Colonial Beginning of Modern Theatre in India Essay Example For Students

Frontier Beginning of Modern Theater in India Essay Frontier Beginning of Modern Theater in India India’s brush with the West during late eighteenth and mid twentieth century had expansive runing political, monetary, cultural and social impacts. In the field of theater this brush changed about everything †its signifier, way and step ( Jain 1992:61 ) . Set up in the British states in Calcutta and later in Bombay, the introduction of current performance center in India is blamelessly a pilgrim wonder. The bing customary dramatic open introductions were seen as coarse rustic diversion and a mentality of disdain or aloofness towards them created. The British worked with the reason that India needed showy progress and they accepting it as the ‘white grown-up guys burden’ to begin Indians into it and Indians promptly ventured frontward to duplicate and assimilate western dramatic hypothetical records accessible before them. During British frontier guideline theater as an advanced signifier of narrating and entertainment a little bit at a time got built up in principle metropoliss like Calcutta ( East ) , Madras ( South ) , Bombay ( West ) and Varanasi ( North ) . The inheritance of the advanced Indian venue started with the terminal of the laterality of old style Sanskrit theater or all the more precisely brahminical standing witting theater and the moving of the topical show and performative convention ( Rangacharya 1975:94 ) . Ascent of Theater in Colonial India It is difficult to turn up the historical backdrop of around 200 mature ages of frontier theater in the modifying socio-political and social environmental factors. Theater in this period conceivably found in three wide stages, first stage can be known as the pioneer time frame runing from 1795 ( the creation ofDisguise) to 1872 ( the creation ofNiladarpan) , during this stage, Indian performance center was in its imitative stage and stayed a way of diversion and cultural communications for a chose set of English individuals and flush instructed indigens. Theater design was limited to the private theater ; a portion of the auditorium houses were work in the houses or forests of Baboo Prasanna Kumar Tagore ( Hindu theater ) , Baboo Nabin Chandra Bose ( Shyam Bazar Theater ) and Baboo Parry Mohan Bose ( Jorasanko Natyasala ) . Bombay theater scene had a comparative trip before the happening to the Parsi theater. The provincial venue was carefully a recreational example and created trust ing on western hypothetical records particularly Shakespeare turned out to be somewhat famous. On November 27Thursday, 1795, Herasim Lebedeff ( 1749-1817 ) , a Russian with the guide of his Bengali mentor Golaknath Das arranged a Bengali form of the English drama,The Disguiseat the Bengal Theater in Calcutta ( Barucha 1953:8 ) . Lebedeff made the interlingual versions and the performing specialists were all Bengalis. For Rangacharya this open introduction proclaimed the introduction of the cutting edge theater ( 1971:94 ) . At that cut the just theater bing was completely British like The Calcutta theater ( bolstered by Warrren Hastings ) with repertories ofThe School for Scandal,Richard III,Hamletand others. The English performance center engaged officials, merchants’ bookmans and agents of east India Company. It was sole to the point that even Usshers and ushers were English ( Barucha 1953:8 ) By 1840 there was an interest among playgoers of Bengal to see theater that would go to the adjusting mentalities in the public eye and in add-on they needed to be engaged excessively.Bidyut Sundar( 1836 ) was among the first of these private open introductions. Arranged in grouped pieces of the house including the nursery and the pulling room of Nabin Chandra Basu ( 9 ) the creation depended by and large on hey tech showy gear imported from England. The show was a sensation of Annada Mangal, a Bengali section structure by Bharat Chandra. As a dramaBidyut Sundarwas uncouth however it’s noteworthy significance was gigantic. It animated blue bloods like Jyotindranath Tagore and Pratap Chandra Sinha to support theaters by in private disparaging open introductions of Bengali dramatizations. The impacts of English guidance, the impact of western civilisation, the ascent of political awareness all made unsettling that offered clout to individuals to pounce upon orthodoxies and to go to cultural indecencies. The first unique show in Quite a while Ram Narayan Tarkaratna’s ( 1822-1886 )Kulin Kulasarvasa( 1853 ) and laterNaba-Natak( New Drama ) ( 1867 ) both were cultural dramatizations on the improprieties ofKulin( upper class ) polygamy. Michael Madhusudhan Dutt’s ( 1824-1873 ) premier brush with Bengali auditorium was his English interlingual version of a Sanskrit traditional show adjusted by Ramnnarayan Tarkaratna s dramaRatnavali( 1858 ) . He wroteSarmistha( 1858 ) , dependent on a sentimental scene from Mahabharata other than oppugning Hindu standards, his other show calledEkei Ki Bale Sabhyata?( Is this Called Civilization? ) ( 1860 ) parodies an anglicized baboo Naba Kumar who stuns individuals by his eccentricities and in it we other than have medicines of female liberation and widow remarriage. In south India in late nineteenth century shows dependent on the new western hypothetical record were written in phonetic correspondences like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. A few names related with theaters were: Pammal Sambandha Mudaliar ( 1873-1964 ) portrayed as the building up male parent of Tamil theater, Gubbi Veeranna ( 1890 1974 ) a pioneer in Kannada theater and Dharamavaram Krishnamchari ( 1853â€1912 ) an observed Telugu writer. The dramatizations contained stories drawn from impressive, verifiable or cultural occasion yet signifier and development depended on shallow impersonation of the shows of Shakespeare. Landfills: A Growing Menace EssayIn this stage Indian theater strived to get a singularity of its ain by rehashing autochthonal recorded or spectacular characters, during this clasp, one gathering of theater practicians like Rabindranath Tagore, Bhartendu Harishchandra and Jayshankar Prasad rewarded theater craftsmanship stylishly asDrishya Kavya( Hansen 1989: 86 ) and attempted to move away from trade wild around the clasp. The Third Phase: The Parsi Theater and Indian People’s Theater Association ( IPTA ) Late nineteenth century was the phase of the ascent of business theaters, the Parsi theater on the one manus and the arrangement of the socially, strategically and socially witting Indian People’s Theater Association ( IPTA ) on the other. During the period 1853 to 1931, Bombay built up an exuberant dramatic human progress adjusted in the covering examples of the Parsi, Gujarati, and Marathi theaters ( Hansen 1999:127-147 ) . This new urban performance center was prominently known as Parsi theater. It emerged so as to flexibly diversion to the expanding populace of enormous metropoliss subsequent upon industrialisation. It introducing dramatizations dependent on Indian folklore, history and tales. With its voyaging organizations, they headed out to various pieces of the state and had a colossal effect on their crowd. Western Naturalistic play, drama and conventional everyday citizens signifiers made a mix for visual part of the business Parsi theater. A combination of gigantic scenes, cover stage, beautiful foundations, exhibition, drama, music, temper and relationship entirely added to the contriving of this theater. Agha Hashr ( 1880-1931 ) was an of import writer of the Parsi theater alongside other notable producer s like Narain Prasad Betab and Radhey Shyam Kathavachak. Parsi theater other than had extraordinary histrions like Cowasji Khatau, Khurshedji Baliwala, Master Madan, Fida Hussain Narasi, Having created in newly rising enormous metropoliss like Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai this signifier of theater performed by proficient gatherings was the solitary start of mass entertainment before the outgrowth of film. The movement made a significant endeavor to pass on play nearer to the average folks however its assault was brazen and direction was on a very basic level western. Indeed, current Indian performance center developed predominantly as a response against its underlying roughness and shallowness. Between the late thirtiess and the 1950s, an extent of occasions ; the frontier atrociousnesss, the Bengal Famine of 1943, the Telengana ( in Andhra Pradesh ) and Tebhaga ( in Bengal ) commonplace movements, the Second World War, collective power, Partition, Failure of Nehruvian goals made interest for a substitute human advancement and created reactions in the signifier of tasteful creations across music, theater, workmanship and move. Indian People’s Theater Association shaped in 1943 utilized venue as a political arm to show an other hypothetical record of social creation. It authoritatively embraced the idea that music, average folks signifiers and theater would be utilized for dissent and reaction to the skirmishes of a colonized state on the one manus and the multi-layered oppression of the everyday citizens under both the pioneer and the quick post-freedom period. The regions where this movement was predominant were Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Delhi, Punjab, Maharashtra, And hra Pradesh and Kerala. The social crew of Binoy Roy ventured out over the state to educate individuals about the devastate toing shortage in Bengal through their choirBhookha Hai Bengal( Bengal is Hungry ) . P.C. Joshi, the so General Secretary of Communist Party of India took the venture and the imaginative people of the occasions Prithviraj Kapoor, Bijon Bhattacharya, Ritwik Ghatak, Utpal Dutt, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Mulk Raj Anand, Salil Chowdhury, Rajendra Raghuvanshi, Jyotirindra Moitra, Safdar Mir and numerous others came frontward and framed Indian People’s Theater Association ( IPTA ) in 1942. The principal most well known dramatization of IPTA was Bijon Bhattacharya’s‘Nabanna’( Fresh Harvest ) . The show was coordinated by Shambhu Mitra and Bijon Bhattacharya and was principal organized on October 24, 1944 at ‘Sr

Veils Essay Example

Cloak Essay At the point when somebody specifies the wordVeil numerous individuals consider Bridal veils.But there are different sorts of cloak around; Islamic cover, Spanish kerchiefs and verifiable headwear. The custom of ladies wearing cover goes back hundreds of years and it crosses numerous cultures.In Islamic societies where ladies have been subordinate to men, the cloak might be worn even today to shield womens faces. Shroud were well known in European designs back in Gothic occasions, around 1400, and before.Women secured their hair with cloak for chapel or to show they were married.Fifteenth century style included topped caps for ladies with cover connected at the pinnacle. A Wimple is a hood worn by ladies over the head and around the neck, cheeks, and jaw. From the late twelfth until the start of the fourteenth century, it was worn broadly all through medieval Europe, and it made due as of not long ago as a head covering for ladies in strict orders.The wimple initially was embraced as a jawline cloak by Western ladies after the crusaders brought once more from the Near East such molds as the shroud of the Muslim lady. The wimple, generally made of fine white cloth or silk, encircled the face and secured the neck and here and there part of the chest. Purdah, Hindi Parda (screen, or cloak), a training that was initiated by Muslims and later received by different Hindus, particularly in India, and that includes the separation of ladies from open perception by methods for disguising dress (counting the cover) and by the utilization of high-walled fenced in areas, screens, and shades inside the home.The practice of purdah is said to have begun in the Persian culture and to be gained by the Muslims during the Arab victory of what is currently Iraq in the seventh century Ad.Muslim mastery of northern India thusly impacted the act of Hinduism, and purdah got regular among the Hindu privileged societies of northern India. During the British authority in India, pur

Early Action Season

Early Action Season *Update as of 2015: Early action is available to both domestic and international students. Tonight is Thursday, October 30th. That means tomorrow is October 31: Halloween. And the next day is November 1: the MIT Early Action deadline. Weve been getting a lot of questions here in the office about the deadline, so let me take a moment to answer some of those questions, and to provide a bit of advice as well. Please be patient with the application tracking system. Allow two weeks from submission date for documents to show up in the tracking system. We have buckets and buckets of mail to open and process already and the deadline hasnt even arrived yet. Please do not harass your teachers or counselors if you dont yet see a recommendation on the application tracking system. They will submit everything in due time, and we will have it processed in plenty of time to make decisions. When we start reading, we begin with the applications that are the most complete. We will provide lots of time for delayed documents. We are happy to be flexible with individual circumstances. November 1 is a postmark/submit-button deadline. We are happy to accept forms submitted any time up to and through November 1. Yes, you can submit documents up to and through midnight on November 1 but really, if youre clicking submit at 11:59:59pm 11/01/08, youre doing it wrong. I recommend clicking submit before the Halloween festivities. Your Halloween will be much more enjoyable and much less stressful if you submit things before Friday night. There is no need to fax materials at this point. Use traditional methods of submission. If something is missing in mid-late November, then the fax will be a good option. We are flexible with word limits on essays, but dont push it. Dont worry if your essay doesnt format as youd like it to. Were reading for content, and were used to seeing the formatting errors from the computer uploading process. No worries. and, while youre thinking of it, go thank your parents for their support over the years: they deserve it. So, who is done and has submitted both their Parts 1 and 2? Doesnt it feel good to have finished the application?

Artifacts of the Royal Cemetery of Ur

What Is Love, a Comparison of Love in Othello and King Lear

What is love? Love is the pinnacle of all emotions, it is the epicenter for life, what is the point of living if there is no love, ironically love is the cause of many a down fall. William Shakespeare has single handedly captured and embraced this necessary feeling and has allowed us to view in on it through the characters in his two masterpieces, Othello and King Lear. Three different kinds of loves explored in both Othello and King Lear, sharing both similarities and differences are a love for a significant other, the love a father holds to his children, and the love a daughter holds for her father. By looking at the outcomes of these loves one may draw a sense of loves negative and positive effects, and how the different traits of†¦show more content†¦Friedlander), but in the end all roads seem to lead to death. Next one may want to look into the love a father holds for a child. This love is also tested in both Othello through Brabantio and Desdemona, and in King Lear through both King Lear and his Daughters and Gloucester and his Sons. Brabantios love for his daughter Desdemona comes out in the beginning of the play when he finds out his daughter has married Othello. This demonstrates a love a father holds for his daughter because he sees it as no one is good enough for his Desdemona even a man who he knows very well like Othello (A. Bradley). An example of this is in the beginning of the play when Brabantio takes the issue of his daughters marriage to court. According to B. Long Desdemona running off with Othello upset him greatly and led to him dying of not old age but a broken heart. King Lears love for his daughter mainly Goneril and Regan can be more related to Desdemonas love for Othello because much the same as Desdemona King Lears unconditional love for Goneril and Regan hazed his vision to the wicked plans hiding under their angelic masks and impure flattery (A. Bradley). Gloucester much like Brabantio and King Lear loved his children highly. Also much the same this love for a child led to the cause of great pain to fall upon him. Even though Edmond unlike Edgar is an illegitimate son he loves them both the same until he connived into perceiving Edgar is inShow MoreRelatedWilliam Shakespeare s Hometown Of The English Language And The World s Best Dramatist1266 Words   |  6 Pagesincomparable to any other author. Some of the many themes included in Shakespeare s works were love, violence, and deceit. He was the first to heavily focus on the internal feelings of his characters. Shakespeare noticed the qualities and characteristics that relate to all human beings making his writing more personal to the audience, but it usually includes a troublesome and tragic mischance. We do not know to what degree Shakespeare s personal experiences are reflected in his sonnets; nor do we knowRead MoreWilliam Shakespeare s Much Ado About Nothing And King Lear3685 Words   |  15 PagesName: Instructors’ Name: Course: Date: Analysis of Shakespeare’s powerful female characters in the play â€Å"Much Ado about Nothing† and â€Å"King Lear Introduction Shakespeare is seen to value the role of women as his plays often portray women as heroines. These women have strong characters that endear them to readers. Readers in our current world, and especially women, are encouraged to be self-assertive in demand for equal treatment in our society. This has been the tradition for women in the WesternRead MoreThe Accomplishments Of Edmund Kean1513 Words   |  7 PagesKean, one of the greatest and most historic British actors to ever live. Kean might have been born on March 17th in the year of 1789,and I say might have because no one really knows when he was born. The exact date of his birth has been a mystery for what seems like forever now, and as the years keep going, the chance of this mystery being solved becomes less and less possible. We’re at the point now where we’ll probably never find out when Edmund Kean was born, all we have is a rough estimate at theRead MoreComparison and Contrast Between Othello and Hamlet3664 Wo rds   |  15 PagesShakespeare’s Othello and Hamlet Comparison and Contrast By Ankur Chauhan Comparisons between plays can always be made; the question is, how useful are they? The core comparison that springs to mind between these two plays, Othello and Hamlet, is that these are both tragedies driven by character. That is to say, they all follow classically great men from great heights to terrible ends and deaths. Each man is in a situation where he is especially vulnerable. If these men swapped places, theyRead MoreTragic Drama According to AC Bradleys Theory of Shakespeare and a Comparison of Arthur Miller and August Wilsons Concept of Tragedy2899 Words   |  12 Pagesparticular paradox, we become fascinated. Bradley emphasizes on viewing the literary techniques used not as the basic constituents but as the expression of tragedy. Some of the major characters in Shakespeares renowned tragedies are Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. Most of these characters are individual sufferers as in reality; a single man faces the paradoxes of life. In every work of Shakespeare, irrespective of the individually unique traits, we find a shattered hope or a failed ambitionRead MoreEssay on Analyses of Race and Gender Issues in Shakespeares Othello3144 Words   |  13 PagesAnalyses of Race and Gender Issues in Othello      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The discussion of race in Shakespeares Othello has received a great deal of critical attention. Virginia Mason Vaughn, in her book Othello: A Contextual History, surveys this critical history, beginning with Marvin Rosenbergs 1961 book The Masks of Othello (a book documenting the nineteenth-century tendency toward representing Othello as light-skinned), and continuing through to Jack DAmicos 1991 book The Moor in English RenaissanceRead MoreEssay Prompts4057 Words   |  17 PagesGreat Expectations Sister Carrie The Great Gatsby The Sound and Fury Gulliver’s Travels Sula Heart of Darkness The Sun Also Rises Invisible Man Their Eyes Were Watching God Joe Turner’s Come and Gone The Things They Carried King Lear The Turn of the Screw Major Barbara Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf 2004 (Form B): The most important themes in literature are sometimes developed in scenes in which a death or deaths take place. Choose a novel or play and write a well-organizedRead More The Theme of Loss in Poetry Essay2004 Words   |  9 Pagesportray the theme of ‘loss’ in some way. ‘Loss’ has been a recurring theme in literature for centuries, from early poets such as William Shakespeare who portrays loss in many of his tragedies including the loss of sanity in ‘King Lear’ and the loss of reputation in ‘Othello’, through to Keats’s ‘Odes’ and into the twentieth and twenty-first century. Loss is an important aspect of life and many modern poets find it to be an interesting theme to deal with in their work. The poems chosen for theRead MoreThe Tragic Hero and the Tragic Story in William Shakespeares Writing2842 Words   |  12 PagesStory in William Shakespeares Writing Shakespeares tragedies are, for the most part, stories of one person, the hero, or at most two, to include the heroine. Only the Love Tragedies (Romeo and Juliet; Antony and Cleopatra)are exceptions to this pattern. In these plays, the heroine is as much at the center of action as the hero. The rest of the tragedies, including Macbeth, have single stars, so the tragicRead MoreHow Did Elizabethan Theater Affect Popular Entertainment?1842 Words   |  8 Pages and a few of her poems still exist today. Elizabeth was also into arts and literature. She loved watching plays and dramatic performances. â€Å"She hired her own company of actors called â€Å"The Queen’s Players.† The art spread because of the queen. Her love for poetry, music, and drama helped make it fashionable for the wealthy members of the court to support the arts. Elizabethan Entrepreneurs built theaters for very large audiences. The theater was an expanding industry at the time. Many theaters began

The Relationship Between Entrepreneurship Free Essays

In order to completely understand the relation, it is Important to define what Is meant by each of the terms before Identifying any links between them. Joseph Schumacher defined entrepreneurship as â€Å"whatever the type, everyone is entrepreneur only when he actually carries out a new combination and loses that character as soon as he has built up his business, when he settles to running it as other people run their 1934, p. 78) I agree with most of this definition as this basically means that a person is only an entrepreneur when something new Is created. We will write a custom essay sample on The Relationship Between Entrepreneurship or any similar topic only for you Order Now After this point, they are not considered entrepreneurs as whatever they have created Is no longer new. Schumacher also said that Innovation Is the creation of a new product, new method of production, new markets or new ways of directing resources. It is also important to distinguish between incremental and radical Innovation. Incremental innovation refers to a small change whereas radical change means a revolutionary change, For example, the Invention of the first mobile phone was a radical innovation. The release of Apple’s latest phone is an incremental innovation. Firstly, I will examine the correlation between Just entrepreneurship and innovation. In my opinion, it is impossible to be an entrepreneur without being innovative. Summerset’s definition supports this belief. The person needs to create something incrementally or radically new in order to be an entrepreneur. A good example of this would be Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple. His Innovation towards portable music was radical In the sense that his product was compact. However, since then, he has made more products such as phones and computers. Schumacher also argued that innovation allows firms to generate abnormal profits which are required as they encourage research and development. However, I believe that this research and development often leads to incremental change rather than radical change. This can be seen by looking at Apple as well. Apple constantly makes incremental changes to FIFO However, incremental change is essential for economic development. Economic development is defined as the rise in the general standards of living and quality of life. It is measured by the Human Developmental Index (HID). The HID is a â€Å"way of measuring development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income† (UNDO, 2011). Economic development can only be achieved if there is economic growth. Economic growth is the rise in a nation’s real gross domestic product (GAP). Considering that â€Å"Development requires the removal of major sources of unfounded: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overcapacity of oppressive states. (Mammary Seen, 1999, p. 3), I firmly believe that economic growth can lead to economic development. Entrepreneurship and innovation fuels economic growth as it makes demand rise. An entrepreneur innovates and creates something to meet a pre-existing yet unfulfilled demand. As a result, people buy that product, allowing the entrepreneur to earn profits. These profits can be invested back into the business. The proces s then starts again and causes the economy to grow. A growing economy results in increasing expenditure. This means that unemployment falls and incomes rise. This means that consumption of necessity goods increases. The provision and consumption of services such as health care and education can also increase. Governments can also generate more revenue from tax as incomes and expenditure rises. This means the provision of public goods such as clean drinking water, sanitation and law and order increases. A rise in the supply of public goods causes a reduction in inequality gap and improves income distribution. All of these constitute to economic development as the standard of living has now been improved and this can be proven by calculating the values for the HID indicators. Furthermore, economic growth is also an incentive for more innovation as it signals to the potential entrepreneurs that the economic conditions are suitable for making profits. It is due to all these conditions that I believe that the ‘uninformed’ mentioned in Ken’s definition are removed and aptly addressed during a period of economic growth, thus, resulting in economic development. An example, from Kenya, of the process above supports my argument. According to an article published by The Guardian, a Kenya telecommunications company, Safari, started providing a mobile banking service called ‘M-Peas’ in 2003. This service permitted its users to store money on their phones and pay for items or transfer money via SMS. This provided people with an alternative source of banking that was better than the traditional method because it was portable and did not impose heavy charges for transactions. As a result, demand for mobile phones went up. A study done by the London Business School showed that for every 10 extra mobile phones per 100 people, GAP in a developing nation went up by 0. 5%. Mobile phones also aided in economic development because they â€Å"can also be used to spread vital information about farming and healthcare to isolated rural areas send symptoms of a disease to a doctor via text and receive a diagnosis. Farmers could find the market price of the crops to ensure that they are not cheated. Mobile banking is not a radical innovation however; incremental change can be more beneficial for less developed countries. This service helps improve the quality of life for people in remote, rural areas that are hard to get to due to poor infrastructure. Although, entrepreneurship and innovation can cause economic growth, it isn’t the only way. Economic growth can also be found in situations from which entrepreneurship is completely absent. A prime example of this would be the Russia during the sass. During this time, Russia was a centrally planned economy. By definition this means that all decisions were made by the state rather than individuals. â€Å"The decade of sass was thus the â€Å"golden period† of Soviet economic Roth. The patterns of Soviet growth of the sass in terms of growth accounting were very similar to the Japanese growth of the sass-ass and to Korean and Taiwanese growth in the 1960-ass – fast increases in labor productivity counterweighted the decline in capital productivity’ (Vladimir Pop, 2010) These nations saw an increase in their GAP even during a lack of entrepreneurship due to increased labor productivity. However, the rise in GAP only lasted a decade. As it can be inferred by inspecting the current economic conditions in the former Soviet states, the growth was not sustainable. Sustainability looks at the level of self-sufficiency a product or notion has. It is related to entrepreneurship and innovation in the sense that if a product, idea or procedure is not sustainable, the likelihood of its existence is low. It’s obvious to me that an entrepreneur is less likely to follow through with an idea that cannot continuously generate profits. Conversely, the concept of sustainable development has to be discussed while trying to understand the relationship between economic development and sustainability. Sustainable development is defined as â€Å"development that meets the needs of the resent without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. † (NUANCED, 1987)This means that entrepreneurs have to be innovative in a manner that satisfies the current demand but does not harm the future generation’s capacity to innovate and satisfy their demands. Sustainable entrepreneurship can help achieve economic development. For example, the invention of the catalytic converter by Eugene Hydro was a radical innovation that was meant to reduce the air pollution created by exhausts from chimneys and automobiles. This kind of radical innovation benefits the developed nations more as they have a higher rate of institution and more factories and automobiles that create emissions. In this case, sustainable entrepreneurship increases economic development because impact on health, one of the factors measured by the HID, is reduced. In conclusion, the relationship between entrepreneurship, innovation and economic development is a bilateral one. I think it is impossible to be an entrepreneur without causes economic growth which is required for economic development. However, economic growth does not equate to economic development, as shown by the report on Soviet growth rates. Even though there was economic growth, there was a very insignificant, if any, rise in the standards of living. For me, this highlights the importance of entrepreneurship in achieving economic development. Even though I think radical innovation is a better reflection of entrepreneurship, I think that incremental innovation is of greater importance for the purposes of promoting economic development in less developed countries. The incremental innovations done by entrepreneurs in less developed nations, such as Safari in Kenya, are vital for economic development due to the nature of the infrastructure in these countries. Radical innovations such as the creation of the catalytic converter and whiney scrubbers that reduce emissions are significant for improving the standards of living in developed nations due to the opulence and levels of consumption. Sustainability and sustainable development play a noteworthy role in this relationship. How to cite The Relationship Between Entrepreneurship, Papers

Salomon V Salomon free essay sample

Salman, who owned a vacant bungalow lot, agreed to sell it to Maryam for RM300,000. The transfer of the lot was to be completed by the end March 2010. Last week, Salman, discovered that other lands in the vicinity of his lot were fetching much higher prices and changed his mind about selling the lot to Maryam. He proceeded to set up a company, Tatipu Sdn Bhd (the company), of which he was the majority shareholder and managing director. His wife, who is also a director, is the only other shareholder of the company. He then transferred the bungalow lot to the company. Subsequently he informed Maryam that he will not be able to proceed with the sale of the property to her as it has been sold to a third party, i. e. the company, but that he is prepared to pay damages for breach of contract. Maryam wishes to sue both Salman and Tatipu Sdn Bhd for breach of contract and claimed specific performance. We will write a custom essay sample on Salomon V Salomon or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Advise Maryam whether she will be successful in her claim for specific performance. (You are required to confine your answer to issues relating to company law. ) (10 marks)   Issue: Whether Maryam can claim the bungalow lot from Salman and/or Tatipu Sdn Bhd by lifting the corporate veil (case law/judicial exceptions) under the concept of separate legal entity. (1/2 marks) Rules: -In separate legal entity doctrine, a company has a legal personality of its own apart from the persons who owns it. The law will treat the company and the members as separate legal persons as decided in the case Salomon v Salomon. -However, in certain circumstances, a court may ignore the separate legal entity of a company (lifting the corporate veil) and look at the members of the company and make them liable. The relevant rule here is the use of company to evade legal obligation to commit fraud under the case law or judicial exceptions and the relevant case is Jones v Lipman. (3/4 marks) Application: -As a general rule, Tatipu Sdn Bhd and the member (Salman) are the separate legal persons. -By creating Tatipu Sdn Bhd and transferring the bungalow lot to the Tatipu Sdn Bhd, Salman actually use Tatipu to evade his legal obligation to Maryam. -The court will lift the corporate veil in the case of fraud done by Salman. -Therefore, the court will disregard the separate legal person and will hold that Salman and his company as one and the same. 3/4 marks) Conclusion: -Both Salman and the company, Tatipu Sdn Bhd will be ordered to specially perform the contract to sell the house to Maryam. (1/2 marks)   Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Please follow exactly the model answer (the answer format) above for the problem question in the assignment/test/final exam. Your answer can be in point form but must be in full sentence just like the above answer. Make sure you write ‘Issue’, ‘Rules’, ‘Application’ and ‘Conclusion’ exactly as above. Remember that one IRAC for one issue. If there are two or three different issues (in one question), then you must have two or three sets of IRAC for that question.

GANGS Essay Research Paper OVERVIEW OF GANGSOriginally free essay sample

GANGS Essay, Research Paper OVERVIEW OF GANGS Originally the word pack had no negative intension. In Old English, pack merely referred to a # 8220 ; figure of people who went around together-a group. # 8221 ; Today a pack can be defined in four basic ways: ? an organized group with a leader ? a incorporate group that normally remains together during peaceable times every bit good as times of struggle ? a group whose members show unity through vesture, linguistic communication ? a group whose activities are condemnable or endangering to the larger society. Gangs are one of the consequences of poorness, favoritism and urban impairment. Some experts believe that immature people, undereducated and without entree to good occupations, become frustrated with their lives and articulation packs as an alternate to boredom, hopelessness and lay waste toing poorness. Surveies have attempted to find why packs blight some communities but there has been no unequivocal reply. As a consequence, people working to work out pack jobs have great trouble. We will write a custom essay sample on GANGS Essay Research Paper OVERVIEW OF GANGSOriginally or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page They find the state of affairs overwhelming, and the force continues. Early GANGS IN UNITED STATES HISTORY No groups wholly suiting the above description of packs existed in America until the early 1800s, but from the beginning of the European colony in America there was gang-like activity, particularly when category differentiations came into being. Gang members tended to be from the poorer categories and tended to be from the same race or cultural background. They banded together for protection, diversion or fiscal addition. THE twentieth CENTURY GANGS In the early 1900s the U.S. economic system worsened, the population grew at a rapid gait, and the spread between the rich and hapless widened. All across the state packs appeared where hapless, hopeless people lived. The morning of the twentieth century besides brought with it a widespread usage of pieces. 1920s By mid 1920s there were 1313 packs in Chicago and more than 25,000 members. Gang warfare in Chicago was widespread and contending took topographic point along cultural, cultural and racial lines. Some packs had no noticeable cultural, cultural or national ties and consisted largely of Whites. Chicano Gangs The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of Chicano ( Mexican-American ) packs in Los Angeles. By the 1940s Chicano packs established their topographic point in Los Angeles-their zoot suits ( a manner of frock incorporating tapered bloomerss, long wide- shoulder coats and broad-brimmed chapeaus ) had become a familiar sight. Contending back against torment of white occupants and sing soldiers during the alleged zoot suit public violences in 1943 strengthened their cause. Post World War II After World War II pack rank: 1.became younger, 2.the nationality of the rank became mostly colored ( though Italians, Irish and other white cultural groups still made up a per centum ) , 3.drugs became a more publicised concern, 4.gang activity centered around large-scale, well-organized street combat, 5.fire-arms were used more frequently, 6.the construction of organisation became more stiff, 7.and society at big became concerned with packs as a societal job and worked toward rehabilitation. Changes in Cultural Populations The 1950s During the 1950s pack contending rose to an all clip high in metropoliss like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Cleveland. Gang members were normally in their teens. Codes of frock ( black leather jackets were popular ) and mannerisms were an of import agencies of designation. Body linguistic communication said a batch about the nature of the pack. When a pack decided to go a combat, or # 8220 ; bopping # 8221 ; pack, its members instantly took on a different manner of walking. A rhythmic pace, characterized by the forward motion of the caput with each measure. Footings for contending were: bopping, rumbling, jitterbugging. Gang members used guns, knives, and homemade arms. Most common drugs-alcohol, marihuana, diacetylmorphine. New York packs fought along racial lines-African-American, white, Puerto Rican. Normally they fought over misss or sod. Turf could be anything from a few blocks to an full vicinity. Gang members believed it was indispensable to protect the award of their girlfr! iends. And in the late 1950, girl packs, with strong ties to boy packs, began to organize. Revenge was required by an inflexible codification of pack trueness. It was from such incidents that packs drew their sense of pride, of # 8220 ; being somebody. # 8221 ; In order to battle the rise of force, organisations like the New York City Youth Board sent societal workers into the slums to organize relationships with the packs. In some instances it worked ; in many it did non. The sixtiess The 1960s saw a diminution in pack force, in portion because drug usage escalated. Where there was more drug usage there was less gang force. America # 8217 ; s attending besides shifted to the civil rights motion, urban ghetto public violences, Vietnam War protests. A new racial consciousness had its consequence on local street pack, making organisations that were more involved in communities. The Black Panthers arose in Oakland in 1968, the Black Muslims gained national prominence in the # 8217 ; 60s and a Puerto Rican pack, the Young Lord s, formed in the early ’70s. The 1970s By early 1972 packs were doing headlines once more. Drug usage seemed to be diminishing and force increasing. Gang rank grew and the potency for force was far greater for the packs had entree to arms that no pack of all time had before. They did non do their central offices in public topographic points, but in private topographic points. Gangs besides acquired greater legal and political edification. When it is evident that person must be arrested for a offense, frequently the pack chooses a minor because his prison sentence will be shorter. Serving a term in gaol helps hike his repute. GANGS Today Since the 1980s, as the ghettos go more and more overcrowded, a pack # 8217 ; s district has become no more than a individual corner or a block. Guns decide statements rapidly and gang wars today are normally fought like guerilla warfare with sniping from rooftops and speedy shootings from rushing autos replacing face to confront confrontations. Gangs have been reported in all 50 provinces and come from many backgrounds. Some packs still form in immigrant communities populated, for illustration, by recent reachings from Vietnam, El Salvador and Haiti. Others cultivate members in vicinities dwelling of households who have lived in the United States for coevalss. Members are still normally male, between the ages 13 and 24. Geography of Today # 8217 ; s Gangs Although packs are more common in metropolitan countries such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, pack activity besides occurs in midsize metropoliss such as Fort Wayne, Indiana ; Albuquerque, New Mexico and Louisville, Kentucky. In 1984 there were an estimated 450 packs and 40,000 members in Los Angeles, today there are twice every bit many packs and more than 100,000 members. In 1987 Louisville reported 1000 pack members, Albuquerque 1757 members and Fort Wayne 50 members. Reasons for Gang Membership Gangs are still mostly populated by immature people from disenfranchised vicinities characterized by overcrowding, high unemployment, high bead out rates, deficiency of societal and recreational services, and a general feeling of hopelessness. Some experts estimate than more than 80 % of pack members are illiterate and happen it about impossible to acquire a occupation. Gaining a Life Young people turn to packs as a agency to gain a life through drug trafficking, illegal arms gross revenues, robbery and larceny. The demand for protection draws some immature people who live in communities where non-gang members are continually harassed by pack members. Some immature people join packs as a manner to derive the regard they lack at place and in the community. Or they may fall in packs because all their friends are making it ; it merely sseems like a natural thing to make. Some experts say that immature people from troubled places try to happen utility households in packs. Abuse, disregard, and loss seem to be common subjects among many pack members. Gang Structure Gang construction varies. The largest packs, some with every bit many as 2,000 members, interrupt up into smaller groups called nines and coteries. Clubs typically bring more district to a gang-they are subdivisions of the pack that move into a new vicinity to develop new concern ( normally drug trafficking ) . Cliques assemble new pack members and unite them along similar involvements ( street combat, burglary ) . In the 1970s many little packs changed their names to make an association with the repute of two Los Angeles packs, the Crips and the Bloods. Today Bloods and Crips can be found all across the United States. Gang Leadership Some packs operate informally, with leading falling to whoever takes control. Other packs have distinguishable leaders and extremely structured packs have officers, much like a corporation. The president might direct the pack # 8217 ; s concern traffics and the frailty president might maintain members in line, supervising the pack # 8217 ; s communicating web, including auto phones, walky-talkies, beepers and pagers. Gang members use these devices to organize drug trades and to protect themselves from apprehension. The warlord keeps order at gang meetings, plans battles against rival packs and controls the pack # 8217 ; s armory. Highly structured packs can be found all around the state, but are most common in New York where competition for drug money and position is high. Solution Although there are no easy solutions to the pack job in this state the following are some thoughts that have been put frontward by sociologists, societal workers, jurisprudence enforcement forces and citizens from beat-up communities. 1.Create occupations for immature people. 2.Develop community plans in the humanistic disciplines, athleticss, etc. 3.Make certain immature people receive a good instruction. 4.Prevent kids from fall ining packs in the first topographic point by supplying other disputing chances. 5.Create alternate life state of affairss for kids who can non remain at place. 6.Provide guidance services for households and immature people. 7.Society as a whole must look at jobs of poorness and favoritism. 8.Individuals can contend bias by get downing to appreciate cultural differences. 9.Young people can make their portion by being unfastened to alternate activities.

Effects of sexual media essays

Effects of sexual media essays In order to analyze the effects the sexual media has on an individual, one must understand social cognitive theory, cultivation theory, and priming theory. These theories provide those who attempt to study the sexual media, the tools needed to uncover the ways in which the sexual media affects our behavior, beliefs, attitudes and emotions. In looking at these theories, one must consider the type of effect the theory is concerned with, the process that leads to these effects, and the features of the sexual media that enhances these effects. The social cognitive theory, which stems from the observational learning theory, is concerned with explaining behavior. More specifically, in terms of the sexual media, this theory outlines the steps by which an individual models their own behavior after the sexual media they are exposed to. For example, the number of sexual partners and individual chooses to have, the age at which they decide to have sex, or whether or not one chooses to practice safe sex are all behaviors that could possibly be learned or altered through sexual media exposure. There are four steps in the observational learning-attention, retention, production, and motivation. If one is able to carry out all four steps this will lead to matching the behavior exhibited in the sexual media. The social cognitive view on observational learning, "is more concerned with the process involved in the representational guidance of action than with the particular medium by which response information is conveyed. The theory seeks to explain how or why the cognitive processes in our mind take representations of behavior in the sexual media and convert them into behavior. Learning occurs when an individual is exposed to modeled events before any responses have been preformed and does not necessarily require intrinsic reward. Not all behavior that an individual is exposed to is necessarily modeled. The specific behavior m...

Business Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Business Strategy - Essay Example ey company comments on ours pricing policies, levels of production, methods of marketing, inventories, the measure taken to develop products, sales situations and goals, non public market surveys and other archives or confidential information (Hill, & Jones, 2009).   Sharpe should ensure economic knowledge about the Barkley. However, Sharpe seeks to maintain business ethics in our communication. Sharp seeks to maintain a steady relationship with the Barley in a way that they will not exchange their trade secrets, the lists of customers that Sharpe is targeting, and information about the resources available at Sharpe, technological developments or operations. Sharpe should also be careful to avoid hiring staff that worked with Barkley. Sharpe should also avoid dealing with suppliers that have supplied for Barkley to avoid leaking of confidential information; Sharpe will not hire or buy staffs from Barkley to extract information about the Barkley Company. Sharply plans to remove barriers to entry in the market or directly alleviating monopoly rents. The company can also venture in facilitating mergers and acquisition (Baye, 2010).   Sharpe also seeks to set up strategies that will enable the company enjoy the economies of scale, the economies of scope, and cost complementarities of price and output this way the company enjoys low costs and increases profitability. The company is planning to implements strategies that encourage innovation to ensure high profitability and low costs (Hill, & Jones, 2009).   Competition laws seek to grow with the mixed laws such as trademarks, copyrights, patents, industrial design rights and in some instances trade secrets. Companies that wish to increasingly raise prices needs to familiarize with the laws that govern such activities lest their contracts be terminated. Contrary a growing notion feels that promotion of novelty through adhering to the ‘intellectual property rights’ encourages competitiveness, whilst the

What are the ethical responsibilities of American consumers Term Paper

What are the ethical responsibilities of American consumers - Term Paper Example Today's American economy stretches to every corner of the globe. It is the responsibility of the Senate to offer Enlightened Humanitarian conditions to the economic periphery. I am here today to remind the Senate committee about African human rights abuses which are unwittingly funded by American consumers through the trade of conflict minerals. The Senate first inspected the Congolese mineral trade in columbite-tantalite, cassiterite and wolframite in 2009. Senator Brownback sponsored S.891, titled â€Å"Congo Conflict Minerals Act.† This bill cites experts at humanitarian organizations, public health officials, economists and the United Nations. The consensus opinion condemns the Congolese mineral trade and the violence which it funds. The bill called for tighter economic control of conflict minerals in America. In the Congo, violent military forces are profiting from the trade in conflict minerals. These forces â€Å"continue to commit widespread human rights abuses† including â€Å"sexual violence and rape† (S.891, Sec. 2 (2), (4)). Sadly, the bill died in committee and American consumers have continued to unknowingly fund the violence in Africa. The Senate should do everything in its power to diminish the trade in conflict minerals. These actions should not be limited to economic sanctions, tariffs, political declarations or consumer education. This serious situation requires a broad approach based in the same Senate mandate that spurred humanitarian regulations of slaves, diamonds, child laborers and even green house gas emissions. Africa has long been the a source of raw materials for colonial nations. The Belgian King Leopold II first founded the Congo in the 19th century as a colonial asset. While Leopold's brutal regime was based in extracting rubber, the current crisis comes from military leaders funded by conflict minerals. (Polgreen). America consumes these materials as finished goods. Consumers must be made cognizant of the ec ological and human costs of this neo-Colonial relationship. New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen described conflict minerals as â€Å"Africa's resource curse: The wealth is unearthed by the poor, controlled by the strong, then sold to a world largely oblivious of its origins† (Polgreen). Ethical consumers must be made aware of these origins. What can the Senate do to regulate American trade in conflict minerals? Two years ago, Senator Brownback would have required manufacturers which use conflict minerals to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. (S. 891). In 2009, the primary concern was the identification of conflict minerals. Today we need to also educate American citizens about the humanitarian cost of consumption. Hopefully this knowledge will allow consumers to regulate their purchase of conflict minerals within the free market. While American consumers are often ethical, sometimes policymakers need to help define the nations economic scope, humanitari an obligations and ecological impact. America is an Enlightened nation with many trading partners. We are all responsible for the well being of the individuals who live on the periphery of our economic influence. We are quick to give philanthropic aid to African nations through the IMF and World Bank. On December 1 of this year, President Obama and this congress guaranteed $48 billion to Africa as part of the â€Å"President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.† This money will be spent over the next five years (Freeman). Our ethical consumption can mirror our humanitarian aid. Conflict minerals fund sexual violence in the Congo, here American consumption needs to be regulated in order line up with our

Monomania Psychology Analysis: Ideal Ego and Ego Ideal

Monomania Psychology Analysis: Ideal Ego and Ego Ideal Abstract: This paper Moby Dick: Obsession, Evil and the Passion of Ignorance, argues that monomania is a passion of ignorance. It contends that this passion of ignorance is situated precisely between the ideal ego and the ego ideal. The ideal ego is the fantasy an individual has of themselves, a narcissistic illusion of completeness. It is a representation based on an image of the self fixed at the infantile period. The ego ideal is the goal of a process, a movement towards an idealized self based on internalised significant early role models, people admired and preferred in favour of the self. In monomania, the ideal ego seeks to eradicate the other, the ego ideal. This is an act of envy, an attempt to kill and steal the others good because it represents what one should be or could have been. Such an act is never conscious. It is a passion of ignorance. The saga of Captain Ahab and his obsessive desire to obliterate the Great White Whale is illustrative of this dynamic. The yearning for absolutes is a hall-mark of monomania. Monomania is a passion of ignorance and is to be found in the boundary between love and hate. It is inherently evil because it excludes and destroys reality. In monomania, ignorance functions as a parochial and universalised concept of reality, marked by a certainty and rectitude which enables the harming of others with humanitarian conviction and moral purpose. The passion of ignorance is situated precisely between the subject and the fantasy of himself. The ideal ego wishes to eradicate the other, the ego ideal, What is at the heart all psychopathological behaviour is an incapacity to communicate with aspects of the self that have, as part of the self protective mechanism of the psyche, been obscured because they are too painful to be addressed. At the time of obfuscation, the only perceived path for survival has been the isolation and dissociation of something intrinsic. Analytical psychology recognizes that there are dark recesses people carry deep within in which lurk forbidden secrets which are treated as unapproachable. These dark places and forbidden secrets are not passive, they pulsate with the presence of malignant, carnivorous forces that reek of fear and anarchy. It is no accident that the developmental arm of analytical psychology is preoccupied to the determining effects of family history, for it is in the family setting that people experience the strongest and most primitive feelings, where relationships take on their most stark and forceful forms. A persons experience within the context of family has its genesis at a time before coping mechanisms are developed, before and independent sense of security and stability has had time to consolidate. Analytical psychology understands that the individual is deeply affected by the net of past experiences. They impact on the way in which present experiences are assimilated or repressed. They determine what may be allowed to come to consciousness and what must be assigned to the unconscious. The unconscious is occasioned by a number of factors, by repression, instinctual inheritance, social conditioning and repressed trauma. It can be personal or collective. In all its aspects, the unconscious represents that part of an individuals psychic existence that is, by multiple strategies, consigned to function without conscious control. Thus analytical psychology attempts inexorably to draw one deeper and deeper into a journey of confrontation with ones self. It calls on the individual to overcome his defences, to transcend the bounds of secure systems he has established to keep full and immediate experience at bay. In the tale of Moby Dick, Ahab misuses his power, disregards the safety of his crew and the profitability of the voyage, even forfeits his own life in order to avenge himself on the whale who robbed him of his leg. He does this, all to avoid a confrontation with himself and his own vulnerabilities. The Story: The tale of Moby Dick begins with the enigmatic words of the narrator, Having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntary pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping onto the street and methodically knocking peoples hats off – then, I account it high time to get to see as soon as I can. (Melville 1992 p. 1) With these words Ishmael the story teller announces his intention to go to sea. He makes the journey to New Bedford, Massachusetts where he takes accommodation at a whalers inn, but as the inn is very full he finds himself sharing a bed with a stranger, Queequeg, a harpooner from the South Pacific. Queequeg is a cannibal from a South Sea Island. His strange physical form appears bizarre to Ishmael. He is covered in strange tattoos and apart from his alien appearance has strange habits and customs. Ishmael is terrified by the encounter but as time passes he is able to move beyond the outward exterior of Queequeg to understand that they are both men, and this strange creature from the South Seas, far from being a terrifying beast is human, and one with a particularly kind heart and generous spirit. The two men join forces and set out to seek work together as whalers. They secure work on the Pequod, a whaling vessel decked out with the bones and teeth of its victims, Peleg and Bildad, t he Pequods Quaker owners, tell them of their Captain, Ahab, who on his last voyage found that sperm whales are not defenceless victims, but creatures with teeth; Ahab has had his leg ripped from him by an enormous white whale. The hunted became the hunter and had struck back. The Pequod leaves the safety of the harbour in Nantucket on a bitterly cold Christmas Day, its crew a diverse mixture of nationalities and cultures. Days later, as the ship makes into warmer waters, Ahab finally appears on deck, balancing unsteadily on his prostheses carved from the jaw bone of a sperm whale. Ahabs intention: to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the great white whale who took his leg. To Ahab, this whale is the embodiment of evil. He must be killed and killed by Ahab. To this end he nails a gold doubloon to the mast and announces to all that the man who first sights Moby Dick will have the coin. Aboard one of these ships is a crazed prophet called Gabriel who predicts doom to all who pursue Moby Dick and the superstitious crew of the Pequod share their sea-stories of how those who hunted the whale met with ill fortune. It is not long before misfortune is seen and known by the crew. While butchering their catch, the harpooner Tashtego falls into the mouth of a dead whale which tears free of the Pequod and sinks. Queequeg dives after the drowning man, slashes into the slowly sinking head with his knife and frees the seaman. During another whale hunt, the black cabin boy Pip, jumps from a whaleboat and is left stranded at sea. He is rescued but the trauma renders him mentally disturbed. He is left mindless and uncanny, a prophetic jester onboard the ship. Still the hunt continues. One day, the Pequod encounters the whaler, the Samuel Enderby. Captain Boomer the skipper has lost an arm in a chance meeting with Moby Dick. As the two captains discuss the whale the contrast becomes evident. Boomer is happy simply to have survived his encounter, and he cannot understand Ahabs lust for vengeance. Queequeg becomes ill and asks the carpenter on board the Pequod to make him a coffin in preparation of his death but he does recover, and the coffin becomes the Pequods replacement life buoy. In expectation of finding Moby Dick, Ahab orders a harpoon to be forged and baptizes this harpoon with the blood of the Pequod harpooners, and his own. Although the Pequod is still hunting whales, it is the hunt for Moby Dick that always hangs over the life of the ship. Then, one day, Fedallah makes a prophesy regarding the death of Ahab. Ahab will see two hearses, the second made from American wood and he will be killed by hemp rope. To Ahab, this means he will not die at sea, for at sea there are no hangings and no hearses. A tropical storm encompasses the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire. To Ahab this is a sign of imminent confrontation and success. To Starbuck, the ships first mate, it is a bad omen and he contemplates murdering Ahab to end the obsession. The tempest ends, but then one of the sailors plummets from the ships masthead and drowns—a grave forewarning of what lies ahead. As Ahabs obsessive desire to find and destroy Moby Dick intensifies, the mad Pip becomes his constant companion. It is near the equator that Ahab expects to find Moby Dick, and it is here that the Pequod meets two whalers, the Rachel and the Delight; both have had recent fatal encounters with the Great Whale. The Captain of the Rachel pleads with Ahab to help him find his son, lost in the battle with Moby Dick, but Ahab has only one goal, to find and kill the whale. Days pass, and then, finally, Ahab sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are launched. Moby Dick rams Ahabs harpoon boat, destroying it but Ahab is saved by his crew. The next day, Moby Dick is sighted once more. The whale is harpooned but again, Moby dick strikes back and once again rams Ahabs boat. Fedallah is trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his death. Starbuck saves his Captain by manoeuvring the Pequod between Ahab and the enraged beast. On the third day, the boats are launched once again and are sent after Moby Dick. The whale turns and attacks the boats, and they see that Fedallahs corpse is still lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. In the ensuing battle, Moby Dick rams the Pequod and she begins to sinks. Ahab, caught in a harpoon line, is hurled out of his whale boat to his death. The remaining whaleboats and crew are caught in the vortex of the sinking Pequod and dragged to their deaths. Ishmael, thrown from his boat at the beginning of the hunt, is the only man to survive. He floats, alone on Queequegs coffin, the only remaining flotsam from the wreckage, an isolated figure in a watery world. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. (Melville 1992 p. 583) An Uncanny Tale In telling the story of Moby Dick, Melvilles narrator, Ishmael, engages in a process of repetition that brings the dead back to life. His narrator offers what appears to be a sober account of his real experience but in the recounting it is immediately evident that this experience is anything but commonplace. Melvilles combination of reality and the fantastic, the credible and the incredible, compel the reader to accept the narrative on its own terms. The tale confronts the reader with narratorial anxiety in both the telling of the tale and in the horror of its content. Melvilles narrative method exemplifies the de-familiarisation of the familiar, the domestication of terror that characterises the uncanny. Freud characterises the uncanny as that which arouses dread and horror; (Freud 1919 p. 339) it is that class of things which lead us back to what is known of the old and familiar. (Freud 1919 p.340) It is precarious, this combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, where the opposites of the homely, customary and congenial also denote the secret that is concealed and kept from sight. (Freud 1919 p. 347) We believe we are at home in the immediate circle of beings. That which is, is familiar, reliable, ordinary. Nevertheless, the clearing is pervaded by a constant concealment in the double form of refusal and dissembling. At the bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary, uncanny. (Heidegger 1971 p. 53) Freud argues that one of the most anxiety-producing devices of the uncanny is the double. Freud considers the uncanniness of the double to be the effect of the egos projection of the object ‘outwardly as something foreign to itself. What is inside is experienced as coming from outside, (Freud 1919 p.358) split off and isolated through a process of repression and dissociation. The subject may identify with another to the extent that he is not sure which identity he is or he may substitute the extraneous self for his own. In the tale of Moby Dick it is this lack of difference which dominates Ahabs relationship to the whale. While Ahab may try to establish himself as a saviour, he too, deep down, is dangerous and destructive. It is this sameness that is problematic. When it becomes too obvious that the other is contained in the self, the other becomes an object for irrational hostility. In this dynamic, both the object (the whale) and the subject (Ahab) become doubles of each othe r in the psyche of the person who is enmeshed in the projection. The notion of the double always inspires the subject with dread and can be summed up as a dividing and interchanging of the ego. There is an inevitable cyclic repetition of the initial trauma. It is an inescapable loop until the doubling is concluded. Aboard ship, Ahab imposes an irresistible dictatorship in order to pursue his obsession. Moby Dick had injured him and that fact contravened Ahabs entire view of how the world should be ordered. The self-righteous, imposing Captain of the Pequod smoulders with the fires of hell. His all consuming pride and rage against the white whale blaze in the great speech before his crew where he proclaims, That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or the white whale principal, I will wreak my hate upon him Talk to me not of blasphemy, man, Id strike the sun if it insulted me. (Melville 1992 p. 167) Ahab cannot see Moby Dick for what the great while whale is, because the reality of the animal is subsumed under the passion of Ahabs projection. But because this ‘relationship is skewed, the rest of Ahabs world suffers. Ahab has no connection to any other person or thing beyond the white whale. It is inevitable that the whale proves to be his nemesis; it is the whale that inflicts retribution and vengeance, not Ahab. The Orphan With the first sentence of Moby Dick we are confronted with the complex figure of Ishmael. The narrative begins with the words Call me Ishmael. The name has come to symbolize orphans and social outcasts but it has another aspect to it. The word literally means ‘God hears. Ishmael, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, was the first son of Abraham, born to a slave woman, Hagar because Abraham believed his wife Sarah to be infertile. But when God granted Sarah a son of her own, Ishmael and his mother were turned out of Abrahams household. Isaac inherited the birthright from Abraham. Ishmael was left to die under a bush in the wilderness by his distraught and starving mother. But in her distress she cried out and God heard her cry and the cry of the child. 15When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. 16 And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. 18Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him. 19Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. 20God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. (Genesis 21: 15 – 20 The Bible NRSV 1988) From a Judeo-Christian perspective Ishmael was an outcast, the result of his fathers failure to believe and obey YHWHs promise to give him a son through his wife Sarah. As a consequence, Ishmael was the one repressed and rejected. But Ishmael was heard and taken care of by God. Throughout his life, Melville was preoccupied with the imagery of orphans and in particular with the character Ishmael. In Mardi he writes, But as sailors are mostly foundlings and castaways, and carry all their kith and kin in their arms and legs, there hardly ever appears any heir-at-law to claim their estate. (Melville 2004 p. 139) In Redburn, Melville writes, at last I have found myself a sort of Ishmael on the ship, without a single friend or companion. (Melville 1957 p. 60) In Pierre Melville writes, so that once more he might not feel himself driven out, an Ishmael into the desert, with no maternal Hagar to accompany him and comfort him. (Melville 1962 p. 125) Edward Edinger argues that Melville had an Ishmael complex which had two sources; personal life experience and identification with an archetypal image. (Edinger 1995 p. 23) The personal cause would be the insanity and death of his father and the ensuing hardships this caused. Melville was twelve and a half when his father died, close to the age of the biblical Ishmael who was thirteen. In addition, he was rejected by his mother, who favoured her first son. According to Arvin Newton, Melville, as an elderly man, once remarked to his niece that his mother had hated him. (Arvin 1950 p.30) The pain of his rejection is poignantly evident in the tale of Mob y Dick Most of the action is seen through the eyes of Ishmael. He will thus represent the authors ego (Edinger 1995 p. 24) Ishmael, the lone survivor of this misadventure is the story teller. At the outset of the story, Ishmael presents as one who is in pain and internal distress. He is impoverished, hostile, depressed and potentially suicidal. He heads for the sea, to Nantucket to find work on a whaler. In the past he has found sea voyages as a way of containing his internal conflict and pain. But before he can find a ship, his poverty forces him to find accommodation in a squalid inn, sharing a bed with a harpooner. When the harpooner enters the room in which Ishmael is sleeping he awakes in horror at the apparition before him, a man who appears to have just returned from the ministrations of a surgeon, his face covered with sticking plaster. But that is not the reality. The harpooner is a cannibal from the pacific, tattooed in his native islander tradition. He carries a tomahawk, a seal skin purse with the hair still attached and a shrunken head. The overall impression is alien, bizarre and terrifying to Ishmael. He watches from beneath the counterpane as the stranger uses the tomahawk as a pipe, then quietly turns into the bed with Ishmael. He is unaware of Ishmaels presence and reacts with instinctive aggression. In the fracas that follows Ishmael calls out in terror to the landlord for help. ‘Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! Save me! (Melville 1992 p. 25) Peter Coffin, the landlord, soothes the moment. He introduces the men to each other and Ishmael is suddenly aware that this frightening apparition is a person, with a name. Queequeg is no longer a nameless savage, a cannibal with a shrunken head and a death dealing tomahawk. The tomahawk is also a peace pipe, and he shares the smoke from this unique instrument with Ishmael. The tomahawk-pipe has now become a symbol for both life and death, a symbol of reconciliation and peace. In this initial encounter with Queequeg a transformation is begun in Ishmael. In symbolic terms, he has embraced, in the symbolic form of Queequ eg, both death and life as indivisible partners, and when he wakes the following morning he begins to see the world from a different perspective. Ishmael understands the mixture of life and death that Queequegs tomahawk-come-pipe represents, and realizes, at least in that moment, that such experience can lead to renewal. The Obsession, Ahab demonstrates the dangers of an all consuming focus; the object of his obsession is the solitary great white whale, nicknamed Moby-Dick by the whalers. On his previous voyage, Ahab had his leg ripped off by Moby-Dick, and at the Ishmaels story begins, he has sworn to take his vengeance by hunting down and killing the great whale. It never occurs to Ahab that he lost his leg while trying to take the whales life and while in the process of killing countless other whales for monetary gain. Ahabs obsession has more to do with what Moby Dick represents than with the great whale himself. He saw Moby Dick as the prey and could not cope with the idea that he was not omnipotent in this relationship, that he was outdone by another creature. As Ahab reasons in a fiery speech to the crew of the Pequod, all visible objects are like pasteboard masks that hide some unknown but still reasoning thing. Ahab hates that inscrutable thing that hides behind the mask of appearance. The only way to figh t against it, he proclaims is to strike through the mask! Moby Dick, as a mysterious force of nature, represents the most outrageous, malevolent aspect of natures mask. To kill it, in the mind of Ahab, is to reach for and seize the unknowable truth that is hidden from all people. He cannot conceive of the concept that there is a simpler reality; he is not the master of all other species. He sees his failure to be able to take life at will as a reversal of his role as the predator and therefore can only conceive of himself now as the one preyed upon. This he cannot accept and so is driven to destroy that which in his mind denies his appropriated reality. Ahabs insane obsession and hunt for Moby Dick describes the consequences of viewing the world as a mask that hides unknowable truth. It is Ahabs frustration with the limits of human knowledge and power that lead him to reject both science and logic and instead embrace violence and the dark magic of Fedallah his demonic advisor. Like Christopher Marlowes Doctor Faustus, he has made a pact with the devil. Thinking he is immortal, Ahab attacks Moby Dick, striking at the mask of appearance that supposedly hides ultimate truth. His devotion to the idea that truth exists behind or beyond the physical world forces him to destroy himself in the attempt to reach it. Ahab can only relinquish his illusion by dying, or killing the object upon which his illusion has rested. Ahabs ideal ego, that is the fantasy he has of himself as one who is in control and omnipotent, is in the process of destroying his ego ideal, that is, his potential as man, captain and hunter. He believes he must eradicate the evil of the whale, but in reality, because he is caught in this doubling with the whale, he is intent on murdering himself. His passion of ignorance has overwhelmed his reason, blinded him to his own creative potential. All that is left is the passion and it knows no reason People thus reduced inflict the traumatic pain of their void on others. The evil they engender is not just about destruction but emerges from the chaotic principle of pure drive which has loss at its centre and therefore must occasion more loss. The important point is not that the symbolism of what Ahab lost, but the symbolism of the loss itself. Revenge is only sought when there has been a great loss, a loss that is seen to embody an injustice, and an injustice imposed by an enemy over whom victory should have been assured. Ahab lost his leg to a beast, an inferior creature. His quest for revenge could just as easily have been instituted by the loss of an arm, a child, or a father. The loss implies inferiority to a foe that is deemed to be unworthy of such a victory. Revenge becomes obsession because only with revenge can the world become again that which supports the adopted perception of order. For Ahab, revenge can only be perceived as the re-imposition of superiority and ascenda ncy. It is the adoption of this delusional sense of what order is, that gives rise to the monomania that attends a thirst for revenge. Ahabs loss of limb is immediate and it is personal but despite losing a leg he can still walk, he can still captain, he can still go on a whaleboat and harpoon. It is the greater loss which is the mechanism standing behind the driving revenge and his monomaniacal pursuit of it. As if to be human is forever to be prey to turning your corner of the human race, hence perhaps all of it, into some new species of the genus of humanity, for the better or for the worse. (Cavell 1998 p.154) For this reason Ahab must inflate the object of his revenge and recreate it as something larger in context. To accomplish this, Ahab must imbue Moby Dick massive power, power beyond comprehension. By placing the capacity of evil upon the whale, Ahab can fool himself into thinking that Moby Dick is a greater being than he really is and therefore his own loss appears greater than it really is. For Ahab, the delusion attendant to the psychosis of revenge suppresses the reality that he is merely a man bent on attempting to restore his lost sense of superiority. This reality is replaced with a grandiose vision of one who is a redeemer for humanity. But it is not humanity Ahab is attempting to redeem; it is his own inflated ego whose ascendancy has been usurped. By imputing to Moby-Dick a demonic power he does not really possess Ahab, blinds himself to any reality of what Moby Dick actually is, to any real strength and intelligence that the whale possesses. This blindness springs not from mere ignorance, but from a consciously willed ignorance, from the desire not to know, from the ambition not to understand. In order to sustain his delusional conception of himself, he must appoint concomitant distortion to the world which surrounds him, and particularly to the object of his obsession. Ahab desperately wants Moby Dick to be inscrutable. He wants him to be a thing that is incapable of being understood, because that enables him to categorize his nemesis as sheer evil. Therefore he is compelled to refuse any effort at understanding and it is this iron-willed ambition to remain ignorant, to label this thing as ultimate evil that generates the ironic twist whereby Ahab himself becomes the ultimate danger, the evil which he imagines he is seeking to eradicate. It is Ahab who causes the complete destruction of all that surrounds him. Evil and the Passion of Ignorance Ahab desires to attach to Moby Dick all the evil that exists in the world. Moby Dick is a creation of his infantile envious omnipotent sadistic phantasies. Ahab himself identifies the ultimately personal source of what he sees as a universal evil when he says, It was Moby-Dick that dismasted me; Moby-Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day! (Melville 1992 p.166). Moby Dick took away Ahabs ability to literally stand on his own two feet. The loss of his leg can also be seen as a symbolic emasculation and that symbolism is made all the more apparent by the fact that Ahabs quest is for a sperm whale. Moby-Dick contains sperm; Ahab does not. In his quest for revenge, all of Ahabs creative potential is voided because he cannot accept that there is a reality that is greater and stronger than himself. It is in the attempt to deny the reality and existence of that which surpasses him that he divorces himself from his own creative life potential. Captain Ahab is both the psychotic parent in command of the infant and the infant overwhelmed with his own omnipotent phantasy. In the tale of Moby Dick, Herman Melville created a character whose motives of vengeance typify the behaviour of a psychotic person. Captain Ahab, in his delusion, could not allow Moby Dick to share the same space in his paranoid and infantile world. Ahab experienced the loss of his leg as a lethal wound that was potentially reparable only by a copy-cat act of vengeance taken upon the alleged guilty Moby Dick. That intangible malignity which has been there from the beginning Ahab did not fall down and worship it, but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it He piled upon the whales hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot hearts shell upon. (Melville 1991 p. 187) We Cannibals must help these poor Christians. The relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is the antithesis of the relationship between Ahab and Moby Dick. Ishmael and Queequeg develop a relationship that is based on the recognition of their dissimilarity and separateness. Ahab and Moby Dick are joined together by Ahabs projection and obsession. With Queequeg and Ishmael, the difference is something to be explored. The relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael has a germ of creativity; that between Ahab and Moby Dick is founded on destruction and butchery. The initial encounter between Queequeg and Ishmael provokes both terror and aggression. The landlord intervenes, calming the situation and bringing them both to an awareness of the necessity of living alongside of each other. This generates a realisation in both Ishmael and Queequeg that they are both men despite the visual and cultural dissimilarities. As time passes and conversation is enjoined, they begin to comprehend both their differences and their commonly shared objectives. According to the customs of Queequegs home, Ishmael and Queequeg are married after a social smoke out of the tomahawk pipe. Queequeg gives Ishmael half of his belongings, and the two men continue to share a bed. The tattooed body of Queequeg is much like the patchwork quilt that covers them both as they sleep. These tattoos are a written narrative of the universe but no one, save the prophet who inscribed them can decipher their meaning, not even Queequeg. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.(Melville 1992 p. 491) For Ishmael, Queequeg represents the dangerous and the forbidden for which Ishmael secretly yearns. Queequeg also symbolizes the explorative and adventurous aspect of Ishmaels personality. Once Ishmael recognizes this, his fears lessen and he embraces the savage into his life. Ishmaels initial hostility to Queequeg is a projection of the suppression of a part of his own personality. Exotic and unique, Queequeg represents the unknown. Ishmael is able to recognise this, to admit it, and to realise that his fear is due to ignorance. With this awareness comes the further realisation that he, Ishmael, must travel to the sea in order to gain life experience by exploring and embracing the unknown. The friendship between the two men, although troubled by prejudice and slow to develop into a full understanding of one anothers character, is solidified with their ‘marriage contract. They effectively become one person, illustrating the full integration of Queequegs otherness into Ishmaels personality. At the end of the book, Ishmael survives because of Queequegs coffin. In accordance with their marriage contract, Queequeg offers Ishmael protection from the sea-hawks, sharks and sea in the form of his coffin. In turn, Ishmael carries on Queequegs spirit, carved into the wood of the coffin. Queequeg represents that part of Ishmael which

The Twilight Saga 2: New Moon Chapter 24 VOTE

HE WAS NOT PLEASED, THAT MUCH WAS EASY TO READ in his face. But, without further argument, he took me in his arms and sprang lithely from my window, landing without the slightest jolt, like a cat. It was a little bit farther down than I'd imagined. â€Å"All right then,† he said, his voice seething with disapproval. â€Å"Up you go.† He helped me onto his back, and took off running. Even after all this time, it felt routine. Easy. Evidently this was something you never forgot, like riding a bicycle. It was so very quiet and dark as he ran through the forest, his breathing slow and evendark enough that the trees flying past us were nearly invisible, and only the rush of air in my face truly gave away our speed. The air was damp; it didn't burn my eyes the way the wind in the big plaza had, and that was comforting. As was the night, too, after that terrifying brightness. Like the thick quilt I'd played under as a child, the dark felt familiar and protecting. I remembered that running through the forest like this used to frighten me, that I used to have to close my eyes. It seemed a silly reaction to me now. I kept my eyes wide, my chin resting on his shoulder, my cheek against his neck. The speed was exhilarating. A hundred times better than the motorcycle. I turned my face toward him and pressed my lips into the cold stone skin of his neck. â€Å"Thank you,† he said, as the vague, black shapes of trees raced past us. â€Å"Does that mean you've decided you're awake?† I laughed. The sound was easy, natural, effortless. It sounded right. â€Å"Not really. More that, either way, I'm not trying to wake up. Not tonight.† â€Å"I'll earn your trust back somehow,† he murmured, mostly to himself. â€Å"If it's my final act.† â€Å"I trust you,† I assured him. â€Å"It's me I don't trust.† â€Å"Explain that, please.† He'd slowed to a walkI could only tell because the wind ceasedand I guessed that we weren't far from the house. In fact, I thought I could make out the sound of the river rushing somewhere close by in the darkness. â€Å"Well† I struggled to find the right way to phrase it. â€Å"I don't trust myself to be enough. To deserve you. There's nothing about me that could hold you.† He stopped and reached around to pull me from his back. His gentle hands did not release me; after he'd set me on my feet again, he wrapped his arms tightly around me, hugging me to his chest. â€Å"Your hold is permanent and unbreakable,† he whispered. â€Å"Never doubt that.† But how could I not? â€Å"You never did tell me† he murmured. â€Å"What?† â€Å"What your greatest problem is.† â€Å"I'll give you one guess.† I sighed, and reached up to touch the tip of his nose with my index finger. He nodded. â€Å"I'm worse than the Volturi,† he said grimly. â€Å"I guess I've earned that.† I rolled my eyes. â€Å"The worst the Volturi can do is kill me.† He waited with tense eyes. â€Å"You can leave me,† I explained. â€Å"The Volturi, Victoria they're nothing compared to that.† Even in the darkness, I could see the anguish twist his faceit reminded me of his expression under Jane's torturing gaze; I felt sick, and regretted speaking the truth. â€Å"Don't,† I whispered, touching his face. â€Å"Don't be sad.† He pulled one corner of his mouth up halfheartedly, but the expression didn't touch his eyes. â€Å"If there was only some way to make you see that I can't leave you,† he whispered. â€Å"Time, I suppose, will be the way to convince you.† I liked the idea of time. â€Å"Okay,† I agreed. His face was still tormented. I tried to distract him with inconsequentials. â€Å"Sosince you're staying. Can I have my stuff back?† I asked, making my tone as light as I could manage. My attempt worked, to an extent: he laughed. But his eyes retained the misery. â€Å"Your things were never gone,† he told me. â€Å"I knew it was wrong, since I promised you peace without reminders. It was stupid and childish, but I wanted to leave something of myself with you. The CD, the pictures, the ticketsthey're all under your floorboards.† â€Å"Really?† He nodded, seeming slightly cheered by my obvious pleasure in this trivial fact. It wasn't enough to heal the pain in his face completely. â€Å"I think,† I said slowly, â€Å"I'm not sure, but I wonder I think maybe I knew it the whole time.† â€Å"What did you know?† I only wanted to take away the agony in his eyes, but as I spoke the words, they sounded truer than I expected they would. â€Å"Some part of me, my subconscious maybe, never stopped believing that you still cared whether I lived or died. That's probably why I was hearing the voices.† There was a very deep silence for a moment. â€Å"Voices?† he asked flatly. â€Å"Well, just one voice. Yours. It's a long story.† The wary look on his face made me wish that I hadn't brought that up. Would he think I was crazy, like everyone else? Was everyone else right about that? But at least that expressionthe one that made him look like something was burning himfaded. â€Å"I've got time.† His voice was unnaturally even. â€Å"It's pretty pathetic.† He waited. I wasn't sure how to explain. â€Å"Do you remember what Alice said about extreme sports?† He spoke the words without inflection or emphasis. â€Å"You jumped off a cliff for fun.† â€Å"Er, right. And before that, with the motorcycle† â€Å"Motorcycle?† he asked. I knew his voice well enough to hear something brewing behind the calm. â€Å"I guess I didn't tell Alice about that part.† â€Å"No.† â€Å"Well, about that See, I found that when I was doing something dangerous or stupid I could remember you more clearly,† I confessed, feeling completely mental. â€Å"I could remember how your voice sounded when you were angry. I could hear it, like you were standing right there next to me. Mostly I tried not to think about you, but this didn't hurt so muchit was like you were protecting me again. Like you didn't want me to be hurt. â€Å"And, well, I wonder if the reason I could hear you so clearly was because, underneath it all. I always knew that you hadn't stopped loving me.† Again, as I spoke, the words brought with them a sense of conviction. Of rightness. Some deep place inside me recognized truth. His words came out half-strangled. â€Å"You were risking your life to hear† â€Å"Shh,† I interrupted him. â€Å"Hold on a second. I think I'm having an epiphany here.† I thought of that night in Port Angeles when I'd had my first delusion. I'd come up with two options. Insanity or wish fulfillment. I'd seen no third option. But what if What if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through? Option three: Edward loved me. The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine. Was that what I'd been trying to tell myself? â€Å"Oh!† â€Å"Bella?† â€Å"Oh. Okay. I see.† â€Å"Your epiphany?† he asked, his voice uneven and strained. â€Å"You love me,† I marveled. The sense of conviction and Tightness washed through me again. Though his eyes were still anxious, the crooked smile I loved best flashed across his face. â€Å"Truly, I do.† My heart inflated like it was going to crack right through my ribs. It filled my chest and blocked my throat so that I could not speak. He really did want me the way I wanted himforever. It was only fear for my soul, for the human things he didn't want to take from me, that made him so desperate to leave me mortal. Compared to the fear that he didn't want me, this hurdlemy soulseemed almost insignificant. He took my face tightly between his cool hands and kissed me until I was so dizzy the forest was spinning. Then he leaned his forehead against mine, and I was not the only one breathing harder than usual. â€Å"You were better at it than I was, you know,† he told me. â€Å"Better at what?† â€Å"Surviving. You, at least, made an effort. You got up in the morning, tried to be normal for Charlie, followed the pattern of your life. When I wasn't actively tracking, I was totally useless. I couldn't be around my familyI couldn't be around anyone. I'm embarrassed to admit that I more or less curled up into a ball and let the misery have me.† He grinned, sheepish. â€Å"It was much more pathetic than hearing voices. And, of course, you know I do that, too.† I was deeply relieved that he really seemed to understandcomforted that this all made sense to him. At any rate, he wasn't looking at me like I was crazy. He was looking at me like he loved me. â€Å"I only heard one voice,† I corrected him. He laughed and then pulled me tight against his right side and started to lead me forward. â€Å"I'm just humoring you with this.† He motioned broadly with his hand toward the darkness in front of us as we walked. There was something pale and immense therethe house, I realized. â€Å"It doesn't matter in the slightest what they say.† â€Å"This affects them now, too.† He shrugged indifferently. He led me through the open front door into the dark house and flipped the lights on. The room was just as I'd remembered itthe piano and the white couches and the pale, massive staircase. No dust, no white sheets. Edward called out the names with no more volume than I'd use in regular conversation. â€Å"Carlisle? Esme? Rosalie? Emmett? Jasper? Alice?† They would hear. Carlisle was suddenly standing beside me, as if he'd been there all along. â€Å"Welcome back, Bella.† He smiled. â€Å"What can we do for you this morning? I imagine, due to the hour, that this is not a purely social visit?† I nodded. â€Å"I'd like to talk to everyone at once, if that's okay. About something important.† I couldn't help glancing up at Edward's face as I spoke. His expression was critical, but resigned. When I looked back to Carlisle, he was looking at Edward, too. â€Å"Of course,† Carlisle said. â€Å"Why don't we talk in the other room?† Carlisle led the way through the bright living room, around the corner to the dining room, turning on lights as he went. The walls were white, the ceilings high, like the living room. In the center of the room, under the low-hanging chandelier, was a large, polished oval table surrounded by eight chairs. Carlisle held out a chair for me at the head. I'd never seen the Cullens use the dining room table beforeit was just a prop. They didn't eat in the house. As soon as I turned to sit in the chair, I saw that we were not alone. Esme had followed Edward, and behind her the rest of the family filed in. Carlisle sat down on my right, and Edward on my left. Everyone else took their seats in silence. Alice was grinning at me, already in on the plot. Emmett and Jasper looked curious, and Rosalie smiled at me tentatively. My answering smile was just as timid. That was going to take some getting used to. Carlisle nodded toward me. â€Å"The floor is yours.† I swallowed. Their gazing eyes made me nervous. Edward took my hand under the table. I peeked at him, but he was watching the others, his fate suddenly fierce. â€Å"Well,† I paused. â€Å"I'm hoping Alice has already told you everything that happened in Volterra?† â€Å"Everything,† Alice assured me. I threw her a meaningful look. â€Å"And on the way?† â€Å"That, too,† she nodded. â€Å"Good,† I sighed with relief. â€Å"Then we're all on the same page.† They waited patiently while I tried to order my thoughts. â€Å"So, I have a problem,† I began. â€Å"Alice promised the Volturi that I would become one of you. They're going to send someone to check, and I'm sure that's a bad thingsomething to avoid. â€Å"And so, now, this involves you all. I'm sorry about that.† I looked at each one of their beautiful faces, saving the most beautiful for last. Edward's mouth was turned down into a grimace. â€Å"But, if you don't want me, then I'm not going to force myself on you, whether Alice is willing or not.† Esme opened her mouth to speak, but I held up one finger to stop her. â€Å"Please, let me finish. You all know what I want. And I'm sure you know what Edward thinks, too. I think the only fair way to decide is for everyone to have a vote. If you decide you don't want me, then I guess I'll go back to Italy alone. I can't have them coming here.† My forehead creased as I considered that. There was the faint rumble of a growl in Edward's chest. I ignored him. â€Å"Taking into account, then, that I won't put any of you in danger either way, I want you to vote yes or no on the issue of me becoming a vampire.† I half-smiled on the last word, and gestured toward Carlisle to begin. â€Å"Just a minute,† Edward interrupted. I glared at him through narrowed eyes. He raised his eyebrows at me, squeezing my hand. â€Å"I have something to add before we vote.† I sighed. â€Å"About the danger Bella's referring to,† he continued. â€Å"I don't think we need to be overly anxious.† His expression became more animated. He put his free hand on the shining table and leaned forward. â€Å"You see,† he explained, looking around the table while he spoke, â€Å"there was more than one reason why I didn't want to shake Aro's hand there at the end. There's something they didn't think of, and I didn't want to cine them in.† He grinned. â€Å"Which was?† Alice prodded. I was sure my expression was just as skeptical as hers. â€Å"The Volturi are overconfident, and with good reason. When they decide to find someone, it's not really a problem. Do you remember Demetri?† He glanced down at me. I shuddered. He took that as a yes. â€Å"He finds peoplethat's his talent, why they keep him. â€Å"Now, the whole time we were with any of them, I was picking their brains for anything that might save us, getting as much information as possible. So I saw how Demetri's talent works. He's a trackera tracker a thousand times more gifted than Jarres was. His ability is loosely related to what I do, or what Aro does. He catches the flavor? I don't know how to describe it the tenor of someone's mind, and then he follows that. It works over immense distances. â€Å"But after Aro's little experiments, well† Edward shrugged. â€Å"You think he won't be able to find me,† I said flatly. He was smug. â€Å"I'm sure of it. He relies totally on that other sense. When it doesn't work with you, they'll all be blind.† â€Å"And how does that solve anything?† â€Å"Quite obviously, Alice will be able to tell when they're planning a visit, and I'll hide you. They'll be helpless,† he said with fierce enjoyment. â€Å"It will be like looking for a piece of straw in a haystack!† He and Emmett exchanged a glance and a smirk. This made no sense. â€Å"But they can find you,† I reminded him. â€Å"And I can take care of myself.† Emmett laughed, and reached across the table toward his brother, extending a fist. â€Å"Excellent plan, my brother,† he said with enthusiasm. Edward stretched out his arm to smack Emmett's fist with his own. â€Å"No,† Rosalie hissed. â€Å"Absolutely not,† I agreed. â€Å"Nice.† Jasper's voice was appreciative. â€Å"Idiots,† Alice muttered. Esme just glared at Edward. I straightened up in my chair, focusing. This was my meeting. â€Å"All right, then. Edward has offered an alternative for you to consider,† I said coolly. â€Å"Let's vote.† I looked toward Edward this time; it would be better to get his opinion out of the way. â€Å"Do you want me to join your family?† His eyes were hard and black as flint. â€Å"Not that way. You're staying human.† I nodded once, keeping my face businesslike, and then moved on. â€Å"Alice?† â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"Jasper?† â€Å"Yes,† he said, voice grave. I was a little surprisedI hadn't been at all sure of his votebut I suppressed my reaction and moved on. â€Å"Rosalie?† She hesitated, biting down on her full, perfect bottom lip. â€Å"No.† I kept my face blank and turned my head slightly to move on, but she held up both her hands, palms forward. â€Å"Let me explain,† she pleaded. â€Å"I don't mean that I have any aversion to you as a sister. It's just that this is not the life I would have chosen for myself. I wish there had been someone there to vote no for me.† I nodded slowly, and then turned to Emmett. â€Å"Hell, yes!† He grinned. â€Å"We can find some other way to pick a fight with this Demetri.† I was still grimacing at that when I looked at Esme. â€Å"Yes, of course, Bella. I already think of you as part of my family.† â€Å"Thank you, Esme,† I murmured as I turned toward Carlisle. I was suddenly nervous, wishing I had asked for his vote first. I was sure that this was the vote that mattered most, the vote that counted more than any majority. Carlisle wasn't looking at me. â€Å"Edward,† he said. â€Å"No,† Edward growled. His jaw was strained tight, his lips curled back from his teeth. â€Å"It's the only way that makes sense,† Carlisle insisted. â€Å"You've chosen not to live without her, and that doesn't leave me a choice.† Edward dropped my hand, shoving away from the table. He stalked out of the room, snarling under his breath. â€Å"I guess you know my vote.† Carlisle sighed. I was still staring after Edward. â€Å"Thanks,† I mumbled. An earsplitting crash echoed from the other room. I flinched, and spoke quickly. â€Å"That's all I needed. Thank you. For wanting to keep me. I feel exactly the same way about all of you, too.† My voice was jagged with emotion by the end. Esme was at my side in a flash, her cold arms around me. â€Å"Dearest Bella,† she breathed. I hugged her back. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Rosalie looking down at the table, and I realized that my words could be construed in two ways. â€Å"Well, Alice,† I said when Esme released me. â€Å"Where do you want to do this?† Alice stared at me, her eyes widening with terror. â€Å"No! No! NO!† Edward roared, charging back into the room. He was in my face before I had time to blink, bending over me, his expression twisted in rage. â€Å"Are you insane?† he shouted. â€Å"Have you utterly lost your mind?† I cringed away, my hands over my ears. â€Å"Um, Bella,† Alice interjected in an anxious voice. â€Å"I don't think I'm ready for that. I'll need to prepare† â€Å"You promised,† I reminded her, glaring under Edward's arm. â€Å"I know, but Seriously, Bella! I don't have any idea how to not killyou.† â€Å"You can do it,† I encouraged. â€Å"I trust you.† Edward snarled in fury. Alice shook her head quickly, looking panicked. â€Å"Carlisle?† I turned to look at him. Edward grabbed my face in his hand, forcing me to look at him. His other hand was out, palm toward Carlisle. Carlisle ignored that. â€Å"I'm able to do it,† he answered my question. I wished I could see his expression. â€Å"You would be in no danger of me losing control.† â€Å"Sounds good.† I hoped he could understand; it was hard to talk clearly the way Edward held my jaw. â€Å"Hold on,† Edward said between his teeth. â€Å"It doesn't have to be now.† â€Å"There's no reason for it not to be now,† I said, the words coming out distorted. â€Å"I can think of a few.† â€Å"Of course you can,† I said sourly. â€Å"Now let go of me.† He freed my face, and folded his arms across his chest. â€Å"In about two hours, Charlie will be here looking for you. I wouldn't put it past him to involve the police.† â€Å"All three of them.† But I frowned. This was always the hardest part. Charlie, Renee. Now Jacob, too. The people I would lose, the people I would hurt. I wished there was some way that I could be the only one to suffer, but I knew that was impossible. At the same time, I was hurting them more by staying human. Putting Charlie in constant danger through my proximity. Putting Jake in worse danger still by drawing his enemies across the land he felt bound to protect. And ReneeI couldn't even risk a visit to see my own mother for fear of bringing my deadly problems along with me! I was a danger magnet; I'd accepted that about myself. Accepting this, I knew I needed to be able to take care of myself and protect the ones I loved, even if that meant that I couldn't be with them. I needed to be strong. â€Å"In the interest of remaining inconspicuous,† Edward said, still talking through his gritted teeth, but looking at Carlisle now, â€Å"I suggest that we put this conversation off, at the very least until Bella finishes high school, and moves out of Charlie's house.† â€Å"That's a reasonable request, Bella,† Carlisle pointed out. I thought about Charlie's reaction when he woke up this morning, ifafter all that life had put him through in the last week with Harry's loss, and then I had put him through with my unexplained disappearancehe were to find my bed empty. Charlie deserved better than that. It was just a little more time; graduation wasn't so far away I pursed my lips. â€Å"I'll consider it.† Edward relaxed. His jaw unclenched. â€Å"I should probably take you home,† he said, more calm now, but clearly in a hurry to get me out of here. â€Å"Just in case Charlie wakes up early.† I looked at Carlisle. â€Å"After graduation?† â€Å"You have my word.† I took a deep breath, smiled, and turned back to Edward. â€Å"Okay. You can take me home.† Edward rushed me out of the house before Carlisle could promise me anything else. He took me out the back, so I didn't get to see what was broken in the living room. It was a quiet trip home. I was feeling triumphant, and a little smug. Scared stiff, too, of course, but I tried not to think about that part. It did me no good to worry about the painthe physical or the emotionalso I wouldn't. Not until I absolutely had to. When we got to my house, Edward didn't pause. He dashed up the wall and through my window in half a second. Then he pulled my arms frcm around his neck and set me on the bed. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what he was thinking, but his expression surprised me. Instead of furious, it was calculating. He paced silently back and forth across my dark room while I watched with growing suspicion. â€Å"Whatever you're planning, it's not going to work,† I told him. â€Å"Shh. I'm thinking.† â€Å"Ugh,† I groaned, throwing myself back on the bed and pulling the quilt over my head. There was no sound, but suddenly he was there. He flipped the cover back so he could see me. He was lying next to me. His hand reached up to brush my hair from my cheek. â€Å"If you don't mind, I'd much rather you didn't hide your face. I've lived without it for as long as I can stand. Now tell me something.† â€Å"What?† I asked, unwilling. â€Å"If you could have anything in the world, anything at all, what would it be?† I could feel the skepticism in my eyes. â€Å"You.† He shook his head impatiently. â€Å"Something you don't already have.† I wasn't sure where he was trying to lead me, so I thought carefully before I answered. I came up with something that was both true, and also probably impossible. â€Å"I would want Carlisle not to have to do it. I would want you to change me.† I watched his reaction warily, expecting more of the fury I'd seen at his house. I was surprised that his expression didn't change. It was still calculating, thoughtful. â€Å"What would you be willing to trade for that?† I couldn't believe my ears. I gawked at his composed face and blurted out the answer before I could think about it. â€Å"Anything.† He smiled faintly, and then pursed his lips. â€Å"Five years?† My face twisted into an expression somewhere between chagrin and horror. â€Å"You said anything,† he reminded me. â€Å"Yes, but you'll use the time to find a way out of it. I have to strike while the iron is hot. Besides, it's just too dangerous to be humanfor me, at least. So, anything but that.† He frowned. â€Å"Three years?† â€Å"No!† â€Å"Isn't it worth anyrhing to you at all? â€Å" I thought about how much I wanted this. Better to keep a poker face, I decided, and not let him know how very much that was. It would give me more leverage. â€Å"Six months?† He rolled his eyes. â€Å"Not good enough.† â€Å"One year, then,† I said. â€Å"That's my limit.† â€Å"At least give me two.† â€Å"No way. Nineteen I'll do. But I'm not going anywhere near twenty. If you're staying in your teens forever, then so am I.† He thought for a minute. â€Å"All right. Forget time limits. If you want me to be the onethen you'll just have to meet one condition.† â€Å"Condition?† My voice went flat. â€Å"What condition?† His eyes were cautioushe spoke slowly. â€Å"Marry me first.† I stared at him, waiting â€Å"Okay. What's the punch line?† He sighed. â€Å"You're wounding my ego, Bella. I just proposed to you, and you think it's a joke.† â€Å"Edward, please be serious.† â€Å"I am one hundred percent serious.† He gazed at me with no hint of humor in his face. â€Å"Oh, c'mon,† I said, an edge of hysteria in my voice. â€Å"I'm only eighteen.† â€Å"Well, I'm nearly a hundred and ten. It's time I settled down.† I looked away, out the dark window, trying to control the panic before it gave me away. â€Å"Look, marriage isn't exactly that high on my list of priorities, you know? It was sort of the kiss of death for Renee and Charlie.† â€Å"Interesting choice of words.† â€Å"You know what I mean.† He inhaled deeply. â€Å"Please don't tell me that you're afraid of the commitment,† his voice was disbelieving, and I understood what he meant. â€Å"That's not it exactly,† I hedged. â€Å"I'm afraid of Renee. She has some really intense opinions on getting married before you're thirty.† â€Å"Because she'd rather you became one of the eternal damned than get married.† He laughed darkly. â€Å"You think you're joking.† â€Å"Bella, if you compare the level of commitment between a marital union as opposed to bartering your soul in exchange for an eternity as a vampire† He shook his head. â€Å"If you're not brave enough to marry me, then† â€Å"Well,† I interrupted. â€Å"What if I did? What if I told you to take me to Vegas now? Would I be a vampire in three days?† He smiled, his teeth flashing in the dark. â€Å"Sure,† he said, calling my bluff. â€Å"I'll get my car.† â€Å"Dammit.† I muttered. â€Å"I'll give you eighteen months.† â€Å"No deal,† he said, grinning. â€Å"I like this condition.† â€Å"Fine. I'll have Carlisle do it when I graduate.† â€Å"If that's what you really want.† He shrugged, and his smile became absolutely angelic. â€Å"You're impossible,† I groaned. â€Å"A monster.† He chuckled. â€Å"Is that why you won't marry me?† I groaned again. He leaned toward me; his night-dark eyes melted and smoldered and shattered my concentration. † Please, Bella?† he breathed. I forgot how to breathe for a moment. When I recovered, I shook my head quickly, trying to clear my suddenly clouded mind. â€Å"Would this have gone better if I d had time to get a ring.'† â€Å"No! No rings!† I very nearly snouted. â€Å"Now you've done it,† he whispered. â€Å"Oops.† â€Å"Charlie's getting up; I'd better leave,† Edward said with resignation. My heart stopped beating. He gauged my expression for a second. â€Å"Would it be childish of me to hide in your closet, then?† â€Å"No,† I whispered eagerly. â€Å"Stay. Please.† Edward smiled and disappeared. I seethed in the darkness as I waited for Charlie to check on me. Edward knew exactly what he was doing, and I was willing to bet that all the injured surprise was part of the ploy. Of course, I still had the Carlisle option, but now that I knew there was a chance that Edward would change me himself, I wanted it bad. He was such a cheater. My door cracked open. â€Å"Morning, Dad.† â€Å"Oh, hey, Bella.† He sounded embarrassed at getting caught. â€Å"I didn't know you were awake.† â€Å"Yeah. I've just been waiting ior you to wake up so I could take a shower.† I started to get up. â€Å"Hold on,† Charlie said, flipping the light on. I blinked in the sudden brightness, and carefully kept my eyes away from the closet. â€Å"Let's talk for a minute first.† I couldn't control my grimace. I'd forgotten to ask Alice for a good excuse. â€Å"You know you're in trouble.† â€Å"Yeah, I know.† â€Å"I just about went crazy these last three days. I come home from Harry's funeral, and you're gone. Jacob could only tell me that you'd run off with Alice Cullen, and that he thought you were in trouble. You didn't leave me a number, and you didn't call. I didn't know where you were or whenor ifyou were coming back. Do you have any idea how how† He couldn't finish the sentence. He sucked in a sharp breath and moved on. â€Å"Can you give me one reason why I shouldn't ship you off to Jacksonville this second?† My eyes narrowed. So it was going to be threats, was it? Two could play at that game. I sat up, pulling the quilt around me. â€Å"Because I won't go.† â€Å"Now just one minute, young lady† â€Å"Look, Dad, I accept complete responsibility for my actions, and you have the right to ground me for as long as you want. I will also do all the chores and laundry and dishes until you think I've learned my lesson. And I guess you're within your rights if you want to kick me out, toobut that won't make me to go to Florida.† His face turned bright red. He took a few deep breaths before he answered. â€Å"Would you like to explain where you've been?† Oh, crap. â€Å"There was an emergency.† He raised his eyebrows in expectation of my brilliant explanation. I filled my cheeks with air and then blew it out noisily. â€Å"I don't know what to tell you, Dad. It was mostly a misunderstanding. He said, she said. It got out of hand.† He waited with a distrustful expression. â€Å"See, Alice told Rosalie about me jumping off the cliff† I was scrambling frantically to make this work, to keep it as close to the truth as possible so that my inability to lie convincingly would not undermine the excuse, but before I could go on, Charlie's expression reminded me that he didn't know arything about thecliff. Major oops. As if I wasn't already toast. â€Å"I guess I didn't tell you about that,† I choked out. â€Å"It was nothing. Just messing around, swimming with Jake. Anyway, Rosalie told Edward, and he was upset. She sort of accidentally made it sound like I wa? trying to kill myself or something. He wouldn't answer his phone, so Alice dragged me to L.A., to explain in person.† I shrugged, desperately hoping that he would not be so distracted by my slip that he'd miss the brilliant explanation I'd provided. Charlie's face was frozen. â€Å"Were you trying to kill yourself, Bella?† â€Å"No, of course not. Just having fun with Jake. Cliff diving. The La Push kids do it all the time. Like I said, nothing.† Charlie's face heated upfrom frozen to hot with fury. â€Å"What's it to Edward Cullen anyway?† he barked. â€Å"All this time, he's just left you dangling without a word† I interrupted him. â€Å"Another misunderstanding.† His face flushed again. â€Å"So is he back then?† â€Å"I'm not sure what the exact plan is. I think they all are.† He shook his head, the vein in his forehead pulsing. â€Å"I want you to stay away from him, Bella. I don't trust him. He's rotten for you. I won't let him mess you up like that again.† â€Å"Fine,† I said curtly. Charlie rocked back onto his heels. â€Å"Oh.† He scrambled for a second, exhaling loudly in surprise. â€Å"I thought you were going to be difficult.† â€Å"I am.† I stared straight into his eyes. â€Å"I meant, ‘Fine, I'll move out.'† His eyes bulged; his face turned puce. My resolve wavered as I started to worry about his health. He was no younger than Harry â€Å"Dad, I don't want to move out,† I said in a softer tone. â€Å"I love you. I know you're worried, but you need to trust me on this. And you're going to have to ease up on Edward if you want me to stay. Do you want me to live here or not?† â€Å"That's not fair, Bella. You know I want you to stay.† â€Å"Then be nice to Edward, because he's going to be where I am.† I said it with confidence. The conviction of my epiphany was still strong. â€Å"Not under my roof,† Charlie stormed. I sighed a heavy sigh. â€Å"Look, I'm not going to give you any more ultimatums tonightor I guess it's this morning. Just think about it for a few days, okay? But keep in mind that Edward and I are sort of a package deal.† â€Å"Bella† â€Å"Think it over,† I insisted. â€Å"And while you're doing that, could you give me some privacy? I really need a shower.† Charlie's face was a strange shade of purple, but he left, slamming the door behind him. I heard him stomp furiously down the stairs. I threw off my quilt, and Edward was already there, sitting in the rocking chair as if he d been present through the whole conversation. â€Å"Sorry about that,† I whispered. â€Å"It's not as if I don't deserve far worse,† he murmured. â€Å"Don't start anything with Charlie over me, please. â€Å" â€Å"Don't worry about it,† I breathed as I gathered up my bathroom things and a set of clean clothes. â€Å"I will start exactly as much as is necessary, and no more than that. Or are you trying to tell me I have nowhere to go?† I widened my eyes with false alarm. â€Å"You'd move in with a house full of vampires?† â€Å"That's probably the safest place for someone like me. Besides† I grinned. â€Å"If Charlie kicks me out, then there's no need for a graduation deadline, is there?† His jaw tightened. â€Å"So eager for eternal damnation,† he muttered. â€Å"You know you don't really believe that.† â€Å"Oh, don't I?† he fumed. â€Å"No. You don't.† He glowered at me and started to speak, but I cut him off. â€Å"If you really believed that you'd lost your soul, then when I found you in Volterra, you would have realized immediately what was happening, instead of thinking we were both dead together. But you didn'tyou said ‘Amazing. Carlisle was right,'† I reminded him, triumphant. â€Å"There's hope in you, after all.† For once, Edward was speechless. â€Å"So let's both just be hopeful, all right?† I suggested. â€Å"Not that it matters. If you stay, I don't need heaven.† He got up slowly, and came to put his hands on either side of my face as he stared into my eyes. â€Å"Forever,† he vowed, still a little staggered. â€Å"That's all I'm asking for,† I said, and stretched up on my toes so that I could press my lips to his.