Friday, January 31, 2020
The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurty Essay Example for Free
The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurty Essay The Last Picture Show is a story of isolation and dysfunction. Death is also a prevailing theme – death of a town, of friendships, of marriages and of friends. It is a story full of characters that can seem larger than life one moment and inconsequential the next moment. As different as they all appear to be, they all share traits in common and these are that they all feel separated from the rest of the world, they all seem to want more out of life than they currently have, and most feel an emptiness that loneliness and desire do not quite give full explanation or understanding of. The story covers a time span of one year in the town of small Thalia, Texas in the 1950s, a dusty and desolate place where everybody knows not only everybody else in town, but everybody knows everybody else’s business and secrets may not always be exposed, but also they are almost always known. Thalia is a place where the undersized population appears to have settled into their unsatisfactory existences even while they often make blundering mistakes in efforts to burst out of their current lives. McMurty’s story has an unusually large cast. Sonny Crawford, a high school senior and football player, is the story’s protagonist. An all-American genuinely nice young man full of deep sadness and quiet thoughts, Sonny lives in a rooming house with his best friend Dwayne, also a high school senior and football player. Duane, a main character, is a little rougher around the edges than Sonny. He is quicker to lose his temper and though he appears as unsatisfied as other characters he does not acknowledge his feelings as profoundly as others. Jacy Farrow is another main character. The beautiful rich girl of Thalia, Jacy is a young woman whose unhappiness with her life, her family, and her fear of the future feeds the fuel of her wild side and unleashes her inhibitions.  The town of Thalia itself is also main character and an absolutely vital part of the story. Thalia, which in the beginning of the story is an old town clinging to life with its unchanging reliability, undergoes metamorphosis’s which parallel and oppose the lives of the characters within it. As the story progresses The Last Picture Show highlights Thalia’s own slow death with the changes it must face. There are many lesser characters, which the story relies on to bring it depth and reinforce and are intricate to the themes of McMurty’s tale. These additional characters also allow the author to show very personal aspects of the main characters as they intermingle with each other. The story centers on these three young adults as they search for something beyond their own existence. The reader follows them through their ordinary lives as they date, dream, and push against internal and external barriers. The story exposes these characters weaknesses as they journey through monotonous days of loneliness where they end up betraying each other and themselves to varying degrees. The story also shows human strength in continuing on during the bleakest of times. Family dysfunction is a constant theme of this story. Sonny’s mother is dead and his relationship with is father is strained and shallow. His real family is Sam, a local businessman who runs the pool hall that is Sonny’s second home, and a handicapped boy, Billy, with no family of his own. Sonny lives in a rooming house with his best friend while his father lives in a hotel in town. Sonny does not like his own girlfriend and he covets his best friend’s girl. Without planning, Sonny because the lover of his coaches’ wife. The coach is hinted to be a closet homosexual with a mean streak a mile wide. Ruth, his wife, has almost given up of finding any happiness in life. Sonny feels sorry for Ruth and their relationship develops into more than Sonny can handle. Duane has no family and his father figure is a callous roughneck, Abilene, who sleeps with Duane’s girlfriend and his boss’s wife who happens to also be the love of his best friends’ life. Jacy is showered with material items from her family but is neglected by her parents emotionally and is filled with unfeeling and despondent advise from her mother. Jacy uses her body to get what she wants and uses people with as little thought as well. Her mother is an unsatisfied woman that cheats on her husband whose focus in life is on making money in a town on its last legs. The family dysfunction is critical to the story because it emphasizes the frailty of the characters and explains the needs they face as well as the choices they make. The town and the characters are supposed to inspired by the real life experiences of the author. How close to accurate portrayals The Last Picture Show is to his reality is unknown to this reader, but McMurty was able to create a life within his pages, which felt like it could have been real. He created visual images that really give off one of the main themes of the story, which is isolation. The town is isolated and seem as far removed from the rest of the world even though it is only a short distance to the much larger Fort Worth. Most of the characters are isolated because the dysfunction of their family situations does not easily lead them to trust others or openly show their true feelings. The characters are isolated too because as much as they want change, especially the younger characters, they are fearful of as well. There are some humorous moments in the story and these brief moments provide necessary alleviation of the overall melancholy, but the most memorable moments in the story are the poignant ones. One instance is when the boys return from Mexico, thrilled to be able to boast about their great adventure, but even more excited to be back in Thalia. They were grateful then, for the same things that often despised, the sameness of the town – they were happy then for the monotony of their Thalia. But that happiness was too brief because it is only minutes after their return that that they learn Sam has died during their time away. Another very moving section is at the very end of the book. After Billy’s death Sonny is numb and in a great deal of pain. Duane has left town, Sam is dead, he feels guilty about Billy, and he knows Jacy is not an option for him. Instinctually, Sonny heads to Ruth. Her own pain is all too obvious as well. And in their pain they are able to comfort each other in a very touching way. The Last Picture Show is a cheerless story. There is no pat happy ending to be had for any of the characters. But, this book is one I would certainly recommend to others because it is an American story which carries a ring of truth to it; life is not always perfect, happy, or fulfilling and fairytale endings are not realist and would not have fit the tone of this story. The realist qualities and the powerfully accurate believability McMurty is able to generate enable the characters to come to life and produces profound feelings in the reader. The reader has become so involved in the lives of the characters that for those characters left at the end of the story the reader possesses intense hope for their future. When an author can bring into being these qualities they present a book incredibly worth reading.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Racism and White Privilege in the Education System Essay -- Finding Fr
Many people in the United States society believe that people of all cultures, races, and ethnicities are now on an even playing field. People with this belief support their logic with the argument that since equal rights for people of color and women have been required by law for some time now, we are all inherently as equal as claimed in the Declaration of Independence. Many believe that race is no longer an issue, a viewpoint frequently referred to as color-blindness. National polling data indicated that a majority of whites now believe discrimination against racial minorities no longer exists. (Gallagher, 96) Color-blindness allows a white person to define himself or herself as politically and racially tolerant and then proclaim their adherence to a belief system that does not see or judge individuals by the â€Å"color of their skin.†(Gallagher, 98) Many Caucasians in particular are of the opinion that because they listen to hip-hop or cheer for their favorite black, prof essional sports player that they are not racist. Still others believe that because they have a black president, we see black people in the commercial of products we consume, or enjoy television shows with black people that they are actually acknowledging race. In order to examine and dismantle this series of misconceptions, we will turn to the work of various scholars of social justice and privilege, including Peggy McIntosh, Patricia Hinchey and Johnathon Kozol as well as the story of Patricia J Williams. Through a careful examination of these works with the support of some key statistics, it is the goal of this paper to demonstrate the existence of a privileged and unprivileged America, despite the color-blindness many may profess to have integrated into their p... ...hools. New York: Crown Pub. McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege and Male Privilege. Wellesley College Center for Research on Women: Working Paper No. 189, 1-20. SueN. (2011, Nov 10). Thom Hartmann Program. Retrieved from Transcript: Thom Hartmann: The Big Picture: A "Race Based" Bake Sale? 26 September '11: http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2011/11/transcript-thom-hartmann-big-picture-race-based-bake-sale-26-september-11 Wight, V. R., Chau, M., & Aratani, Y. (2010, Jan). National Center for Children in Poverty. Retrieved from Who are America’s Poor Children?: http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_912.html Williams, P. (2010). Of race and risk. In Race, Class, & Gender: An Anthology (7th ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth. Zinn, H. (2007). Why Students Should Study History. In W. e. Au, Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 1 (pp. 179-181). Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Deltoid Intramuscular Injection and Obesity Essay
Deltoid Intramuscular Injection and Obesity Introduction            According the World Health Organizations and Centers for Disease Control and prevention in United States, approximately one –third of adults are considered obese. This has raised the no of intramuscular injections with approximate rate of 16 billion per year. Despite complex skills in administering, IM injections into deltoid muscle for administering the vaccine is best considered. IM injections is injection in which the needle pierces the muscle at least by 5mm, Zayback (2007).This has raised a great concern to the health sector whether the standard needle of 25-38 mm used, is able to deposit the medication to the muscle of obese individual. For the last six years, this has pushed researchers to address the issue of IM needle length in obesity. Further, the research based its findings reached conclusion 1.5 inches needle is the best as opposed to 1-inch needle. Further, it was discovered that there is no commonly accepted method if IM injection for a person with high BMI (Plotkin, 2008). Implication on leadership and management            The procedure for administering the vaccine by use of IM injections in obese individuals has not been an easy go to the leadership and management of health care in United States. With increased number of patients, the cases of incapability of vaccine causing a reaction(reactogenicity),wrong vaccine injection techniques and incorrect needle length used for IM injection in obese individuals has been of major concern. According to World Health Organization, the concerns have been associated to patient’s discomforts and increased cases of risks. It is therefore imperative to the leadership of medical-surgical nurses find an appropriate solution to the above raised concerns.            Also according to WHO (2009), administration of IM injection has for long been a complex challenge .Perhaps it has been found that the nurses when giving IM injections, use techniques that are little more ritualistic procedure but based on tradition ,which is passed from one nurse to another, generation to another. It is in great concern it has been addressed to the management and the leadership .This is because the skills not only requires dexterity in manipulating needle and syringe, but also knowledge in deciding the appropriate needle, syringe type and appropriate location of the injection ( Coco man & Murray 2008).            Following this, timely reaction from management and leadership of health care in U.S is of great essence. This is because wrong IM injection technique and incorrect needle length can result to complications such, as are muscle fibrosis, abscess, gangrene, nerve injury and contracture. On the other side, unsafe injection technique may result in many of infections, such as HIV (6-8) and hepatitis B and C. According to Cocoman & Murray (2008), Detroid IM injection has resulted to permanent disability and in some cases to legal actions due to inappropriate injection techniques. In additional, this has problems to health care management in imparting proper knowledge to its nurses despite continued iatrogenic complications. Implications of issues for nursing practice            Based from the questions, concerns, statistics and issues raised, there has been increased awareness to the nurses’ and other health care professionals carry out the appropriate techniques of intramuscular injections, appropriate vaccine and identification of appropriate needle length for injection in obese patients.            Following the effects of injecting vaccine into the subcutaneous tissue, complications such as granulomas and abscesses, injecting the vaccine into the deltoid muscle was more recommended .Further (Walters & Furyk, 2010) describes that although Obese patients still receive the injections into subcutaneous tissue there are more harm. This is because there is slower rate of absorption and medication efficiency can be compromised, resulting to vaccine failure.            In determining the correct needle length, for the past six years the research based on issues of intramuscular needle –length in obesity begun. A research by Zaybak and colleagues (2007) was conducted to measure SCT in ventrogluteal and dorsogluteal sites to determine the optimum injections. In determining the optimum injection for IM injections, Weight was the key factor to the research whereby the BMI for extremely obese was greater than 35, for obese 30-30.5 and for overweight the BIM ranged 25 -29.9 in adults. Following the research, 16mm long needle in adolescents less than 60kg is recommended. It is acceptable for those adults weighing 60-70 kg when using flattened technique or bunch. However, it was agreed 1.5 inches needle to use as standard in Detroid IM injection of vaccine in obese patients. To the question of common method of Detroid IM injection, it was discovered that there is no commonly accepted method of IM injectio n for a person with high BMI. Strengthening of nursing practice            From above review, there are many discrepancies in the practice of IM administration. There is because there is no standard method of detroid IM injection and needle length as. This has further created gaps in nursing education as well as the nursing practice (Cook, 2006).There is therefore need to apply the above currently evidence –based research guideline to harmonize the practice and the nursing education in United states. References Cook, I.F., Williamson, M., & Pond, D. (2006).Definition of needle length required for intramuscular deltoid injection in elderlyadults: An ultrasonographic study.Voccine, 24(7), 937-940. Cocoman, A., & Murray, J. (2008). Intramuscularinjections: A review of bestpractice for mental liealtii nurses.Journalof Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing,/ 5(5), 424-434. Zaybak.A., Gà ¼nes,Y.,Tamsel, S., Khorshid, L, &Eser, I. (2007). Does obesity prevent theneedle from reaching muscle in intramuscular injections? journal ofAdvanced Nursing, 58(6), 552-556 Plotkin, S., Orenstein, W, & Offit, P (2008).Vaccines (5* ed.). Philadelphia: SaundersElsevier. Source document
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Essay on The Battling Psyche - 1676 Words
The Battling Psyche The human psyche is a mysterious and unknown force that human beings have attempted to understand for centuries. It is understood that as human being we possess this psyche, however the nature of this psyche is not known and has thus been examined and hypothesized upon by many great minds. Literature in particular seeks the means to offer a theorized explanation of the workings of this mysterious psyche in a multitude of ways, from scientific writings, to poetry and fiction. Although these thoughts lie subtly embedded in the fictional stories, they often offer the best explanations. Two of the earliest and best known American writers that attempted to explain such a complex matter in their stories are Nathaniel†¦show more content†¦Due to the failure of his mental state Roderick’s psyche can be observed from outside perceptions so that one can examine the inner manner of that which they possess themselves, but are unable to view objectively. When the narrator first en counters his old friend he is â€Å"at once struck with and incoherence – and inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, and excessive nervous agitation†(717). The inner struggles of the human psyche are brought outwards through Roderick. The narrator can physically perceive the inner struggle and inconsistency that Roderick’s mind is undergoing. Throughout his stay, the narrator observes these battles with more intensity and the reader to is able to see how hard the mind battles itself until finally it falls. With his sister’s assumed death, Roderick’s mind is at its breaking point, and when she comes back, Roderick dies of that which he has always feared of dying from: fear itself. Roderick’s fear or fear kills him due to his frail and lonely state of being. Nathaniel Hawthorne also focuses on the delicacy of the human psyche, but rather than examine this through fear, he examines the psyche through morality and sin. Just as Poe’s life was consumed by thoughts of death, Hawthorne constantly struggled with thoughts of sin. ThisShow MoreRelatedPsychological Thriller Media Studies1263 Words  | 6 Pageslonger reliant on physical strength to overcome their enemies but are reliant on their mental resources by battling for equilibrium in the characters preying on one another’s mind. For example; playing deceptive games. 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