Homecoming Essays - Ellen, , Term Papers, Research Papers

Homecoming Plain Homecoming's most important part takes place a few hours outside of Manhattan at Annette's, the Grandmother of the Byrne family, elegant country home. Most of the family, Gene, Ellen, Mark, Aaron, Brenda, Cynthia, Andrew, live in Manhattan. Lewis and Daisy live in Washington. It happens during the winter. Annette Byrne is the mother of Gene and Lewis. The two brothers grew up close and worked together in an architecture firm. One evening at an opening party, for a hotel that they had constructed with their successful firm, collapsed. Many people died, and many were seriously injured. They went to trial and it was very dirty and tore the brothers apart. For the next many years the two brothers didn't' talk. Gene's daughter Ellen and Lewis' daughter Cynthia didn't talk often and they lived in the same city. Gene's daughter Ellen left her fianc?, a very wealthy well-known man, for Mark. Mark worked in an art gallery, and they fell in love. Gene didn't' approve of this, but dealt with it. Gene gave her a hard time about her marriage for a long time, because Mark was Jewish. Mark's parents were Aaron and Brenda. Aaron was a doctor, and Brenda was a social worker. Gene and Aaron met once and didn't' get along at all and haven't spoke since. Ellen and Mark had a baby Lucy, and about four years later they had a second child Freddie. Mark and Ellen were very happy and saving up to start open an art gallery. At about the same time as Freddie's birth, Lewis' daughter, Ellen, had twins. Ellen married a man named Andrew. They were very happy together, and very successful. When the twins were about twelve months old, they were hit by an out of control taxicab while out for a walk with the nanny. Cynthia and Andrew supported each other, but then began to drift apart. One night at a party they were just beginning to become close again, and start a new, and Andrew cheated on Cynthia. She kicked him out of the house, and hasn't talked to Andrew since. Annette had enough of all of this foolish fighting. She sneakily sent letters to each member of the family inviting them to come out and stay at her house. Each member of the family didn't know of the other member's invitation. The day that everyone was to arrive at Annette's house, Gene arrived first, then Lewis, Daisy and Cynthia came together, next Ellen, Mark, their children, and Mark's parents arrived together, Andrew was the last one to arrive. Andrew came alone. When Gene and Lewis were first together, they argued in the garden room. They yelled and screamed about the past, while their mother just listened. It seemed hopeless, and Daisy insisted they leave. While the brothers were arguing all the others were in the foyer, uneasily mumbling to their allied family members. The weather was bad and everyone wanted to leave, but Annette insisted that they stay because of the weather, and plus she had a meal prepared. Annette's friend Marian was over the house incase Annette needed support, which Annette did. Many of the family members were angry with her for putting them in this situation. Marian convinced them all to stay for lunch. After lunch, Ellen takes her two children down to the pond to see the swans. While they were down there Lucy ran down after the swans and fell into the icy lake. Ellen ran after her and fell in too. Mark saw this and ran to the lake, he was followed by the rest of the family. Andrew got a rope and tied Daisy to it. Daisy went in the lake, after Mark had grabbed Ellen out of the water, and grabbed Lucy. Both Ellen and Lucy were unconscious and not breathing. Aaron, who is a doctor, saved Lucy, and Lewis saved Ellen. Everyone, now back in the house, slowly began to get along; everyone except for Cynthia and Mark. Gene and Lewis came to an understanding about their whole fiasco, Daisy began to talk to Mark, and Gene had been friendly with Aaron. That night Mark went to Cynthia's room. He refused to leave, and fell asleep on her floor. She woke up in the middle of the night and covered him with a blanket. He woke up, and they talked and decided to save their marriage. Everyone goes to sleep peacefully that night, and the family is one again. The theme of this book is

The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man by Emily Dickinson

The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man by Emily Dickinson The enigmatic Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) saw only ten of her poems published while she was alive. Most of her work, more than 1,000 poems with their odd capitalization, liberal use of em dashes and iambic pentameter rhyming structure, was published after her death. But her works have helped to shape modern poetry. Life of Emily Dickinson Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson was a reclusive figure, who took to wearing all white clothing and stayed confined to her home later in life. Whether she was eccentric or suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder is a matter hotly debated among Dickinson scholars. She did not live her entire life at her familys Amherst home; she spent a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary but left before completing a degree, and visited Washington, D.C. with her father when he served in Congress.   Dickinsons body of work also included correspondence with friends. Many of these letters contained original poems.   After her death, her sister Lavinia collected Emilys vast collection of writing and attempted to organize it. Although early editors tried to normalize Dickinsons writing, taking out the unusual punctuation and random capitalized words, later versions of her work restored it to its unique glory, em dashes and all.   Emily Dickinsons Poetry With titles like Because I Could Not Stop for Death, and A Narrow Fellow in the Grass, its clear that Dickinsons poetry has a foreboding undertone.  Many academics believe that all of Dickinsons poems can be interpreted to be about death, some overtly, some with more subtle turns of phrase. Indeed, Dickinsons correspondence shows she was troubled by several deaths of people she was close to; a school friend died very young of typhoid fever, another of a brain disorder. Its not outside the realm of possibility that young Emily withdrew from social life because she was deeply affected by her losses. Questions for Study of The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man Is this an example of a Dickinson poem in where she appears to be writing about one thing (the wind) but is actually writing about something else? In this poem, does the wind represent a man, or does it represent an existential fear of death, ever present and able to blow in and out as it pleases? Why is the man tired? Here is the full text of Emily Dickinsons poem The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man The wind tapped like a tired man,And like a host, Come in,I boldly answered; entered thenMy residence withinA rapid, footless guest,To offer whom a chairWere as impossible as handA sofa to the air.No bone had he to bind him,His speech was like the pushOf numerous humming-birds at onceFrom a superior bush.His countenance a billow,His fingers, if he pass,Let go a music, as of tunesBlown tremulous in glass.He visited, still flitting;Then, like a timid man,Again he tappedt was flurriedlyAnd I became alone.

Curriculum History of the United States Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Curriculum History of the United States - Essay Example tes formal education system experienced a relative period of stabilization that allowed institutions to come together under a common ideal (Zais 1976). Even as curriculum development began to gain structured form, initial developments occurred through the gradual accumulation of diverse subjects: mathematics was followed by an array of sciences, including botany, anatomy, physics, astronomy, and geology. Soon after this subjects for non-college bounds students were added, such as typewriting, woodworking, and metallurgy. However, the ultimate array of subjects remained haphazard, unlike the well-structured form it progressively attained. Recognizing the haphazard curriculum, in 1892 a famous committee was formed to help add structure to the loosely formed curriculum. The group was termed the Committee of Ten and was headed by the President of Harvard at the time – Charles Eliot. The committee understood that the unstructured format of the current education system was pernicious to societal development, so they set out to bring order to the chaos (Zais 1976). Eliot and the committee determined that the greatest means to accomplish this would be to have the curriculum adhere to the already established college structure and function solely to prepare students for higher education. As a result, the core courses that had come together immediately after the Civil War were kept and substantiated, yet the elements of the curriculum designed for students not college-bound was discarded as unnecessary. Historians and educational theorists regard this last point as especially relevant to the changing view of learners ov er time, as its underlining assumption was that these core courses, even if they didn’t target specific vocational aspects of the learner’s development, would have the ultimate benefit in preparing them intellectually for whatever task they undertook. Even as these earlier curriculum formulations considered the development of the human, it wasn’t