Start a new life Essays

Start a new life Essays Start a new life Essay Start a new life Essay In Act 1 the reader is carefully introduced to all of thew characters in such a way that first impressions sculpt the way in which the reader for most of the play, views the characters.  Set in the interior of Hobsons Boot shop in Chapel Street, Salford, Act 1 begins with Albert Prosser, the 26 year old son of an established solicitor (who likes Alice) coming into the shop where Maggie, Alice and Vickey are sitting behind the counter. Albert has come in to see Alice, and Maggie knows this but tired of him always coming in and making sheeps eyes at Alice, she teaches him a lesson making him buy a pair of boots and laces costing him quite a lot of money. Soon after this when Albert has left, Hobson enters and has a talk with his three daughters, informing them that he has had enough of them interfering with his comings-in and goings-out and that he considers them immodest in the way they dress, bumptious and uppity. When he threatens to find husbands for Alice and Vickey so that he can wash his hands of them, Maggie inquires whether, if he is dealing husbands round, she gets one and Hobson laughs cruelly exclaiming Well, thats a good one, you with husband! When Maggie asks why not, he tells her that she is, well past the marrying age and that she is an, old maid if ever there was one. Although Maggie is probably angry at her fathers remarks, she has no chance to react yet because Mrs. Hepworth, one of Hobsons wealthier customers enters wanting to know the maker of the boots she is wearing. At first Hobson is puzzled and assumes that she is dissatisfied with the quality of the boots, however it turns out it is exactly the opposite. When presented with the maker of the boots, Will Mossop, a lanky dull-witted man of about 30, she praises him on the exceptional quality f the boots and even gives him her card so that he could inform her if he ever moved employers, Mrs. Hepworth then leaves. Then enters Jim Heeler, a friend of Hobsons who he talks to about marrying off Alice and Vickey and his opinion on what he should do. Jim immediately changes Hobsons mind when he tells him about the amount of money that two weddings will cost him, and having to replace them with paid workers if they left the shop.  After Jim and Hobson leave to go to the Moonrakers (the local pub), Maggie calls Will up from the cellar below the shop where he works, and tells him that she thinks he is very gifted and that his skilled hands mean that he could leave Hobsons shop and work somewhere else where he would be paid and appreciated more. She then casually asks him to marry her and he does not refuse, partly because he does not want to offend her and also because he is afraid of her. He tells her about his previous engagement to Ada Figgins who then enters the shop to bring Will his dinner. Maggie using her ability to overpower people, manages to win Will in a short war of words with Ada, who although is quite a weak, poor blooded girl, has a mother who is even more strong willed than Maggie, and who Will is even more afraid of. Because Will lodges with Ada and her mother so Maggie solved that problem easily, telling him to stay with Tubby Wadlow, another one of Hobsons workers. Maggie, feeling quite pleased with herself probably because she has proved her father wrong, tells her sisters about her intention to marry Will, quite casually. They are astonished and both think that Maggie will be marrying well beneath her. Hobson, who returns soon after this and agrees with Alison and Vickey, describes Will as a workhouse brat, a come-by chance and he calls Will to him so they he can beat the love for Maggie out of Wills puny body. However, Will showing a little bravery tells Hobson that the more he beats him the more he will stick to Maggie like glue and he kisses her, to which Maggie explains I knew he had it in you! while Hobson just stands in amaze indecision. A Summary of Act Two Act 2 begins a month later in the shop with Alice and Vickey having obvious problems running the shop since Maggies departure. Maggie enters followed by Will and Freddie Beenstock (Vickeys suitor). They tell Alice and Vickey about Hobson getting junk and falling through the trapdoor of Freddies corn warehouse into the cellar, on to a large pile of corn.  Maggie has come up with a plan to keep Hobson exactly where he is. She gets Albert Prosser, the son of a solicitor to draw up a document prosecuting him for trespassing and damage of the corn he landed on. She wants him out of the way so that she can get married to Will with her sisters there. She also tells Alice and Vickey about the shop that she has set up with Will and the cellar below it where they are going to live. After telling her sisters to go and get dress for her wedding, Maggie and Will are left alone and she says to him The Parson is going to ask you if you will have me and youll either answer truthfully or not at all. If you are not willing, just say so now to which Will replies, Ill tell him yes, and reveals, Yes Maggie Im resigned. Youre growing on me, lass. Ill toe the line with you.  Summary of Act Three  Act 3 is set in the cellar of Will and Maggies shop in Oldfield Road, with Will, Maggie, Albert, Alice, Vickey and Freddie having dinner round the table celebrating Will and Maggies marriage earlier that day. Hobson knocks on the door of the shop calling desperately for Maggie while Alice, Vickey, Freddie and Albert (who are all afraid of Hobson) hide in the bedroom.  When Hobson enters, he is quite distress about an action for damages for trespassing against him, which he says, will bankrupt and ruin him. After watching him squirm and feel total humiliation telling all of this in front of Will whom he considers inferior to him, Maggie solves his problem suggesting an out of court settlement of 2000 and Maggie also manages to get a further à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½1000 out of him to pay for Alice and Vickeys weddings and after realising that he has been diddled he storms out angrily after giving his word to pay the money, meaning that to retain any honour or self-respect he could not break his promise. Grateful to their sisters Alice and Vickey leave happy, knowing that they are soon to be married to Albert and Freddie. Summary of Act Four  This time set in Hobsons living room Act 4 begins with Hobson being ill and daughterless with only Tubby to look after him. When Dr MacFarlane arrives and examined Hobson he diagnoses chronic alcoholism and advises him to swallow his pride and ask one of his daughters to return and help him. Tubby calls for Maggie, who enters, told that Hobson was dangerously ill. Alice and Vickey are also called and when asked how is willing to look after Hobson, all three are reluctant. Alice and Vickey both find reasons why they cannot, however Maggie being very shrewd and sharp does not dismiss the idea altogether. After quite a lot of tough negotiating on Maggie and Wills part (who has come on a lot since his marriage to Maggie), Will and Maggie agree to return to Hobsons shop to look after him and the business on the condition that Will become his partner and he becomes only a sleeping partner, with little impact on the running of the business, with even the name changing to Mossop Hobsons. Will goes on to suggests more changes to the interior of the shop and the dà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½cor, while Hobson has little choice but to accept ungraciously. When Hobson then exits after being told to go and get the Deeds drawn up for the new partnership in the business, Will and Maggie are left alone and Will who for once stood up for himself against Hobson, revealed to Maggie that he had still been astonished at his own boldness.  Then comes my favourite part of the play, the ending where Will takes Maggies hand referring to her wedding ring says, Youve worn a brass one long enough (Maggie used a brass ring from her fathers shop to be her wedding ring rather than going to the expense of buying a proper one). To this Maggie, wrenching her hand free, replies Ill wear that ring forever, Will, and Will explains I was for getting you a proper one, Maggie, and Maggie says, Im not preventing you. Ill wear your gold for show, but that that brass stays where you put it Will, and if we get too rich and proud, well just sit down together quite and take a long look at it, so as well not forget the truth about ourselves  Will expresses his feelings of amazement, triumph and incredulity with a simple, Well, by gum! before turning to follow Maggie and Hobson to start a new life.

Pyramids - Enormous Ancient Symbols of Power

Pyramids - Enormous Ancient Symbols of Power A pyramid is a type of huge ancient building  that is a member of the class of structures known as public or monumental architecture. The archetypal pyramid like those at Giza in Egypt is a mass of stone or earth with a rectangular base and four steeply sloping sides that meet in a point at the top. But pyramids come in many different forms- some are round or oval or rectangular at the base, and they can be smooth-sided, or stepped, or truncated with a flat platform topped by a temple. Pyramids, more or less, are not buildings that people walk into, but rather huge monolithic structures meant to make people awestruck. Did You Know? The oldest pyramid is Djosers Step Pyramid in Egypt, built about 2600 BCEThe largest pyramid is Cholula in Puebla, Mexico, covering an area about four times as large as the Giza pyramids in Egypt Who Built the Pyramids? Pyramids are found in several cultures around the world. The most famous are those in Egypt, where the tradition of the construction of masonry pyramids as tombs began in the Old Kingdom (2686–2160 BCE). In the Americas, monumental earthen structures called pyramids by archaeologists were constructed as early as the Caral-Supe society (2600–2000 BCE) in Peru, similar in age to those of the ancient Egyptian, but, of course, totally separate cultural innovations. The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site preserves the burial mounds of an Indian civilization which inhabited the area from 900 to 1500 AD. | Location: Collinsville, Illinois, USA. Michael S. Lewis / Getty Images Later American societies who built pointy- or platform-topped, slope-sided stone or earthen pyramids include the Olmec, Moche, and Maya; theres also an argument to be made that the earthen Mississippian mounds such as Cahokia of southeastern North America should be classed as pyramids. Etymology While scholars are not in total agreement, the word pyramid is apparently from the Latin pyramis, a word which refers specifically to the Egyptian pyramids. Pyramis (which is apparently unrelated to the old Mesopotamian tragic myth of Pyramus and Thisbe) in turn is derived from the original Greek word puramid. Interestingly, puramid means cake made out of roasted wheat. One theory for why the Greeks used the word puramid to refer to the Egyptian pyramids is that they were making a joke, that the cake had a pyramid shape and calling the Egyptian structures pyramids was slighting the Egyptian technological capabilities. Another possibility is that the shape of the cakes was (more or less) a marketing device, the cakes made to look like the pyramids. Another possibility is that pyramid is an alteration of the original Egyptian hieroglyph for pyramid- MR, sometimes written as mer, mir, or pimar. See the discussions in Swartzman, Romer, and Harper, among lots of others. In any case, the word pyramid was at some point also assigned to the pyramid geometric shape (or possibly vice versa), which is basically a polyhedron made up of connected polygons, such that the sloping sides of a pyramid are triangles. Why Build a Pyramid? Close Up View of Casing Stones of the Bent Pyramid. MedioImages / Photodisc / Getty Images While we dont have any way of knowing for sure why the pyramids were built, we have lots of educated guesses. The most basic is as a form of propaganda. Pyramids can be seen as a visual expression of the political power of a ruler, one who at a minimum had the ability to arrange to have an extremely skilled architect plan such a massive monument  and to have laborers mine the stone and construct it to specifications. Pyramids are often explicit references to mountains, the elite person reconstructing and reconfiguring the natural landscape in a way that no other monumental architecture really can. Pyramids may have been built to impress the citizenry  or the political enemies inside or outside the society. They may even have fulfilled a role empowering non-elites, who may have seen the structures as proof that their leaders were able to protect them. Pyramids as burial places- not all pyramids had burials- may also have been commemorative constructions that brought continuity to a society in the form of ancestor worship: the king is always with us. Pyramids may also have been the stage on which social drama could occur. As the visual focus of large numbers of people, pyramids may have been designed to define, separate, include, or exclude segments of the society. What are Pyramids? Like other forms of monumental architecture, pyramid construction holds clues to what the purpose might be. Pyramids are of a size and quality of construction that greatly exceeds what is required by practical needsafter all, who needs a pyramid? Societies which build pyramids invariably are those based on ranked classes, orders or estates; the pyramids are often not built just on a lavish scale, they are carefully planned to suit a particular astronomical orientation and geometrical perfection. They are symbols of permanence in a world where lives are short; they are a visual symbol of power in a world where power is transitory. Egyptian Pyramids Step Pyramid of Djoser and Associated Shrines. Print Collector / Hulton Archive / Getty Images The best-known pyramids in the world are those of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The precursors of the pyramids were called mastaba, rectangular mudbrick burial structures built as tombs for the rulers of the predynastic period. Eventually, those rulers wanted larger and larger burial facilities, and the oldest pyramid in Egypt was the Step Pyramid of Djoser, built about 2700 BCE. Most of the Giza pyramids are pyramid-shaped, four flat smooth sides rising to a point.   The largest of the pyramids is the Great Pyramid of Giza, built for the 4th dynasty Old Kingdom Pharaoh Khufu (Greek Cheops), in the 26th century BCE. It is massive, covers an area of 13 acres, made from 2,300,000 limestone blocks each weighing an average of 2.5 tons, and rising to a height of 481 feet.   Great Pyramid at Giza (Old Kingdom Egypt)Step Pyramid of Djoser (Old Kingdom Egypt)Menkaures Pyramid (Old Kingdom Egypt)Khafres Pyramid (Old Kingdom Egypt)Bent Pyramid (Old Kingdom Egypt) Mesopotamia Elamite complex in the Khuzestan province of Iran, it is one of the few existing ziggurats outside Mesopotamia. Kaveh Kazemi / Getty Images The ancient Mesopotamians also built pyramids, known as ziggurats, stepped and built of sun-dried brick at its core, then veneered with a protective layer of fire-baked brick. Some of the brick was glazed in colors. The earliest known is located at Tepe Sialk in Iran, constructed in the early 3rd millennium BCE; not much is left but part of the foundations; precursor mastaba-like structures date to the Ubaid period. Each of the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Elamite cities in Mesopotamia had a ziggurat, and each ziggurat had a flat top where the temple or house of the citys deity. The one in Babylon likely inspired the Tower of Babylon verses in the bible. The best preserved of the 20 or so known ziggurats is that at Chogha Zanbil in Khuzestan, Iran, built about 1250 BCE for the Elamite king Untash-Huban. Several levels are missing today, but it once stood about 175 feet tall, with a square base measuring about 346 feet on a side.   Central America Lava Field at Cuicuilco (Mexico). Flowers bloom on the 50 BC eruption at Cuicuilco, they pyramid in the background. vladimix Pyramids in Central America were made by several different cultural groups, the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Toltec, and Zapotec societies. Almost all of the Central American pyramids have square or rectangular bases, stepped sides, and flat tops. They are made of stone or earth or a mixture of both.   The oldest pyramid in central America was built during the early 4th century BCE, the Great Pyramid of Complex C at the Olmec site of La Venta. It is massive, 110 feet high and was a rectangular pyramid with stepped sides, made from adobe brick. It has been severely eroded into its current conical shape.   The largest pyramid in Central America is at the Teotihuacano site of Cholula., known as the Great Pyramid, La Gran Pirmide, or Tlachihualtepetl. Construction began in the 3rd century BCE, and it eventually grew to have a square base of 1,500 x 1,500 feet, or about four times that of the Giza pyramid, rising to a height of 217 feet. It is the largest pyramid on earth (just not the tallest).  It features a core of adobe brick covered over by a veneer of mortared stone which in turn was covered by a plaster surface.   The pyramid at the site of Cuicuilco near Mexico City is in the form of a truncated cone.  Pyramid A at the site of Cuicuilco was built about 150–50 BCE, but buried by the eruption of Xitli volcano in 450 CE.   ï » ¿Teotihuacan, Mexico Monte Alban, MexicoChichà ©n Itz, Mexico (Maya)Copan, Honduras (Maya)Palenque, Mexico (Maya)Tenochtitlan, Mexico (Aztec)Tikal, Belize (Maya) South America Sipan Pyramid, Peru (Moche)Huaca del Sol, Peru (Moche) North America Cahokia, Illinois (Mississippian)Etowah, Alabama (Mississippian)Aztalan, Wisconsin (Mississippian) Sources Harper D. 2001-2016. Pyramid: Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed 25 December 2016.Moore JD. 1996. Architecture and Power in the Ancient Andes: The Archaeology of Public Buildings. New York: Cambridge University Press.Osborne JF. 2014. Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology. Albany: SUNY Press.Pluckhahn TJ, Thompson VD, and Rink WJ. 2016. Evidence for Stepped Pyramids of Shell in the Woodland Period of Eastern North America. American Antiquity 81(2):345-363.Romer J. 2007. The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited. New York: Cambridge University Press.Swartzman S. 1994. The Words of Mathematics: An Etymological Dictionary of Mathematical Terms. Washington DC: Mathematical Association of America.Trigger BG. 1990. Monumental architecture: . World Archaeology 22(2):119-132.behavioursymbolicofexplanationthermodynamicA Uziel J. 2010. Middle Bronze Age Ramparts: Functional and Symbolic Structures. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 142(1):24-30.Wicke CR. 1965. Pyramids and Temple Mounds: Mesoamerican Ceremonial Architecture in Eastern North America. American Antiquity 30(4):409-420.