het reisgedrag van de nederlanders

het reisgedrag van de nederlanders Het reisgedrag van de Nederlanders Nederlanders staan er om bekend dat je ze overal tegen komt, in dit opzicht zou je zeggen dat er een bepaald reisgedrag typerend is voor Nederlanders. Toch is dit wel het geval, ook Nederlanders hebben een aantal belangrijke overeenstemmingen wanneer het gaat over hun reisgedrag. In dit deel van het adviesrapport zal u dit kenbaar gemaakt worden. Hierbij word gebruik gemaakt van betrouwbare bronnen die u terug kunt vinden in dit document. Vakantieparticipatie De duur van de vakantie Bestemmingen binnenland Bestemmingen buitenland Vakantieparticipatie Opvallend is dat een hoog percentage Nederlanders op vakantie gaat. Zowel voor korte vakanties (2 tot 7 dagen) als lange vakanties (8 of meer dagen). Dit percentage komt neer op 82% (2008). Dit percentage is erg stabiel het verschilt namelijk slechts 1 procent als u kijkt in de periode van 2003 tot 2008. Dit percentage komt neer op 12,5 miljoen Nederlanders die jaarlijks op vakantie gaan. Hoewel wintersport de laatste jaren steeds meer in opkomst is blijft de lange vakantie in de zomer favoriet onder de Nederlanders. Het aantal Nederlanders dat in 2008 op wintersport is gegaan bedraagt 5,1 miljoen tegenover 10,0 miljoen zomervakanties. Hierbij gaat het wel om vakanties die 5 of meer dagen duren. Korte vakanties daar in tegen worden meer gedaan in de winter. Een belangrijke toevoeging hieraan is wel dat de winter periode 7 maanden (oktober april) duurt en de zomer periode slechts 5 maanden (mei september). De duur van de vakantie Een gemiddelde lange vakantie in 2008 duurde 12 dagen. Buitenlandse lange vakanties duurden gemiddeld 3 dagen langer dan binnenlandse lange vakanties. Korte vakanties duurden gemiddeld iets meer dan 3 dagen. Hierbij was bijna geen verschil tussen het gemiddelde van binnenlandse en buitenlandse vakanties. Bij het lezen van deze statistieken is het echter wel belangrijk dat u zich realiseert dat zowel de dag van vertrek als de dag van aankomst bij de duur van de vakantie worden gerekend. Zo worden korte vakanties vaak in het weekend doorgebracht. Tijdens de deze vakanties moest er natuurlijk ook een overnachtingsplaats gevonden worden, hiervoor boekte Nederlanders voor lange vakanties in totaal 253 miljoen overnachtingen. Meer dan de helft van deze overnachtingen vonden plaats in het buitenland. Op alle bestemmingen overtrof de zomerovernachtingen die van de winter. De meeste overnachtingen tijdens lange vakanties werden gemaakt in Frankrijk (17%), Spanje (11%) en Duitsland (9%). Bij korte vakanties waren de resultaten van het onderzoek anders. Hier vonden de meeste van de 70 miljoen overnachtingen plaats in Nederland. Zowel in Nederland als in het buitenland waren er weinig verschillen in het aantal overnachtingen in de winter en de zomer. Bestemmingen binnenland Door de statistieken van het ContinuVakantieOnderzoek van TNS Nipo hebben we tijdens het onderzoek een goed beeld gekregen van het Nederlandse Reisgedrag in Nederland. Het toeristengebied Veluwe en Veluwerand blijkt in 2008 met 12% het meest bezochte gebied door Nederlandse vakantiegangers. Daarna komt met 11% de toeristen gebieden Groningse, Friese en Drentse zandgronden en Noordzeebadplaatsen op de ranglijst. Opvallend is dat het laats genoemde gebied de laatste jaren wel steeds minder Nederlandse toeristen trekt. Trokken ze in 2003 nog 1,3 miljoen Nederlanders, nu is dat nog slechts 1 miljoen binnenlandse toeristen. Hieraan kun je zien dat de bosrijke gebieden meer in opkomst zijn en juist de water (zee, rivieren en meren) gebieden minder interessant worden. Dit word ook beaamd door de volgende statistiek. Hierin staat de ontwikkeling van het aantal bezoekers in de periode van 2003 tot 2008. http://www.cbs.nl/NR/rdonlyres/8665248B-16B7-4C08-B980-4159B7AE0F6F/0/2008g72pub.pdf Grafiek binnenland verdeling overtypen/invoegen!

Isabel Allende?s ?Two Words :: essays research papers

Loss and Survival in Isabel Allende’s â€Å"Two Words† Because Belisa Crepusculario had such a difficult childhood in which she experienced so much loss in her life, she is forced to become a stronger person both mentally and physically to survive such devastating circumstances. It will ultimately be this strong sense of survival that she develops through these experiences of great loss, which will guide her through the survival of life threatening situations. Belisa had a rough childhood. She was born into a family that was very poor. On top of dealing with poverty, Belisa also had to deal with living in a place that wasn’t suited very well for inhabitants. This quote explains her childhood quite well. â€Å"Belisa Crepusculario had been born into a family so poor they did not even have names to give their children. She came into the world and grew up in an inhospitable land where some years the rains became avalanches of water that bore everything away before them and others when not a drop fell from the sky and the sun swelled to fill the horizon and the world became a desert. Until she was twelve, Belisa had no occupation or virtue other than having withstood hunger and the exhaustion of centuries† (10). I believe that this quote sets up the rest of the story about Belisa because it portrays her as someone who endured many hardships as a young child and those are what helped her become a stronger person for those hardships. Belisa also had to endure great loss of family members as a young child. She was the only child out of her five siblings to survive a horrible drought that swept through the area where she lived, that claimed her four siblings. This quote explains those circumstances. â€Å"During one interminable drought, it fell to her to bury four younger brothers and sisters; when she realized that her turn was next, she decided to set out across the plains in the direction of the sea, in hopes that she might trick death along the way† (10). I believe that her strong will to survive is what made her leave home, because she did not want to just whither away into death like the rest of her family had done. She wants to live and that was quite evident. While Belisa is making her way toward the sea, she encounters others who are doing likewise, to avoid the great drought.

Travels Through the Rhineland Essay -- Travel Writing Descriptive Ess

On mountain peak the gods' abode; resplendent shines the proud-standing hall! (From Wagner's Das Rheingold, qtd. in Evensen) My friend dropped me off at the KÃ ¶ln Hauptbahnhof under the warm summer afternoon. The train station was nearly under the shade of the KÃ ¶lner Dom, the great Gothic cathedral of KÃ ¶ln. I had first seen the Dom at night when it was partially illumed by floodlights and the moon, though most of it remained in shadows. The twin black spires hung over me and I stood, marveling underneath the 600 year old Gothic spectacle without knowing fully what I was experiencing. But between the midnight and the 500 foot sooty towers I was compelled to pause and reflect some of the cathedral's light. In the train station I marveled at the schedule board as it fluttered rhythmically when its times changed. I boarded a train for Mannheim and it rolled out of KÃ ¶ln into the countryside of the Rhineland. The countryside was definitely different from what I was used to in Canada and I did enjoy the pleasant scenery. But I must admit that I was not wholly concerned with taking in the splendor and that my memory of my travel down the Rhine is limited (it was only a two hour journey by train after all). However, I found that the more Romantic descriptions of the Rhine I read the more my memory was restored. Also, as I read I begin to understand my experience differently and new sensations on those old memories are evoked. The day was perfect for travel: the weather was warm but not uncomfortable, and the sky was a matte cerulean though it was speckled throughout the journey with cirrus and cumulus clouds. As far as I can remember, the train followed the Rhine for most of the journey to Mannheim where I caught another... ...ts of text and music in Wagner. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.trell.org/wagner/multi.html. Miall, David. "Wordsworth: Rhine (3)." Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. "Rhine." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2 Apr. 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine. Radcliffe, Ann. Excerpts from A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return Down the Rhine: to which are added, Observations During a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland. Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1997. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Oxford: Project Gutenberg, 1993. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext93/frank14.txt. Wordsworth, William. "Tintern Abbey." Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998. Travels Through the Rhineland Essay -- Travel Writing Descriptive Ess On mountain peak the gods' abode; resplendent shines the proud-standing hall! (From Wagner's Das Rheingold, qtd. in Evensen) My friend dropped me off at the KÃ ¶ln Hauptbahnhof under the warm summer afternoon. The train station was nearly under the shade of the KÃ ¶lner Dom, the great Gothic cathedral of KÃ ¶ln. I had first seen the Dom at night when it was partially illumed by floodlights and the moon, though most of it remained in shadows. The twin black spires hung over me and I stood, marveling underneath the 600 year old Gothic spectacle without knowing fully what I was experiencing. But between the midnight and the 500 foot sooty towers I was compelled to pause and reflect some of the cathedral's light. In the train station I marveled at the schedule board as it fluttered rhythmically when its times changed. I boarded a train for Mannheim and it rolled out of KÃ ¶ln into the countryside of the Rhineland. The countryside was definitely different from what I was used to in Canada and I did enjoy the pleasant scenery. But I must admit that I was not wholly concerned with taking in the splendor and that my memory of my travel down the Rhine is limited (it was only a two hour journey by train after all). However, I found that the more Romantic descriptions of the Rhine I read the more my memory was restored. Also, as I read I begin to understand my experience differently and new sensations on those old memories are evoked. The day was perfect for travel: the weather was warm but not uncomfortable, and the sky was a matte cerulean though it was speckled throughout the journey with cirrus and cumulus clouds. As far as I can remember, the train followed the Rhine for most of the journey to Mannheim where I caught another... ...ts of text and music in Wagner. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.trell.org/wagner/multi.html. Miall, David. "Wordsworth: Rhine (3)." Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. "Rhine." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2 Apr. 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine. Radcliffe, Ann. Excerpts from A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return Down the Rhine: to which are added, Observations During a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland. Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1997. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Oxford: Project Gutenberg, 1993. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext93/frank14.txt. Wordsworth, William. "Tintern Abbey." Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998.

Concept of Beauty According to the Western Philosophers Essay

Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of thing. The ideas of beauty is found in almost every culture and at almost every time in human history, with many similarities. Beauty was and still is a term of great esteem linking human beings and nature with artistic practices and works since the early civilizations. From the early cultures, beauty, goodness and truth are customarily related. Beauty here carries a double meaning, inclusive and exclusive. In the inclusive sense, beauty pertains to anything worthy of approbation, to human virtues and characters, to nobility and goodness, to hidden things and truth, to the natural and divine worlds. In the exclusive, restricted sense, it pertains to how things appear, their manifestations, and to the joys human beings experience when presented with beautiful things, human bodies, artifacts, natural creatures and things. When we talk about the beauty in works of art, we are talking about this latter beauty, and experiencing this beauty refers to the aesthetic experience. Such beauty is the higher degree of it and the experience of it last in us beyond the time and space. The nature of beauty and its role in philosophy and aesthetics was explained from the early periods and its evolution as described by the philosophers and writers as follows: ~PLATO~ ( 428 or 427 – 348 or 347 B. C ) Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. He must have had some love for the arts, because he talks about them often, and his remarks show that he paid close attention to what he saw and heard. He was also a fine literary stylist and a great story-teller; in fact he is said to have been a poet before he encountered Socrates and became a philosopher. Some of his dialogues are real literary masterpieces. On the other hand, he found the arts threatening. He proposed sending the poets and playwrights out of his ideal Republic, or at least censoring what they wrote; and he wanted music and painting severely censored. The arts, he thought, are powerful shapers of character. Thus, to train and protect ideal citizens for an ideal society, the arts must be strictly controlled. Plato had two theories of art. One may be found in his dialogue The Republic, and seems to be the theory that Plato himself believed. According to this theory, since art imitates physical things, which in turn imitate the Forms, art is always a copy of a copy, and leads us even further from truth and toward illusion. For this reason, as well as because of its power to stir the emotions, art is dangerous. Plato’s other theory is hinted at in his shorter dialogue Ion, and in his exquisitely crafted Symposium. According to this theory the artist, perhaps by divine inspiration, makes a better copy of the True than may be found in ordinary experience. Thus the artist is a kind of prophet. Here are some features of the two theories: 1. Art is imitation This is a feature of both of Plato’s theories. Of course he was not the first or the last person to think that art imitates reality. The idea was still very strong in the Renaissance, when most people thought that a picture must be a picture of something, and that an artist is someone who can make a picture that â€Å"looks just like the real thing†. It wasn’t until late in the nineteenth century that the idea of art as imitation began to fade from western aesthetics, to be replaced by theories about art as expression, art as communication, art as pure form, art as whatever elicits an â€Å"aesthetic† response, and a number of other theories. So art is imitation. But what does it imitate? In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life. In other words, a work of art is a copy of a copy of a Form. It is even more of an illusion than is ordinary experience. On this theory, works of art are at best entertainment and at worst a dangerous delusion. Whereas in the Symposium, he talks of art as imitation of the divine beauty and eternal truth. 2. Art is powerful, and therefore dangerous Poetry, drama, music, painting, dance, all stir up our emotions. All of the arts move people powerfully. They can strongly influence our behavior, and even our character. For that reason Plato insisted that music (especially music), along with poetry and drama and the other arts, should be part of the education of young citizens in his ideal republic, but should be strictly censored to present, at first, only the good. Plato’s influence came into the medieval European tradition through the filter of Neoplatonism, a much later modification of Platonic teachings that flourished in the centuries just before and after the time of Jesus. The most famous neo-Platonist was Plotinus. Plotinus and the other neo-Platonists made much of the idea of Beauty, and the soul’s quest for it, as described in the Symposium. Through neoplatonism, Plato’s second theory (art as imitation of eternal Beauty and eternal Truth) became the channel of his influence on the western middle ages and the renaissance. ~ARISTOTLE~ ( 384-322 BC ) In The School of Athens, the fresco by Raphael, Plato and Aristotle stand side by side. Plato points to the heavens, to the ideal world of the Forms. Aristotle is shown with his hand open toward the earth. The painting shows how passionate Renaissance intellectuals were about the views and achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It also accurately portrays the difference between Plato and Aristotle. It’s a difference that shows up in their approaches to the arts. Aristotle took time and change more seriously than did Plato. Not surprisingly, he was also somewhat friendlier to the passions than was Plato; though he, too, thought that the moral virtues were various habits of rational control over the passions. Like Plato, Aristotle thought that art involved imitation (mimesis), though on this point as on many others he was flexible and allowed for exceptions. He also thought harder than Plato about what art imitated. For example, he says that Tragedy is an imitation â€Å"not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery† (Poetics 1451b). Thus he leans toward the â€Å"art as imitation of the ideal† theory that Plato might have developed, but never did. Aristotle’s Poetics is largely devoted to drama, in particular to tragedy. Aristotle provides both a history of the development of poetry and drama, and a critical framework for evaluating tragic drama. The Poetics is the first systematic essay in literary theory, full of insight, and showing a high degree of flexibility in the application of its general rules. Like many of Aristotle’s other attempts to systematize knowledge about an area, this framework has had a strong influence up to the present day, and was particularly influential during the Renaissance and the early modern European periods. Aristotle stresses the need for a work to be unified. The plot should be unified, portraying, in effect, one extended action which is set up, develops, and comes to a climactic conclusion. The character of the protagonists should be consistent, and the action should be the sort of action those characters would produce under those circumstances. The time of the action should also be unified, so that the plot can be held in memory as one action. Aristotle thought this would usually imply that the action would occur within one day. These â€Å"Unities† of action, character, and time were developed and added to by Renaissance writers to produce a code of â€Å"decorum† for dramatic productions, and failure to observe the â€Å"Unities† was often taken to mean failure of a work. Of course this brought a rebellion against Aristotle, who was not in fact responsible for the excesses of this code, and no doubt had no intention of producing a set of rules for dramatists in the first place. His critical standards no longer rule the evaluation of plays and novels, let alone other works. But the Poetics remains an impressive accomplishment, and many of its insights continue to ring true. It still seems a good general rule that a plot should be unified; that in a drama character should be revealed by action; that surprising turns are a great help to a plot, as long as they are not implausible; that one should not try to cover too great a length of actual time within the time of the play. The idea of catharsis is a potent one; and so is the idea that art portrays the universal, â€Å"not a thing that has been, but a kind of thing that might be. † ~RENE DESCARTES~ (1596-1650) He described the beauty and perfection of god’s works and the divine light. As late as the eighteenth century, beauty retained its relation to divinity and perfection, expressed in art. Even so, with Descartes and his time a transformation of the world began that included alterations in the practice and understanding of art and in the thought of beauty and beautiful things. In a universe made by god, the beauty and perfection of the world are immediate and infinitely important. ~GEORGE BERKELEY~ (1685-1753) â€Å"A man needs no argument to make him discern and approve what is beautiful; it strikes as first sight, and attracts without a reason. And as this beauty is found in shape and form of corporeal thins, so is there analogous to it, which is a beauty of another kind; an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the eyes perceive, so do by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent or faculty is ever quickest and purest in the noble mind. † George Berkeley (1685-1753) is Irish philosopher and critics. He had moral sense theory of ethical judgment, which eliminates the traditional conception of moral rules as divine commands known by revelation as a main target of Berkeley’s attack. Francis Hutcheson offered his account of the sense of beauty as an introduction to his theory of the moral sense, Berkeley extended his attack to Hutcheson’s aesthetics. He exclaimed his response to beauty need not always be a response to the appearance of usefulness; e. g. Greek columns are tapered to look stable even though they would actually be stable with being tapered. The arguing issue raised remained a live one for aesthetics theory entities radical transformation in the post- Kantian period. ~IMMANUEL KANT~ (1724-1804) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German Enlightenment philosopher whose original and powerful philosophy has shaped most subsequent western thought. He was a popular lecturer, and was capable of a lively, readable style; although his major works are as dense and difficult as they are influential. (Kant defended this as a deliberate choice, since he wanted to examine what could be known about the mind in itself, or a priori, without depending on particular examples.) Kant produced an early treatise on aesthetics, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1763), and did not write on the subject again until the end of his career, in the Critique of Judgment (1790). In between the two works came the development of his influential critical philosophy. Although Kant saw the Critique of Judgment as the key work which connected his writings on epistemology (the theory of knowledge) in the Critique of Pure Reason with his writings on ethics in the Critique of Practical Reason, it is not necessary to know these other works in order to understand the most influential parts of Kant’s aesthetics. Like many other writers on aesthetics before him, Kant’s main interest was not in art per se, but in Beauty (and along with other eighteenth century writers, in the Sublime). Thus most of his remarks are as relevant to the beautiful or sublime in nature as in art. Like other Enlightenment writers, (e. g. , Hutcheson and Hume), Kant also thought that Beauty or Sublimity were not really properties of objects, but ways in which we respond to objects. And like these other writers, Kant was concerned to show that this focus on the subjective aesthetic response did not make aesthetic value a mere function of individual or personal taste. Kant’s way of working out these problems is what makes his aesthetics original and influential. He claimed that judgments of taste are both subjective and universal. They are subjective; because they are responses of pleasure, and do not essentially involve any claims about the properties of the object itself. (What matters is not the picture I see; rather it is the pleasing effect of the picture on me.) On the other hand, aesthetic judgments are universal and not merely personal. That’s because in a crucial way they must be disinterested. When I am appreciating a painting aesthetically, I am not thinking about how much money it’s worth, or whether it is a portrait of a family member, or even about who painted it, except in so far as knowing the painter helps me see what’s in the work. These non-aesthetic interests are extraneous to my appreciation of the painting. Rather I am pleased by the painting just for what it is, apart from anything I may get out of it. In fact I do not even take an ethical interest in the painting’s subject (that is, any ethical interest is separate from this disinterested pleasure I take in the painting). â€Å"Taste that requires an added element of charm and emotion for its delight, not to speak of adopting this as the measure of its approval, has not emerged from barbarism†. Kant thought that for aesthetic judgments to be both subjective and universal, they had to be about form. Beauty should be â€Å"a question merely of the form†. More specifically, the object being contemplated (e. g. , a work of art, or an actual landscape) must display a kind of undefined purposive ness, such that it seems to be organized with a final purpose in mind, although it is not possible to say what that purpose is. Thus a work of art, or a beautiful natural object, displays a kind of free play of forms, consistent with the presence of a purpose to which we don’t have access. So intent was Kant on emphasizing the formal properties of the objects of aesthetic attention that he was unwilling to include color among the aesthetically relevant properties of an object. Color, in his view, is mere decoration; design and composition are what really matter . To sum up this point about form in Kant’s own words: â€Å"A judgment of taste which is uninfluenced by charm or emotion (though these may be associated with the delight in the beautiful), and whose determining ground, therefore, is simply finality of form, is a pure judgment of taste. † Kant divided the kinds of aesthetic response into responses to the Beautiful and the Sublime. The one represents a pleasure in order, harmony, delicacy and the like. The other is a response of awe before the infinite or the overwhelming. While the beautiful presents the appearance of form, the sublime may often seem formless. The pleasure it gives us derives from our awareness that there is something in us that transcends the overwhelming power or infinity outside us. Finally, Kant had things to say about genius. In short, he thought that genius has its own rules, and one cannot dictate to it. How Kant arrived at his conclusions is not easily shown; and it is no surprise that the philosophical reasoning that grounds those conclusions did not follow them into the cultural mainstream. But the conclusions themselves proved quite influential. His remarks on genius, and on purposive ness in art and nature, had an impact on the development of Romantic aesthetics. Later, the idea of a disinterested appreciation of form became a watchword for philosophers and critics like Clement Greenberg who defended abstract art. In literary criticism, the New Criticism which focused on the text itself, and its philosophical defense by Beardsley and Wimsatt, were similarly inspired.

Dark Romanticism in “The Devil and Tom Walker” Essay

During the nineteen century in America, Dark Romanticism was very popular. Dark Romanticism is a literary subgenre that emerges from Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism believed that to discover truth people must see beyond the physical world, also believed that people can find God directly on nature. Dark romanticism explores the conflict between good and evil and the psychological effect of sin and guilt in the human mind. One of the famous Dark romantic writers is Washington Irving. He is well known for his short stories and his unrealistic characters and his detailed description of nature. Irving develops the characteristic themes of dark romanticism through symbolism in â€Å"The Devil and Tom Walker†. Many Dark romantics writer thought that nature had a spiritual influence over people, as a mysterious being. One of the main themes of the Dark Romanticism is nature. Irving describes with detail the nature setting around the characters. In this story Irving says â€Å"The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood†. In this sentence he is describing the setting described as dark, decaying and mystifying. Another theme presented in this story is the presence of the devil. Irving gives the devil human qualities and describes him as a â€Å"great black man†, â€Å"neither Negro nor Indian†, with a â€Å"pair of great red eyes† and with an ax in his shoulder. The devil is said to have various names among the countries and he claims to have witness great battles and conflicts in America. Dark Romantics used images of evil in form of vampires, devils, ghosts and other human-characterized figures. In this case Irving uses the devil as a symbol of evil. Dark Romantics presents human beings as susceptible to sin. The author presents different sins in this story for exa mple, avarice. This sin was present in Tom Walker and also in his wife. In the story it said that the â€Å"husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards† and there were conflicts about what â€Å"ought to have been common property†. This says that the woman hid things to her husband, in order to save it from herself. Dark Romantics explore the conflict between good and evil. In this case the devil wanted to make an agreement with Walker. At first Walker refused because he knew that when devil granted favors, there was one condition: he had to be at his service. The wanted him to become a slave trader, but he refused his proposal because he was against slavery. He instead became a usurer. When Tom Walker committed sins, he went to church to feel better about it. These visits to church are a symbol used to present guilt. He tried to focus in reading the Bible, but he kept censuring his neighbors and scamming his clients. He thought that every sin his neighbors committed became a credit in his own sins. Also, Walker tried to hide his guilt in his ostentation by building a great and incomplete house, just as Captain Kidd hid his treasure between the big trees in the forest. Washington Irving uses many symbols in this story to present the themes of Dark Romanticism. The forest is a symbol of the nature, and the devil is representative of the evil influence over the human being. Walker’s house represents a place to hide guilt and Walker’s wife is a symbol of greed. â€Å"The Devil and Tom Walker† describes very well the themes of Dark Romanticism.

Plato-Machiavelli Comparison

Danielle Butler October 16, 2011 English 101/ O. C #2-Machiavelli Though often presented as two ideological opposites, personally I find there to be a lot more similarities between Plato and Machiavelli than usually acknowledged. Obviously there are some sharp contrasts. If one examines the excerpts from Machiavelli’s â€Å"The Prince† and Plato’s â€Å"The Republic†, it’s easy to conclude that Plato believed it to be essential for a government leader to be just, good, and free from corruption. Whereas Machiavelli’s ideal ruler is less concerned about morality, and more about shrewdness, awareness, and pragmatism.. That being said, ultimately both men arrive to the same conclusion all be it through different means; that a ruler’s primary objective is to create and maintain a unified, orderly, and controlled state, with a content population. When it comes to humanity, Machiavelli is considered pessimistic, due to his less than glowing expectations for the nature of man, as he clearly states â€Å" For one can generally say this about men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for gain.. † (46). While Machiavelli’s opinion of men in general leaves little to be questioned, I find Plato’s generalized idealism to be far more dubious. In the Republic, it appears that Plato’s optimisms about human nature, and capability does not extend to everyone, asserting that many people are better off being ruled by â€Å"better men†. In book 9 Socrate’s states to Glaucon â€Å"Tharsymacus did in the case of subjects, that the slave should be governed by his own harm, but on the ground that it is better to be governed by the divine and the intelligent preferably indwelling and his own, but in default of that imposed from without, in order that we all so far as possible may be akin and friendly because our governance and guidance are the same? † (Plat. Rep. 9. 590d) Both Machiavelli and Plato also recognize that generally, most people of the populace are easily manipulated by their senses. Plato illustrates that in his â€Å"allegory of the cave†. Machiavelli makes it clear that he feels this shortcoming to be advantageous for the â€Å"prince†, and it should be exploited when need be, as he states â€Å" he (the prince) should appear, upon seeing him and hearing him, to be all mercy, all faithfulness , all integrity, all kindness, all religion. And there is nothing more necessary than to seem to possess this last quality. And men in general judge more by their eyes than their hands; for everyone can see but few can feel. † (49). While many may chide Machiavelli’s approach as disingenuous and manipulative, which it plainly is, how much does this tactic differ from Plato’s suggestions? In the Republic, Plato suggests that society must be persuaded by a â€Å"noble lie† to unify the citizens and deepen their allegiance to their community as Socrates states â€Å"How, then, said I, â€Å"might we contrive  one of those opportune falsehoods  of which we were just now speaking, â€Å"so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city? â€Å"What kind of a fiction do you mean? † said he. â€Å"Nothing unprecedented,† said I, â€Å"but a sort of Phoenician tale,something that has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to happen in our day  and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable. †

Petit and fernando

There were two young souls with a dedicated passion in the novel † Let The Great World Spin† by Colum McCann expressed themselves through different inspiration. Philippe Petit, the French acrobat who in 1974 walked across a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Petit a man with out a fear, well that's what you would say if you would watch him pursue what he felt like was destiny. He had a passion most would call crazy, insane, or even fatal. Fernando Yunque Marcano was Just young Hispanic fourteen year old boy still experiencing life, and adventure through a camera in the treets of New York.Fernando was blown away by the creativity that these artists would express and how they would show their thoughts through art. Philippe and Fernando are two different people in two different settings living in their own journey. Petit was passionate about â€Å"walking on wire. † He didn't want to think of the consequences he could face while performing such walk. He was a calm per son Just focused on his dream to walk further and higher, to call it history I suppose. His motivation was the rush he received.He puts himself to the test and it was even said that â€Å"His favorite moment was running along the wire without a balancing pole- it was the purest bodyflow he could get† (McCann 158). When he finally arrived to walk on the wire and went through the rush â€Å"he felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake† (McCann164). A person feels like it was a different of kind of living says a lot on how he felt for this passion someone would call insane, he felt alive. He felt something he couldn't compare it to. Petit had a talent that humanity could not deny.Fernando Yunque Marcano was a humble quiet boy with not much money. He is an adolescent but definitely knew where his passion lied. He hid his face through a camera. Fanatical in his work, the only image that he had in his mine was captivating the moment through photography. Fernando wou ld surf the trains of New York putting himself in danger one hand on his camera trying to take pictures of what he saw such beauty in, tags â€Å"loves the way the letters curl, the arcs, the swerves, the flames, their clouds. (McCann 168), it shows that he saw creativity and enjoyment to omething that we see everyday and probably show not much interest in. His talent to express himself in photographs is another way of speech. Philippe Petite was a man with an obsession of the wire. Fernando Yunque Marcano had an obsession of the camera. They were two legendry men in their own unique way. No matter their motive or their reason they did what they loved to do. Their dedication to what they felt was their purpose overcame their â€Å"fear† to reality. There dedication to there obsession is another world for his passion.