A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Essay -- A Very Old Man with Enormo

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The fictional tale entitled A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is an intriguing story which is expressed very well in the title. The story is about just that, an old man with wings. The only aspect that the title fails to point out is that he is an angel. I find the story to be somewhat interesting; however, it isn’t exactly hard to put down.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The one thing about this story that stands out the most, is the author’s use of tone. This is the main aspect of the story that jumps out at you. The usage of tone and detail really works to the story’s advantage. The first paragraph alone is filled with descriptions that really set the tone and make you feel like you are there.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This paragraph does a good job of setting the tone. It gives you the feeling that you are in an old, small town. One of those little towns where everyone knows each other and the adventures and gossip of the school children travels town wide.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As the story goes on, the characters begin wondering why the angel is in there presence. Was he in the middle of a flight and was forced to land because of the weather? Or was he in front of their house because he was coming to help the family? They assumed that he was coming to help the child.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"He’s an angel,† she told them. â€Å"He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Once everyone gets settled in the fact that an angel has crash landed in their town, they start to wonder what they sho... ...n for the family and all of the talk about the angel is quickly intercepted by a lady who is cursed with the body of a tarantula. After a while of everyone ignoring the angel, his wings heal. One day Elisenda looks out the kitchen window to see the angel fly away. He is struggling to fly because of his sore wings, but eventually he disappears in the horizon. This finishes the story with the feeling of a positive tone. Everything seems to be a little bit brighter at this point. Not only did the angel manage to recover and go back to wherever he came from, but at this point the family was quite wealthy because of the money brought in by the tourists who had come to see the fallen angel. There is no use in wondering if the angel came for a purpose anymore, his presence helped to completely turn the family’s lifestyle around. Their new mansion was very beautiful. It had gardens and balconies, as well as nets to keep the crabs in. This kept the crabs from getting into the house and making everything dirty, which was mentioned earlier in the story as the reason that the child was sick in the first place. I guess Elisenda was right when she said that the angel had come to help the baby.

“Old Man at the Bridge” by Ernest Hemingway Essay

â€Å"Old Man at the Bridge† was inspired by Hemingway’s travels as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Old Man at the Bridge demonstrates the power of narrative art. It takes a small, ordinary detail in a situation and by the art of story-telling transforms it into a powerful story about the tragedy of war. The old man becomes a symbol of the countless civilian victims of war– those â€Å"without politics.† The old man is going to die at the bridge–displaced, disoriented, alone. He’s not a cat, nor a dove, but a goat–who was â€Å"only taking care of animals.† The themes of the story are ‘many innocent people become victims of war’, ‘even when exposed to the atrocities of war some people do not lose their basic humanity.’ The story is laid in a war zone at a pontoon bridge across the Ebro river. The time is Easter Sunday 1938. Such geographical names as San Carlos, Ebro contr ibute to the credibility of the story. A first person narrator who tells the story through careful description, reportage of dialogue and insightful commentary about the old man. The narrator makes the reader see the old man. His engagement with him suddenly brings the old man into focus, he emerges out of the faceless, voiceless crowd. The Narrator’s consciousness of the approaching enemy â€Å"contact† is used to create the dramatic tension between the immobility of the old man and the coming destruction as he constantly observes the movement of carts across the bridge while talking. The narrator’s conversation allows the old man to have a voice. The voiceless victims speak through the old man. The story does not really go in sequence. It starts off in the present, then goes back and forth between past and present throughout the whole story. The central character is the 76 yr. old man, a war refugee who has been uprooted and displaced by the war. The old man is â€Å"without politics,† who was only taking care of his animals, but who has had his world destroyed. He is disoriented, confused and disconnected. He has retreated into his isolated world in which he can only cling to his obsessive thoughts about his animals, and is too tired to go any further. He will die at the bridge–another nameless innocent victim of war. The Scout is the narrator who creates the story of the old man at the bridge. Through his telling of the story, he gradually articulates who the old man is and what he represents. The Scout at the beginning is the impersonal narrator who sees the old man and decides to  engage him in conversation. By asking the old man questions about himself, the Scout gradually understands the situation of the old man. At the beginning he thinks the old man is just resting so he encourages him to move on. In the course of his conversation he realizes the old man is disoriented, displaced and that he will not be able to move on, but that he will likely die at the bridge. The scout who begins as a detached observer comes to the painful realization that â€Å"there was nothing to do about him.† And he ends with the bitterly ironic observation about Easter Sunday and the old man’s luck, which is no luck. The old man will soon cross that final bridge. There is one symbol of hope in the story. At the beginning of the narrator’s conversation with the old man, the birds the old man was looking after were referred to as â€Å"pigeons,† but by the end of the story, they become â€Å"doves,† symbols of peace in wartime. The narrator makes this switch as he asks, â€Å"Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?† It is unclear whether this is a slip of the tongue, because the narrator is clearly distracted by the impending arrival of the enemy, or if Hemingway is attempting to give the image of the birds flying away an even more positive tint by referring to them as symbols of peace.

Environmental Policies Of Liberi A Socioeconomic...

Environmental Policies of Liberia: Perspectives from a Socioeconomic Investigation Liberia, commonly known for diseases such as Ebola and cholera and also known as home to such notorious figures as Joshua Milton Blahyi, a mass murderer and cannibal, is a nation recovering from two recent civil wars on the northwest shore of Africa. The total landmass, consisting of 111,369 square kilometers; is roughly the size of the state of Virginia. In addition to having a long stretch of coastline along the North Atlantic Ocean, about 13% of the landmass is aquatic. With this in mind, the population density based on June estimates is 4,092,310, per square kilometer of usable landmass, which equates to about 43 persons per square kilometer of usable†¦show more content†¦Liberia’s Current Environmental Policy In 2003, Civil war plagued Liberia formed The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA’s mission statement is as follows: The Environmental Protection Agency of the Republic of Liberia is the principle authority for implementing the national environmental policy and sustainable management law for the protection of natural resources in Liberia. As a commitment to the environment, the Government of Liberia established the EPA in 2003 under the EPA Act.The Agency became a fully functioning entity in 2006 with a board of directors and Policy Council. As the lead government environment protection Agency, the EPA has been charged with the executive authority over all environmental activities and programmes relating to environmental management in Liberia (The National Environmental 2003). The agency is empowered with a list of 25 functions; none of which seem to be implemented. Furthermore; it would seem that the agency is currently of little to no use for reasons that will be addressed later. These reasons are despite the fact that the organization has clearly stated its ultimate purpose as such: It is the continuing responsibility of NECOLIB to use all practicable means possible, consistent with other essential components of national policy, to improve and coordinate government s plans, functions, programs and resources to the end that the nation may: 1.Fulfill the