The Speckled Band Essay Example for Free

The Speckled Band Essay There has been a great deal of famous detective stories that have been written by many authors, all of which are very interesting and exciting. Some examples of very good, successful detective stories are:  The murders in the Rue Morgue written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841. This book was Edgars first story and it was very successful.  The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins which featured Sergeant Cuff and a stolen gem. This was written in 1868.  Another set of detective stories was Sherlocks Holmes written stories, which were written during the 1880s. As you can see detective books have been going on since the mid 1800s as well as in the 1900s.  1920s onwards Agatha Christie starts to write her very famous and very successful detective stories with Hercule Poirot and Dorothy L. Sayers with Lord Peter Wimsey, both of the upper class.  1970s P.D. James and Ruth Rendell start to write. In their recent books they feature corrupt policemen. In P.D. James last three books the murder has not been convicted, either because they died or due to insufficient evidence.  1990s There has been popularity shown by the number of films and T.V series e.g. Inspector Morse, Taggart, Frost, Dalziel and Pascoe and so on. From the above you should notice that there has been a lot of well known detective stories about and I will be comparing and contrasting two types of detective stories. To support my points I will be using quotations and close references. In each section I will compare the stories and clearly explain the difference. I will be covering the following factors in detail, detectives, crime and motive, clues and red herrings, methods of investigation, the setting location social conditions and the creation of suspense. In The Speckled Band written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the detectives are very polite to each other and speak Queens English. When they talk to each other they always address each other a my dear friend, Dr Watson, Mr Holmes or Madam never by there first name. Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band comes across as being very clever and witty. You know this because at the very beginning of the story Dr Watson is saying he was going over his and Sherlocks seventy odd cases that they have done in the last eight years. If Holmes were not clever he would have completed all of those cases. Another part of the story where Holmes shows his cleverness is when Helen Stoner has come to see him and he notices that she has come by train and dog-cart. Holmes knows that she has firstly come by train from the ticket stub in Helens hand and secondly he notices that she has come by dog-cart from the splattered mud up her arm, I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove. You must have started early, and yet you had a good drive in a dog-cart There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way.  Holmes also notices that Helen is shivering and orders her a cup of hot coffee. When Sherlock is observing the Stoke Moran notices a lot of clues, which no one else had seen before. I will go into this more when I talk about clues and red herrings.  Sherlock Holmes is always cool and collective in dangerous situations. E.g. when he hears the hissing he lashes out at it very quickly and takes action whereas Watson sits there not knowing whats going on and he panics a bit but Holmes stays calm. Holmes also keeps calm when Dr Grimsby Roylott comes to visit him. I have heard a bout you before. You are Holmes the meddler.  My friend smiled. (Sherlock Holmes)  Holmes the busy body.  His smile broadened. (Sherlock Holmes)  Holmes the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office.  Holmes chuckled heartily.  Sherlock Holmes comes across as not at all being scared. You know this because he is not scared in more than one occasion. He was not scared when Dr Grimsby Roylott barges in and threatens him, he keeps very calm and another place where he keeps his cool is when he is approaching the Stoke Moran place and sees the baboon. Although he knows the Dr Roylott keeps a cheetah he doesnt become scared and he carries on as normal. Holmes is also not as weak as you think he is because when Dr Roylatt comes to Holmes house he bends the fire poker to try to scare Sherlock but Holmes just bends it straight again.  my grip was not much more feeble than his own. As he spoke he picked up the steel poker, and with a sudden effort straightened it out again.  Sherlock Holmes really enjoys his work and loves to solve new cases. You know this because when Helen Stoner comes to him and she tells him what the case is about. She tells Holmes that she wont be able to pay him a lot of money and he replies saying that money is not a problem and as long as she pays for his expenses. E.g. transport fees and accommodation. Sherlock Holmes comes across as being a hero in The Speckled Band because Helen Stoner travels miles and miles to seek out this famous detective. When she finds him he gets straight on the case and solves it within a days work whereas Helen has not had the slightest clue how her sister died for two years.  Another detective in The Speckled Band is Dr Watson. Dr Watson is Sherlock Holmes assistant, he is also very polite when he talking to people, he always addresses people as sir, madam or by their last name never by their first name. Holmes, I cried, I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at.  Dr Watson comes across as being a clever man but not as near as Sherlock Holmes. He has always assisted Holmes crimes all of which he has helped to solve the case. Watson also enjoys his work at solving cases with Sherlock and he has always accompanied Sherlock, you can tell Watson enjoys the cases when he says he wouldnt miss the case.

Still Life :: Personal Narrative Papers

Still Life "Each of us is a kind of crossroads where things happen. The crossroads is purely passive, something happens there. A different thing, equally valid happens elsewhere. There is no choice, it is a matter of chance." à  Levi-Strauss "It was boring." "How could you find it boring?" "It just...sat there. Mooned over itself. It was talky." "It was...great. I dunno. I think it says something to people in transition." "Well, I'd hardly think of my life as...I don't know..." "Static?" "Right." My mother, my sister, my father and I walked two blocks, and took the subway back to our hotel. That wasn't the first time I'd seen the movie. The summer I learned how to wear cologne, I was burning my last bridge to the city of Los Angeles, one kiss at a time in a Venice Beach apartment. There was an early cut of Lost In Translation playing on a gaudy television, in a gaudy entertainment center, in a gaudy black leather-smeared den, in a rundown walk-up. You can see without seeing, obviously. I can certainly tell you the converse is true. I'd been working most of that summer as an overnighter in a chic department store catering to aging Westwood matriarchs, leaving the sales floor perfumed with my distaste for high fashion. But I remember, more than anything else from that last tango on Figueroa, Scarlett Johansson in a pink wig, singing "Brass In Pocket" to a dried-up matinee idol. "You know, looking back, I'm beginning to realize...those characters were assholes! How did we like them?" "Maybe they were but...I dunno. I just see something in Charlotte that's so...'I am trapped here, and I don't know it.'" "But Bill Murray! What a fuckin' dick!" "I don't see that. I just...Maybe this rings to me in a way it shouldn't." "I'm not trying to make fun of the movie, I liked the movie too, but you've got to--" "I know. You're very even-handed, Josh, and I'm putting on extra eyeshadow." "Fuck you, you know what I mean." "You workin' today?" "Shit, yeah. Call after you're out of seminar." "Cool." I walk home, and sure as silver, we meet at 7. He is certainly not wrong, but he forgets completely why I, and many others, are completely in love with these two unlikely friends. Chance. The best part of Lost In Translation is not what everyone points out - the imagery, the music, the acting, the sweetness and strangeness of the narrative, but it is how the viewer finds it.

Gothic art and architecture Essay

The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, spanned by what we term the Gothic period, saw a revolution in the social and economic life of Europe. As princes created fixed capitals for themselves instead of the earlier uncomfortable peripatetic courts, so the earlier agricultural system gave way before a more modern money economy. The movements brought great changes in their train and were to have a profound effect upon the arts. For the first, the building of castles, palaces and town residences not only gave a new importance to the visual effect of surroundings but also to the ideas of comfort and luxury. The court of Burgundy led the way and life came to be dominated by intricate ceremonial inherited in part from antiquity, Byzantium and the orient, and elaborated into an obligatory etiquette destined to reach its most exaggerated expression in baroque Spain. At the end of the period this court culture flowered into what was an almost decadent magnificence. Gothic sculpture, like Gothic architecture, originated in France, and it, too, spread rapidly throughout Europe, varying in each country (Frankl 21). Gothic art had become common to all of Europe, and its national variants did not develop in isolation, although they always remained distinct within the framework of the style. There was a good deal of practical exchange, and German holy images were ordered from and sent to Italy, French ivory caskets and small altars were exported to England and Germany and English alabasters were exported throughout Europe (Frankl 25). In its transition from the Romanesque, Gothic architecture was characterized by an open stone framework supporting a stone vaulting (Frankl 3). As this development reached its peak, painting and sculpture were almost completely subjected to architecture, though all three arts were ultimately to gain. It was inevitable that large-scale mural painting should give way as the walls of Gothic churches were increasingly devoted to ever-larger windows. However, these new transparent walls of glass were quickly claimed by the painters and at the very moment when they were most dependent upon the good will of the architect, they achieved their greatest triumphs; for this new painting with colour and light on enormous areas of glass amounted to the conquest of a new artistic field. Glass painting, from being a pleasant accessory of the old order of architecture, had gradually become an indispensable feature of Gothic interior decoration. Its greatest successes were achieved, as were those of the Gothic style as a whole, primarily north of the Alps, and its decline accompanied that of the style as a whole (West 104-05). In appropriating sculpture, Gothic cathedral architecture presented it with such gigantic new problems that it was taxed almost beyond its strength. The figures that had previously been sparingly applied to doorways and towers multiplied and became immense crowds nestling in groups round doorways and towers. As a result of this dependence on architecture, more sculpture was commissioned in the Gothic period than at any other time between antiquity and the baroque era; indeed the sculptor has probably never been so much in demand as he was then (West 137-39). At the end of the Gothic period, when architecture tired, when cathedrals, started at the peak of the period, remained unfinished despite increasingly extended building periods; when towers, planned on a gigantic scale, were left incomplete; when niches on pillars and portals still remained empty, sculpture was still strong enough to leave the sinking ship, alert enough to recapture part of its former territory. It was altar-decoration which gave new life to the dying art of monumental sculpture. Here sculptors and wood carvers gradually developed the simplicity of the early retable into an architectural structure worthy to carry their figures. The Gothic winged altar grew from the mensa, until, high under the distant vaulting, multitudinous groups of figures were gathered into its forest-like branches, both over centrepiece and over wings. At the close of the Gothic period a true Kleinplastik developed-Kleinplastik is an untranslatable word which applies to small, delicate carvings, sometimes only a few inches high, which were later to become the passion of the lay collector with his delight in elaborate material and craftsmanship. The ideals of the thirteenth century were still those that had inspired the crusades and which, towards the end of the eleventh century, had fired the western Christian world with a zeal to free the Holy Land from the Mohammedan infidels. In the space of a few generations, religious fervour and love of adventure moved hundreds of thousands from every country to do battle with the dangerously advancing forces of Islam. Great victories awaited them, but also shameful defeats; fame and riches, but imprisonment and miserable death as well. An important after-effect of the period of the crusades, which really ended at the close of the thirteenth century, was the growing prosperity, not only at the courts but also amongst the lesser nobility and the burghers. It was accompanied by a taste for luxury, a desire for a less simple mode of life, which in turn generated the forces needed to satisfy the new demands. The world had become, in contemporary eyes,-not only bigger and wider, but also more beautiful and interesting. Thus poetry and the arts, as well as the crafts, which had worked almost solely for the honour of God and the glory of his Church, were now called upon to glorify the everyday world (West 210-11). Commerce and the crafts, in all their colourful diversity, gained respect. As they grew in importance, guilds and merchant companies came into being, and succeeded in getting a voice in the administration of the cities, until the cities finally obtained freedom from the feudal overlord, owed allegiance only to the emperor, and were able to form political alliances with other cities. There was no more bondage for the burgher. The main roads met in the cities, which were the centres for travellers and pilgrims and for the trade of goods from far and near. The great building organizations were situated within their walls and they sheltered the artists and craftsmen; new wealth accumulated in the cities and with it a new civic pride appeared. All these developments offered the Gothic sculptor and carver many opportunities and, moreover, each generation had an insatiable desire to express its own artistic feeling. This was only made possible, over the years, by making room, by repeatedly clearing away or destroying the â€Å"outmoded† work of previous generations. Furthermore, the changing and often more elaborate liturgical customs and rites of the high and late Middle Ages demanded new equipment, new furnishings, and these afforded new subjects for the artist. For example, the appearance of the Rosary brotherhoods of the late Middle Ages produced a flood of Gothic Madonnas. The fast-spreading cult of St Anne led to the creation of charming groups showing her with the Virgin and Child (Branner 47). The number of altars increased considerably during the Gothic period in the cathedrals and collegiate churches especially, but also in the parish churches. The spacious churches of this era often had dozens of altars, sometimes more than fifty. The burgher, noble, or even ecclesiastic donors of these altars made themselves responsible for the material needs of the priest who served at their altar as well as for the provision of an artistically conceived altar with furnishings of admirable craftsmanship (Frankl 95). For such an altarpiece tradition demanded a representation of the patron saint, a cross, candelabra, an altar cloth, and robes. The buttresses of the new churches favoured the construction of subsidiary chapels and thereby increased the potential space for additional altars, which meant more commissions for the artists. The altarpiece which, as the chief domain of art, combined painting and sculpture in a common effort, has become the classic expression of late Gothic art for the world at large. In these altarpieces, the central section was generally reserved for three-dimensional figures. The insides of the wings were often given to the carvers for their reliefs, if they had not already been allotted to the painters–for whom the outsides of the wings were always reserved. Such an altar complex was indeed imposing; its changing face-different on weekdays, Sundays and feast days-served as a kind of three-dimensional picture book of the church year for a pious world which could as yet neither read nor write, and so readily sought these vivid illustrations of the scriptures. The Western world found, in Gothic art, a means of symbolizing the Christian capacity to experience life and religion as conceived within the framework of medieval piety. Although each nation added something of its own national peculiarities the style retained its validity as a common artistic expression of Western Christianity and was universally recognized. Works Cited Branner, Robert. Burgundian Gothic Architecture. A. Zwemmer, 1960. Frankl, Paul. Gothic Architecture. Penguin Books, 1962. West, George Herbert. Gothic Architecture in England and France. G. Bell & Sons, 1911.

Inequality And Prosperity Social Europe Vs. Liberal America

Within his acclaimed novel â€Å"Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe vs. Liberal America, Princeton University professor Jonas Pontusson (2005) underlines that due to their direct influence on the livelihoods of individuals, social issues associated with the welfare of society have not only always attracted attention from academics, but have also consistently been under careful scrutiny of policymakers (p. xiii). In particular, Pontusson (2005) emphasizes that social scientists and policy experts have especially concentrated on the advanced economies of Europe and the USA, and he contends that debates regarding which socioeconomic system deserves more praise – mainly in terms of citizen opportunity - are becoming more passionate on account of the expansion of intense political and cultural differences between the two (p. 2). To be more specific, with the adoption of neoliberal economic policies beginning in the early 1980s, the USA instantaneously transformed into a self -serving society that encouraged privatization, deregulation, cutting public expenditure for social services, and most importantly, the replacement of the concept of the public good with individual responsibility (Clark, 2012, para. 1). In absolute contrast, the social democratic model found within Northern European countries such as Sweden, have comprehensive welfare states that prioritize universalism so as to enhance individual autonomy, redistributionist taxation in order to provide an elaborate socialShow MoreRelatedAustralia s Bilateral Trade Agreements With The Trans Pacific Partnership1468 Words   |  6 PagesWith more than two-thirds of its trade with Asian partners, Australia relies heavily and has invested in that locale’s prosperity. 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