To What Extent Curleys Wife a Victim in Of Mice and Men Essay

In Of Mice & Men, the character Curley’s Wife is depicted as flirtatious, promiscuous, and insensitive. However, her husband Curley sees her as only a possession. Most of the workers at the ranch see her as a tart, whereas Slim, the peaceful and god-like figure out of all the men, see her as lonely. This answer will tell us to which extent, is Curley’s wife a victim, whether towards her flirtatious behaviour, or to everyone’s representation of her. The character of Curley’s Wife is very hard to unravel, as throughout the book, Steinbeck’s representation of women through characters such as George and Candy, is very harsh. This is because the sociological opinion at that time was that they were either, mothers, sisters, or prostitutes, as the audience soon see, George and other ranch workers refer to her as â€Å"bitch† â€Å"loo loo† and â€Å"tramp†. There were also a growing number of prostitutes during the Great Depression period, as they would offload their services to those whom were able to pay and have some decent income during the Depression. Other aspects that may make Curley’s Wife seem like a tart, is Curley’s â€Å"Glove Fulla’ Vaseline†. Curley literally keeps a glove full of Vaseline, in order to keep his hand soft, possibly for a sexual act. Curley boasts to Candy that the hand is for his wife, which tells us that she gives him consent to do these acts to her, and also, Curley’s nerve to inform fellow workers about his glove shows that he believes that his own wife is a tart, which is very controversial today, but back then, women were seen as nothing more than possessions, yours to do what you will. George informs Lennie to avoid Curley’s Wife at all costs, and not to talk to her, because of her promiscuous behaviour, he believes t... ...ars for the fidelity of his wife as he believes there is a chance that Slim could be with her, despite his good nature. This makes the audience believe that Curley knows his wife is capable of anything, and that he would rather have her under his control. However, the poignant side to Curley’s Wife’s victimisation is when she is victimised due to the stereotypical image of women, either mother or prostitute. This adds a dark shadow over her complicated character, because the way she dresses, and the shoes she wears, especially at the ranch of all places, is unnatural. Also, her manipulative ways ironically cost her life, as she was probably toying with Lennie being mentally handicapped. Overall, I believe that the way that Curley’s Wife has cast her impression upon everyone, has eventually made her a victim of society, the ranch workers, and most importantly, herself.

Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne Rebecca Townsend Hum2235 Dr. Hoover Edison College Fall 2012 Townsend 1 The painting of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne took more than a decade to complete. It was created in the 16th century, in Florence Italy. A young master artist declined the original commission for The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and suggested Leonardo da Vinci. The monks who commissioned the painting, an artifact of Christ’s family tree, gave Leonardo a workroom.The figures in the picture are of Saint Anne representing the grandmother, the Virgin as mother (Mary/Madonna), the Child as Christ, and the lamb as the future sacrifice of Jesus. They are closely intertwined in the painting showing their tight bond in Christian History. Da Vinci could not separate Christianity from his work. Leonardo in his painting as well as in his life seemed to cultivate a sense of mystery (Capra XIX). The monks of the Florentine Santissima Annunziata commissioned Leonardo to pa int The Virgin and Child with St. Anne as an altarpiece for their high altar. In his typical fashion, Leonardo did not complete the work on time.The monks, eager for their altarpiece had to commission another artist to complete the work. The monks approached Filippo Lippi to complete the work Leonardo had started. Filippo Lippi was the artist that painted Madonna and Child with Two Angels in 1465. Lippi was the artist who had initially rejected the commission suggesting the monks give the project to Leonardo. Lippi considered Leonardo to be a superior artist. Lippi agreed to finish the project but died before its completion. After Lippi died, the monks had a young Florence artist named Perugino finally complete the piece.At last, the monks of the Santissima Annuziata in Florence had their painting for their high altar. Some consider the painting to be a treasure of esoteric and occult wonders. Some are fascinated by the sight of St. Anne supporting her heavy daughter on her knee, wi th no visible means of support (Budny36). Townsend 2 It’s hard to find any evidence of Leonardo’s beliefs in his paintings, since there are no written records that have survived if they ever existed. Leonardo believed that a good artist must also be a good scientist in order to best understand and describe nature.The humanistic, naturalistic, and scientific aspects of Leonardo’s life and work are not always clear because he was an original Renaissance man [Leonardo’s art, scientific investigations, technological inventiveness, and humanistic philosophy were all bound] together. During the 16th century he made numerous drawings and sketches with different themes that eventually lead to this famous artifact The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. Various designs still exist of the version painted in 1510. Leonardo could not fuse the two qualities he desired: an abstract formula and the immediacy of life.The final painting now hangs in the Louvre in Paris. The painting is a complex and masterful synthesis of his previous variations (Capra 105). In some research it is stated that this artifact is unfinished, even though he had worked on this painting possibly for eight or nine years (Bramly 321). Leonardo had a habit of never finishing his work. Leonardo had drawn many different cartoons painting and sketches leading up to the final painting of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. One of his cartoon sketches had St. John the Baptist kneeling next to Christ (Capra 105). Leonardo switched St.John to a lamb in the final painting. The lamb (sacrificial animal) represents passion suffering in Christ’s destiny. It is not known why Leonardo replaced St. John, who was Christ’s cousin, with a lamb. He painted the Christ child as being about a year old. It looks as if he is slipping out of his mother’s hands and trying to grab hold of his destiny, the lamb. The lamb, being embraced by Christ has his head bent, while its tail a nd hind legs are clearly indicated to be in a comfortable place (Johannes 86). Townsend 3 Leonardo put his thoughts to paper and painted through, light, shadow, and geometry, using three dimensions.Da Vinci declared, â€Å"There are three kinds of perspective. † The first is concerned with the reason for the diminution of things as they form from the eye. Second contains the way in which colors vary as they form the eye. The third and last declaration of how objects should appear less distinct the more distant they are. Examples, perspective of disappearance (Capra 219). Perspective in painting was his destiny. From the pyramidal construction to the fact that only three feet belonging to the figures are visible, everything in the picture seems to be threefold.In fact in this painting, Leonardo was pursuing a theological meditation on the destiny of Christ, which had begun in his early painting Virgin of the Rocks (Bramly 320). Most research indicates the rocks, mountain strea ms, and escarpments of his childhood made up his private landscape in his paintings (Bramly 86). Leonardo depicts the women as sister like in age even though they are indeed mother and daughter. Saint Anne, the mother of Virgin and Child, sits with her daughter on her lap. The Virgin is half rising from her sitting position and she appears to want to restrain her daughter from separating the Child and lamb (Kemp 273).It is unusual for Mary to be portrayed in her mother’s lap. The painting may have more meaning to it than the Passion of Christ. Saint Anne perhaps represents the Church in this painting. Art critics have admired the unity of the three figures, the freedom of movement, the sweet and melting quality of the faces, and the mountains in the background. The family figures almost blend into each other in their rhythmic balance, with Leonardo’s dreamy mountains, foreshadowing the landscape of the Madonna, in the background (Capra 105). What better way to describe the bond of maternal love uniting three generations?Leonardo had written in a short note in one of his journals, The Virgin and Child Townsend 4 with Saint Anne means â€Å"the glorification of motherhood†. The Virgin and Saint Anne in this masterpiece seem to be about the same age in the painting, with their two bodies merging almost into one. Leonardo gave the child two mothers both graced with the blessed smile of happiness. To the viewer’s eye, the painting may imply to evoke his thoughts on his childhood which the painter wanted our thought as childhood had been divided between his real mother and his stepmother.He may have united them in his mind as he did in his painting, a picture that no one could have painted except of Leonardo De Vinci (Bramly 318). Both women, Saint Anne and the Virgin, have dedicated their lives to God, which had touch Da Vinci. One research source stated that in the painting Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, the Virgin is designed first, as she is in so many of his drawing, and the landscape seems to flow from her. The Painting is designed by Da Vinci in a diagonal, where we formerly saw a pronounced swing down from top right at the crown of the tree, through St .Anne’s left arm and elbow, through the successive arm/knee/arm/knee configuration of the Virgin, down to the placement of St. Anne’s feet on the then more brightly â€Å"spotlighted† left section of the rocky foreground. Against that progression, we saw in the earlier state how Leonardo had orchestrated a countervailing upper left to the bottom right sweep through the principal heads and the arms of the Virgin and the Child, down to the rump and tail of the lamb. This movement was decisively echoed and enforced by the parallel diagonals of the Virgin’s right leg and St.Anne’s left leg (Johannes 3). It is stated that Saint Anne’s left arm was painted the same way in another Leonardo da Vinci painting. Townsend 5 Leo nardo’s composition of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is perhaps the one which, of all his designs, he contemplated the longest and in great depth. Perhaps, he felt attracted by the particular formal and iconographical problems presented by the subject. When we were asked to select an artifact to research and write about, the painting of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne caught my eye.The love and compassion in the women’s eyes and their expressions towards the innocent child reminds me of the love I have for my own children. Although much research has been done to discover why Leonardo painted the picture the way he did, it is still unclear. It is unclear why the women appear to be the same age and why he substituted St. John with the lamb for the final painting. Research is still being done on his journals and notes. Leonardo, who was left handed, wrote all his notes in mirror writing, from right to left (Capra, 27).Perhaps further analysis of his notes and sketches will reveal more insight into the painting of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. [pic] Work Citied Bramly Serge. Leonardo the Artist and the Man. Penguin Group. Great Britain. 1994. Print. Budny Virginia. The Art Buletin. Vol. 65, No. 1 (Mar. , 1983), pp. 34-50. Print. Capra Fritjof. The Science of Leonardo. New York. Anchor. December 2008. Print Johannas Nathan. Miteilungen. 36. Bd. H. ? (1992), pp. 85-102. Article. Kemp Martin. Leonardo on Painting. Yale Nota Bene. Yale University. 2001. Print. Marani Pietro C. Leonardo Da Vinci. Abrams Harry N. New York: 2000. Print.

Experimental research and computational research on working memory and visual attention. The WritePass Journal

Experimental research and computational research on working memory and visual attention. Introduction Experimental research and computational research on working memory and visual attention. IntroductionReferences:Related Introduction Psychology is the scientific study of our behaviour and experience (Hayes, 1999, p.1). Through research psychologists can determine the way human beings behave and the experiences they share around them. The scientific methods used in the study of human behaviour and mind have been undertaken through neuropsychological case studies, experimental research and computational modelling, in which they formulate theories, test hypotheses through observation and experiment, and analyse the findings with statistical techniques that help them identify important findings. The following explanation will highlight and describe working memory and visual attention, and how psychologists have sought to understand through two of the following research methods: experimental research and computational modelling. Working memory basically refers to the brain ability to temporarily store information. Visual attention as describe by Triesman et al. (1984), the features that are attractors of covert visual attention are those parts of an image that differ from all the other parts by a single aspect. Psychologists have sought to understand both working memory and visual attention through experimental research and computational modelling. The experimental research was first set up by Wilhelm Wundt in his laboratory in 1879. His first researches were based on visual illusions and perception. In 1885, Herman Ebbinghaus published the first experimental research on memory and after behaviourism was eliminated, the cognitivist argued that all studies connected to psychology and the undertaken of the mind and human behaviour must be conducted through empirical means. A move from the empirical means saw the introduction of computer systems as new ideas for the processing of information. These computer programs were developed and would carry out perceptual processes such as the recognition of complex stimuli. These programs made use of feature detector systems and this discovery of feature detectors can be regarded as an example of different approaches to cognition being combined, with contributions from both neuroscience and computer modelling. On visual attention, there are experiments, which has been conducted by Navon (1977) and proposed that it may be the norm to process the global attributes conducted for visual attention is the one in which subjects to attend to a physical property such as colour or spatial location. There are other experiments like the visual search task. One computational modelling of the visual attention research method is the one conducted by Neisser (1964, 67) and experimented on the considerable variation in the ease which we can identify a given object from other object. Neisser modelled the visual search task by having subjects search among an array of letters represented in paper or on a computer screen for a specified target. The relationship between targets and distracters could then be manipulated. On working memory, psychologists have performed many experiments, which sought to explain how memory is organised, and works within the brain by using the working memory model, which was provided by Baddley, A. and Hitch, G.   It has been possible in recent years to use magnetic and positron scanning devices to observe what is happening in different parts of the brain while people are doing various mental tasks. Additional evidence about brain functioning is gathered by observing the performance of people whose brains have been damaged in identifiable ways. Therefore, in cognitive psychology experiments and theory development are frequently aided by developing computational models of the behaviour of groups of neurons as in the working memory. According to Groome, D. (2006, p.132) working memory is define as the process of storing information and experiences for possible retrieval at some point in the future. This ability to create and bring back memories is very important when it comes to the understanding of cognition and this helps our ability as human beings to function properly. Our memories allow us to store information about the world so that we can understand and deal with future situations on the basis of our experience. Encoding refers to getting information into the system by translating it into a neural code that your brain processes. What happens this a little life when you type on a computer keyboard, as your key strokes are translated into on electrical code that the computer can understand and process storage involves retaining information over time. Once in the system, information must be filed away and saved, as happens when a computer stores information temporarily in the RAM (Random Access Memory) and permanently on a hard drive. Finally, retrieval refers to processes that access stored information. On a computer, retrieval occurs when you give a software command ( e.g: open file) that transfers information from the hard drive back to the RAM and the screen, where you can scroll through it. Keep in mind, however, that this analogy between human and computer is crude. For one thing, people routinely forget and distort information and sometime â€Å"remember† events that never occurre d According to Loftus Bernstein (2005), has described human memory is highly dynamic, and its complexity cannot be fully captured by any existing information processing model. Encoding, storage and retrieval represent what our memory system does with information. Before exploring these processes more fully, let us examine some basic components of memory. The fascinating thing about this unilateral visual neglect is that these effects occur even though the pathways from the receptors to the central nervous system for the neglected information remain intact. Treisman has proposed that separate systems analyze objects different visual features. Through parallel processing, these systems all process information at the same time and we can attend selectively to one feature by effectively blocking the further processing of the others ( Treisman Gelade, 1980). In studies, employing Treisman’s visual search tasks (also called feature search tasks), participants look at a display of different objects on a computer screen, searching for ones, called targets that differ from the others in only one feature. The visual attention search task is one of the most widely used measures in the study of visual perception and attention. A work centred on the locating of targets or items among distracters and the differences in visual attention stimulus between the feature search and the conjunctive search resulted to a reaction time that varies due to the variable number of distracters in which a search item could be found. The research findings were based on the above factor. Treisman and Gelade (1980) provided the Feature Integration Theory (FIT) on focused attention that embraces the conceptualisation of perception of features and objects also known as the visual search method. In trying to integrate the two features-feature search and conjunctive search, Treisman and Gelade (1980) maintained that hence in the process, the primary visual features should be presented in two separate feature maps and in the end of the process integrated in a saliency map and accessed to direct attention to an ar ea where items could easily be seen. In all the visual search tasks, which have been provided for our understanding of visual attention, was the pre-attentive stage that processes targets and non-targets differentially and was provided through the works of Neisser (1967), that in this hypothesis the separable features are independently coded and in parallel through detecting multiple target.   The method is however considered to be very slower mechanism through the ‘focal attentive’ stage. Neisser (1967) approach notes that visual search for dissimilar letters was faster than for similar letters in which he concluded there is no need to attend to background letter in the lists as letters. All what is required is to look for features in a background of rounded features. If background items are similar to the target, it is necessary to consider more features and this would take longer. Neisser also argues that in visual search where only targets required response, the non-targets are rejected in the preliminary stage and allow targets to pass through and be identified. Thus, Neisser concluded that there is a pre-attentive stage of visual processing which allows us to detect a target without having consciously attended to and decode each background item. Another claim on this theory is about pre-attentive grouping process, which suggests that features within a given map can be formed into coherent clusters. But this view was rejected when Quinlan, (2003) mentioned that in the first stage of the visual search task the position of features from the one object doesn’t need to correspond with one another in a coherent fashion, because coordination of information also does not exist between the different feature maps. As this method fails, it requires an additional process for such positional information to be cross-referenced and accessed. References: Treisman A. and Gelade, G. (1980). A feature integration theory of attention Cognitive Psychology, 12(1), p.97-136. Richard Gross (2005). The Science of mind and behaviour in psychology. 4th Ed. London Michael W. Passer and Ronald E. Smith   (2008).   Science of mind and behaviour. 4th Ed. New York. Michael S. Gazzaniga, Todd F. Heatherton and Diane F. Halpern   (2010). Psychological Science. 3th Ed.   New York: Psychology Press. Nick Braisby and Angus Gellatly (2005). Cognitive Psychology. New York. [/level-freee-rstricted]