Strategic Management Essay Example for Free

Strategic Management Essay Nintendo was founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi in Japan which started out by selling game cards. In 1974, Nintendo ventured into the video gaming industry and since then have been committed to creating innovative video games console and games like the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game boy, Nintendo 64, Game boy pocket, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Game Cube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS lite, Wii, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo DSi XL, Nintendo 3DS, Super Mario Brothers game Series and Zelda Game Series. (Thompson, Strickland Gamble, 2010) Thompson, J. A., Strickland, I. A., Gamble, J. E. (2010). Crafting and Executing Strategy. New York, NY:McGraw-Hill Irwin. In 2006, Nintendo released the Nintendo Wii with the strategy of â€Å"fun for everyone† which captured majority of the video game market share. As of 2013, Nintendo is the longest running gaming company in the industry which operates in more than 35 countries such as Korea, USA, France and South Africa (Nintendo webbie). Nintendo is also the world’s largest video game company generating more than 6 billion USD in revenue, with more than 5,000 employees worldwide (financial statement 2013). The United States is the largest market for Nintendo which consist of more than one third of the sale in 2013. http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2013/130424e.pdf Nintendo’s mission is to continue to produce and market the best products of the highest quality and to treat every customer with respect, attention and consideration (http://www.nintendo.com/corp/mission.jsp). Nintendo will continue to pursue their basic strategy of expanding the gaming population by offering products that anyone regardless of age, gender or gaming experience can enjoy. (financial statement 2013). Porter Five forces Threat of new entry – Low. The entertainment market is currently in an oligopoly with competitors such as Sony (playstation 3), Microsoft (Xbox and Kinect) and the latest competitor Apple (Ipads). Any new company who wants to be in the gaming console industry will face high barriers of entry and face these 3 companies which have huge amount of resources and technology. Unless a company has huge amount of resource and experience to produce in a large scale to compete against Nintendo or their competitors, they will not experience economics of scale thus lowering their profit as compared to the rest. Threat of substitutes – Medium. Nintendo’s main source of revenue comes from their portable gaming device, the DS, the home entertainment system, the Wii and their games. Substitutes such as the Ipad or PS vista post a high threat against the Nintendo DS for the portable gaming devices and Xbox Kinect also posts a high level of substitution against Wii for the home entertainment system. Gaming applications in the past few years have been on the rise, showing a strong competition against games from Nintendo. People can download games from their Ipads and use it as a substitute against Nintendo’s products. Prices of competitors are also priced at a competitive rate as Nintendo. Technology of smartphones and social media such as facebook are also getting better where consumers can play games on their phones and on the internet. Power of Buyers Medium. The switching cost from Nintendo to its competitors are not high to the extend where one is unable to afford. Due t o technology advancements, Ipad users could download applications to play games from Nintendo. There are no concentrated buyers which make up a huge share of Nintendo’s revenue Power of suppliers – low. Electronic components are generally inexpensive unless being customized. With globalization, Nintendo could easier find suppliers which have a lower producing cost with the same quality. Nintendo suppliers would try to use all means and ways to keep Nintendo as their customers as Nintendo produces their consoles in a global scale. Competitive rivalry – Medium. Although Nintendo been introducing unique and cutting edge technology to have a competitive advantage over competitors such as the Nintendo 3DS where consumers are able to play 3D games without wearing 3D glasses, competitors such as Sony and Microsoft have been steadily improving on their technology to increase their competitiveness in the gaming industry. Nintendo is constantly trying to differentiate the ir products in the gaming industry however technology advancement have been trying to integrate the gaming industry where consumers can play the games using just one console such as computers or tablets. Value Rarity – Nintendo 3DS Inimitability Non-substitutability –

The Indian Removal Period Essay Example for Free

The Indian Removal Period Essay The Indian removal period, just like the just and lawful wars fought against native tribes, was yet another attempt to acquire immense wealth and power over the American territories. Although this was much humane than the eradication of Indian populations, the removal in itself, both as a legal concept and its implementation, is debatable. It is unfair to take away or limit the Indians’ right to their property, as well as their way of life. The implementation of the Indian removal was based on fraudulent and fabricated assumptions and assertions regarding the tribes. It was baseless, and it steps on the culture and the traditions of the Indian tribes. The Indian removal was a way for the U. S. government to anchor the accomplishment of their goals for expansion and acquisition of natural wealth and resources, mostly concentrated in Indian territories. Moreover, Americans used the Indians as slaves, without some of them even knowing it. This is mainly due to the Indians’ loss of power to decide freely, for they were only given choices, and both were agreeable to the U. S. government. The Indian removal was implemented by the U. S. government because it is less risky when it comes to considering the predisposition of uprising. Perhaps the Americans wanted to avoid aggressive and forceful reactions from the Indian tribes; therefore, they initiated treaties with the tribes. The Indian population would also serve them purpose in order to achieve their goals, in terms of toil and labor. The Indian removal was successful in its efforts because most of the lands and territories were yielded to the government. Although the land and territorial exchange also provided for the demands of the tribe members, the result of the trade was more agreeable to the Americans because it paved way to the realization of their goals and objectives. For the Indians, the Indian removal cost them their land, their culture, and their identity. Indians who agreed to join the government suffered greatly as slaves or laborers without being provided rightful compensation. They were stripped off their right to become a valuable, notable, and contributory part of society. For those who entered the Indian country, they were not recognized nor respected as landowners. Either way, the Indians were cheated, persecuted, and tormented by the U. S. government.

Irelands Sovereign Debt Crisis

Irelands Sovereign Debt Crisis Both the Fed and the ECB use similar tools to implement monetary policy, although some differences do exist between the method used to manage the money and influence short term interest rates (Cecchetti OSullivan, 2003). The fed conduct an overnight repurchase agreements (repos) which are made of collateralized loans. The fed provide reserves to a small number of designated dealers in exchange for government securities, and agree to reserve the transaction at a future date. The Fed decide each morning the level of reserves to supply, by forecasting the demand of reserves the goal by doing so is to keep the federal funds rate as close to its target as possible. However, in case of sustained increases in reserves demand the Fed purchases government securities outright in the secondary market.   With the reserve requirements, the Fed has another tool to stabilize the demand for reserves and also it makes it easier to control the fed funds rates. At the same time the discount rate gives us the cost of funds available to banks to borrow through the discount window. Banks are obliged to finish all other sources of financing before going to discount window. Although funds in the discount window are a vailable at a rate lower than the market rate, borrowing in the discount window is perceived as the bank being in trouble. According to the definition from Wikipedia, An open market operation (OMO) is an activity by a central bank to give (or take) liquidity in its currency to (or from) a bank or a group of banks. The central bank can either buy or sell government bonds in the open market (this is where the name was historically derived from) or, which is now mostly the preferred solution, enter into a repo or secured lending transaction with a commercial bank: the central bank gives the money as a deposit for a defined period and synchronously takes an eligible asset as collateral (Open market operation, 2017). From the perspective of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), identify and explain how the short term policy rate is implemented as part of monetary policy. Describe identifiable economic target variables that these central banks attempt to control and the degree of transparency applied in implementing policy. Incorporate a discussion of how operating procedures and institutional practice are managed in the respective jurisdictions (U.S. and Eurozone). Make reference to Wikipedias description of Open Market Operations. Compare and contrast where appropriate. Make reference to Taylor (1993), The Cecchetti Chapters 15 and 16. During the two decades before 2007, the Irish economy made a significant progress through implementation of wide range of policies. Those policies helped the country to stimulate productivity. The country industrial policies focused successfully on encouraging export-oriented foreign direct investment. Adding to that the country focused on improving education with large expansion of the third level sector. As result of those policies, the Irish economy outpaced advanced economies, and its labor productivity was not far from US by mid-2000. The country put a lot of people into work during the Celtic Tiger, for a country that did not have a lot of institution it was a huge labor participation. In the late 1980 the country had 1.1 million of people at work but by 2007 It grew to 2.1 Million. While the country in late 1980 had a low rate of labor force participation, from mid-1990 onwards Irish people who lived abroad started to take job at home. Due to that the Irish economy became incr edible employment creating machine. The country lowed tax rates and raised public spending. Given that; the country experimented a very gracious growth, and at the same time it had sufficient tax revenue to generate budget surplus. While the country was wishing for that period to last forever, things did not go like that and the bubble popped in 2007. Factors that contributed to Irelands Sovereign debt crisis Huge deficit: Banking crisis:   International borrowing of the 6 mains banks in Ireland rose from less than 15billion in 2003 to almost 100 Billion by 2007the credit boom and acceleration of housing activity were all financed by the Irish banks. Whelan (2011) stated that prior to 2003 they operated normally, with the boom they changed strategy and increased their property lending at rapid rates and financed much of this expansion with bonds issued to international investors. That created a huge exposure of the Irish banks to property developers, as the only way for the banks to get their money back was if the housing price kept increasing. As most of the property developers found misfortune during the collapse of the housing boom, it was difficult for those banks to get their money back and at the same time they found it hard to raise funds on bond markets as international investors became concern about their exposure. In what ways is Ireland Sovereign Debt Crisis akin to the crisis experienced in other Eurozone jurisdictions. In what way is it different? As Ireland a lot of countries in the Eurozone were operation a debt/GDP ratio above 90% prior to 2000, and with joining the Eurozone and changing currency some of them saw a growth of the economy in a way they were not expecting. The major banks of the Eurozone were all highly exposed to the losses in the US market in asset-backed securities. The end of the credit boom saw the economy growth of countries that were benefiting from it slowed down, they saw a fall in their fiscal revenues. The banking sector of some of the Eurozone countries deteriorated in way that for the outside world investors they posed fiscal risks. At one point they represented such a risk for the overall euro that they were shout out of the bond market. While the crisis experienced by other countries in the Eurozone was in some way similar to Ireland, the difference was the other countries were running large and sustained external deficits. However, in Ireland the government through the boom of the housing market focused less on taxing income taxes but most of the revenue of the government was from taxing the property developing market. According to Philip R. Lane (2012) in Ireland the government was not a net borrower during 2003-2007 while in countries like Portugal and Greece the government and corporations were both significant borrowers. Lane (2012) argued that the origin and propagation of the European sovereign debt crisis can be attributed to the flawed original design of the euro. While the euro area enjoyed years of happiness and growth, it was a half concept since from the beginning it was built of the Dollar union. There was an incomplete understanding of the fragility of a monetary union during crisis. Furthermore, it was created without a significant degree of banking union or fiscal union. While originally the monetary union was designed to tackle the over-borrowing of some countries, retaining national responsibility for financial regulation and fiscal policy never took away the risks some countries was building from years. With the euro, the fiscal risks increased before the crisis as the euro made finance available to countries which already had problem controlling their debt/GDP ratio. During the crisis it was more difficult to save the banks, and also the fiscal costs of rescuing them increased. If the euro was same as the dollar, the monetary union would have been out of the crisis quicker than what actually happened. The single currency took away the tools for a country to adjust its economy during time of crisis. First, cutting the interest rates to stimulate demand, but at the start of the crisis the ECB did the opposite and raised the interest rate, which put countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and others in a bad position. The second was to devaluate the currency in order to boost exports. While most countries that were hit at the same time as Euro managed to recover from the financial crisis, the difficulty of pulling the same trick failed here as the recovery is slow and some of the euro countries still hang on the edge of collapsing. Definition and Characteristics of hedge funds It is not clearly defined what hedge funds are, but different typical characteristics are enumerated in order to give some clarification on what they were. Stulz (2007) defined them as unregulated pools of money managed by an investment advisor, the hedge fund manager, who has a great deal of flexibility. Cottier, 2000 and Jakobsons, 2002 agreed with Stulz, 2007 on the fact that they are all form of investment funds, companies and private partnerships that use derivatives for directorial investing. Those investments are permitted to go short and also use a substantial leverage through borrowing. Hedge funds have a limited number of investors who can participate, and also they cannot make public offering in order to avoid regulation. Ahedge fund is typically a collection of funds managed by the hedge fund manager-typically through a separately organized company, the management company (Stulz, 2017). Hedge fund managers focus on maximise the increase in investment value rather than sim ply perform better than average. They are paid based on the amount of wealth increase they made, and most of their compensation depends on giving investors a positive absolute return. Stulz (2007) argued that the hedge fund industry may have played more of a role in creating liquidity and making markets efficient than the mutual fund industry. The hedge fund industry could do so because it was generally not regulated, so that funds were free to take whatever positions they wanted and to make full use of financial innovations. As hedge funds are enormously free from regulations that hold back mutual funds to operate at the best capacity, they have developed a better sophisticated, unconventional and proprietary investment strategies. Hedge fund means that risks are being hedge in order, but for some hedge funds take an aggressing approach with no particular hedging policy. The fees of a hedge funds are higher and depend on the performance which distinguishes them from mutual funds. Certain funds do not have the opportunity to take short positions, invest in derivatives but investing in hedge funds give them a simple way to expand their scope of investing. Hedge fun ds managers are given the chance to search for profitable opportunities that other investors do not have the resources or expertise to find. Looking at the track of top hedge funds managers, we can affirm that they very much found these opportunities. Hedge funds often make profits by providing liquidity to the markets by buying securities that are temporarily depressed because of market disruptions (Stulz, 2017). Furthermore, a hedge fund manager focuses on achieving absolute returns by finding as many profit opportunities as possible that are immune to market gyrations-in industry lingo, generating alpha (returns uncorrelated to market performance) rather than beta(imf, 2017). According to Duffie and Stein (2015) how was LIBOR manipulated by Banks and Traders? What solutions do they propose? From definition, LIBOR is the London Interbank offered Rate, it is a daily fixed rate used by the banks to borrow between each other. LIBOR play a central role as benchmark in modern financial markets. During the financial crisis of 2007-2009, banks were more concerned on the image they sent to the world. None of them wanted to be seen as creditworthy than others. As result from such behavior, when the banks were polled to produce LIBOR, some understated their costs. Which is known as a form of manipulation. In other cases, traders looking for profit on a position would ask bank officials to bias their reports. By doing so they would cause the benchmark to move one way or the other. In some instances, more significant distortions were achieved through collusion that coordinated the misreporting among several banks (Duffie Stein, Spring 2015). Various policymaking group that acknowledged the manipulation problem associated with LIBOR believed that it would be in the best interest of financial market to part away with the current practice. They wanted to change from the fixing LIBOR rates using judgmental submissions from a panel of banks something more secure. According to Duffie and Stein (2015) different types of solution might be worth looking into. They acknowledge that a transition from the current methodology to something might be hard to do but necessary if we wanted to tackle the problem. Their first solution was using the interest rates set by the Federal reserve as benchmark. The federal reserve set two rates: the rate it pays to banks on their excess and the overnight reserve repurchase rate. Because those rates are used to implement monetary policy and are set by Federal reserve they are shield from manipulation. Another solution they put forward was the use of the rate on short-term treasury bills. While this market is not manipulation-proof, it is certainly much deeper and more active than the market for unsecured bank borrowing (Duffie Stein, Spring 2015). Although this solution may provide some benefits, in some moments of stress on the economy they realised that investors tend to walk away from it. However, they concluded the merit in using should make us give some careful consideration. Treasury general collateral risk repo rate is another near-riskless rate they argued might be a solution. It is made of the average rate at which dealers acquire overnight financing secured by treasury securities. It is a market that is highly liquid and as the treasury bill, we would expect general collateral repo rates to be robust to manipulation. The last one is the overnight index swap, according to Duffie and Stein (2015) it pays a predetermined fixed interest rate in exchange for receiving the compounded daily federal funds rate over the 3-months term of the contract. An advantage of OIS is that it does not incorporate the same kind of safe-haven premium as Treasury bills (Duffie Stein, Spring 2015). A liquid derivatives market has an incentive of manipulation from the participants using the underlying benchmark. As big as the derivatives market is, one should expect a flaw in efficiently operating in and manipulation should be considered as the inevitable cost of doing business.   Cause reforming the whole system at this point would cost a lot money and time and would not necessary tackle the problem. According to Armour et al (2011) what has been the impact of bank fines on Banks. Explain the event study methodology as proposed by Armour et al (2011) to determine the impact of bank fines. as stated by Armour, Mayer and Polo (2011) a firms reputation reflects the expectations of partners of the benefits of trading with it in the future. They believed certain types of revelation may be expected to impact negatively on trading parties expectations of a firms future performance. An announcement by a regulator that a firm has engaged in misconduct may constitute precisely this type of revelation. They observed that the penalized firms stock prices experience statistically significant abnormal losses of approximately nine times the fines and compensation paid. They interpreted the fall in equity market value in excess of mandated payments as the firms reputational loss (Armour, Mayer, Polo, 2017). They used the statistical method to assess the impact of the public announcement of misconduct on the value of the firms. It was done in order to see how the investors respond to such news about the firms. The basic idea is to calculate the irregular price reaction around the event, using the market model as benchmark model for normal returns. They used a pioneer methodology by Fama et al (1969) which evaluates the reaction of stock price to the public announcement of misconduct. Adding to that They followed the residual approach used by Jarrel and Peltzman (1985), Karpoff and Lott (1993) and Karpoff, Lee and Martin (2008). Using 260 days period, they analysed the ordinary least square regression of Ri,t, and Rm,t which are the returns on firm is common stocks on day t and the index of market returns on day t. They use this formula Reputational loss = ΆVt Fine Compensation to measure the reputational losses. After getting the 3 days average cumulative abnormal returns of -1.68% which represent an average of the effect of all press statements. Then their sample was decomposed into cases which characterised investors and customers and also third parties in order to see the effect of press statements referring to misconduct that affected them. In the third parties group we had entities like the states, other companies investors. Doing this allows us to see that shareholder wealth effects are highly dependent on this stratification (Armour, Mayer, Polo, 2017). They observed that there is a -2.62% share price drop when the wrongdoing affects the customers and investors, a 0.24% increase when it is third parties. This is consistent with theories which suggest that revelation of information of misconduct by a firm will cause its trading partners its customers and investors to downgrade their assessments of its quality and adversely affect its terms of trade (Armour, Mayer, Polo, 2017). Why is banker pay relevant? Are bankers paid too much for what they are doing as job? Why even after the financial crisis bankers are still paid huge sum of money when other workers in different sectors saw their salaries cut due to the recession? Those are some of the questions that have been bothering people for quite sometimes now. Bebchuk, Cohen and Spamann (2010) performed an analysis using the period of 200-2008. They compared the performance of companies directed by top earning CEO to their salaries. In order to analyze if they were really worth paying those salaries. They found that those companies operated on incentive basis. Those firms bonus compensation structure, gave executives the incentives to seek improvement in short term earning figures even at the cost of losing the investments in the future. Originally the executives take the money and invest them to maximize the profit. The higher the risk the more profit the investments will make. Most executives focus on the bonus they will collect on those investments, the higher the risks they are taking, higher will be the bonus they will collect. And when the investments go bust and turn into massive losses, they still hold on to the bonus they made. Most banks arrange their pay in that way because they want excessive profitability. Most banks will prefer to retain the services of extraordinarily talented traders. In order to attract those people, they are ready to pay substantial premium for their services. In football you have Messi and Ronaldo and the rest follow, same principle with top tr aders (best CEO). The decision bankers make not just affect the bank but the economy as a whole which is why most firms are willing to provide a good incentive in order to be profitable. Also there is a notion that if you pay a banker in a good way it perform better. In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008-2009, there widespread beliefs that executive pay arrangements could have encouraged excessive risk-taking and that fixing those arrangements will be important in preventing similar excesses in the future (Bebchuk, Cohen, Spamann, 2017). They argued that during the period 2000-2008, top executives of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers cashed large amounts of performance-based compensation. Annual salaries of those top executives have hardly changed, and kept increasing due bonuses. During the crisis, top bankers in 2011 had their pay fully recovered to the point where they were getting more money than before the crisis. If bankers are paid in a competitive labour market and simply rewarded for their talent, there seems little reason for government intervention, at least on efficiency grounds. That was why in late July 2011 the European commission unveiled its proposals known as CRD IV which covered the following area the bonus cap It restricted the senior staff bonuses to 100% of their fixed remuneration in any given year or 200% with agreement of shareholders. It recommended performance pay based on a combination of an assessment of the individual and the overall results of the firm. In addition, performance should be assessed in a multi-year framework in order to ensure that the assessment process is based on longer-term performance and that the actual payment of performance-based components of remuneration is spread over a period which takes account of the underlying business cycle of the credit institution and its business risks (Ferrarini, 2015). the Pay Out Process Rules the de minimis principle While the CRD IV proposed a very good alternative for bankers remuneration, it is apparent that the application of such are doomed to be limited by the sad reality of our world. It has said the bonus cap is counter-productive, because it drives up fixed pay, reduces firms cyclical cost flexibility and perversely makes material risk takers less personally accountable for risk management failures, by reducing the proportion of their pay that can be lost as a result of any failure (out-law, 2017). It is natural that cutting the incentive of getting high compensation through bonuses would encourage most of the senior staffs to seek a different way to maximize their profit. It will put pressure to increase fixed pay and .Another limitation is the one size fits all approach taken to tackle the problem. Not all the credit institutions are the same, so an incentive structure that may work for one firm is not necessarily suited to another.

A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare’s treatment of illusion and realit

A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare’s treatment of illusion and reality in the play A Midsummer Nights Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare, it is a play about lovers and includes madness, mayhem, magic and illusion. The title tells us of the inevitable confusion to come, as in Elizabethan times ‘A Midsummer Night’ was a festival linked with mayhem and chaos, and the fact it is a ‘dream’ conjures up ideas of illusion and fantasy. The play has two settings, Athens which represents reality, order and daylight and the woods, the world of the fairies, which symbolize illusion, magic, and a place of darkness. There are three main groups of characters the courtiers, the workmen and the fairies whose actions form four different plots within the play. 1. The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta 2. The love affairs between Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena 3. The workmen’s play, its planning, rehearsal and performance 4. The quarrel between Oberon and Titania A Midsummer Nights Dream itself is an illusion, and to enjoy it you must temporarily suspend reality. Love is an important theme in the play, whether it is true love or induced by magic; it inhibits people’s ability to distinguish what is real or simply an illusion. The play begins in Athens, with the preparations for the forthcoming marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons. The use of these characters at the beginning of the play gives it a real sense of importance. Egeus enters with a complaint against his daughter Hermia; she refuses to wed Demetrius who has her father’s consent to marry her, but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Egeus believes his daughter could not possibly truly love L... ...thing beautiful and magical. There are references throughout the play to moonlight; this helps to set up the nighttime scenes, as the play would originally have been played in the daytime. The moon was thought to affect people’s behaviour. This idea is portrayed in the play; the characters act irrationally during the nighttime scenes, and appear to gain clarity as the daytime returns. The young lovers awake, unsure of what they have experienced, and believe they have simply been dreaming. Puck has the final speech in the play and speaks directly to the audience; he refers to himself and his fellow actors as shadows within a dream, this reminds us that we have been part of an illusion just like the characters in the play. He ends asking the audience to clap this signals the end of the performance, and the illusion created by ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’. A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare’s treatment of illusion and realit A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare’s treatment of illusion and reality in the play A Midsummer Nights Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare, it is a play about lovers and includes madness, mayhem, magic and illusion. The title tells us of the inevitable confusion to come, as in Elizabethan times ‘A Midsummer Night’ was a festival linked with mayhem and chaos, and the fact it is a ‘dream’ conjures up ideas of illusion and fantasy. The play has two settings, Athens which represents reality, order and daylight and the woods, the world of the fairies, which symbolize illusion, magic, and a place of darkness. There are three main groups of characters the courtiers, the workmen and the fairies whose actions form four different plots within the play. 1. The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta 2. The love affairs between Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena 3. The workmen’s play, its planning, rehearsal and performance 4. The quarrel between Oberon and Titania A Midsummer Nights Dream itself is an illusion, and to enjoy it you must temporarily suspend reality. Love is an important theme in the play, whether it is true love or induced by magic; it inhibits people’s ability to distinguish what is real or simply an illusion. The play begins in Athens, with the preparations for the forthcoming marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons. The use of these characters at the beginning of the play gives it a real sense of importance. Egeus enters with a complaint against his daughter Hermia; she refuses to wed Demetrius who has her father’s consent to marry her, but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Egeus believes his daughter could not possibly truly love L... ...thing beautiful and magical. There are references throughout the play to moonlight; this helps to set up the nighttime scenes, as the play would originally have been played in the daytime. The moon was thought to affect people’s behaviour. This idea is portrayed in the play; the characters act irrationally during the nighttime scenes, and appear to gain clarity as the daytime returns. The young lovers awake, unsure of what they have experienced, and believe they have simply been dreaming. Puck has the final speech in the play and speaks directly to the audience; he refers to himself and his fellow actors as shadows within a dream, this reminds us that we have been part of an illusion just like the characters in the play. He ends asking the audience to clap this signals the end of the performance, and the illusion created by ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’.

Use of Theme, Setting, and Time in Ibsens Hedda Gabler Essay -- Hedda

Use of Theme, Setting, and Time in Hedda Gabler    Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, is a work about a woman who manipulates the fates of others in order to fulfill her own desires. The title character is a woman who has recently returned from a six month "honeymoon" with her groom, Tesman, a man whom she does not love. She yearns for freedom, but she feels as if she cannot leave her marriage. To occupy her time, she manipulates the lives of everyone around her. Hedda kills herself after becoming engorged in her own manipulations. Through the use of theme, setting, and time period, Ibsen produces a work that uniquely portrays the sources of the motivations of this manipulative woman. Whether it be the burning of her former love’s manuscript or supplying him with the pistol to shoot himself, Hedda’s malevolence shows the ability of man to have total disregard for the life of another. Hedda coldly manipulates the lives of everyone around her. Through these manipulative actions, she ruins the lives of all of her acquaintances. Because she is not happy in her marriage, she attempts to forbid anyone else to live a content life. For example, after she persuades Eljert Là ¶vborg to consume alcohol, he ruins his reputation and loses something that is most precious to him: the manuscript of a book that he had been writing with Mrs. Elvsted. Although Hedda realizes the importance of this manuscript to both Là ¶vborg and Mrs. Elvsted, she chars it. Because Là ¶vborg and Mrs. Elvsted have put their souls into this manuscript, Hedda metaphorically relates her action to burning their child. This cold thoughtlessness demonstrates Hedda’s disregard for th e life of a fellow human being. Hedda’s actions ultimately lead to her demise. After giving ... ...nnot manipulate her own life. She does not want to remain in her marriage, but she lacks the courage to get out of it. Because of the times and her situation, she feels that she cannot leave her husband. It seems as if these manipulations are a sick form of entertainment for Hedda. One could regard this play as a purely feminist work or as the story of a woman who has no regard for human life. In either way in which it is regarded, Ibsen realistically portrays the motivations of Hedda Gabler through his use of theme, setting, and current events. Works Cited Hemmer, Bjorn. "The dramatist Henrik Ibsen." http://odin.dep.no/ud/nornytt/ibsen.html Ibsen, Henrik. Four Major Plays: A Doll’s House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mazer, Cary M. "Hedda Gabler." http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cmazer/hedda.html.

How Mildred Taylor uses the Characters and Events to show the Prejudice

Mildred Taylor, the author of 'Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry' clearly depicts racism in her novel. She skillfully uses the characters and events in the novel to show prejudice in Mississippi in the 1930s, when the book was set. At the time Mississippi was renowned as one of the worst states for racism. Taylor has created many situations in her novel were several of the characters are victimized as well as discriminated against. Throughout the novel white people form an irrational judgment on the black race, innocent people are burnt and lynched. 'Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry' is a novel which ventures on how hatred, humiliation and degradation fill the gap between the two races that are separate from each other, the races of the black and white. Taylor uses one of the main characters in this novel, Cassie Logan to show how racism impacted on their everyday lives. When Cassie goes to Strawberry for the first time, she is put out of her comfort zone and into the real world. Through these episodes Taylor shows us that Cassie had to grow up, and learn that being defensive cannot always solve the problem. As Cassie angrily confronts Mr. Barnett as she has not been served, he angrily ?recoiled? and told her to get her ?little black self? away from the counter to wait. As Mr. Barnett tries to get rid of Cassie he bellows, ?whose little nigger is this? leaving Cassie feeling ashamed and confused. Taylor uses this incident and characters to show that black people were considered, by some, to be less important than whites, since Cassie had been waiting for nearly an hour. The language spoken by Mr. Barnett is strongly patronizing, and it expands the portrayal of racism. Another point where Cassie is complete humiliated is when she bum... ...hool every day, whilst the white school bus goes past and sprays them with red dust. This also shows segregation, whites and blacks had to be as far apart as possible according to the whites. In the novel we see segregation many times: when Big Ma parks the wagon the other side of the field, the different schools and different buses. Taylor does use strong and powerful language through her characters and events to portray the racism. She also had a clear structure, some may find it confusing at times, but overall it does not affect how prejudice is portrayed as events follow each other. I think that the final message of the novel, perhaps, is that survival is possible, but that there are inevitable losses along the way, and that whatever race we are should not matter. Taylor uses memorable characters and big and small events to show prejudice in 1930?s Mississippi.

Lord of the Flies vs. the Destructors Essay

Fiction looks at all ranges of topics through the eyes of so many diverse characters. Lord of the Flies and The Destructors is no different in the sense you see two extremely striking situations through the eyes of surprising characters. These stories both take a look at society and the primitive aspects it can have. The main characters in the story are both children of young ages exhibiting surprising and sometimes extremely shocking behavior displaying a loss of innocence. They differ in the sense that Lord of Flies looks at how savage a human can get in desperate situations while the other is how savage a person can get against a society that feel victimized against. These two novels have similarities that can be easily identified. They both display groups of adolescents that are interacting with extreme situations. Lord of Flies depicts children stranded on an island and they must come together in order to find these solutions. Desperation sets in which motivates them to start acting more and more savage as time goes on. This is similar to The Destructors because the short story displays a similar group of young children who display savage behavior to a community. While one is a residential community and another is an island, the island represents a community for these boys for the time of the story because they are stranded upon it. Both stories display a power struggle through two characters in them. Lord of The Flies shows this through Jack and Ralph and In the Destructors this is seen through Trevor and Blackie. Jack and Ralph both attempted to become chief of the new tribe, Ralph winning by a few votes. However, as time goes on their primitive behaviors shine through creating a divide between the children and Jack develops his own tribe. Jack’s influence motivates the children to become violent and savage toward Ralph and his group, resulting in killing one of Ralph’s friend, Piggy. All of the teamwork and civil behavior that Ralph represents is slowly gone until the children all turn into monsters, which Jack represents. Ralph was about structure and finding a rescue, which is evident in his design of two groups, one for food and one for a fire signal while jack was all about savage behavior and power over the other children. In the Destructors, Blackie and Trevor both have potential to be the leader of the Wormsley Common Gang and it can be seen through their dialogue that they are both aware that they want it. Blackie tries to display this by attempting to prevent Trevor from voting on what kind of trouble they get into when he late to their meeting but Trevor does not allow him. The peak of this struggle is when are discussing ideas and Trevor tells them about destroying Old Misery’s house from the inside. Blackie attempts his best to discourage with the potential of police and the inability to accomplish this but Trevor continue to push the idea until it is voted for and chosen. This symbolized the end of Blackie’s reign of the group and when one member asks â€Å"How do we start?† Blackie simply walks away saying, â€Å" He’ll tell you.† Implying that he knows what has occurred and realizing his role of leadership is taken over. Both groups in each story displayed how easily a dynamic can change through Power. When you look at the stories from another angle, you can see that the messages they have differ extremely. Lord of the Flies was all about human nature and the ends it can go. This novel is a timeless one because of the message it sends through the least likely characters, young boys. The Destructors is a more believable story because the type of violence that is seen in the story. While damage to someone’s home is awful and the manner in which they did it was extremely special, Lord of The Flies uses violence against one another and results in psychotic breaks and children losing their lives at the hands of others. The longer these children are with one another, they start to lose more of their humanity and gain more primal instincts in ways of acting. Jack is the best candidate to display this because of how he grows more and more corrupt. After starting his own tribe, he has enabled himself to dictate what he feels his followers should do. He allowed them to become savage as well. If he felt that other children needed to be punished, he felt not hesitation and even was to the point of murdering another child. He started wearing clay masks, which represents the symbolism of having a new more primal faà §ade. The novel wraps up with Ralph being rescued but crying because he reflects on everything that has happened and how far these young children have fallen and to what points they all reached. The Destructors really depicts a group of children who aim to destroy a neighborhood leaving an old man’s house for last. These children differ from the ones in Lord of The Flies because though they do some pretty questionable acts, it is more delinquency rather than primal acts. These boys are doing violent actions because of the violence through the war they witness around them. With World War II going on, these children are witness to bombings often leaving them feeling with the need to do something. They decide to become a gang that will make their mark around London, causing crime one more extreme than the next. Trevor motivates these boys to destroy an old man’s house but instead of normally destroying it while he is away, they decide to wreck it from the inside out. Trevor says, â€Å"We’d be like worms, don’t you see, in an apple.† (pg. 12) However, mid construction the old man, Old Misery, comes home unexpected and is locked away until the job is finished. The ending displays Old Misery sobbing as his house is destroyed and the lorry that was around ended the story by laughing saying â€Å"There’s nothing personal but you got to admit it’s funny.† (pg. 22) This is actually the exact opposite reaction of what Lord of The Flies displayed because even though Mr. Thomas was sobbing at his loss similar to Ralph’s reaction, the Lorry laughed at the comedy of the situation. These stories all depict children doing things that typically we would not expect to see in society. However, the lack of a society in both novels has allowed behavior of this magnitude to occur. These stories show us that though they are different kinds of crimes and in different context, society is what can be considered the common thread through both stories. Society and it’s influence can really effect the people that are in it and if you are in a society that doesn’t provide a positive structure, you could display the actions seen in Lord of The Flies or The Destructors.