Free Essays on Polygamy

Dolphyne, Florence Abena. The Emancipation of Women. Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991. Pg.14 â€Å"A man who had been married for about two years decided to take on a second wife. His wife thought there was no need for that since she felt they were getting on perfectly happily†¦the man argued that she alone could not provide hum all the things he needed at the time he needed them, but the woman insisted there was no basis for that claim.† To prove his point, the man asked for traditional Asante corn dough to be prepared in one day. The woman took on the challenge. She worked hard all day preparing the necessary ingredients and when the day was done she was not. She gave up and apologized to her husband for being so stubborn and told him she felt it was a good idea for him to marry a second wife. Even though this is just a folktale and its credibility is questionable, it still gives the idea of how people began to accept polygamy. Young girls of this tribe here this story over and over. When they become of age to marry, they feel there is absolutely n othing worn! g with being one of many wives and they accept it as part of everyday life. Pg17 â€Å"Some educated women†¦of the Islamic faith†¦will tell you that they would not mind being the second, third, or fourth wife†. The reason for this is that they feel they will have time to concentrate on their education or career whenever it is not their turn to â€Å"†¦keep house for the husband.† I always wondered how the women of polygamous marriages felt about being one of four wives. This statement doesn’t seem likely. I can’t think of any woman that would not mind sharing her husband with co-wives. Pg18 Those who support polygamy have argued, â€Å"†¦that it is justified on account of the ratio of women to men in their countries† This seems like people who practice polygamy are just trying to justify it in any way. Embry, Jessie L. Mormon Polygamous Families. Salt... Free Essays on Polygamy Free Essays on Polygamy Dolphyne, Florence Abena. The Emancipation of Women. Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991. Pg.14 â€Å"A man who had been married for about two years decided to take on a second wife. His wife thought there was no need for that since she felt they were getting on perfectly happily†¦the man argued that she alone could not provide hum all the things he needed at the time he needed them, but the woman insisted there was no basis for that claim.† To prove his point, the man asked for traditional Asante corn dough to be prepared in one day. The woman took on the challenge. She worked hard all day preparing the necessary ingredients and when the day was done she was not. She gave up and apologized to her husband for being so stubborn and told him she felt it was a good idea for him to marry a second wife. Even though this is just a folktale and its credibility is questionable, it still gives the idea of how people began to accept polygamy. Young girls of this tribe here this story over and over. When they become of age to marry, they feel there is absolutely n othing worn! g with being one of many wives and they accept it as part of everyday life. Pg17 â€Å"Some educated women†¦of the Islamic faith†¦will tell you that they would not mind being the second, third, or fourth wife†. The reason for this is that they feel they will have time to concentrate on their education or career whenever it is not their turn to â€Å"†¦keep house for the husband.† I always wondered how the women of polygamous marriages felt about being one of four wives. This statement doesn’t seem likely. I can’t think of any woman that would not mind sharing her husband with co-wives. Pg18 Those who support polygamy have argued, â€Å"†¦that it is justified on account of the ratio of women to men in their countries† This seems like people who practice polygamy are just trying to justify it in any way. Embry, Jessie L. Mormon Polygamous Families. Salt...

Review of Stephanie McCurry's book MAsters of Small Worlds Essay

Review of Stephanie McCurry's book MAsters of Small Worlds - Essay Example McCurry’s thesis stresses quite frequently on the significance of the role of gender and the patriarchal nature of the yeoman society, which she portrayed as being almost characteristic to the low country yeoman society. McCurry’s thesis is well argued and some of her sources are well researched as well. But not all of McCurry’s arguments are convincing. In fact, in most cases McCurry provided very little pertinent evidence for her arguments. The concepts of political and social unity however have been presented with some well examined evidence such that they seem more plausible than McCurry’s other arguments which are not only based on insufficient data but are argued such that the concepts themselves are open to several interpretations. McCurry bases most of her arguments concerning the yeoman society on the Low Country’s geographical factors. However, one finds that McCurry, in her aim to explore the principles of the culture and structure of the yeoman society has attempted to broaden the geographical precincts of the low country. Perhaps McCurry felt compelled to do so in order to present pertinent data for her arguments. It might be that McCurry did not find enough data to back up her thesis and arguments. Extending the geographical area of the low country (to cover certain areas believed to be in the â€Å"Middle Country†) might have given McCurry the possibility to explore more evidence from those areas, thereby making her thesis a tad richer with weightier data. The extending of geographical boundaries also gave McCurry the opportunity of exploring the similarities and connections of the working relationships between wealthy slave owning families and the farming families with no slaves. The ideal example to justify the hypothesis that the extending of the low country topography gave McCurry more data to work with is the instance when McCurry used the personal diary of a woman (believed to be

Interior architecture - Detail and the user Essay

Interior architecture - Detail and the user - Essay Example The large number of Scarpa’s architectural projects reflect his unique concepts and ideas of design (Scarpa, Beltramini, Battistella et al, 2007). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate Carlo Scarpa’s use of the relationship between the body and architecture, and examine the roots of his conception of the elements of architectural construction as â€Å"beings†. Further, Scarpa’s imaging the user, with architectural details in relation to the user’s body, and his layering of memories based on the affinity between architecture and place, will be discussed. Relationship Between the Body and Architecture In European culture, there has always been a significant place for the relationship between the body and architecture, and the complex phenomenon of corporeality. This tradition originated from Marcus Vitruvius, the ancient Roman architect and engineer in the first century B.C., who compares the human body directly to the body of a building, and reinforces the analogy, so that the importance of symmetry, proportion and harmony in architecture become secondary to his theory of the link between corporeality and architecture. According to Dodds, Tavernor and Rykwert (2002: 28) â€Å"although this highly provocative subject has been treated with great attention and subtlety by critics, it remains nonetheless poorly understood†. ... Thus, the body was used not only to designate conceptual, but also material reality. Plato followed by Aristotle undertook to find a clear understanding of corporeality. The concept of the body is always open for further improvemen â€Å"through the continuous reciprocity of necessity and reason† (Dodds et al 2007: 28). Consequently, the body is perceived as a comparatively stable structure in the context of reality as a whole denoted by the cosmos. There is a surprising richness and depth of understanding of the relation between the human body and the world, the common corporeality and meaning, rendering the body as a microcosm. There is great reciprocity between the human body and the world, and between the human body and architecture. Joints, Frames and Building Construction Mass as â€Å"Beings† In the mid-nineteenth century, Gottfried Semper divided built form into two separate material procedures: the tectonics of the frame in which members of different lengths ar e joined together to encompass a spatial field, and the stereotomics of compressive mass that, â€Å"while it may embody space, is constructed through the piling up of identical units† (Frampton 2000: 181). Tectonics relates to the construction of buildings. The work of Carlo Scarpa is a contemporary manifestation of Semper’s approach supporting the concept of framework as aerial and dematerialization of mass, while the mass form is telluric or relating to the earth into which it is embedded deeply. The former tends towards the light, and the latter towards the dark. These gravitational opposites, the immateriality of the frame and the materiality of the mass are considered to symbolise the two cosmological polarities towards which they reach out: the sky and the earth. The experiential limits

Causes of World War Essay Example for Free

Causes of World War Essay World War 1 was the first war in history that had most of the world dragged into conflict against one another. There were many causes of WW1 the main one that actually started it was a short term cause, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austria-Hungary Empire. But there were a lot of long term causes that were building up to war like the arms race with military sections such as navy being built up especially between Britain and Germany. Also Imperialism was a great cause because Germany had only just unified in comparison to the rest of the world they wanted to get themselves on the map in regards to some colies but there wasnt much free space rest in the world, also there was the alliance systems that actually pulled everyone into the war. Nationalism also played a role, basically its patriotism so it cone sides with the alliance system especially to do with Britain and all its colonies such as Australia and Canada, they join the war because of the alliance but also because Britain is basically there mother so even though they were independent they still were going to help out their oldest and greatest ally at that time. The only short term cause was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 1914, this act committed by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo; Bosnia was the match that started the fuse that led to war. The reason for this assassination was mainly because he and his group wanted to break free of the Austria-Hungary Empire and have an independent Yugoslavia. This caused the spark of the war because Austria-Hungary found out that Serbia helped to provide some equipment and weapons. So they decided to teach Serbia a lesson by going to war with them and were planning on crushing them but they couldnt because Serbia was allied with Russia but they did anyway pulling there ally, Germany, in and causing the whole conflict to kick off. The death of one royal family member and the actions of one man to commit that murder ended up getting approximately 16 million people killed in the process. The arms race then ensued when Germany started to build its navy in compaction with Britain use 4,532,000 tonnes of iron and other materials and had 63 separate Dreadnoughts built. Those figures were just for the dreadnoughts that does not include other ships like destroyers and torpedo boats. That shows the pure magnitude of the want that Germany had to out-class and over power the amazing and massive British Navy that had been dominate in the oceans of the world for hundreds of years. There is a reason for the saying Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. The whole arms race was because Germany wanted to become the world power over Britain and to do that they needed a navy but they couldnt really build massive ships in secret so the British found out and started to up there navy power as well, to stay ahead. One of the main ways they did that was by introducing the HMS Dreadnought; it was a new design that was faster and stronger than any other ship that had been built to date. It was launched on the 10th of February 1906 starting a new class of ships, the Dreadnought class. The whole naval arms race was a product of Germanys imperialism and want to become a major world power but because they had only unified in 1871 they didnt have much of a chance to get many colonies but they got a few and needed a navy to defend them but they had other plans on what to do next. There was also an arms race on land/ sky but it was no were near as large or cost as much because ships are a lot bigger and more expensive. But ever since wright brothers flew their first plane the military was interested in using them as weapons and they did, Biplanes made their combat debut during WW1 and it was the first time battles had taken to the skies and there was more than just ground forces to consider when planning out tactics. Also it was during but there was also the invention of the Tank or as it were first called Land ships. Imperialism was a major stir between the European powers as they were all trying to get more colonies and more land, but during this time Germany still wasnt Germany it was Prussia and because they unified late they didnt have a chance to colonies the world but they did do it in time to participate in the scramble for Africa and its resources. The reason for it being a part of the build up to WW1 was that Germany was envious of the rest of the European powers and how many colonies they possessed, especially Britain. This might not seem that important but to be a world power you needed influence around the world or a lot of land (like Russia) but Germany had neither but the wanted to be conceded a world power but they couldnt really because there was not much land left that the Germans could Colonise. Germany was also involved in the Morocco crisis because they wanted equal economic benefits from Morocco including Moroccos natural resources. This whole situation was a big problem between the European power and who would control Morocco. Nationalism is just patriotism on an extreme level, during the early 1900s all powers in Europe had their populations tricked because they all thought their ideologies were the best and their army could crush any opponent. Basically the major powers thought they were the biggest and the best. This was especially important between Russia and Germany the main reason Germany agree to support Austria-Hungary is because the tension between Russia and Germany was building. But because of nationalism was so strong in Germany they thought, well war is inevitable so we may as well crush them now. But Russian people had the same idea. On the outbreak of war Germanys mobilised with the strength of 3.8 million in there general army compared to Russias 5.25 million. You can see that Russias military was a lot bigger but Germany had it going through their minds that they could win anyway, even though on the outbreak they sent most of their troops towards France to destroy them quickly, that was the plan anyway. The whole reason most empires/ countries got involved was because they thought their armies were so amazing that their contribution would end the war in under a year, which was not true because of the stalemate that old tactics with new equipment caused, because as soon as machine guns were introduced trench warfare was outdated. The alliances were the main long term cause of WW1 they are what brought everyone into the war making it a world war, because it involved most of the world. The first treaty that was called upon was Serbia calling on Russia because of the treat from Austria-Hungary and Serbia could definitely not stand up on its own to such a large empire such as Austria-Hungary. There  was no signed treaty but Russia wanted to keep the peace in the Bucklands area and to do that they need to mobilise their military. And the mobilising of Russias military marked the start of many chain reactions of treaties/ alliances that would be called upon that cause one assassination to turn into the First World War. The Duel Alliance was the defence agreement between Austria-Hungary and Germany it was brought in, in case Russia attacked which was most likely at the point when the treaty was signed in 1879. Also ironically it was signed to limit war but it did the exacted opposite. But even though it was called upon for an offensive movement it was still defensive from Russia because Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia cause the Russians to move there army towards Austria-Hungary so they called for support from Germany and they got it. These were the first two alliances call upon and they started the First World War. The Franco-Russian Alliance was between Russia and France it was mainly to contain the threat of Germany because if Germany decaled war on either of them they would have to fight on two fronts because France and Russia were right next to Germany but on opposite geographical sides. It was signed in 1836 and its purpose was to dissuade Germany it worked for a while but ultimately it failed and Germany declared war on both of them. The Treaty of London was signed 1839 and its point was to recognise and guarantee Belgiums independence and Neutrality. Because it was so old Germany called it The Scrape of Paper and when Germany planned to disregard Belgiums neutrality by going through Belgiums boarders to invade France they expected no one to care or act upon it. Not only was this seen as war mongering but Britain stayed true to their word to Belgium and got involved in the war because of that. And with the entry of Britain brought all her allies from her colonies; Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa. With that most of the world was involved and it truly had become a World War. Then finally there was America. America was not obliged to join the war at any point by a military alliance but as soon as Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 trying to restrict shipping to Britain and force them to surrender by starving them American shipping was in danger because America shipped food and other goods to help them in the war effort indirectly. But with their shipping naval personnel in danger they didnt have much of a choice to declare war on Germany thus America entered the war. In conclusion there were many reasons for WW1 to start but most of them had been building up for years behind the scenes it just took the match of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to light the fuse and the world exploded into chaos and destruction with roughly 16 million people dead, 20 million wounded, and 8 million missing it was one of the biggest wars in the worlds history. BIBLIOGRAPHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5YREY33W24 Published on 4 Aug 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njINCi9iIrA Published on 25 Jun 2010 http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/gcselinks/wars/firstwwlinks/worksheets/causeswwi.pdf Published on (No date found) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I Published on 29 Aug 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Published on 29 Aug 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Published on 27 Aug 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip Published on 5 Aug 2014 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-franz-ferdinand-assassinated Published on (No date found) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-German_naval_arms_race Published on 19 Jul 2014 http://alphahistory.com/worldwar1/imperialism/ Published on (No date found) http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/moroccan_crisis_1905.htm Published during May 2012 http://alphahistory.com/worldwar1/nationalism/ Published on (No date found) http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3415778 Published on 24 Sep 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Serbia_relations Published on 11 Jun 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_Alliance_(1879) Published on 2 Aug 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Russian_Alliance Published on 23 Aug 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_London_(1839) Published on 23 Aug 2014 http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/america_and_world_war_one.htm Published during 2006 The First World War, Robin Lobban, Oxford University Press Text book from school, page 91 (white)

Chinese Culture Exposed in the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee :: Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee

Chinese Culture Exposed in the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee In by reading the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, I gained a perspective of the people and culture of China. This book showed the analysis of Chinese saw and the background of Chinese history. Judge Dee, during the Tang Dynasty, was a well-known statesman and a magistrate to a town called Chang-Ping. He was known to be a famous detective, in which he could solve all crimes. In the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, he is faced with three murders, which develop throughout the book. First of the three murders was the murder of the two silk merchants. Second was the sudden death of a young husband, and thirdly was the poisoning of a bride in her nuptial chamber. As Judge Dee begins solving the crimes, the story unfolds slowly and shows the reader the history of China. In the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, Judge Dee lived in the Tang dynasty. During this period, one can see how the Chinese authoritative views were strict, the laws and punishment which were enforced, and what the outlook on the Chinese society was. Authority had a strong hold on their community and the people in the town also confined in them to help them and solve crimes. The community also knew what the consequences of causing a crime was and that indeed it was wrong to omit a crime. Judge Dee and with the help of his associates, begins solving the crime through much observation and Judge Dee was very clever. He used methods and tools such as, going undercover, using underground sources, interrogation, and forensic science to solve his problems. It isn’t much different today on how we solve crime in the western world. We can see the Asian influence in solving crime matters when Judge Dee uses religion, ghosts, and dreams to solve his crimes. Bad luck and superstition such as were also believed. If the dead weren’t buried properly the Chinese felt that the dead wouldn’t let the family rest or sleep in peace. In the end of the book you could see that the use of torture and the methods of execution are more extreme than the western culture. Judge Dee went to an ancient graveyard to consults the spirit of the dead.

Is Love an Art? Essay

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one â€Å"falls into† if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter. Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love — yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love. This peculiar attitude is based on several premises which either singly or combined tend to uphold it. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of â€Å"being loved,† rather than that of â€Å"loving,† of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especi ally used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits. Another, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one’s body, dress, etc. Other ways of making oneself attractive, used both by men and women, are to develop pleasant manners, interesting conversation, to be helpful, modest, inoffensive. Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, â€Å"to win friends and influence people.† As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal. A second premise behind the attitude that there is nothing to be learned about love is the assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an â€Å"object,† not the problem of a â€Å"faculty.† People think that to â€Å"love† is simple, but that to find the right object to love — or to be loved by — is difficult. This attitude has several reasons rooted in the development of modern society. One reason is the great change which occurred in the twentieth century with respect to the choice of a â€Å"love object.† In the Victorian age, as in many traditional cultures, love was mostly not a spontaneous personal experience which then might lead to marriage. On the contrary, marriage was contracted by convention — either by the respective families, or by a marriage broker, or without the help of such intermediaries; it was concluded on the basis of social considerations, and love was supposed to develop once the marriage had been concluded. In the last few generations the concept of romantic love has become almost universal in the Western world. In the United States, while considerations of a conventional nature are not entirely absent, to a vast extent people are in search of â€Å"romantic love,† of the personal experience of love which then should lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love must have greatly enhanced the importance of the â⠂¬Å"object† as against the importance of the â€Å"function.† Closely related to this factor is another feature characteristic of contemporary culture. Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern man’s happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He(or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl — and for the woman an attractive man — are the prizes they are after. â€Å"Attractive† usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious — today he has to be social and tolerant — in order to be an attractive â€Å"package.† At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one’s own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden assets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market. The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about lov e lies in the confusion between the initial experience of â€Å"†falling†Ã¢â‚¬  in love, and the permanent state of â€Å"being† in love, or as we might better say, of â€Å"standing† in love. If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being â€Å"crazy† about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness. This attitude — that nothing is easier than to love — has continued to be the prevalent idea about love in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better — or they would give up the activity. Since the latter is impossible in the case of love, there seems to be onlyone adequate way to overcome the failure of love — to examine the reasons for this failure, and to proceed to study the meaning of love. The first step to take is to become aware that â€Å"love is an art,† just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, Synopsis: The Art of Loving has helped hundreds of thousands of men and women achieve rich, productive lives by developing their hidden capacities for love. An astonishing frank and candid book renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, it explores the ways in which this extraordinary emotion can alter the course of one’s life. Most of us are unable to develop our ability to love on the only level that really counts-a love that is compounded of maturity, self-knowledge, and courage. Learning to love demands practice and concentration. Even more than any other art, it demands genuine insight and understanding. In this startling book, Fromm discusses love in all aspects: not only romantic love, so surrounded by false conceptions, but also love of parents for children, brotherly love, erotic.

Wallace Stevens Poem The Death of a Soldier and William...

Read Wallace Stevens poem The Death of a Soldier and E.E. Cummings poem my sweet old etcetera in your textbook, Select Writers of the Twentieth Century. Select either poem and analyze the view of war in the poem with the view of war in Faulkners story Two Soldiers. The essay should be well- developed and well-supported with the texts. Wallace Stevens The Death of a Soldier honors the common, unremarkable death of an ordinary soldier. War is portrayed as inevitable in the Stevens poem, like the seasons. As in a season of autumn. / The soldier falls. The soldier is portrayed as acting like a leaf, falling to the ground. Unlike a famous general, there is no pomp and circumstance to the soldiers death, no memorial or extensive period of mourning. Metaphors of the natural world also used to describe the soldier include the wind ceasing to blow. Without dwelling upon the reasons for warfare and the injustices of war, Stevens makes it seem as if there is nothing humans can do to prevent the carnage caused by war. Humans are, in effect, caught in the states machinery of power that is bigger than the individual will. This sense of wars inevitability is also present in Faulkners short story Two Soldiers, in which the unnamed narrator idealizes his brother Pete. Unlike the Stevens poem, the short story is about a specific w ar and a specific family. The older brother, Pete, does not have a romantic view of war but he must surrender to the states need that