Vendetta Essay Example for Free

Vendetta Essay 1. What period in history do you believe is portrayed in this movie? Considering the general circumstances illustrated in the movie; citizens afraid of its government, I believe, the period in history is when democracy was belittled, and government dominated with oppressive force. Since at various times the connection between V and Guy Fawkes is emphasized, the movie seems to be based on the historical event of November 5th, 1605; the date Guy Fawkes was arrested for conspiracy to blow up the parliament building. 2. Who do you believe in history does Chancellor Adam Sutler most resemble? It seems that since the period when the Guy Fawkes incident happened was when a protestant King was ruling England, Chancellor Adam Sutler equates to the figure aforementioned. However, in light of the Chancellor’s characteristics, he may represent another figure in history; Adolf Hitler. The rationale behind the link is because they both were dictators of a country that used military force to rule the country, and eradicated specific targets; for instance the gay for High Chancellor, and the Jewish for Adolf Hitler. 3. Who do the â€Å"Fingermen† represent in history? If the High Chancellor represents Adolf Hitler, the Fingermen would most likely symbolize the Nazis. The people who carried out rules, regardless of its brutality, directed by the head. 4. What or who does Lewis Prothero represent? I had heard once that in the period of the Nazi’s domination, there were a few people who expressed dissention through literary works, and since Lewis Prothero used his composition skills comically portray High Chancellor, shedding a light on the injustice of the government, from the little knowledge I have, Lewis Prothero seems to represent those who voiced their disagreement of the Nazi regime. 5. Who do the people taken into the prisons represents? There were a variety of people that were taken into prisons. First, there were those who did not fit in with the government’s ideals; most significantly gay people and those who showed objection to the government. Another group was those that became the target of a biological study. These fictional people of the movie most likely represent the victims of the Holocaust. 6. Is â€Å"V† a terrorist or is he an avenger? Why? V is both a terrorist and an avenger. V can be labeled a terrorist because he used extreme force to show his dissent with the government, injuring and murdering innocent people along with the act. However, if he were only a terrorist, he needn’t kill the specific people that took part in the biological study. 7. What has happened to the United States in this movie? The United States is portrayed to have fallen from its once superior state and failed to keep itself intact. 8. Why does â€Å"V† have such a grudge against Lewis Prothero? One main reason V has a grudge against Lewis Prothero is because he was the commanding officer of the particular prison that conducted a biological study on innocent people. Another may be because of the fact that he serves as the voice of the propagandizing the government. 9. What is Evey Hammond’s occupation and what kind of person is she in the beginning? What kind of person does she become later on? Evey Hammond holds a minor job at the broadcasting station and although she has all the reason to avenge on the government for its atrocities done on her family, she complies with the rules of the government and lives as a dutiful citizen.  However after she meets V, she loses the sense of fear she had lived with all her life, and frees her suppressed anger. 10. In whose footsteps does â€Å"V† follow? What is the date that is so important in the movie? And why is it so important? V follows the footsteps of the character of the movie he shows Evey; he chooses his idea over love. The date that keeps coming up is the 5th of November. Its role in the movie is significant because it’s the same date in history that Guy Fawkes and his accomplices planned to change the country by removing the leading people, the same objective and similar means of V’s plan.

Comparing Spiritual Growth in Gardeners Grendel and Hesses Siddhartha

Spiritual Growth in Gardener's Grendel and Hesse's Siddhartha      Ã‚   A mythical beast who finds meaning in killing and a questioning wanderer who cannot find meaning in being: both John Gardener's Grendel and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha grow and develop spiritually, yet their authors use vastly different styles to convey these changes.    John Gardner's revolutionary style is not encompassed by a single genre; instead, he mixes first-person narrative and several different literary styles to give the "Ruiner of Meadhalls" a unique voice. The use of first-person narrative is essential to convey Grendel's spiritual growth. Were it not for Grendel's often self-deprecatory tone, which varies from mocking - "big shaggy monster intense and earnest, bent like a priest at his prayers" (72) - to bitter and cynical - "I, Grendel, was the dark side. The terrible race that God cursed" (51) - Grendel would be impossible to relate to. Even Grendel's bouts of insanity - (whispering, whispering. Grendel has it occurred to you my dear that you are crazy?)" are easily understood.    Grendel varies from the simple, childish tone of "'Why can't I have someone to talk to? The Shaper has people to talk to'" (53) to the dense philosophical metaphors and complex diction of Grendel's conversation with the dragon. Gardener gives Grendel a purposefully guileless voice to illustrate both the monster's feelings of lost youth as well as his progression into a more sentient being.    "I think I was half prepared, in my dark, demented state, to see God, bearded and gray as geometry, scowling down at me, shaking his bloodless finger. (53)    The nihilistic dragon disagrees with Grendel's humanization, regarding men scornfully a... ...orld, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration, and respect.' (147)    Siddhartha progresses from an aloof and slightly arrogant youth, not unlike young Grendel, to a wise, satisfied man.    The central difference between John Gardener's Grendel and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, both stories of spiritual growth and development, is not thematic. Instead, vast differences in tone and language make the self-deprecating monster easy to empathize with and the soul-searching wanderer simple and detached. Despite their stylistic differences, both works stand alone as examples of philosophical and spiritual evolution.    Works Cited   Gardner, John. Grendel. 1971; rpt. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Hesse, Herman. Siddhartha. Dover Publications, 1998.   

Political Culture of Mexico

Mexican Political Culture As once put by Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, Mexico is a land of â€Å"super-imposed pasts† (McCormick, p. 326). It continues to be and is seen as a melding pot of its European and Native American ideas about society, law and government. Its history has had a major influence on the political culture of Mexico, seen through years of revolution, violence and corruption. Mexico is a considered a new democracy, but there is a tension still seen between democracy and authoritarianism. The country we see today has impressive growth yet is still enduring poverty. It’s a geographically diverse country, with a population of approximately 106million people. Latin American political culture is seen as â€Å"elitist, hierarchical, authoritarian, corporatist and patrimonial. † Various economic pressures and calculated changes being made to the system of government are now challenging these traditions in Mexico, hopefully to ultimately restore the relationship between the government and people. (McCormick, pg. 33) Today, many of the politics we see in Mexico do still reflect the centralized and hierarchical system of the Aztecs, but we see much change in the country after the arrival of Europeans. Until the 15th century, native peoples inhabited the current Mexico. The Mayans and Azteks built a surprisingly sophisticated empire with their own local governments, centralized taxes and court system and beyond. The Spanish arrived in 1519 and by the mid-sixteenth century all of what the native peoples had built had been conquered. The Spaniards left Mexico with a huge influence; they brought religious heritage in Catholicism, which has gone beyond just a religion in Mexico and is embedded in their political culture. â€Å"Spanish Catholicism was based on the idea that political authority emanated from God, and all lower levels of society had progressively less power and status. † (McCormick, p. 334). We see this hierarchical influence still in Mexican political culture today, along with the elitism of the Native American society. The Virgin of Guadalupe is a strong symbol within the Mexican society and their Roman Catholic beliefs. It is said that in December 1531, the Virgin Mary appeared on three occasions to a Christian Indian, Juan Diego, six kilometers north of Mexico City, and identified herself as Guadalupe. It is said that the Guadalupe symbol â€Å"links family, politics and religion; the colonial past and the independent present; and the Indian and the Mexican. It reflects the salient social relationships of Mexican life and embodies the emotions they generate. † (Merrill & Miro, Religion) Devotion to the Virgin Guadalupe remains strong even as Mexican society changes. For example, in a national opinion poll found, nine out of ten Mexicans still continued to ask intercessions from the Virgin or another saint. (Merrill & Miro, Religion) Another huge aspect of Mexican political culture is the Constitution of 1917. Many Mexicans attribute the origins of the political system in Mexico to the Revolution of 1910-1920 and it’s Constitution of 1917. Unlike their American neighbors, the people of Mexico focus and look to the past, not the future, to there missed dreams and hopes. Many people of Mexico support and have faith and pride in the Constitution of 1917, agree with the goals of the Revolution and support their political institutions. (McCormick p. 333) The Constitution is seen more as an outline of the goals Mexico has aspired for. Their believe in the Constitution but recognize it as a work in progress as it still contains many goals that have not achieved, such as the goal of greater equality. The more Mexico strives towards democracy, the more we can begin to pin down and see the final handicaps that stand in between Mexico and democracy. As Mexico has become wealthier, we see now that their middle class is further expanding and there are greater chances and hopes for political modernization, hoping to permanently stray from the corruption seen in the past. Mexico is a federal republic, but power has been traditionally centralized within the ruling political party. Political power in Mexican politics revolves commonly around camarillas, which is a network of people with common political interests, who have specific ties to a particular leader. Each group of camarillas has a single leader and through this, you find that everyone relies on one another for political advancement. In a system like this, unfortunately personalities become more important than ideologies and policies in political matters and behavior. We see through this centralization how corruption in Mexican political history has been so common. Throughout the years of revolution and war, Mexican political culture has been hugely tarnished by seemingly credible evidence of corruption. There is a value of order over freedom. This is especially seen through the years of the PRI party regime, which held power for 71 years in Mexico. Corruption was rampant, and it has created an intense distrust of government within Mexico, to the point that it is now extremely hard to introduce and collect taxes. 50% of all Mexican people still feel that they have little political impact. Another big aspect of Mexican political culture is the idea of machismo. In short, it is assertive masculinity, seen most obviously in the political marginalization of women. (McCormick p. 336). Women in Mexico only won the right to vote in 1953 and still rarely move into positions of authority, especially within the government. The inequality of women is seen predominantly throughout Mexico, with about 70% of all women in the mid-1990’s employed in the tertiary sector of the Mexican economy, commonly with lower wages than those of men. The growing presence of women in the workforce contributed to changes in social attitudes, yet machismo is still a prevalent, traditional social attitude with most women in households subjected to control, domination and violence by men. The violence towards women is extremely apparent, seen in its boldest form in the city of Ciudad Juarez. Over a period of 12 years, murders of over 300 women all went unsolved. We do still see machismo more broadly in Mexico, through political violence such as riots, kidnappings and conflicts related to the drug trade, which are already complex issues on their own. As previously mentioned the political culture in Mexico is still residing within a tension between democracy and authoritarian rule. It seems that as Mexico continues its expansion into democracy, we will eventually see changes to the traditions on what is political culture in Mexico today. Bibliography McCormick, John. Comparative Politics in Transition. Sixth ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning Paras, Pablo. â€Å"The Political Culture of Democracy in Mexico: 2006. † The Political Culture of Democracy in Mexico: 2006 (2006): 1-198. Sitemason. vanderbilt. edu. Dec. 2006. Web. Jan. 2010. Morris, Stephen D. â€Å"Corruption and Mexican Political Culture. † Corruption and Mexican Political Culture: 1-37. _Www. southalabama. edu/†¦ /crptn%20and%20political%20culture. pdf_. Web. Jan. 2010. Tim L. Merrill and Ramon Miro, editors. Mexico: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1996.

Do You Hear the People Sing for Nelson Mandela - 990 Words

Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela was born in the small village of Mvezo in the South Africa in 1918. He is known better by the name Nelson, which was given to him by his school teacher in the year 1925. Activism seemed to be in his blood from a young age, as he was asked to leave the University of Fort Hare for participating in a boycott of the Student Representative Council voting. He eventually joined the African National Congress (ANC) with his friend and mentor Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. In the year 1948 the South African Government introduced a new apartheid policy, and Mandela and the ANC quickly worked to protest the new segregation laws. It was his fight against the apartheid that causes him to be remembered and revered throughout the nations of the world. Mandela was fiercely opposed to apartheid, and once he was freed from prison the government began to change; his leadership fell short after he was elected president however. The dictionary definition of the word apartheid is â €Å"any system or practice that separates people according to race, caste, etc.† However when most people think of apartheid, they think of the injustices carried out by the Republic of South Africa starting in 1948. The enactment of these laws caused racial discrimination to be legalized as well as an encouraged practice. There were many laws with the apartheid such as the prohibition of marriage between a white and non-white and the requiring of blacks to carry around â€Å"pass books† whichShow MoreRelatedEssay On Supporting Success1333 Words   |  6 Pagesdifficult for people who lack a stable support system. Whether it is a college student or a Civil Rights activist, most of the time people need support from others to accomplish their goals. 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