Role of Women in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman Essay

Role of Women in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman is of course about a salesman, but it is also about the American dream of success. Somewhere in between the narrowest topic, the death of a salesman, and the largest topic, the examination of American values, is Millers picture of the American family. This paper will chiefly study one member of the family, Willys wife, Linda Loman, but before examining Millers depiction of her, it will look at Millers depiction of other women in the play in order to make clear Lindas distinctive traits. We will see that although her role in society is extremely limited, she is an admirable figure, fulfilling the roles of wife and mother with remarkable intelligence.†¦show more content†¦HOWARDS VOICE. Go on, say something. (Pause.) Well, you gonna talk? HIS WIFE. I cant think of anything. HOWARDS VOICE. Well, talk--its turning.~ HIS WIFE (shyly, beaten). Hello. (Silence.) Oh Howard I cant talk into this . . . HOWARD (snapping the machine off). That was my wife. (1199) There is, in fact, a third woman in Howards life, maid. Howard says that if he cant be at home when the Jack Benny program comes on, he uses the wire recorder. He tells the maid to turn the radio on when Jack Benny comes on, and this automatically goes on with the radio.... (1199). In short, the women in Howards world exist to serve (and to worship) him. Another woman who seems to have existed only to serve men is Willy Lomans mother. On one occasion, in speaking with Ben, Willy remembers being on her lap, and Ben, on learning that his mother is dead, utters a platitudinous description of her, Fine specimen of a lady, Mother (1183), but thats as much as we learn of her. Willy is chiefly interested in learning about his father, who left the family and went to Alaska. Ben characterizes the father as a very great and a very wild-hearted man (1185), but the fact that the father left his family and apparently had no further communication with his wife and children seems to mean nothing to Ben. Presumably the mother struggled alone to bring up the boys, but her efforts areShow MoreRelated Portrayal of Women in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman Essay1679 Words   |  7 PagesPortrayal of Women in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman Although Death of a Salesman is mainly about a salesman named Willy Loman, the almost hidden presence of the women in the novel goes all too often unnoticed.   Linda Loman seems to be the glue that holds the Loman clan together, as Willy, Biff, and Happy are all deluded in one way or another.   Arthur Miller depicts Willys wife in a very specific way, and this is a very crucial part of the story.   He depicts the other women in the storyRead More Tragic Heroes in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman and Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House1709 Words   |  7 PagesHeroes in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman and Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House Dramatists such as Aristotle started to write a series of plays called tragedies. They were as follows: the play revolved around a great man such as a king or war hero, who possessed a tragic flaw. This flaw or discrepancy would eventually become his downfall. These types of plays are still written today, for example, Arthur Millers Death of Salesman and Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House. Death of Salesman shows theRead MoreWomen’s Treatment in Death of a Salesman1463 Words   |  6 PagesWomen’s treatment in Death of a Salesman December 11, 2012 Abstract In our today’s men and women hold equal rights, however, in times prior to the 1950’s the majority of people would agree men held favorable positions and were said to be superior over women. Unfortunately this behavior still exists in countries. Arthur Miller’s, Death of a Salesman probes into these issues and solidifies how the past plagued woman. Miller categorizes women into two buckets; housewives or whores. TheRead MoreArthur Millers Death of a Salesman Essay904 Words   |  4 PagesArthur Millers Death of a Salesman Arthur Millers play, Death of a Salesman contains many themes of success and failure. They include the apartment buildings, the rubber hose, Willys brother Ben, the tape recorder, and the seeds for the garden. These symbols represent Willys attempts to be successful and his impending failure. In the start Willy and Linda moved to a home in Brooklyn, as it at the time seemedRead More Death Of A Salesman Essay1380 Words   |  6 Pagesthe protagonist and a superior force and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that excites pity or terror. Miller’s explains that a tragic hero does not always have to be a monarch or a man of a higher status. A tragic hero can be a common person. A tragedy does not always have to end pessimistically; it could have an optimistic ending. The play Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, is a tragedy because it’s hero, Willy Loman, is a tragic figure that faces a superior source, being the AmericanRead More Importance of Self-Image in the Loman Family1483 Words   |  6 Pages Published in 1949, Arthur Miller’s Death of Salesman is a post Second World War American drama that highlights the plight of isolation and desolation experienced by the common man, as symbolized by Willy. The play deals with the society, life’s absurdity, various internal and external conflicts, death and above all, the tragedy of existence. It is located in the industrial society of the twentieth century where the pressure to succeed and the financial difficulties seem insurmountable. The playRead MoreAnalysis Of The Of A Salesman And Millers And Williams Plays1102 Words   |  5 PagesThe playwrights we discussed after Tennessee Williams have adapted disparate elements of postmodernism to undermine the modernist assumptions undergirding O’Neill’s, Glaspell’s, Wilder’s, Miller’s and Williams’ plays. I will use Fences, The Hungry Woman, Topdog/Underdog, Glengarry Glen Ross, Six Degrees of Separation, and The Heidi Chronicl es to support my claim. To start off, I will come up with working definitions of modernism and post-modernism. Modernism is a movement in culture that seeks toRead More Individual Choice and Failure in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman1553 Words   |  7 PagesIndividual Choice and Failure in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman It could be argued that Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman is a tragic play that represents the failures of a system, but from an existentialist point of view, however, the play solely represents the failures of an individual. By looking at the many distasteful characteristics of the societal system embodied by the Lomans family values and dreams, and by then arguing these points from an existentialist point of view, thisRead MoreAnalysis Of Arthur Miller s The Death Of A Salesman 1325 Words   |  6 PagesArthur Miller is one of the most successful and enduring playwrights of the post-war era in America. He focuses on middle-class anxieties since the theme of anxiety and insecurity reflects much of Arthur Miller’s own past. The play addresses loss of identity and a man’s inability to change within him and society (Miller 16). The American Dream has been an idea that has motivated society for centuries. It often times becomes the main theme for many movies, novels, an d poems. In, The Death of aRead MoreDeath Of A Salesman By Arthur Miller1470 Words   |  6 Pagesfamilies to travel to American soil to try at a chance of a better life, and in doing so, they too venture on a path to achieving this so commonly understood â€Å"American Dream.† Arthur Miller, a well-known literary writer in America, seems to disagree with this national phenomena, offering a different view in his play Death of a Salesman. In this play, he demonstrates through the life of an average American family, how this so called â€Å"dream† is much more complicated than the world is lead to believe. By using

The Media And Its Impact On Society - 914 Words

The media is very a controversial source of information heavily relied upon by many in today’s fast paced society. From its being media has been a controversial provider of information to the public in our nation. What was the initial purpose of the media and what about in today’s society ? How has it changed since it first began in the United States? Finally, does it still serve a useful purpose to society today? These are questions that are often asked but go unanswered to the satisfaction of many in society today. Thanks to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson the media became a useful tool for the earliest politicians to voice their opinions of areas of concern(Patterson,2013,p.247). This meant the earliest days of media were full of government partisanship. Without the government’s assistance through printing right contracts for approved government paperwork and such printed forms of media for the public may not have existed for years to come. The first printed sources of media were full of government partisanship because politicians used these as outlets to sway public opinion and publically argue with their constituents. Thanks to the invention of the telegraph in the early part of the 1800’s events from surrounding areas that were outside the paper’s immediate community were able to be reported. These new stories would replace those political partisanship columns and other byas commentary(Patterson,2013,p.247). Another technological advancement of theShow MoreRel atedThe Media And Its Impact On Society Essay1723 Words   |  7 Pagesonce said, â€Å"Whoever controls the media, controls the mind†. The Media have become one of the most dominant source of education of the 21st century. We could argue that most Americans use the media as their main source of information. The side effect of that is the fact that the media are very polarized. With the ongoing polarization, we could hypothesize that people would have been more politically educated and oriented if the media was not infiltrated. Mass media are expected to be educational.Read MoreThe Media And Its Impact On Society1678 Words   |  7 Pages When you are young you don t realize that what you are watching on the television is shaping many of your beliefs, distorting what is fictional and what is reality. The media plays a huge role in stereotyping black people compared to white people which has a major impact in how we view the people in our world. When we are watching tv or listening to the radio and it is constantly relating the color of a person s skin to their actions. This causes the audience to associate these actions with aRead MoreThe Impact of Media on Society853 Words   |  3 PagesHow much of an impact does the media have on your life? How many hours do you spend on the phone, watching television, or browsing the internet? Whether you choose to believe it or not, the media plays an enormous role in our everyday lives, and its impacts continues to stretch as technological advancements and other inn ovative creations come into place. One of the largest groups that the media affects, we fear is our children. As media continuously grows and undergoes changes, more and more childrenRead MoreThe Media And Its Impact On Society Essay1721 Words   |  7 Pagesonce said, â€Å"Whoever controls the media, controls the mind†. The Media have becoming one of the most dominant source of education of the 21st century. We could argue that most americans use the media as their main source of information. The side effect on that is the fact that the media is very polarized. With the ongoing polarization, we could hypothesize that people would have been more politically educated and oriented if the media was not infiltrated. Mass media is expected to be educational. PublicRead MoreMedia And Its Impact On Society Essay1625 Words   |  7 PagesMedia can be defined as â€Å"the means of communication as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, that reach or influence people widely† and is fully ingrained into our society. In fact, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report, during the 1st Quarter of 2016, American adults consumed media at a daily average of 10 hours and 39 minutes. Media not only entertains us and serves as an important agent of communication, but also plays a crucial role in the socialization of culturalRead MoreThe Impact Of Media On Society1435 Words   |  6 Pagesâ€Å"Mass media is a significant force in modern culture. Sociologists refer to this as a mediated culture where media reflects and creates the culture† (â€Å"The Role and Influence of Mass Media†, n.d, para.2). Media has affected to the most area of human life include relationship, education, careers, and entertainment. There were a lot of researches about the impacts of media to society from negative to positive effects; however, researchers were not pay attention to the impacts of media in inequalityRead MoreThe Media And Its Impact On Society1161 Words   |  5 PagesThe media plays a significant role in developing awareness on various different subjects. Without the media, people would be much less informed on many social and economic issues. The media can be credited for improvements in these sectors today as it engages the public to have an opinion of our on-going evolvements by releasing daily reports on such topics. In terms of charitable aid the media has greatly developed our awareness with a nature that influences us to feel sympathy for those less fortunateRead MoreMedia And Its Impact On Society1696 Words   |  7 Pages Media has an impact on many of the population’s everyday life. It comes to no surprise that the media i s closely related with body imaging. There are thousands of advertisements out in the media that depict images of beauty and physical attractiveness which are unrealistic. The masses see these images and think that they are achievable thus lowering the self-esteem of many. Many of these commercials and advertisements fall under the category of the following: weight loss, clothing, cosmetics andRead MoreMedia And Its Impact On Society Essay1903 Words   |  8 PagesMedia has been growing for a numerous amount of years, and it will only keep rising. You could say that nearly everyone around you has some sort of technological device or way in which they can access the media, these are what we call print, audio visual and on-line media. Print media includes things such as newspapers, magazines and even books, Audio visual media includes your TV, radio or even music and finally on-line media is mostly photos or videos that are spread over the internet. 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Bag of Bones CHAPTER FIFTEEN Free Essays

State your name for the record.’ ‘Michael Noonan.’ ‘Your address?’ ‘Derry is my permanent address, 14 Benton Street, but I also maintain a home in TR-90, on Dark Score Lake. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER FIFTEEN or any similar topic only for you Order Now The mailing address is Box 832. The actual house is on Lane Forty-two, off Route 68.’ Elmer Durgin, Kyra Devore’s guardian ad litem, waved a pudgy hand in front of his face, either to shoo away some troublesome insect or to tell me that was enough. I agreed that it was. I felt rather like the little girl in Our Town, who gave her address as Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire, America, the Northern Hemisphere, the World, the Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Mind of God. Mostly I was nervous. I’d reached the age of forty still a virgin in the area of court proceedings, and although we were in the conference room of Durgin, Peters, and Jarrette on Bridge Street in Castle Rock, this was still a court proceeding. There was one mentionably odd detail to these festivities. The stenographer wasn’t using one of those keyboards-on-a-post that look like adding machines, but a Stenomask, a gadget which fit over the lower half of his face. I had seen them before, but only in old black-and-white crime movies, the ones where Dan Duryea or John Payne is always driving around in a Buick with portholes on the sides, looking grim and smoking a Camel. Glancing over into the corner and seeing a guy who looked like the world’s oldest fighter-pilot was weird enough, but hearing everything you said immediately repeated in a muffled monotone was even weirder. ‘Thank you, Mr. Noonan. My wife has read all your books and says you are her favorite author. I just wanted to get that on the record.’ Durgin chuckled fatly. Why not? He was a fat guy. Most fat people I like they have expansive natures to go with their expansive waistlines. But there is a subgroup which I think of as the Evil Little Fat Folks. You don’t want to fuck with the ELFFS if you can help it; they will burn your house and rape your dog if you give them half an excuse and a quarter of an opportunity. Few of them stand over five-foot-two (Durgin’s height, I estimated), and many are under five feet. They smile a lot, but their eyes don’t smile. The Evil Little Fat Folks hate the whole world. Mostly they hate folks who can look down the length of their bodies and still see their own feet. This included me, although just barely. ‘Please thank your wife for me, Mr. Durgin. I’m sure she could recommend one for you to start on.’ Durgin chuckled. On his right, Durgin’s assistant a pretty young woman who looked approximately seventeen minutes out of law school chuckled. On my left, Romeo Bissonette chuckled. In the corner, the world’s oldest F- 111 pilot only went on muttering into his Stenomask. ‘I’ll wait for the big-screen version,’ he said. His eyes gave an ugly little gleam, as if he knew a feature film had never been made from one of my books only a made-for-TV movie of Being Two that pulled ratings roughly equal to the National Sofa Refinishing Championships. I hoped that we’d completed this chubby little fuck’s idea of the pleasantries. ‘I am Kyra Devore’s guardian ad litem,’ he said. ‘Do you know what that means, Mr. Noonan?’ ‘I believe I do.’ ‘It means,’ Durgin rolled on, ‘that I’ve been appointed by Judge Rancourt to decide if I can where Kyra Devore’s best interests lie, should a custody judgment become necessary. Judge Rancourt would not, in such an event, be required to base his decision on my conclusions, but in many cases that is what happens.’ He looked at me with his hands folded on a blank legal pad. The pretty assistant, on the other hand, was scribbling madly. Perhaps she didn’t trust the fighter-pilot. Durgin looked as if he expected a round of applause. ‘Was that a question, Mr. Durgin?’ I asked and Romeo Bissonette delivered a light, practiced chip to my ankle. I didn’t need to look at him to know it wasn’t an accident. Durgin pursed lips so smooth and damp that he looked as if he were wearing a clear gloss on them. On his shining pate, roughly two dozen strands of hair were combed in smooth little arcs. He gave me a patient, measuring look. Behind it was all the intransigent ugliness of an Evil Little Fat Folk. The pleasantries were over, all right. I was sure of it. ‘No, Mr. Noonan, that was not a question. I simply thought you might like to know why we’ve had to ask you to come away from your lovely lake on such a pleasant morning. Perhaps I was wrong. Now, if ‘ There was a peremptory knock on the door, followed by your friend and his, George Footman. Today Cleveland Casual had been replaced by a khaki Deputy Sheriff’s uniform, complete with Sam Browne belt and sidearm. He helped himself to a good look at the assistant’s bustline, displayed in a blue silk blouse, then handed her a folder and a cassette tape recorder. He gave me one brief gander before leaving. I remember you, buddy, that glance said. The smartass writer, the cheap date. Romeo Bissonette tipped his head toward me. He used the side of his hand to bridge the gap between his mouth and my ear. ‘Devore’s tape,’ he said. I nodded to show I understood, then turned to Durgin again. ‘Mr. Noonan, you’ve met Kyra Devore and her mother, Mary Devore, haven’t you?’ How did you get Mattie out of Mary, I wondered . . . and then knew, just as I had known about the white shorts and halter top. Mattie was how Ki had first tried to say Mary. ‘Mr. Noonan, are we keeping you up?’ ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, is there?’ Bissonette asked. His tone was mild, but Elmer Durgin gave him a look which suggested that, should the ELFFS succeed in their goal of world domination, Bissonette would be aboard the first gulag-bound boxcar. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said before Durgin could reply. ‘I just got derailed there for a second or two.’ ‘New story idea?’ Durgin asked, smiling his glossy smile. He looked like a swamp-toad in a sportcoat. He turned to the old jet pilot, told him to strike that last, then repeated his question about Kyra and Mattie. Yes, I said, I had met them. ‘Once or more than once?’ ‘More than once.’ ‘How many times have you met them?’ ‘Twice.’ ‘Have you also spoken to Mary Devore on the phone?’ Already these questions were moving in a direction that made me uncomfortable. ‘Yes.’ ‘How many times?’ ‘Three times.’ The third had come the day before, when she had asked if I would join her and John Storrow for a picnic lunch on the town common after my deposition. Lunch right there in the middle of town before God and everybody . . . although, with a New York lawyer to play chaperone, what harm in that? ‘Have you spoken to Kyra Devore on the telephone?’ What an odd question! Not one anybody had prepared me for, either. I supposed that was at least partly why he had asked it. ‘Mr. Noonan?’ ‘Yes, I’ve spoken to her once.’ ‘Can you tell us the nature of that conversation?’ ‘Well . . . ‘ I looked doubtfully at Bissonette, but there was no help there. He obviously didn’t know, either. ‘Mattie ‘ ‘Pardon me?’ Durgin leaned forward as much as he could. His eyes were intent in their pink pockets of flesh. ‘Mattie?’ ‘Mattie Devore. Mary Devore.’ ‘You call her Mattie?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, and had a wild impulse to add: In bed! In bed I call her that! ‘Oh Mattie, don’t stop, don’t stop,’ I cry!’ ‘It’s the name she gave me when she introduced herself. I met her ‘ ‘We may get to that, but right now I’m interested in your telephone conversation with Kyra Devore. When was that?’ ‘It was yesterday.’ ‘July ninth, 1998.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Who placed that call?’ ‘Ma . . . Mary Devore.’ Now he’ll ask why she called, I thought, and I’ll say she wanted to have yet another sex marathon, foreplay to consist of feeding each other chocolate-dipped strawberries while we look at pictures of naked malformed dwarves. ‘How did Kyra Devore happen to speak to you?’ ‘She asked if she could. I heard her saying to her mother that she had to tell me something.’ ‘What was it she had to tell you?’ ‘That she had her first bubble bath.’ ‘Did she also say she coughed?’ I was quiet, looking at him. In that moment I understood why people hate lawyers, especially when they’ve been dusted over by one who’s good at the job. ‘Mr. Noonan, would you like me to repeat the question?’ ‘No,’ I said, wondering where he’d gotten his information. Had these bastards tapped Mattie’s phone? My phone? Both? Perhaps for the first time I understood on a gut level what it must be like to have half a billion dollars. With that much dough you could tap a lot of telephones. ‘She said her mother pushed bubbles in her face and she coughed. But she was ‘ ‘Thank you, Mr. Noonan, now let’s turn to ‘ ‘Let him finish,’ Bissonette said. I had an idea he had already taken a bigger part in the proceedings than he had expected to, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was a sleepy-looking man with a bloodhound’s mournful, trustworthy face. ‘This isn’t a courtroom, and you’re not cross-examining him.’ ‘I have the little girl’s welfare to think of,’ Durgin said. He sounded both pompous and humble at the same time, a combination that went together like chocolate sauce on creamed corn. ‘It’s a responsibility I take very seriously. If I seemed to be badgering you, Mr. Noonan, I apologize.’ I didn’t bother accepting his apology that would have made us both phonies. ‘All I was going to say is that Ki was laughing when she said it. She said she and her mother had a bubble-fight. When her mother came back on, she was laughing, too.’ Durgin had opened the folder Footman had brought him and was paging rapidly through it while I spoke, as if he weren’t hearing a word. ‘Her mother . . . Mattie, as you call her.’ ‘Yes. Mattie as I call her. How do you know about our private telephone conversation in the first place?’ ‘That’s none of your business, Mr. Noonan.’ He selected a single sheet of paper, then closed the folder. He held the paper up briefly, like a doctor studying an X-ray, and I could see it was covered with single-spaced typing. ‘Let’s turn to your initial meeting with Mary and Kyra Devore. That was on the Fourth of July, wasn’t it?’ ‘Yes.’ Durgin was nodding. ‘The morning of the Fourth. And you met Kyra Devore first.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You met her first because her mother wasn’t with her at that time, was she?’ ‘That’s a badly phrased question, Mr. Durgin, but I guess the answer is yes.’ ‘I’m flattered to have my grammar corrected by a man who’s been on the bestseller lists,’ Durgin said, smiling. The smile suggested that he’d like to see me sitting next to Romeo Bissonette in that first gulag-bound boxcar. ‘Tell us about your meeting, first with Kyra Devore and then with Mary Devore. Or Mattie, if you like that better.’ I told the story. When I was finished, Durgin centered the tape player in front of him. The nails of his pudgy fingers looked as glossy as his lips. ‘Mr. Noonan, you could have run Kyra over, isn’t that true?’ ‘Absolutely not. I was going thirty-five that’s the speed limit there by the store. I saw her in plenty of time to stop.’ ‘Suppose you had been coming the other way, though heading north instead of south. Would you still have seen her in plenty of time?’ That was a fairer question than some of his others, actually. Someone coming the other way would have had a far shorter time to react. Still . . . ‘Yes,’ I said. Durgin went up with the eyebrows. ‘You’re sure of that?’ ‘Yes, Mr. Durgin. I might have had to come down a little harder on the brakes, but ‘ ‘At thirty-five.’ ‘Yes, at thirty-five. I told you, that’s the speed limit ‘ ‘ -on that particular stretch of Route 68. Yes, you told me that. You did. Is it your experience that most people obey the speed limit on that part of the road?’ ‘I haven’t spent much time on the TR since 1993, so I can’t ‘ ‘Come on, Mr. Noonan this isn’t a scene from one of your books. Just answer my questions, or we’ll be here all morning.’ ‘I’m doing my best, Mr. Durgin.’ He sighed, put-upon. ‘You’ve owned your place on Dark Score Lake since the eighties, haven’t you? And the speed limit around the Lakeview General Store, the post office, and Dick Brooks’s All-Purpose Garage what’s called The North Village hasn’t changed since then, has it?’ ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Returning to my original question, then in your observation, do most people on that stretch of road obey the thirty-five-mile-an-hour limit?’ ‘I can’t say if it’s most, because I’ve never done a traffic survey, but I guess a lot don’t.’ ‘Would you like to hear Castle County Sheriffs Deputy Footman testify on where the greatest number of speeding tickets are given out in TR-90, Mr. Noonan?’ ‘No,’ I said, quite honestly. ‘Did other vehicles pass you while you were speaking first with Kyra Devore and then with Mary Devore?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How many?’ ‘I don’t know exactly. A couple.’ ‘Could it have been three?’ ‘I guess.’ ‘Five?’ ‘No, probably not so many.’ ‘But you don’t know, exactly, do you?’ ‘Because Kyra Devore was upset.’ ‘Actually she had it together pretty well for a ‘ ‘Did she cry in your presence?’ ‘Well . . . yes.’ ‘Did her mother make her cry?’ ‘That’s unfair.’ ‘As unfair as allowing a three-year-old to go strolling down the middle of a busy highway on a holiday morning, in your opinion, or perhaps not quite as unfair as that?’ ‘Jeepers, lay off,’ Mr. Bissonette said mildly. There was distress on his bloodhound’s face. ‘I withdraw the question,’ Durgin said. ‘Which one?’ I asked. He looked at me tiredly, as if to say he had to put up with assholes like me all the time and he was used to how we behaved. ‘How many cars went by from the time you picked the child up and carried her to safety to the time when you and the Devores parted company?’ I hated that ‘carried her to safety’ bit, but even as I formulated my answer, the old guy was muttering the question into his Stenomask. And it was in fact what I had done. There was no getting around it. ‘I told you, I don’t know for sure.’ ‘Well, give me a guesstimate.’ Guesstimate. One of my all-time least favorite words. A Paul Harvey word. ‘There might have been three.’ ‘Including Mary Devore herself?. Driving a ‘ He consulted the paper he’d taken from the folder. ‘ a 1982 Jeep Scout?’ I thought of Ki saying Mattie go fast and understood where Durgin was heading now. And there was nothing I could do about it. ‘Yes, it was her and it was a Scout. I don’t know what year.’ ‘Was she driving below the posted speed limit, at the posted speed limit, or above the posted speed limit when she passed the place where you were standing with Kyra in your arms?’ She’d been doing at least fifty, but I told Durgin I couldn’t say for sure. He urged me to try I know you are unfamiliar with the hangman’s knot, Mr. Noonan, but I’m sure you can make one if you really work at it and I declined as politely as I could. He picked up the paper again. ‘Mr. Noonan, would it surprise you to know that two witnesses Richard Brooks, Junior, the owner of Dick’s All-Purpose Garage, and Royce Merrill, a retired carpenter claim that Mrs. Devore was doing well over thirty-five when she passed your location?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was concerned with the little girl.’ ‘Would it surprise you to know that Royce Merrill estimated her speed at sixty miles an hour?’ ‘That’s ridiculous. When she hit the brakes she would have skidded sideways and landed upside down in the ditch.’ ‘The skid-marks measured by Deputy Footman indicate a speed of at least fifty miles an hour,’ Durgin said. It wasn’t a question, but he looked at me almost roguishly, as if inviting me to struggle a little more and sink a little deeper into this nasty pit. I said nothing. Durgin folded his pudgy little hands and leaned over them toward me. The roguish look was gone. ‘Mr. Noonan, if you hadn’t carried Kyra Devore to the side of the road if you hadn’t rescued her mightn’t her own mother have run her over?’ Here was the really loaded question, and how should I answer it? Bissonette was certainly not flashing any helpful signals; he seemed to be trying to make meaningful eye-contact with the pretty assistant. I thought of the book Mattie was reading in tandem with ‘Bartleby’ Silent Witness, by Richard North Patterson. Unlike the Grisham brand, Patterson’s lawyers almost always seemed to know what they were doing. Objection, Your honor, calls for speculation on the part of the witness. I shrugged. ‘Sorry, counsellor, can’t say left my crystal ball home.’ Again I saw the ugly flash in Durgin’s eyes. ‘Mr. Noonan, I can assure you that if you don’t answer that question here, you are apt to be called back from Malibu or Fire Island or wherever it is you’re going to write your next opus to answer it later on.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve already told you I was concerned with the child. I can’t tell you how fast the mother was going, or how good Royce Merrill’s vision is, or if Deputy Footman even measured the right set of skid-marks. There’s a whole bunch of rubber on that part of the road, I can tell you. Suppose she was going fifty? Even fifty-five, let’s say that. She’s twenty-one years old, Durgin. At the age of twenty-one, a person’s driving skills are at their peak. She probably would have swerved around the child, and easily.’ ‘I think that’s quite enough.’ ‘Why? Because you’re not getting what you wanted?’ Bissonette’s shoe clipped my ankle again, but I ignored it. ‘If you’re on Kyra’s side, why do you sound as though you’re on her grandfather’s?’ A baleful little smile touched Durgin’s lips. The kind that says Okay, smart guy, you want to play? He pulled the tape-recorder a little closer to him. ‘Since you have mentioned Kyra’s grandfather, Mr. Maxwell Devore of Palm Springs, let’s talk about him a little, shall we?’ ‘It’s your show.’ ‘Have you ever spoken with Maxwell Devore?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘In person or on the phone?’ ‘Phone.’ I thought about adding that he had somehow gotten hold of my unlisted number, then remembered that Mattie had, too, and decided to keep my mouth shut on that subject. ‘When was this?’ ‘Last Saturday night. The night of the Fourth. He called while I was watching the fireworks.’ ‘And was the subject of your conversation that morning’s little adventure?’ As he asked, Durgin reached into his pocket and brought out a cassette tape. There was an ostentatious quality to this gesture; in that moment he looked like a parlor magician showing you both sides of a silk handkerchief. And he was bluffing. I couldn’t be sure of that . . . and yet I was. Devore had taped our conversation, all right that underhum really had been too loud, and on some level I’d been aware of that fact even while I was talking to him and I thought it really was on the cassette Durgin was now slotting into the cassette player . . . but it was a bluff. ‘I don’t recall,’ I said. Durgin’s hand froze in the act of snapping the cassette’s transparent loading panel shut. He looked at me with frank disbelief . . . and something else. I thought the something else was surprised anger. ‘You don’t recall? Come now, Mr. Noonan. Surely writers train themselves to recall conversations, and this one was only a week ago. Tell me what you talked about.’ ‘I really can’t say,’ I told him in a stolid, colorless voice. For a moment Durgin looked almost panicky. Then his features smoothed. One polished fingernail slipped back and forth over keys marked REW, FF, PLAY, and REC. ‘How did Mr. Devore begin the conversation?’ he asked. ‘He said hello,’ I said mildly, and there was a short muffled sound from behind the Stenomask. It could have been the old guy clearing his throat; it could have been a suppressed laugh. Spots of color were blooming in Durgin’s cheeks. ‘After hello? What then?’ ‘I don’t recall.’ ‘Did he ask you about that morning?’ ‘I don’t recall.’ ‘Didn’t you tell him that Mary Devore and her daughter were together, Mr. Noonan? That they were together picking flowers? Isn’t that what you told this worried grandfather when he inquired about the incident which was the talk of the township that Fourth of July?’ ‘Oh boy,’ Bissonette said. He raised one hand over the table, then touched the palm with the fingers of the other, making a ref’s T. ‘Time out.’ Durgin looked at him. The flush in his cheeks was more pronounced now, and his lips had pulled back enough to show the tips of small, neatly capped teeth. ‘What do you want?’ he almost snarled, as if Bissonette had just dropped by to tell him about the Mormon Way or perhaps the Rosicrucians. ‘I want you to stop leading this guy, and I want that whole thing about picking flowers stricken from the record,’ Bissonette said. ‘Why?’ Durgin snapped. ‘Because you’re trying to get stuff on the record that this witness won’t say. If you want to break here for awhile so we can make a conference call to Judge Rancourt, get his opinion ‘ ‘I withdraw the question,’ Durgin said. He looked at me with a kind of helpless, surly rage. ‘Mr. Noonan, do you want to help me do my job?’ ‘I want to help Kyra Devore if I can,’ I said. ‘Very well.’ He nodded as if no distinction had been made. ‘Then please tell me what you and Maxwell Devore talked about.’ ‘I can’t recall.’ I caught his eyes and held them. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘you can refresh my recollection.’ There was a moment of silence, like that which sometimes strikes a high-stakes poker game just after the last of the bets have been made and just before the players show their hands. Even the old fighter-pilot was quiet, his eyes unblinking above the mask. Then Durgin pushed the cassette player aside with the heel of his hand (the set of his mouth said he felt about it just then as I often felt about the telephone) and went back to the morning of July Fourth. He never asked about my dinner with Mattie and Ki on Tuesday night, and never returned to my telephone conversation with Devore the one where I had said all those awkward and easily disprovable things. I went on answering questions until eleven-thirty, but the interview really ended when Durgin pushed the tape-player away with the heel of his hand. I knew it, and I’m pretty sure he did, too. ‘Mike! Mike, over here!’ Mattie was waving from one of the tables in the picnic area behind the town common’s bandstand. She looked vibrant and happy. I waved back and made my way in that direction, weaving between little kids playing tag, skirting a couple of teenagers making out on the grass, and ducking a Frisbee which a leaping German shepherd caught smartly. There was a tall, skinny redhead with her, but I barely got a chance to notice him. Mattie met me while I was still on the gravel path, put her arms around me, hugged me it was no prudey little ass-poking-out hug, either and then kissed me on the mouth hard enough to push my lips against my teeth. There was a hearty smack when she disengaged. She pulled back and looked at me with undisguised delight. ‘Was it the biggest kiss you’ve ever had?’ ‘The biggest in at least four years,’ I said. ‘Will you settle for that?’ And if she didn’t step away from me in the next few seconds, she was going to have physical proof of how much I had enjoyed it. ‘I guess I’ll have to.’ She turned to the redheaded guy with a funny kind of defiance. ‘Was that all right?’ ‘Probably not,’ he said, ‘but at least you’re not currently in view of those old boys at the All-Purpose Garage. Mike, I’m John Storrow. Nice to meet you in person.’ I liked him at once, maybe because I’d come upon him dressed in his three-piece New York suit and primly setting out paper plates on a picnic table while his curly red hair blew around his head like kelp. His skin was fair and freckled, the kind which would never tan, only burn and then peel in great eczema-like patches. When we shook, his hand seemed to be all knuckles. He had to be at least thirty, but he looked Mattie’s age, and I guessed it would be another five years before he was able to get a drink without showing his driver’s license. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a five-course lunch, courtesy of Castle Rock Variety grinders, which are for some strange reason called ‘Italian sandwiches’ up here . . . mozzarella sticks . . . garlic fries . . . Twinkies.’ ‘That’s only four,’ I said. ‘I forgot the soft-drink course,’ he said, and pulled three long-neck bottles of S’OK birch beer out of a brown bag. ‘Let’s eat. Mattie runs the library from two to eight on Fridays and Saturdays, and this would be a bad time for her to be missing work.’ ‘How did the readers’ circle go last night?’ I asked. ‘Lindy Briggs didn’t eat you alive, I see.’ She laughed, clasped her hands, and shook them over her head. ‘I was a hit! An absolute smashola! I didn’t dare tell them I got all my best insights from you ‘ ‘Thank God for small favors,’ Storrow said. He was freeing his own sandwich from its string and butcher-paper wrapping, doing it carefully and a little dubiously, using just the tips of his fingers. ‘ so I said I looked in a couple of books and found some leads there. It was sort of wonderful. I felt like a college kid.’ ‘Good.’ ‘Bissonette?’ John Storrow asked. ‘Where’s he? I never met a guy named Romeo before.’ ‘Said he had to go right back to Lewiston. Sorry.’ ‘Actually it’s best we stay small, at least to begin with.’ He bit into his sandwich they come tucked into long sub rolls and looked at me, surprised. ‘This isn’t bad.’ ‘Eat more than three and you’re hooked for life,’ Mattie said, and chomped heartily into her own. ‘Tell us about the depo,’ John said, and while they ate, I talked. When I finished, I picked up my own sandwich and played a little catch-up. I’d forgotten how good an Italian can be sweet, sour, and oily all at the same time. Of course nothing that tastes that good can be healthy; that’s a given. I suppose one could formulate a similar postulate about full-body hugs from young girls in legal trouble. ‘Very interesting,’ John said. ‘Very interesting indeed.’ He took a mozzarella stick from its grease-stained bag, broke it open, and looked with a kind of fascinated horror at the clotted white gunk inside. ‘People up here eat this?’ he asked. ‘People in New York eat fish-bladders,’ I said. ‘Raw.’ ‘Touch? ¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ He dipped a piece into the plastic container of spaghetti sauce (in this context it is called ‘cheese-dip’ in western Maine), then ate it. ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Not bad. They ought to be a lot hotter, though.’ Yes, he was right about that. Eating cold mozzarella sticks is a little like eating cold snot, an observation I thought I would keep to myself on this beautiful midsummer Friday. ‘If Durgin had the tape, why wouldn’t he play it?’ Mattie asked. ‘I don’t understand.’ John stretched his arms out, cracked his knuckles, and looked at her benignly. ‘We’ll probably never know for sure,’ he said. He thought Devore was going to drop the suit it was in every line of his body-language and every inflection of his voice. That was hopeful, but it would be good if Mattie didn’t allow herself to become too hopeful. John Storrow wasn’t as young as he looked, and probably not as guileless, either (or so I fervently hoped), but he was young. And neither he nor Mattie knew the story of Scooter Larribee’s sled. Or had seen Bill Dean’s face when he told it. ‘Want to hear some possibilities?’ ‘Sure,’ I said. John put down his sandwich, wiped his fingers, and then began to tick off points. ‘First, he made the call. Taped conversations have a highly dubious value under those circumstances. Second, he didn’t exactly come off like Captain Kangaroo, did he?’ ‘No.’ ‘Third, your fabrication impugns you, Mike, but not really very much, and it doesn’t impugn Mattie at all. And by the way, that thing about Mattie pushing bubbles in Kyra’s face, I love that. If that’s the best they can do, they better give it up right now. Last and this is where the truth probably lies I think Devore’s got Nixon’s Disease.’ ‘Nixon’s Disease?’ Mattie asked. ‘The tape Durgin had isn’t the only tape. Can’t be. And your father-in-law is afraid that if he introduces one tape made by whatever system he’s got in Warrington’s, we might subpoena all of them. And I’d damn well try.’ She looked bewildered. ‘What could be on them? And if it’s bad, why not just destroy them?’ ‘Maybe he can’t,’ I said. ‘Maybe he needs them for other reasons.’ ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ John said. ‘Durgin was bluffing, and that’s what matters.’ He hit the heel of his hand lightly against the picnic table. ‘I think he’s going to drop it. I really do.’ ‘It’s too early to start thinking like that,’ I said at once, but I could tell by Mattie’s face shining more brightly than ever that the damage was done. ‘Fill him in on what else you’ve been doing,’ Mattie told John. ‘Then I’ve got to get to the library.’ ‘Where do you send Kyra on your workdays?’ I asked. ‘Mrs. Cullum’s. She lives two miles up the Wasp Hill Road. Also in July there’s VBS from ten until three. That’s Vacation Bible School. Ki loves it, especially the singing and the flannel-board stories about Noah and Moses. The bus drops her off at Arlene’s, and I pick her up around quarter of nine.’ She smiled a little wistfully. ‘By then she’s usually fast asleep on the couch.’ John held forth for the next ten minutes or so. He hadn’t been on the case long, but had already started a lot of balls rolling. A fellow in California was gathering facts about Roger Devore and Morris Ridding (‘gathering facts’ sounded so much better than ‘snooping’). John was particularly interested in learning about the quality of Roger Devore’s relations with his father, and if Roger was on record concerning his little niece from Maine. John had also mapped out a campaign to learn as much as possible about Max Devore’s movements and activities since he’d come back to TR-90. To that end he had the name of a private investigator, one recommended by Romeo Bissonette, my rent-a-lawyer. As he spoke, paging rapidly through a little notebook he drew from the inside pocket of his suitcoat, I remembered what he’d said about Lady Justice during our telephone conversation: Slap some handcuffs on that broad’s wrists and some tape over her mouth to go along with the blindfold, rape her and roll her in the mud. That was maybe a bit too strong for what we were doing, but I thought at the very least we were shoving her around a little. I imagined poor Roger Devore up on the stand, having flown three thousand miles in order to be questioned about his sexual preferences. I had to keep reminding myself that his father had put him in that position, not Mattie or me or John Storrow. ‘Have you gotten any closer to a meeting with Devore and his chief legal advisor?’ I asked. ‘Don’t know for sure. The line is in the water, the offer is on the table, the puck’s on the ice, pick your favorite metaphor, mix em and match em if you desire.’ ‘Got your irons in the fire,’ Mattie said. ‘Your checkers on the board,’ I added. We looked at each other and laughed. John regarded us sadly, then sighed, picked up his sandwich, and began to eat again. ‘You really have to meet him with his lawyer more or less dancing attendance?’ I asked. ‘Would you like to win this thing, then discover Devore can do it all again based on unethical behavior by Mary Devore’s legal resource?’ John returned. ‘Don’t even joke about it!’ Mattie cried. ‘I wasn’t joking,’ John said. ‘It has to be with his lawyer, yes. I don’t think it’s going to happen, not on this trip. I haven’t even got a look at the old cockuh, and I have to tell you my curiosity is killing me.’ ‘If that’s all it takes to make you happy, show up behind the backstop at the softball field next Tuesday evening,’ Mattie said. ‘He’ll be there in his fancy wheelchair, laughing and clapping and sucking his damned old oxygen every fifteen minutes or so.’ ‘Not a bad idea,’ John said. ‘I have to go back to New York for the weekend I’m leaving aprs Osgood but maybe I’ll show up on Tuesday. I might even bring my glove.’ He began clearing up our litter, and once again I thought he looked both prissy and endearing at the same time, like Stan Laurel wearing an apron. Mattie eased him aside and took over. ‘No one ate any Twinkles,’ she said, a little sadly. ‘Take them home to your daughter,’ John said. ‘No way. I don’t let her eat stuff like this. What kind of mother do you think I am?’ She saw our expressions, replayed what she’d just said, then burst out laughing. We joined her. Mattie’s old Scout was parked in one of the slant spaces behind the war memorial, which in Castle Rock is a World War I soldier with a generous helping of birdshit on his pie-dish helmet. A brand-new Taurus with a Hertz decal above the inspection sticker was parked next to it. John tossed his briefcase reassuringly thin and not very ostentatious into the back seat. ‘If I can make it back on Tuesday, I’ll call you,’ he told Mattie. ‘If I’m able to get an appointment with your father-in-law through this man Osgood, I will also call you.’ ‘I’ll buy the Italian sandwiches,’ Mattie said. He smiled, then grasped her arm in one hand and mine in the other. He looked like a newly ordained minister getting ready to marry his first couple. ‘You two talk on the telephone if you need to,’ he said, ‘always remembering that one or both lines may be tapped. Meet in the market if you happen to. Mike, you might feel a need to drop by the local library and check out a book.’ ‘Not until you renew your card, though,’ Mattie said, giving me a demure glance. ‘But no more visits to Mattie’s trailer. Is that understood?’ I said yes; she said yes; John Storrow looked unconvinced. It made me wonder if he was seeing something in our faces or bodies that shouldn’t be there. ‘They are committed to a line of attack which probably isn’t going to work,’ he said. ‘We can’t risk giving them the chance to change course. That means innuendos about the two of you; it also means innuendos about Mike and Kyra.’ Mattie’s shocked expression made her look twelve again. ‘Mike and Kyra! What are you talking about?’ ‘Allegations of child molestation thrown up by people so desperate they’ll try anything.’ ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘And if my father-in-law wanted to sling that kind of mud ‘ John nodded. ‘Yes, we’d be obligated to sling it right back. Newspaper coverage from coast to coast would follow, maybe even Court TV, God bless and save us. We want none of that if we can avoid it. It’s not good for the grownups, and it’s not good for the child. Now or later.’ He bent and kissed Mattie’s cheek. ‘I’m sorry about all this,’ he said, and he did sound genuinely sorry. ‘Custody’s just this way.’ ‘I think you warned me. It’s just that . . . the idea someone might make a thing like that up just because there was no other way for them to win . . . ‘ ‘Let me warn you again,’ he said. His face came as close to grim as its young and good-natured features would probably allow. ‘What we have is a very rich man with a very shaky case. The combination could be like working with old dynamite.’ I turned to Mattie. ‘Are you still worried about Ki? Still feel she’s in danger?’ I saw her think about hedging her response out of plain old Yankee reserve, quite likely and then deciding not to. Deciding, perhaps, that hedging was a luxury she couldn’t afford. ‘Yes. But it’s just a feeling, you know.’ John was frowning. I supposed the idea that Devore might resort to extralegal means of obtaining what he wanted had occurred to him, as well. ‘Keep your eye on her as much as you can,’ he said. ‘I respect intuition. Is yours based on anything concrete?’ ‘No,’ Mattie answered, and her quick glance in my direction asked me to keep my mouth shut. ‘Not really.’ She opened the Scout’s door and tossed in the little brown bag with the Twinkies in it she had decided to keep them after all. Then she turned to John and me with an expression that was close to anger. ‘I’m not sure how to follow that advice, anyway. I work five days a week, and in August, when we do the microfiche update, it’ll be six. Right now Ki gets her lunch at Vacation Bible School and her dinner from Arlene Cullum. I see her in the mornings. The rest of the time . . . ‘ I knew what she was going to say before she said it; the expression was an old one. ‘ . . . she’s on the TR.’ ‘I could help you find an au pair,’ I said, thinking it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than John Storrow. ‘No,’ they said in such perfect unison that they glanced at each other and laughed. But even while she was laughing, Mattie looked tense and unhappy. ‘We’re not going to leave a paper trail for Durgin or Devore’s custody team to exploit,’ John said. ‘Who pays me is one thing. Who pays Mattie’s child-care help is another.’ ‘Besides, I’ve taken enough from you,’ Mattie said. ‘More than I can sleep easy on. I’m not going to get in any deeper just because I’ve been having megrims.’ She climbed into the Scout and closed the door. I rested my hands on her open window. Now we were on the same level, and the eye-contact was so strong it was disconcerting. ‘Mattie, I don’t have anything else to spend it on. Really.’ ‘When it comes to John’s fee, I accept that. Because John’s fee is about Ki.’ She put her hand over mine and squeezed briefly. ‘This other is about me. All right?’ ‘Yeah. But you need to tell your babysitter and the people who run this Bible thing that you’ve got a custody case on your hands, a potentially bitter one, and Kyra’s not to go anywhere with anyone, even someone they know, without your say-so.’ She smiled. ‘It’s already been done. On John’s advice. Stay in touch, Mike.’ She lifted my hand, gave it a hearty smack, and drove away. ‘What do you think?’ I asked John as we watched the Scout blow oil on its way to the new Prouty Bridge, which spans Castle Street and spills outbound traffic onto Highway 68. ‘I think it’s grand she has a well-heeled benefactor and a smart lawyer,’ John said. He paused, then added: ‘But I’ll tell you some-thing she somehow doesn’t feel lucky to me at all. There’s a feeling I get . . . I don’t know . . . ‘ ‘That there’s a cloud around her you can’t quite see.’ ‘Maybe. Maybe that’s it.’ He raked his hands through the restless mass of his red hair. ‘I just know it’s something sad.’ I knew exactly what he meant . . . except for me there was more. I wanted to be in bed with her, sad or not, right or not. I wanted to feel her hands on me, tugging and pressing, patting and stroking. I wanted to be able to smell her skin and taste her hair. I wanted to have her lips against my ear, her breath tickling the fine hairs within its cup as she told me to do what I wanted, whatever I wanted. I got back to Sara Laughs shortly before two o’clock and let myself in, thinking about nothing but my study and the IBM with the Courier ball. I was writing again writing. I could still hardly believe it. I’d work (not that it felt much like work after a four-year layoff) until maybe six o’clock, swim, then go down to the Village Cafe for one of Buddy’s cholesterol-rich specialties. The moment I stepped through the door, Bunter’s bell began to ring stridently. I stopped in the foyer, my hand frozen on the knob. The house was hot and bright, not a shadow anywhere, but the gooseflesh forming on my arms felt like midnight. ‘Who’s here?’ I called. The bell stopped ringing. There was a moment of silence, and then a woman shrieked. It came from everywhere, pouring out of the sunny, mote-laden air like sweat out of hot skin. It was a scream of outrage, anger, grief . . . but mostly, I think, of horror. And I screamed in response. I couldn’t help it. I had been frightened standing in the dark cellar stairwell, listening to the unseen fist thump on the insulation, but this was far worse. It never stopped, that scream. It faded, as the child’s sobs had faded; faded as if the person screaming was being carried rapidly down a long corridor and away from me. At last it was gone. I leaned against the bookcase, my palm pressed against my tee-shirt, my heart galloping beneath it. I was gasping for breath, and my muscles had that queer exploded feel they get after you’ve had a bad scare. A minute passed. My heartbeat gradually slowed, and my breathing slowed with it. I straightened up, took a tottery step, and when my legs held me, took two more. I stood in the kitchen doorway, looking across to the living room. Above the fireplace, Bunter the moose looked glassily back at me. The bell around his neck hung still and chimeless. A hot sunpoint glowed on its side. The only sound was that stupid Felix the Cat clock in the kitchen. The thought nagging at me, even then, was that the screaming woman had been Jo, that Sara Laughs was being haunted by my wife, and that she was in pain. Dead or not, she was in pain. ‘Jo?’ I asked quietly. ‘Jo, are you ‘ The sobbing began again the sound of a terrified child. At the same moment my mouth and nose once more filled with the iron taste of the lake. I put one hand to my throat, gagging and frightened, then leaned over the sink and spat. It was as it had been before instead of voiding a gush of water, nothing came out but a little spit. The waterlogged feeling was gone as if it had never been there. I stayed where I was, grasping the counter and bent over the sink, probably looking like a drunk who has finished the party by upchucking most of the night’s bottled cheer. I felt like that, too stunned and bleary, too overloaded to really understand what was going on. At last I straightened up again, took the towel folded over the dishwasher’s handle, and wiped my face with it. There was tea in the fridge, and I wanted a tall, ice-choked glass of it in the worst way. I reached for the doorhandle and froze. The fruit and vegetable magnets were drawn into a circle again. In the center was this: help im drown That’s it, I thought. I’m getting out of here. Right now. Today. Yet an hour later I was up in my stifling study with a glass of tea on the desk beside me (the cubes in it long since melted), dressed only in my bathing trunks and lost in the world I was making the one where a private detective named Andy Drake was trying to prove that John Shackleford was not the serial killer nicknamed Baseball Cap. This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root-canal at a time; boat-builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind us as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things fish and unicorns and men on horseback but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on. How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER FIFTEEN, Essay examples

The Contemporary Ethical Environment in the IT industry

Question: Describe about the contemporary ethical environment in the IT industry? Answer: Introduction: With the technological advancement and dynamic nature of the civilization make it possible to impose some code of ethics that are appropriate for the previous generation and no longer applicable for to apply in this decade. Hence some corrective measures are taken to change the technology and principle. Hence the security and ethics will be maintained properly. There are five main categories, which are in focus in terms of security in IT industry- Privacy, control, ownership, security and accuracy. Professional requirement for the ethical behavior: Many people in IT industry are mandatory to sign the NDA, which is nondisclosure agreements and some other clauses mentioned in contracts. Even there are legal documents which will restrict employees ability to disclose the information with new joiner even restriction go up to the level that make the employees unable to join other company (Rivard and Aubert, n.d.). As a particular individual a responsible person only is the accessible to the systems and the technologies. He is only one who will be responsible to aware other workers about a particular technology which is in use in the industry. The person has the access to the confidential internal data regarding strategic and procedural information. Some advanced technologies are meant to incorporate in order to make a new application or a new system as n new revolutionary system with respect to execution and design (Partida and Andina, 2010). Like many organizations, IT industries have started to have background and credit check of an employee at the time of hiring. By performing these kinds of checks, protection is given to the industry to avoid any kind of scandals (Oliva, 2004). Like every business organization IT industries love to be accurate. As an effective decisions are made only with accurate decision. Manually estimated calculation and establishing relationship among those data manually had lot of complications, being most critical function to perform. Technology has made it possible to interconnect complicated process to fetch desired data (Northcutt and Northcutt, 2004). With the technological advancement there are lots of security breaches in terms of network, stealing physical devices and also other social engineering attacks are there, which cause to break traditional safety measures. Organizations have some internal policies to deal with these kinds of security breaches. Conclusion: With dynamic growth in the population and trends in information technology has emphasized that challenges related to ethical behavior can be reduced by the integrity, competitiveness and survival uprightness. It is mostly needed by todays organizational culture to manage its all the operation with integrity and take care of proper maintenance of ethics. Organizations need to ensure that their employees should know how to deal ethical issues faced at the work font every day. Hence, ethical dilemma would not occur. Ensuring systematic System security in the contemporary IT environment: Introduction: Though the original purpose to use internet is to move file and multimedia information across the globe has added so many features to the present working environment to the every king of business organization, where IT has put a great impact. Ease of use and simplicity are two attribute of internet use, though with commitment of giving best effort service has snatched the security and integrity. On the other hand, with the rapid use of internet and new arrival of software and hardware equipment for information and communication technology advancement has led to a state users are not fully acknowledgeable. It sometime happens that the user is known to the actual implementation of the targeted software and hardware. The Social, operational, technical aspects of IT security: With the emerging trend of internet and its usage, lots of technologies have been introduce in order to have proper communication irrespective of place and type of the information. In an IT environment of a business organization, when data is moved or communication is held, there are chances or occurring social engineering in terms of ethical breaches. In this scenario the intruders who are setting behind the computer are physical far away, can cause data stealing and also can cause flooding (Managed security service enables outsourcing of security, 2000). The intruder can target an individual or can target an organization, or to steal data. So that he can take revenge or financially can be benefited. Generally in social engineering attackers can act as legitimate user to steal data of an individual or of an organization (Hawthorne, 2004). It sometime happens that the attackers are involved in eavesdropping, where the conversations are listened by the attacker by the physical present of by the trapping the communication channel form the middle. Some time attackers flood the IP pool of the server acting as legitimate client (Fumy and Sauerbrey, 2006). In this scenario clients stay busy to send only one request to the server but form the middle the attacker act as a legitimate client and send the server bulk of request one after another requesting IP (Erbschloe, 2005). In this scenario server sends all the IP to the illegal client and finishes its stock of IPs and the moment the legitimate client request for the IPs, there is no IPs available in the IP pool of server. This scenario is called flooding (Fumy and Sauerbrey, 2006). To overcome this entire scenario, a person who is working within his personal network and or working under the organizational network must have some methods to secure his system (Demetriades, 2003). He must have the safe internet browsing by installing firewall, installing some antivirus software or by restricting hardware (portable) storage devices (Pendrive, flash cards) form inserting in the computer or in the main operational devices. These were the basic it risk mitigation technology I have introduced (Datta, 2010). With basic technologies, user, who are involved in organizational work or the people who are engaged basically to surf the internet for their minor usage or for the enjoyment purpose, are prompted by these security software or by the firewalls whenever a malicious link is clicked or visited. Hence the users become aware about not to click the link (Calder and Watkins, 2010). These basic security measures allow an individual to have a safe experience of internet enabl ed devices. Hence the data remain in antitheft environment and system softwares become protected enough to not to crash (Erbschloe, 2005). Conclusion: With the birth of the technologies in the IT sectors, intruders and hackers were also introduced. Hence with the basic risk mitigation technologies and also with advanced mechanism incorporated with some cryptography algorithm it become possible to restrict the security breaches. Even for an organization, network service providers can also incorporate safe way communication by introducing VPN (Virtual Private Network). Where communication takes place in a dedicated line. Hence there is no sharing which has eliminated the security breaches. Measuring and managing contemporary IT related risk: Introduction: Several technologies have been introduced, in order to measure and to mitigate the IT risks in the contemporary environment of the IT industry. For example a person working within his personal network and or working under the organizational network must have some methods to secure his system or must have the safe internet browsing by installing firewall, installing some antivirus software or by restricting portable storage devices form inserting in the computer or in the main operational devices. These were the basic it risk mitigation technology. Contemporary risk challenges to measure and manage risk: With the invention of modern technologies in information and communication technologies, it no doubt become easy for the world to gather the information form whenever and its about whatever (Bonhoeffer et al., 2005). With the incorporation of e-commerce technology, the IT industries and other business organizations have involved to commerce the business in form of business-to-business, business-to-customer, customer-to-customer and customer-to-business. In B-C commerce a company can give ad of their services or products on their official site and customer can choose and place order as per their preferences. In B-B commerce, a business organization offers their product to other organization, for example IT consultancy companies are engaged in deploying software products in the other companies or the partnership of eBay and paypal (Axelrod, 2004). In C-B commerce, customers upload their requirement to the official site of the company or in a public forum as per their requirement, the d esired company of the customer or the as per the customers requirement a particular company will take the order. In C-C commerce, customer uploads their requirement in the public forum using internet. Hence customers can buy/sell/give solution to other customers. In these kinds of business solutions, there are risks for the user/customer with less computing knowledge. As with advancement in technology many software tools have invented. These software tools are installed in a computing device to record the sequence of key strokes. Or it may happen those users/customer are provided link buy the intruders, who are sitting between the customer and companys official site. These kinds of mails contain malicious codes, where users are offered some expensive gift in exchange of their personal data. The moment user click on the link, the software or the code related to that link start fetching all the records. Or some time a user or an individual related to a particular user reveals personal data on the website, which can make the user vulnerable. Hence it is required to be updated with the advancement in the technology. Ebay faced an attack between late February and early march. In this scenario, login credentials of some employees of the Ebay are obtained by hackers. They accessed the database contained of user records and copied all of the records (Ackermann, 2013). Conclusion: With basic risk mitigation technologies, user, who are involved in organizational work or the people who are engaged basically to surf the internet for their minor usage or for the enjoyment purpose, are prompted by these security software or by the firewalls whenever a malicious link is visited. These basic security measures allow an individual to have a safe experience of internet enabled devices. Hence the data remain in antitheft environment and system software become protected enough to not to be vulnerable to crash. On the other hand an organization can ask for the VPN service for their network service provider or can use some cryptographic algorithm based software for encrypt the data before sending them via Internet. References Ackermann, T. (2013). IT security risk management. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler. Axelrod, C. (2004). Outsourcing information security. Boston: Artech House. Bonhoeffer, D., Green, C., Krauss, R., West, C. and Stott, D. (2005). Ethics. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Calder, A. and Watkins, S. (2010). Information security risk management for ISO27001/ISO27002. Cambridgeshire: IT Governance Pub. Datta, P. (2010). A preliminary study of ecommerce adoption in developing countries. Information Systems Journal, 21(1), pp.3-32. Demetriades, D. (2003). Information technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Erbschloe, M. (2005). Physical security for IT. Amsterdam: Elsevier Digital Press. Ethical challanges. (2003). The American Journal of Evaluation, 24(1), pp.81-82. Fumy, W. and Sauerbrey, J. (2006). Enterprise security. Erlangen: Publicis Corporate Publishing. Hajibayova, L. (2013). Blog, news, ecommerce: Does genre matter for taggers?. NASKO, 4(1). Hawthorne, J. (2004). Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Managed security service enables outsourcing of security. (2000). Network Security, 2000(9), p.7. Northcutt, S. and Northcutt, S. (2004). IT ethics handbook. Rockland, MA.: Syngress Pub. Oliva, L. (2004). IT security. Hershey [Pa.]: CyberTech Pub. Partida, A. and Andina, D. (2010). IT security management. Dordrecht: Springer. Rivard, S. and Aubert, B. (n.d.). Information technology outsourcing.

Slavery And Evolution Of Cherokee Essays - Cherokee Nation, Cherokee

Slavery And Evolution Of Cherokee In this well-written book by Theda Perdue, he discloses much of the history of slavery among the Cherokee people and their evolution during this 326 year period. He begins with their abduction by the Spanish. Perdue gives a remarkable comparison of the two very different views of slavery experienced by two very different cultures. He states that even though the Spaniards captured the Cherokee for use as slaves, they misunderstood that the Indians had an egalitarian social system. The Cherokee system also included distribution of power and labor. Thus, the Cherokee accepted their slavery as a natural part of domination by the strongest. The Cherokee misunderstood the Spanish form of slavery which was one of cruelty. During the first years of contact with the Europeans and the African people, the Cherokee were only peacefully inquisitive. The Indians need for European trading goods grew. Because of this need, the Cherokee began waging war to supply slaves to the Europeans in return. Thus, corrupting the Cherokee lifestyle. Theda Perdue tells of the destruction of tribal ways due to the embracing of a belief foreign to the Native American way of life. According to Perdue, the U.S. government, after the Civil War, decided that cheating the Cherokee for any reason was justified because of genuine or imagined betrayals.

Free Essays on Piccasso

, that the painting could do all the talking needed. In October of 1901, Picasso painted beggars, very poor women who had children, blind men, harlequins, crazy people, and social outcasts. Picasso did this as a social protest. In the winter, he paints a portrait called Autoportrait. This portrait is a painting of him during the blue period. He depicts himself as unhappy, there isn’t a smile on his face, an... Free Essays on Piccasso Free Essays on Piccasso SUBJECT: Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period 1901, before moving to Madrid Pablo Picasso was staying in Mlaga with his friend Casagemas at his family’s house. He outraged his family while staying there by staying out late, not dressing properly, visiting brothels, and ignoring his family members that the two were not allowed to stay with the family. Pablo Picasso’s friend Carlos Casagemas passed away after committing suicide in front of friends at the Cafà © de l'Hippodrome because of the failure with his girlfriend Germaine. Picasso finds out about the death of his friend while in Madrid. During his time in Madrid, Picasso paints the people that surround him while sitting on the street corners. Picasso starts using pastels and paints to depict the different classes of the people. When he would use the harlequins and the poorest class of society, as models he mostly used blacks and whites to portray the harshness of their lives. When he would paint the high-class people, he would use softer tones and seductiv e colors. At this point of his life, he was just starting to reach his blue period (pre-blue period). Picasso moved back to Paris and that’s where he went into his blue period. It was after the visit to the women’s prison in Paris that turned him to use primarily blue. Picasso said, â€Å"It was thinking about Casagemas ... that got me started painting in blue.† Picasso’s wanted his paintings to be primarily political. He believed that the art explained pain and sadness without using words, that the painting could do all the talking needed. In October of 1901, Picasso painted beggars, very poor women who had children, blind men, harlequins, crazy people, and social outcasts. Picasso did this as a social protest. In the winter, he paints a portrait called Autoportrait. This portrait is a painting of him during the blue period. He depicts himself as unhappy, there isn’t a smile on his face, an...

Individual Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Individual - Assignment Example The company cannot achieve its mission with engaging adequately strategies to ensure development and maintenance of superior quality products and services, maintaining affordable prices for the products, ensuring consumer have adequate knowledge about the products, strategies to outcompete the rivals, etc. (Steers et al., 34). Improving the productivity of workers can help the company to reduce the cost of production, increase quality of products and improve productivity of the company (Schreck 24). I recommend Starbucks to focus on streamlining the workforce in order to ensure the competent workforce. Furthermore, the company should motivate employees by giving them better remunerations and other benefits in order to reduce workers turnover and cost of replacing the employees who have already left the organization. Well-motivated employees are more productive and will take more time to improve the quality of services and products offered by the organization (Wetherly & Otter 253). One of the core objectives of Starbucks is to produce quality products and services to the consumers (Ahlstrom & Bruton 9). The company should obtain feedback from the customers regarding what users need in order to devise strategies that can lead to better products and services. In the recent, the company has increased its presence in the society through social media (Bicky & Kwok 201). Therefore, the Starbuck management should ensure consider the consumers information and engage them in providing accurate information that can increase product improvement. The company should research on various product designs needed by consumers through effective communication and ensure they offer innovative products to the customers in order to provide increase client’s satisfaction (Wetherly & Otter 267). Starbucks experience stiff competition from other companies

What are the methods, justifications and impacts of transgression on Essay

What are the methods, justifications and impacts of transgression on the rhetorics of the media South Park - Essay Example The use of rhetoric in various mediums is able to define and express specific approaches to those that are developing specific ideologies. In some instances, the traditional rhetoric is altered because of the expression which is used. This develops a sense of persuasion and understanding in a way that is able to create alternatives. The transgression is used to express opposition to the current political, social and economic environment, while developing personalized theories from the authors that are expressed in each episode. Transgression of Rhetoric of South Park â€Å"South Park† is now recognized as one of the most controversial shows on television. The show aired in 1992 with the â€Å"Spirit of Christmas,† which starred Jesus Christ battling his rival Satan. From this point, the show developed into productions based on Hollywood flicks, political controversies and statements which rebelled against the popular culture in society. The approach is one which continu es to develop with the issues which are currently associated with conflict in society while approaching these with a sense of cultural and political humor. The approach which has been taken by â€Å"South Park† in the last 20 years has developed it as a show noted as an oppositional culture. Instead of defining acceptable in terms of the political and social order, the show transgresses all of the order and opposes every angle with dichotomies and by negotiating the ideologies which are currently accepted in society (Gournelos, 2009: 15). ... The communication which is used is developed by taking apart the popular communication and showing that this exposure is one which does not provide relevant content to the current approaches. By opposing the statements which are made, â€Å"South Park† uses the transgression to make an even stronger statement. This is based on how the exposure in popular culture and in politics is irrelevant and is usually a substitute or metaphor toward an issue which is not being confronted or which does not exist at all. The tactic of oppositional culture then creates a transgression that shows another theory the authors effectively express (Pype, 2011: 114). An example of the oppositional culture that is created and the transgression that shows the irrelevance of the points is from the episode â€Å"Imaginationland† in season 11. This particular show was defined with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that began to take over the popular media. The oppositional culture is one which define d the terrorist attacks as non – existent. The opposition was based on the continuous statement by the main characters of the â€Å"terrorists taking over the imagination† of those that were a part of the area. This moved into a red alert with the fear that was shown by the government of the terrorists taking over all of imagination land with no recovery. The show leads into not only oppositional statements about the terrorist attacks, but shows the clips as controversial because of the absurd which is used, such as seen in figure 1. Figure 1: Imaginationland The opposition which is created is based on rejection of the theories and media of terrorism. This is combined with the discourse and rhetoric which rejects the political and cultural theories about terrorism

Critical Introduction- Documentary Video Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Critical Introduction- Documentary Video - Essay Example The music was played by the use of classic genre in order to create the new sounds. Karl Waugh and Chloe Wallace are the subjects behind the documentary and had a rhythmic relationship of the played music, of which they created. It is a passion for the Waugh to play his music. This is especially at the times he speaks, making the audience to have the personal feelings of the music after they view it. This is a norm, especially for the filmmakers in using a style of keeping the people who create the music in the limelight. In this case, they see no importance for any other alternative of this style since it is an understandable style to the audience and the artists. Furthermore, the team producing the documentary wanted to make the audience to distinguish the style of music used in this artwork and classifying it as the real music. In the introduction to the documentary, Bill Nichols explains that the filmmakers structured their film according to the interview of the Waugh since his words were forming the framework of the argument discussed in the documentary. The producers have the tasks of marketing the new music in Brighton as well as avoiding the critical debate of whether the type of the music can be classified as the real music. This aims at giving the audience the chance to have their own opinions on the documentary or their own feelings. The documentary also supports the spoken words and is supported by the images, which are shown in the film as discussed by Bill Nichols. This is because the visuals are traditionally important in the films and they are shown as shots in supporting the discussions of Waugh. The sounds, which were heard as being experimental were produced by the Zero Map and are used to encourage the artists in using shots that corresponds with their ideas. The team also believes that, showing the shots will make the audience to have better understandings of the

Environmental Exploitation Resources

Environmental Exploitation Resources The effects of human exploitation of the natural resources are not limited to deforestation and pollution; it has also affected the diverse animal species of all the earths ecosystems. In recent years scientists have explored the possibility of breeding endangered species in captivity and releasing them into the wild to ensure the species survival in the wild. However, these sorts of programs are not easy to fund or carry out. Several implications ranging from operational problems, to inbreeding within the species make it hard for conservationists to carry these programs out. Captive Breeding of Endangered Animals for Release into the Wild. Humans are the dominant species on earth. We are considered to be one of the â€Å"newer† species, since our species did not evolve until recent times. It is out species ability to adapt and modify its surroundings that has made it the real â€Å"king of the jungle†. Our dominance on this planet makes us completely responsible for all the things that happen and are not directly caused by natural phenomena. Humans are to blame for driving our fellow animal species to the brink of extinction. Our lifestyles and need to consume goods like there is nothing else in the world to do but consume and produce wastes are some of the main causes for the destruction of our natural resources. In recent years the effects of our dwelling in the planet has become more obvious than ever, and the attitude of people is changing. Scientists suggest that a possible solution for the problem could be to have the endangered animals bred in sanctuaries or places where they can be safe and later released into the wild (Meffe and Carroll, 2007). Implications The idea sounds logical and most people think it is the best way to increase the wild populations of some of the most critically endangered species in the world. However, there are several implications that the general public is not well aware of. Ability to Breed in Captivity For example, not all species have the same ability to breed in captivity. Some require very specific conditions that cant be mimicked in captivity. It is estimated that out of all the recovery plans for endangered species captive breeding is only recommended in 63% of the plans in the USA (Mathews et al., 2005). Ability to Be â€Å"Wild† Besides these conditions, some animals lose their ability to be â€Å"wild† when they find themselves in captivity. They lose certain behaviors that are absolutely necessary for their success in the wild regarding their skills to find food, find a mate, successfully reproduce and care for their young. Scientists have attempted to teach captive-bred animals some of these behaviors and have found it extremely hard to do and in some cases impossible (McPhee, 2004). Some animals learn most of these abilities from their mothers or from the interaction with members from their own species. Highly sociable species have another problem besides those listed above; they behave differently to most wild social groups and struggle to be accepted in the group. Species with this problem include African Wild dogs, lions and ungulates in general. Ungulates are animals with hoofs (Gusset, Slotow, Somers, 2006). Hunters Even when the animals are successfully reintroduced into the wild they are not completely safe. When populations recover and they are considered stable, the government tends to take the species off the Protection Act that punished human aggressors. As soon as they are left without federal protection, hunters move in and the cycle begins all over again. Since these populations are not as â€Å"wild† as others of the same species, they may find themselves lacking of abilities to avoid humans. For example, the grey wolf population in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana has increased slowly and has remained stable for a few years now, so they are to be lifted from the Protection Act in those states. This will allow hunters to kill 950-1,500 animals in order to reduce the population to an estimated 1,250 wolves. This decision was reached in favor of the farmers in the area want to protect their livestock from the wolves, but other groups say that this is not a valid reason because farmer are allowed to kill any wolves that attack, or harass their animals as long as they notify authorities within 72 hours (Legislature of the State of Idaho, 2008). Inbreeding Other problems include inbreeding of the endangered species. Since the surviving populations of some endangered animals are small, the interbreeding gives room for inbreeding, which increases the chance of genetically inherited disease or genetic predisposition to health problems that may affect the animals ability to survive and reproduce. Reproduction in the wild once the animals have been released is key to the survival of the species. If they are unable to reproduce and link their genes with those of wild populations, inbreeding will be more likely to occur and affect their ability to succeed (Pluhà ¡Ã„ ek, Sinha, BartoÃ… ¡ Ã…  Ãƒ ­pek, 2007). For example the Florida panther, a subspecies of mountain lion, is highly endangered and despite the efforts of conservationists and zoos, their reproductive success was so low it was estimated that the population would decline to the point of extinction. In order to save this rare subspecies of mountain lion, scientists studied the genetics of other subspecies of mountain lions to find out which one was more closely related to the Florida panther. The findings showed that the panthers in Texas showed a high resemblance, genetically speaking, to the Florida panthers and their populations were linked. This increased the reproduction success rate in a short time, giving the species and new chance of survival (Stokstad, 2005). The Ecosystem When dealing with conservation biology, every single niche of the ecosystem has to be taken in consideration before taking any course of action. When an element of the ecosystem is removed, it affects the other elements of the symbiotic community. Success Stories Black-Footed Ferrets. For example, when Prairie Dogs were exterminated by farmers and the government in the Great Plains area, the Black-Footed ferret, the only mammal of its class native to North America, was the one who suffered the most. These small mammals have one of the most specialized diets of all the mammals. They feed entirely on prairie dogs and live in their burrows underground. These particular species was thought to be extinct until the 1980s when a colony was sighted. Since their re-discovery the have proven to be a real success for conservation biologists. Their numbers are increasing steadily and education has made farmers aware of the importance of protecting these critters and their needs in the wild. They succeeded because not only did the federal government provided funds and resources for the protection of the species. Farmers were also educated and collaborated by protecting their lands and the ferrets living in it (Cubie, 2006). Przewalskis Horse. Another success story is that of the Przewalskis horse, or Mongolian wild horse. These horse species is the only â€Å"true† wild horse species left in the wild. This is the only species of horse that has never been tamed. They suffered the loss of their territory and pasture lands to the hands of the Mongolian farmers and their livestock. These beautiful horses lost their territory and suffered from diseases carried by the farm animals that had contact with them. Several zoos worldwide made a great effort to adopt the remaining individuals in the wild and started breeding programs. By 1960 the species was extinct in the wild and was kept alive in zoos. Their breeding programs started slow but steady and they have been reintroduced into the wild in new territories where they are not to be disturbed (Souris, Kaczensky, Julliard, Walzer, 2007). Scimitar Horned Oryx. A similar case happened with the Scimitar Horned Oryx. This antelopes were hunted for their horns, which are the largest of all the antelopes, to the brink of extinction. These magnificent animals live in the northern African deserts and the Middle East. Their population in the Middle East was affected by the constant armed conflicts that have taken place in the region for over 40 years. The dwellings of this antelope were protected and some individuals were captured to breed them in captivity. Their population recovered greatly thanks to the combined efforts of local park rangers who protected the reserves in which they were relocated to and the breeding programs. It is estimated that if scientists had not stepped in, the species would have become extinct by now (Campbell, 2007). Tigers. Tigers are among the most endangered species on earth and conservation efforts in the wild do not seem to be making any progress. In fact there is no population recovery. The different subspecies are still as endangered as ever and their numbers keep dropping every year. Some tiger sanctuaries in India have not had a single sighting of a tiger in years. These are situations that have pushed conservation biologists to take desperate measures and embark on controversial projects to save the critically endangered species (Ranganathan et al., 2008). Figure 1: Tigers in the Wild by Species (WWF, 2008) A very ambitious project a few years ago broke the scientific world when a pair of captive bred Bengal tigers was â€Å"trained† to become wild in a game reserve in South Africa. These tiger species is the second largest of all the big cats and it is native to Bangladesh and India. The biologists in charge of the project, Dave Salmoni and John Varty, decided to take them to Africa, because it is the continent with the highest success of large predator population recovery in the world. The tigers were taught to hunt, and avoid dangerous prey that was new to them such as Cape buffalo (Living with Tigers, 2004). This particular release project has proven to be effective yet very controversial. Tigers are not native to Africa, so their introduction to this new continent was seen as a bad choice since it would only mean more competition to the native predators. South Africas native predators include other vulnerable species, mainly big cats, such as cheetahs, African lions, and leopards. These felines compete against each other for hunting grounds and prey. The introduction of the much larger Bengal tiger will only increase competition and favor the introduced species since its characteristics make it a better and stronger predator (Living with Tigers, 2004). The second major issue regarding the introduction of tigers into Africa is the fact that the pioneer animal behaviorist, who was head of the project, hand raised the tigers and â€Å"trained† them to be wild. Therefore, the constant contact with humans during their development is more likely to make them seek human contact in the future. The tigers would not be afraid of humans and the villagers of the region could find themselves in dangerous situations with these mighty predators. Villagers are concerned because in case the Tiger Project releases more tigers, it would mean one more predator to watch out for (Living with Tigers, 2004). These issues have been addressed by one of the biologists in charge of the tiger project in South Africa, Dave Salmoni. Salmoni (2007) explains, that the â€Å"unfortunate reality is that tiger conservation in Asia is in a disturbing state. The problems facing the tiger are ones that cannot be overcome at a whim. We would be acting unethically if we started introducing tigers into an area that has not yet solved its conflicts with the tiger. Therefore, a project like this needs to take seed in another country. Once a working model for tiger conservation is established it is then possible to motivate decision makers to begin to start rectifying the problems the tiger faces. [†¦]In my opinion, if I were given the choice to save the tiger in Africa or see it vanish from the earth, I would choose Africa. Saving the tiger in Africa is not the goal of the project. We hope to use the sanctuary as a model for conservation in Asia.† Conclusion Most of the examples I have listed so far may seem to be all failures, but when we take into consideration that all other measures taken have failed, their results are not too bad. Governments around the world tried to protect their wildlife by designating reserves or protected lands. Poaching. The problem with these is that poachers and black-market traders can easily access the endangered animals and hunt them down. The truth is that there are not many options available when dealing with wild animals, especially those whose populations are so small, any sort of disturbance could be fatal. One of the biggest problems is that once the populations begin to recover and scientists back down and let nature take its course, human greed returns to claim their victims. Recent studies suggest that the populations of some of the most endangered animals are declining once again due to poaching and habitat destruction. For example, tigers, leopards and other big cats are killed for their furs, bones and claws. Elephants, rhinoceros and many species of antelope are killed for their tusks and horns. All of these products are used in the production of traditional Chinese medicine remedies, or sold as trophies or art pieces (WWF, 2008). Captive Breeding Solution. It may seem that captive breeding is not the best solution for this problem; nevertheless, it is the only solution that seems to be giving positive results in the long run. Protected areas can only help so much, especially in third world countries which do not have the resources to pay personnel who protect these wildlife reserves and they lack human resources to patrol the large extensions of land to make sure poachers are not entering the protected lands. Zoos help, but the interaction between humans and the wild animals ends up being a problem. Animals raised by hand are less likely to fear humans and therefore become easy prey for hunters or even other animals. Studies show that the loss of â€Å"wildness† of captive animals is not only limited to their learnt behaviors, some species show these changes by losing some â€Å"instincts† that are invaluable in the wild like their ability to avoid predators or techniques for finding food (Mathe ws et al., 2005). Some of these â€Å"learnt† behaviors can be eliminated by introducing the captive bred animals to wild populations from an early age so that they can learn from those who have better developed instincts and survival skills. This can be very hard to do because wild populations are not always receptive to outsiders and may see the additions as threats or future competition and get rid of it. But since there is no other plausible way to teach the captive bred individuals, their gradual introduction to wild populations is the best way to ensure their survival and later reproduction in the wild in order to increase the numbers of a population (Gusset, Slotow, Somers, 2006). In conclusion, no other conservation practice seems to be providing any positive results and captive breeding and releasing into the wild of endangered species are the only projects that have shown tangible results in the last few decades. It may not be the best way to ensure the survival of the many endangered species, but it is the only method that seems to be producing positive results and increasing wild populations numbers. It is important to understand the importance each creature plays in the world and its extinction will only cause changes in ecosystems that will end up affecting human beings as well.