideas with my subject mentor and she seemed to very enthusiastic about the notion and encouraged me to pursue my quest for greater autonomy in the classroom. By making subtle adaptations to the unit of work, I believe that I was able to incorporate a greater element of fun and appropriately matched the tasks to pupils learning needs.