Macbeth by William Shakespeare :: Papers

Macbeth by William Shakespeare Recently in class we have read and studied one of Shakespeare's most famous plays: Macbeth. I found the language a bit difficult to understand and rather archaic but the themes as relevant as they were when the play was written and set. The play was an intriguing one. Whilst studying the play we were focusing on the main character whom the play was based upon and named after, Macbeth. Having finished the play, I felt a sense of pride and achievement that I have read a Shakespearean play. In this evaluation I wish to consider the accuracy of Malcolm's comment that Macbeth died a "butcher" Macbeth towards the end of the play appeared extremely cold and heartless yet at the beginning was a hero who did have good qualities which is why it was such a tragedy that he turned evil. Macbeth is a very complex character and Shakespeare began by highlighting his good points, portraying him as a decent person thus making us care what happens to him. Macbeth being hailed a hero,(in Act1Sc2) was a well-deserved title. He was a brave and gallant soldier, ironically fighting against traitorous behaviour to the king. We are told in gory detail that he "unseamed" one traitor by ripping him apart with his sword from his navel to his mouth showing his military capability Described as "Belona's bridegroom" by Rosse, Macbeth was being compared with Mars, the Roman God of War a compliment by any standard. This reinforces the bravery and ability of Macbeth and showed that in the context of his times, Macbeth was a first class soldier and admired by many. In fact, to the bitter end Macbeth remains a brave character fighting against all odds when he himself has become the traitor. Another virtue of Macbeth's is that he is held in high regard by the king. On several occasions, King Duncan praises Macbeth going as far as saying on one occasion, " we love him highly". King Duncan obviously held a lot of trust in Macbeth even visiting his castle and

Toy Story

Name: Karl Dent Instructor: Morgen Thomas SP13: SOC 101 Date: Mar 19, 2013 â€Å"A Toy's Story Observation† When you think about toys the first thing that comes to mind is the joy they gave when you were a kid growing up, and the smile they put on your kid’s face when you see them playing with them on a daily basis. What if toys could talk? What information would they give us? What would they tell us? Recently I set out on a quest to better understand what information I could get just by looking at the toys in my local neighborhood toy store and how they shape the mind of kids from a young age.Unfortunately for me, the day I went to the toy store there were not many people shopping, so this made my research a little harder to complete. I wandered around the store for several hours, going through many different aisles and looking at many different toys. At times I felt like I was being watched; it was so quiet I could hear whispers as if the little action figures were gi ving me the information I needed. By looking at toys as a way of seeing things from a sociological stand point, I can understand why the manufacturers of toys make certain types and what goals they are trying to accomplish.By studying different toys, I started to use them as tools to see the world in a new way and to see how they shape society from both nature and nurture. My views of toys were like sociological imagination; I started to see how contextual our lives are. I then realized our individual identities were only sensible in a social context. But how can you look at toys and figure out how humans behave in our society? The only possible answer I found to my question was sociology. Toys help to form one important aspect of our lives which we come to understand as gender identity.By having toys specific to boys and girls it helps us to understand what it means to be male or female. Understanding gender identity is said to be one of the most important ways we develop who we ar e and where we belong in our society. With many of the toys I observed, I noticed they would have a specific age group on the box, which is known as the functional age symbol. This helps parents understand the expected developmental growth of their child, being able to compare it with the age of the kids on the toy boxes.There was a lot of cooking toys for girls, and a lot of police toys for boys, which illustrated to me gender inequality. These toys present the message that men are dominant and above women. By looking at the boxes they showed boys play an authority figure of catching bad guys and there weren’t any girl cops on any of the police toys that I saw. This led me to believe that they saw women as being weak and not able to go out and be a police officer in the community that they would eventually grow up and be a part of.There were also toys that sent the message that some men were over other men and some women where over other women. G. I. Joe toys are a way of sh owing boys what they should grow up to be, while a princess doll shows a girl that she is expected to be a pretty lady. This is the process of general socialization in our society. While this process starts at birth, it continues throughout our lives by way of the nurturing of kids through toys. Laser tag toys are more group oriented because they require more than one person to play.This then teaches group cohesion, this is where an individual would start learning how to work as a team while playing with other people. Looking at a play house princess set you can see how that particular toy prepares girls for the future role that society would proclaim them to have. Society expects our girls to grow up and be wives, the one who is always back at home taking care of the kids and the house and making dinner for the husband. The differences in toys between girls and boys also create gender inequality.It would lead you to think that girls will grow up doing just domestic jobs and that bo ys will grow up to be cops, soldiers, firefighters, etc. Gender inequality also creates a wage gap for women in our society because it puts male and female with the same potential on an unequal playing field. NBA toys are modeled after real people. They were of James, Bosh, Williams, Durant and Griffin which are all black male players. There were not any female basketball toys; this showed the separation of race, sex, color and gender, and how sports and athletes are seen in American society.By giving athletes the achieved status of celebrity and role model, it enables the toy company to create a new market of toys based on the person and not the sport. By not promoting female sports as much as male sports, we are sending a message that male sports are more dominant than female sports and males are more important than females when it comes to sports. There were not any white basketball toys and this was an appeal by the toy company to get whiter kids involve in basketball so they ca n be famous and one day own their own toy in a toy store.Separating gender by toys can also lead to other things such as stigma and sanction by family, friends and even teachers. A girl playing with a boy toy and doing boy things will be seen as a tom boy and a boy playing with a girl toy will be seen as s sissy. This can cause serious sanction by parents if they are around friends out in public and society will view this as being deviant because they are going against the norm of what is expected from them. Ranking boys above girls is a form of social inequality and relates to the structure of mobility because it brings about what is called social stratification.One set of toys that stood out were the Home Depot toys. They showed white males being builders and taking control of the development of buildings and handling tools. This was showing men as being engineers and future bosses and did not show where girls could do the same jobs as men in the future. By not giving girls the op portunity from a young age to do what they want, we continue to limit the ability of women in our society. Toys are a very important way for kids to develop. This is one of the many ways they learn to start sharing things with each other.Toys help kids to understand their roles and gender. Day-care, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten are very good places for kids to start their venture of learning. This is where individuals and groups get a chance to interact. In this setting, they have the ability to focus on the creation of their personal identity through playing with toys and others. Of particular interest is the relationship between individual action and group pressures. Having this opportunity to be away from their parents and spend time around other kids will help them nderstand what friendship is and learn the difference between boys and girls. We can expand military toys not only to boys but also to girls because women have proven to be just as productive in the military work forces as men. Allowing boys to play with dolls without being sanctioned is a good way of teaching them how to take care of a child and be more loving when they hit adulthood. Making NBA toys for both males and females is a way to promote the WNBA as much as we do for the men and to gain the interest in the sports for more women.Making white NBA toys will show our kids that white basketball players are as good as black. Teaching girls how to work in construction is not a bad thing because women can also be successful engineers and builders. Domestic jobs such as taking care of the kids should be taught to boys and not just girls. Giving girls more access to the things that are normally set aside for boys from an early age and allowing social mobility will allow them to move from one class to another. If we made these changes we could reduce gender inequality in our society between girls and boys.

Case Study: Our Perfect Wedding Essay

Claire has done a reasonably good job about target markets for her new web based business, and understands the relevant needs quite well. But for the marketing mix, she as fallen short because it’s not clear whether this business involves one strategy or several strategies. For example, a marketing mix that appeals to engaged couples would not be the same as a marketing mix that appeals to the companies that pay for web pages. Claire’s target markets are engaged couples /newlyweds (for gift registry); companies that target newlyweds with both goods and services (with the advertising of web pages); and friends and family of the couple to be married (whom the advertisers want to reach). Claire has done a reasonably good job about target markets for her new web based business, and understands the relevant needs quite well. But for the marketing mix, she has fallen short because it’s not clear whether this business involves one strategy or several strategies. For example, a marketing mix that appeals to engaged couples would not be the same as a marketing mix that appeals to the companies that pay for web pages. Claire’s target markets are engaged couples /newlyweds (for gift registry); companies that target newlyweds with both goods and services (with the advertising of web pages); and friends and family of the couple to be married (whom the advertisers want to reach). What may or may not be obvious at first is that there is little about this business that requires that it be focused only on customers or advertisers in the same city or metro area. To the contrary, gift-givers who are inclined to get on the internet to check a wedding registry might be equally willing to order gifts from distant companies (advertisers), especially if the company provides special services such as gift wrap, personalized gift cards, and delivery direct to the recipient. Even for local customers, there may be a number of mail order, catalog, and specialty retailers in distant locations who are interested in reaching this target market. Simply focusing on retailers or service providers in the local area to generate website listings and advertising revenue may not make sense. Similarly, there is little reason that the registry service should be limited to local couples-a user of the Internet usually doesn’t know or care whether the base operation for a website is nearby or far away. To the extent that there are advantages of localizing aspects of the service, Claire could potentially set up a segmented approach in which different parts of the website were designed to appeal to people from different areas. As a start, for example, she might think about retailers or advertisers who have facilities or base operations in her own area but who also are targeting customers in other places. Let’s think about the marketing mix that Claire offers for each of these target markets. For each group: What is the specific product (and what are its benefits)? What is the price of obtaining those benefits? How are the benefits promoted? And (to a lesser extent) what is Claire’s role in the place arrangements between the advertisers and their customers? How does her current geographic focus come into play? The benefits for engaged couples seem pretty clear. The $20 price to register is not a big investment if it saves time and leads to the desired gifts rather than things that are not of interest. So, it is unlikely that price sensitivity should be big concerns unless other services appear that will provide the service (and/or other superior benefits) for free. This is certainly a possibility because revenue from advertisers could pay for the services provided if enough advertisers and customers can be attracted. If the couple doesn’t know about the service and doesn’t know to look for it, they won’t sign up. There is also some evidence for this diagnosis because the main flurry of activity came after Claire finally got some attention with publicity. That attention and interest simply wasn’t forthcoming from her limited advertising. Claire should work harder to get more publicity. There also seems to be a very important role for word-of-mouth referrals here. For example, there is no explicit discussion in the case about how friends and family of the couples are supposed to learn about the website, but it would certainly make sense to develop ideas that could be shared with the registered couples about how to inform gift givers about the website, what it is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to work. Furthermore, the relationship with couples who do sign up needs to be a close one, even if for only a short time period. Most couples are not going to be repeat customers but on the other hand, couples who are about to get married often know others who are at the same life stage; especially the among the younger first time married. Claire needs to think about how to stimulate word-of-mouth referrals so that people who do sign up help to bring in additional customers. Since she doesn’t have a lot of money, one way to do this is to think in terms of marginal revenue from new customers and what it might cost her to acquire a customer. It might be better and cheaper to offer couples who recommend the service to a friend a $5 or $10 â€Å"rebate† on the $20 fee, or perhaps she could enter them in a bi-monthly drawing for some more substantial prize like a honeymoon trip. So far, Claire has not done a particularly good job of giving advertisers a reason to buy into her service. She is basically selling a professional service to them, but most of them can’t evaluate it in advance and they are unclear about its benefits. The comparison with the cost of a Yellow Pages ad is interesting because it provides a sort of reference price for the advertiser. Yet, the advertiser probably sees some sort of Yellow Pages listing as a must buy. Perhaps this sort of website advertising will become a must buy, but probably not until more of these companies target customers who think of the web as â€Å"the place† to look for this sort of information. Claire is also being a bit production-oriented in the way she is thinking about her product. She designs web pages in her other job, and so she is thinking about potential advertisers who need a web page. But companies that already have a good web page might be more interested in something else, like a banner ad or button ad at her website that would allow a net surfer to click over to get their existing message. Companies that have already invested in a website know that they face the same problem that Claire does–they want to attract people to the site. So, for them the value of banner ads (perhaps at a lower cost, or even with the fee based on the number of click-through from Claire’s website) might be easier to see. Claire also might think about the pricing arrangement for advertisers. She currently bundles the price of the on-time service of preparing the web page and the ongoing online web page. She might want to charge separately for the preparation of the web page and/or allow customers to have something more elaborate than a single page. Claire’s service in many ways operates with the same approach as a magazine attracting an audience and advertisers who want to reach that audience. Yet, most companies that sell advertising media time and space rely on personal selling and/or offer incentives to advertising agencies or others that refer business. Claire hasn’t done much personal selling to advertisers, even after her direct response mailing didn’t work. The case offers several hints why she didn’t like the job she had doing personal selling, and she is busy doing other things. It is likely that if she is going to need to get help if the personal selling parts of her promotion blend is going to be handled well. Since she doesn’t have a big budget, she might think about trying to find someone who would sell advertising space on her website on a straight commission basis. That way, she would not have much expense until she had revenues. Of course, the salesperson would still need to have a good story to tell, and that might depend on having a way to better establish the link between the advertiser’s sales and visits to the websites. For example, if Claire could convince advertisers to offer a small discount to customers who purchased because of the website she might be more successful in getting customers to tell the advertisers that â€Å"I am an OurPerfectWedding. com† customer. The case also portrays her as a doer not as a planner, which is in part true. She had an idea but doesn’t have a detailed plan for what needs to be done. Rather, she hasn’t yet really made the investment of time and money to give her idea a chance to work. She’s a doer when it comes to some things but has not really been a dedicated doer when it comes to getting this business started. She probably wouldn’t have the time to do that unless she gave up her full-time job or really cut back on her social life. While it is not hard to think about different things that Claire could do, what is perhaps more relevant is what is she willing to do.