Essays on Basil

Within the Context of World History

Racism and misconceptions about the peoples of Africa have resulted in the neglect of Africa’s historical reality ever since the field of history began to emerge as a structured discipline during the eighteenth century (Reynolds, “So Many Africas, So Little Time: Doing Justice to Africa in the World History Survey”). Since Greek and Roman times and up until the European Renaissance there was mutual respect between Europeans and the subjects of black kingdoms they met (Clarke ‘Why African History?”). By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, most European historians, philosophers and political scientists had adopted a Eurocentric attitude ...

Communication Issues: Handling Sensitive Communication In the Workplace

You are a high level professional, in charge of a large in-office team. You were recently assigned a new assistant, who is a recent college graduate with little professional experience. There are several major issues with his performance which must be addressed if he is to remain employed within the facility. First, he has a tendency to want to ignore what he perceives as boring paper work, and dismiss clear directions, in order to jump into what he believes are more sensitive, or high level types of jobs. Not only that, but the assistant is inappropriately familiar in the ...

Observation is the act of learning about and investigating a specific area of interest. When we make observations, we notice phenomena that we can readily explain, as well as phenomena that defy explanation. When we observe something that we can’t explain and that we wish to understand, or when we have a theory about the conditional behavior of the system or object we are observing, we are led to ask a question that we can answer by conducting purposeful research. The research question should make the goal and the course of the research clear. It should not be ...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a contradiction of people who are authentic such as Sybil and Henry and those who are hiding their true selves behind deceptions, like Dorian and Basil. This paper will look at the use of “smoke and mirrors” in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. “Smoke and Mirrors” is a metaphor that refers to the hiding of truth behind a veil of deception. This is a concept that is popular in Victorian Literature and helps to drive the plot as the conflict is often times essential to the advancement of the storyline. ...

Introduction

It is customary for the non-native speakers to substitute the correct pronunciation of the words with their versions of vowels and consonants. There are patterns of pronunciation of words in every language and it is believed that the non-native speakers utilize their habitual pronunciation of the new language. These patterns in language may persist at different levels. Some of the non-native speakers tend to learn new language faster, the others retain the traces of native language in their patterns of pronunciation through the years. This may root in different factors, such as the duration of practice in new language, ...

Introduction

Social classes in Britain currently are not based on the amount of wealth that someone has accumulated unlike in the previous centuries. One can be rich but considers oneself poor or is taken by the community as of a lower class. On the other hand, the poor can be deemed to belong to the upper class. However, it depends on the understandability of the English culture like behavior patterns, beliefs, and customs as well as the proficiency of the English language. Britain and particularly England has a highly class sensitive culture and the practical ways in which the people ...

The life of St.Augustine, one of the most eminent theologian of the Middle Ages, could be divided into two parts: pre-Christian and Christian. His conversion at a relatively mature age made his Confessions a unique work, where a Christian regards a non-Christian life, distracting and leading away from God, basing on a personal experience rather than from a standpoint of an external observer, knowing little or nothing of the activities and experience he criticizes or condemns. One of such reprehensible activities, according to St.Augustine, is the reading of fictional literature.

“I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of my own, and ...