Death Of A Salesman And Biff Essays - English-language Films

Death Of A Salesman And Biff The Importance of Biff's Role in "Death of a Salesman" The play "Death of a Salesman", by Arthur Miller, follows the life of Willy Loman, a self-deluded salesman who lives in utter denial, always seeking the "American Dream," and constantly falling grossly short of his mark. The member's of his immediate family, Linda, his wife, and his two sons, Biff and Happy, support his role. Of these supportive figures, Biff's character holds the most importance, as Biff lies at the center of Willy's internal conflicts and dreams , and Biff is the only one in the play who seems to achieve any growth. Biff's role is essential to the play because he generates the focus of Willy's conflict for the larger part, his own conflict is strongly attributed to Willy, and finally, he is the only character who manages growth or a sense of closure in the play. Willy is forever plagued by the fact that Biff has not"gone anywhere in life." Biff, who is already in his thirties, is still drifting from place to place, job to job, most recently work as a farmhand. Biff is a source of endless frustration for Willy, who always dreams of Biff being incredibly successful in the business world. When Willy has memories of Biff as a boy, he is completely obsessed with whether or not Biff is well-liked; however, he is completely oblivious to things like Biff's having stolen a football from school, and the fact that Biff is failing his math class. "Be liked and you will never want," says Willy(1363). The amount of aggravation generated by Biff's lack of motivation and desire to be "successful" makes Biff's role extremely important The play also spends quite a bit of time focusing on Biff's own conflict, which is basically his father. In his youth, he shared his father's great aspirations for himself. He was captain of the football team, and had plans for college and then a career in business afterwards. Biff was absolutely obsessed with pleasing his father, who was flawless in his eyes. All of this changed, however, when Biff found his father in a Boston hotel room with another woman. After that, Biff "laid down and died like a hammer hit him "(1392). Biff had never dreamed for himself, being concerned only with fulfilling his father's wishes. When Biff realized that Willy was not the great man that he thought he was, his dreams became nothing to him, as had his father. And so, Biff became a drifter, living only on a day to day basis. Lastly, Biff is the only character who achieves any real growth in the play. Throughout the play Linda has remained static, always steadfastly supporting Willy, and believing he is incapable of flaw. At Willy's funeral, Happy says, "I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have-to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him"(1415). His father died deluding himself, and apparently Happy is going to do the same. It is only Biff who realizes "[Willy] had all the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong...The man never knew who he was"(1415). Biff has accepted the fact that he was not meant to be a salesman and must seek another path in life. Having made these observations, it quickly becomes clear that Biff's character is as vital to the play as is Willy's. Without Biff there would be no play. Therefore, Biff's role in "Death of a Salesman" is important because he is the focus of Willy's attention and distress, his own conflict is based on his father, and Biff actually grows at the end of the play, which is important to any story.

Buenos Aires essays

Buenos Aires essays The region now known Buenos Aires had outgrown Spains political and economic domination in 1776. By May 25, 1810 a revolution broke out because of the discontent with Spanish interference. Soon in 1816 it led to an independence from Spanish rule. Independence revealed the furious regional discrepancies which Spanish rule had blocked out. Conservative landowners that were supported by the gauchos and rural working class were the Federalist of the interior. The Federalist mainly advocated provincial autonomy. The cosmopolitan city dwellers who welcomed the injection of European capital, immigrants and ideas were the Unitarists of Buenos Aires. The Unitarists upheld Buenos Aires central authority. After the era of rule by Federalist Juan Manuel Rosas, a new period of growth and prosperity was growing with the Unitarist constitution of 1853. Foreign investment and trade were hallmarks of the new liberalism due to European immigration. The Pampas was given over to the cultivation of cereal crops, and sheep were introduced. A foreign interest is the road to growth with in the economy. Like wise as the Europeans invested their time in trade and investment then British should too invest their time as much as the Europeans. Argentina remains a safe destination for travelers and from my perspective it was very much so. Despite the many corruptions that occurred in Argentina, the challenge now is to pull itself out of the hole and avoid further chaos. The past is behind us and the future is ahead which our focus is where it needs to be. The other major Latin American states I visited were also Mexico. The most appealing aspect to Mexico is its advantage to the Mexican economy. Mexico is one of the worlds most strategically positioned countries. Its on a northern border with the U.S. and the southeast with Belize and Guatemala. Mexico faces the fast growing markets of the Pacific Rim on one coastline, while on the ...

Police and Ethical duties to apprehend Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Police and Ethical duties to apprehend - Essay Example In keeping with the Queensland, Australia Police code of ethics, I am responsible for being fair. I am also obligated to comply with the law strictly. This is a difficult scenario as everyone has an excuse for their behavior. The elderly man may claim to need the marijuana for medicinal purposes but that is not the point. The issue at and is that he is in possession of an illegal substance and it is my job to apprehend him according to the law. I will have no choice but to take him into custody and from there, investigation of his doctor’s orders and prescription can be assessed. If I do not apprehend the man, I am abiding perhaps by the portion of the ethics code that instructs law enforcement officials to be fair. If I however, do apprehend the man, I am abiding by the letter of the law which is my duty. I would apply the SELF test to this situation and ask myself first if the decision to apprehend the man would withstand â€Å"scrutiny† from the community and the service? I fell that if I apprehend the man, I will receive less scrutiny than if I do not apprehend the man. The Australian drug laws are rigid and very clearly have no tolerance for possession. If the marijuana is given to the man by a doctor, that can be established later. For now, the right decision is apprehension of the man in possession of marijuana without regard to his age. Next I will need to ask myself if my decision will â€Å"ensure† compliance with the oath that I took as a member of the police. I feel that my decision to apprehend would surely comply with that oath as I am to uphold the law and the law states that marijuana is illegal. If I do not apprehend the man, I feel that my decision would not â€Å"ensure† such compliance. Next, the question is whether or not my decision is in fact â€Å"lawful†. It is clearly illegal to have marijuana on one’s possession. Regardless of the reason

Discuss transcultural nursing in relation to case management in the Research Paper

Discuss transcultural nursing in relation to case management in the substance abuse hispanic client - Research Paper Example All the hospital practitioners and nurses ought to recognize that diversity does exist among patients including members of the healthcare team (Powell & Tahan, 2010). This paper discusses the trans-cultural nursing that relates to treatment of substance abuse among the Hispanic population. The discussion will address the substance use problem and its consequences among the Hispanic population Hispanic Population Hispanics involves the largest minority group in the United States with a percentage of 14.2. They comprise young people with 40 percent under the age of 21 years. In addition, they have a proportionately low-income level with 23 percent living under the poverty line. They also have a low level of educational attainments with many of them not finishing high school. The Hispanic growth rate constitutes 3.6 percent per year. Therefore, the Hispanic population is young, rapidly growing ethnic and cultural group in the United States. The growing population is due to the relative youth and the high birth rates including the immigration (Easterby et al., 2012). The phenomenon of drinking might be because of strict cultural sanctions against drinking by women, which is typical in the entire Latin America. Much research shows that there is the preservation of cultural norms of the countries of their origins, and hence, they resist the pressure to engage in the substance use. The patterns of substance abuse amongst the Hispanics might have the influence of acculturation and the countries of origin. In fact, one of the studies based on the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey demonstrates that substance abuse amongst the Hispanics increased with acculturation. On the other hand, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration gives information on the treatment completion, treatment stay and the discharge demographics. Furthermore, the primary substance of abuse varies according to the Hispanic origin, with the Puerto Rican and the Cuban- American women reported being opiate users while the Mexican-American women were more methamphetamine users (O. Doody & C. Doody, 2012). Case Management Case management approaches might be quite useful in having control of substance abuse, for instance, in older women of the Hispanic population. One can observe the alcohol dependency in older women when they are present at an acute care medical setting with such complaints as memory loss and chronic pain among other signs exacerbated by alcohol. The signs should not be for normal consequences of aging. When such occurs, it calls for intervention and discussion of abstinence including the treatment options. The nurse should facilitate treatment, which is respectful, supportive and non-confrontational. The providers should gather the personal information of the client from family members, clergy, and neighbors. The nurse should be direct and honest and should manage to explain that assistance is quite available, and the family member should assist her in communicating when he or she is from a different culture. In managing the case, well-coordinated approaches that deal with the abuse treatment for Hispanic older women should include an interdisciplinary treatment team with the family involved in a plan of individualized support services. The providers sh

Evaluate the effectiveness of logistics management as a method of Essay

Evaluate the effectiveness of logistics management as a method of gaining competative advantage within Youngs Seafood , Grimsby and how this relates to the wider supply chain - Essay Example Further, the paper also discusses how this concept relates to the Supply Chain Management. Logistics is defined as â€Å"the time-related positioning of resources†. A good logistics supply chain would include the right resources in the right place, at the right time, right quality/quantity and at the right cost. It took some time for the company - Young’s Sea Food to accept logistics as a management process. Most of their competitors have already established this sector as one of the foundation stones to deliver diverse services and products while aiming high profit margins and customer satisfaction. Today, logistics management is acclaimed as a combining process that provides information networks and necessary infrastructure essential for the development and functioning of global supply chains. The company - Young’s Sea Food has already taken various initiatives such as real time manufacturing and distribution, supply chain engineering, efficient consumer response systems and the lean models. The main aim of the company management is to search for new levels of supply chain efficiency and integration. Supply chain collaboration remained an elusive goal for the management. The company’s management has recognized that the future to competitive edge is to define internal improvements and plan far outside the frontiers of the normally envisioned enterprises. In today’s global and volatile market and with ever increasing competitors for Young’s Sea Food, the consumer demands are rising by the minute. It is now acknowledged as a strategic necessity, to forge partnerships beyond geographical and industry-vertical boundaries. Collaborative planning systems are providing the capabilities for accelerating the co-management of planning processes and effici ent sharing of information. Logistics collaboration and sharing of infrastructure needs to become a reality for the company in order gain an edge over other market

Age and Gender Differences on Fear of Crime

Age and Gender Differences on Fear of Crime The current study aimed to investigate age and gender effects on fear of crime and their relationships with attitude towards prisoner and crime, life satisfaction, living arrangement and religion in a Chinese sample. 170 undergraduate and postgraduate students, with a mean age of 21.9 years, participated in this study. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire on fear of crime. In general, women reported significantly greater fear of crime than men. A factor analysis was performed and two factors were extracted: fear of being cheated and fear of physical harm. An age-gender interaction effect was found after controlling the variable of attitude towards prisoner. Results indicated that older females had higher levels of fear of being cheated than males. Yet, gender and age differences in fear of fraud victimizations are a largely unexplored area. Additional research is needed to examine how womens fear of being cheated varies with age. Introduction Fear of crime has received considerable attention in the criminological studies. Over the last few decades, research has been carried out to explore how fear of crime is explained and handled by society. Information about fear of crime not only help us to understand and interpret what fear of crime meant for individuals and societies, but also facilitate government to develop active plans to tackle publics fear. Anxieties about crime may lead to behavioral adaptation, e.g. taking precautions against crime and avoiding certain places. Nonetheless, public anxieties about crime may also have negative consequences for the individual and for society. For example, they may exacerbate the impact of crime by damaging an individuals quality of life or may affect the community by deteriorating a shared sense of trust, cohesion, and social control (Jackson, 2006). The concept of fear of crime and its causation is widely examined in the criminological field, but there is a lack of agreement on the definition of fear of crime. Fear of crime may involve two different concepts: an evaluative component and an emotional component (Skogen, 1984). For instance, Hollway and Jefferson (1997) referred crime fear as irrational response in which the rational, calculating individuals who routinely miscalculate their true risk of crime; whereas Ferraro (1995) suggested that fear of crime is an emotional reaction of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person associates with crime. Past research has identified a number of factors which appear to make a contribution to fear, such as age, gender, race, vulnerability, neighbourhood cohesion, personal knowledge of crime and victimization, confidence in police and criminal justice systems, perception of risk, and assessment of offence seriousness (Box, Hale and Andrews, 1988). However, the current study wil l focus mainly on age and gender effects on fear of crime. Gender and Age Effects It is well-documented that women are more fearful of becoming a victim of crime than men despite the fact that they are less often victimized by serious violent crime (Pain, 2001; Fetchenhauer and Buunk, 2005). Over the past decades, researchers have proposed different approaches to resolve the fear victimization paradox: (1) hidden victimization of women; (2) gender tendencies of women to recall victimization experience, and to generalize fear from one context to another; (3) vulnerability of women; and (4) male discount of fear. Most crime surveys have shown that the levels of violence against women (e.g. domestic violence) are far higher than men; therefore it has been argued that women are not irrationally fearful of crime. It is because women and elderly under-report their actual victimization, and thus they appear to be less victimized (Pain, 2001). However, some have suggested that women tend to generalize the actual experience of victimization across spatial contexts than men (Pain, 1995; Farraro, 1995). Warr (1984) found that fear of sexual assault operated as a master offense among women and their fear of sexual assault influenced fear of nonpersonal crimes, such as burglary. Yet, still others reported that males often discount their fear of crime (Smith and Torstensson, 1997). Previous literature has demonstrated that males are suppressed by the perception that it is not socially acceptable to express ones fear; and when men are being perfectly honest, they may actually be more afraid of crime than women (Sutton and Farrall, 2005). On the other hand, the vulnerability hypothesis suggested that women are physically weaker than men and therefore they are less able to defend themselves against (typically male) perpetrators. A considerable amount of studies have also shown that that gender difference in fear of crime often reflects gender difference in physical vulnerability (e.g. Smith and Torstensson, 1997). Apart from gender, age is another important factor that predicts fear of crime. However, the definition of elderly varies across different studies (Chadee and Ditton, 2003). For example, Sundeen and Mathieu (1976) defined elderly as 52 years or above, whereas Warr (1984) suggested 66 years and over. Yet the most common definition of old is aged 65 or above. Since there has been no agreement on the definition of what constitutes old, mixed results were found on age. Some researchers argued that older people report higher level of fear than young people (e.g. On and Kim, 2009). In contrast, others suggested that elderly people are less likely to be victimized and thus they have the lowest level of fear (e.g. LaGrange and Ferraro, 1989; Chadee and Ditton, 2003). On and Kim (2009) explained that older people (aged 65 and over) often experience a drop in social networks (e.g. withdrawal from work, loss of close family members, increasing physical and psychological fragility), and their so cial isolation or feeling of loneliness intensifies fear of crime. Recently, it has been proposed that the relationship between fear of crime and age is non-linear and varies with crime type (Moore and Shephred, 2007). Past research has shown two different inverted U-shaped patterns in fear of property loss and fear of personal harm. Fear of property crime peaked at some time during middle-age, whereas fear of personal harm decreased with age (Chadee and Ditton, 2003; Moore and Shepherd, 2007). The oldest age group (75 or above) exhibited the lowest levels of fear for both property crime and personal crime (Chadee and Ditton, 2003). Prior research has shown that gender and age often interact with one another in producing the fear of crime differences (Ortega and Myles, 1987; Haynie, 1998; Pain, 2001). Significant gender differences in fear are observed among younger people. Nonetheless, this gender-fear gap has narrowed as mens reported fear of crime has gradually increased over tim e while womens has remained stable (Haynie, 1998). Attitude towards prisoner and crime and life satisfaction Much research on fear of crime has been focused on the perceived risk of crime; little is known about how peoples attitude towards prisoners and quality of life link to their fear of crime. Informal social control, trust, and social cohesion are important factors that contributed to the feelings of security; hence, one might argue that fear of crime often reflects individuals life satisfaction and their perceptions of social control. Jackson (2006) puts forward the view that public attitudes toward crime raise fundamental sociological problems but with a twist: public perceptions of deviance, social order and social control (p.253) and he claimed that public perceptions of crime reveal how people conceive social order (including the norms, values, and morals that bind communities and constitute social glue) and what they see as hostile to that social (maybe specific groups or wider social changes regarding values and morals, ethnicity diversity, and transformations in the political a nd economic arenas) (p.261). Therefore, it has been suggested that high levels of community efficacy, social cohesion, and a tight social structure (with low levels of anonymity and distrust) might inhibit fear of crime (Farrall, Gray and Jackson, 2007). In the last decades, researchers have questioned the validity of previous studies on fear of crime. LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) criticized that the experimental designs of previous studies were problematic. First, it has been suggested that measures of crime risk are often mistaken for measures of crime fear. Second, several widely used crime survey do not measure fear of crime, in which implicit questions are used in crime survey to measure fear (e.g. how safe do you feel or would you feel being out alone in your neighborhood at night?) instead of explicit questions. Hence, LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) have developed an 11-itemed crime fear survey to overcome the above shortcomings. The current study aims to use LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) crime fear questionnaires to examine gender and age effects on fear of crime in a Chinese sample. Method Sample A total of 170 participants (77 males, 92 females and 1 without specifying gender) were recruited in this study. The sample consisted of both undergraduates and postgraduates. Participants aged from 18 to 48 year-old (M = 21.94; SD = 4.07). Descriptive statistics of the sample were presented in table 1.They joined this study on a voluntary basis. Instrument Attitudes towards Prisoners Scale (Melvin, Gramling, Gardner, 1985) This scale contains 36 items. Participants were asked to rate on a 5-point Likert Scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The scale had a satisfactory reliability level, with overall alpha = .91. Life Satisfaction Scale. Life Satisfaction Scale, a five-item-scale developed by Diener and his associates measured general satisfaction towards life (Diener et al., 1985; Larsen, Diener, Emmons, 1985; Pavot Diener, 1993). It was validated locally (Wang, Yuen, Slaney, 2009). Participants were asked to rate the items on a 7-point Likert Scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The overall alpha is satisfactory at .88. Fear of Crime Scale (Ferraro, 1996) The ten items of this scale were rated on a 10-point Likert scale, raning from 1 (not afraid at all ) to 10 (very afraid). Unlike the Attitude towards Prisoners Scale, the Fear of Crime Scale had not been validated locally, thus prior to any analysis, a set of validation procedures was performed. First, two items that could not match the current research purpose were removed: while the item being raped or sexually assaulted was removed due to its gender nonequivalence, the item having your car stolen was also removed because not many college students in Hong Kong owned their own cars. After removing the two items, the Kasier-Meyer-Oklin (KMO) and the Bartletts Test of Sphericity were performed to see if the originally factor structure could be employed in this study. The KMO value of the eight items was 0.80 and the Bartletts Test of Sphericity was significant (p Results Checking for Covariates Based on previous studies, life satisfaction, religion, and living arrangement are all possible covariates. In order to be classified as a covariate, these variables should correlate with a) any of the independent variables (age and gender) and b) any of the dependent variables (total fear of crime, fear of physical harm and fear of being cheated). Preliminary analyses indicated none of these variables satisfied the above conditions, so they would be excluded in subsequent analysis. Testing of Hypothesis Prior to analysis, all variables excluding gender were mean-centred. This was done to reduce any multicollinearity and to facilitate model estimation when main effects and interactive effects were both present (Aiken West, 1991). To compare the relative influences of age and gender on total fear of crime, fear of physical harm and fear of being cheated, three sets of hierarchical regression were performed. Attitude towards prisoners was first entered into the equation as a covariate, followed by age and gender; the Age X Gender interaction term was entered afterwards. Gender Difference in Fear of Crime: There was a main effect that gender had on all three types of crime fear, where female was always significantly more fearful than male (see Table 2). See table 3 for the mean and standard deviation of the three dependent variables in each gender group. Age Effect on Fear of Crime: While age positively correlated with fear of being cheated, no significant correlation was found between age and the other fear of crime constructs (see Table 4). Yet after controlling for attitude towards prisoner as the covariate, the predictive power of age on fear of being cheated disappeared (see Table 2). Age X Gender Interaction Effect on Fear of Crime: Significant Age X Gender interaction effects on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated were found. However, such interaction effect did not happen for fear of physical harm (see Table 2). To further investigate these significant interaction effects, two sets of hierarchical regression on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated were performed after splitting the sample into male and female subgroups. Attitude towards prisoners was first entered into the equation as a covariate, followed by age. After controlling for the covariate, age was no longer a predictor of total fear of crime for both gender groups. Yet for fear of being cheated, while it could be predicted by age for female (ÃŽÂ ² = .14, p Discussion The present study aimed to look at age and gender effects on fear of crime and their relationships with attitude towards prisoner and crime, life satisfaction, living arrangement and religion in a Chinese sample. In general, women reported higher average scores on fear than men among all aspects of crime, indicating that women were always more afraid of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured. Women in our sample also reported that they were most afraid of being raped or sexually assaulted, followed by fear of being murder and fear of being attacked by someone with a weapon. This pattern of results were in line with previous findings that women were more fearful than men because they were particularly vulnerable to crime and were less able than men to defend themselves physically; therefore, women perceived themselves to be at greater risk of crimes than men (LaGrange and Ferraro, 1989; Smith and Torstensson, 1997). The results were also consistent with previous s tudies that fear of sexual assault operated as a master offense among women, which in turn heightened their fear of other victimizations, e.g. murder, attacks, or burglary (Ferraro, 1995). On the other hand, fear of being murder was most common among males, followed by fear of being attacked by someone with a weapon and fear of being raped or sexually assaulted. Interestingly, the current results replicated the findings of LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) in which men reported that they were afraid of being sexually assaulted (presumably by other men). In the second part of the study, a factor analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between gender and age of participants and their various crime perceptions. Results of the present study showed a gender effect on fear of crime, in which women had significantly higher score on total fear of crime, fear of being cheated and fear of physical harm than men. These findings were consistent with previous research in which females might have lower threshold for fear than males. An evolutionary approach has been put forward by researchers to explain this gender difference in fear of crime (e.g. Campbell, Muncer and Bibel, 2001; Fetchenhauer and Buunk, 2005; Sidebottom and Tilley, 2008). In a Dutch study, Fetchenhauer and Buunk (2005) showed that females were significantly more fearful than males when presented with scenarios (both criminal and non-criminal events) that resulted in physical injury, and they proposed that gender differences in fear of all kinds of events that inv olved physical injury may be the result of sexual selection that favoured risk-taking and status fights among males, and being cautious and protecting ones offspring among females (p.111). The current study also found a significant positive correlation between age and fear of being cheated, suggesting that older people were more afraid of being cheated than younger people. The result reflects the varying importance attached to material wealth with age: the costs of property loss might have greater impact on middle-aged group since they are more likely to have accumulated property and have dependent children compared to younger age group (Moore and Shepherd, 2007). Based on data derived from the 2001 British Crime Survey, Moore and Shepherd (2007) concluded that fear of property loss was greatest at around 40-60 years, peaked at around 45 years, whereas a lower level of fear was observed at about 16-25 years. Another possibility for the age differences in fear might be due to socialization. Past research has shown that socialization may increase the amount of contacts with others, and thus people who socialize more often may increase their likelihood of fraud victimizat ion (Van Wyk and Manson, 2001). In a recent study, Schoepfer and Piquero (2009) demonstrated that risky behaviour and age were important factors that predicted the likelihood of fraud victimization: individuals who were open to financial risk-taking and engaged in more risky behaviours were more likely to be a victim of fraud (e.g. free prize fraud, credit or bank account fraud and being billed for more than what the product is worth). It should also be noted that older people in our sample are postgraduate students who might have higher income and socialize more often and thus they have greater opportunities to be victimized than younger people. Results in this study also showed that the relationship between age and fear of being cheated was influenced by individuals attitude towards prisoner. Since not much research has been done on fear of being cheated, more studies are needed to look at the relationship between age and fear of deception. Nonetheless, no significant correlation was found between age and fear of physical harm, indicating that that age was not associated with levels of fear of being physical harm. Further analysis was performed in the next section to look at gender and age effects on various constructs of fear. Significant gender-age interaction effects were found on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated. After controlling the variable attitude towards prisoner, age was a significant predictor of fear of being cheated in females, but not in males. There was a positive correlation between age and fear of being cheated among females, suggesting that older females were more fearful of being victimized than males. This may be due in part to the fact that personal victimization can have more serious consequences for women than men. Past research has indicated that crime fear involve both emotional and evaluative components and it is shaped by the vividness of the image of crime and perceptions of the severity of the consequences of crimes, together with feelings of personal control and perceptions of victimization likelihood (Jackson, 2006). It has been found that some vict ims of fraud may experience more harmful long-term effects than those victimized by conventional crimes, and many of them continued to suffer from lasting problems with finances, self-esteem, embarrassment, and self-blaming even ten years after the incidents (Shover, Fox and Mills, 1994). Recently, Schoepfer and Piquero (2009, p.210) argued that some fraud victimizations have even been equated to those of rape since both crime are rarely reported by victims and both involved victim facilitation, and questions of guilt and responsibility are the burden of the victims; hence, this makes females more fearful of being cheated than males. However, the current results did not support some of the past findings on fear of fraud victimization. Mixed results were found in previous studies concerning gender difference on fear of property loss. For instance, LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) found no gender different on fear of being conned or swindled out of money and fear of being approach by a beg gar; whereas Moore and Shepherd (2007) showed that men were more fearful than women of property loss. One of the possibilities for the discrepancy in these findings might be due to the cultural difference in crime rates. Since fear of crime also reflects actual crime rate in society, results in the present study might also suggest that older women are more vulnerable to minor crimes, e.g. street or telephone deception, than men in the local area. Yet, no interaction effect on fear of physical harm was found in this study. Additional study might be needed to investigate how womens fear of being cheated varies with age. There are two possible limitations in the current study that should be taken into account. The first one relates to variables that were not included in the questionnaire, namely the mass media effect, crime prevalence and previous victimization experience. Due to the limitations of the standard questionnaire used in the present study, these factors were not included. It is well-established that the mass media plays an important role in shaping individuals attitude towards prisoner and the perception of crime and fear. According to the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF), people may attend to information about criminal activities from a series of amplified stations (e.g. mass media and interpersonal communication), and the risk signals may interact with a wide range of psychological, social and cultural processes in ways that intensity their actual risks (Kasperson et al. 2003). Researchers have demonstrated that tabloid readers who have an extensive level of crime media exp osure are about twice more likely to be worried than those who have limited exposure to crime source (Smolej and Kivivuori, 2006). Previous literature on media consumption and public attitude toward crime has also shown that offenders are often portrayed as different from the general population and viewed as psychopaths that prey on weak and vulnerable victims (Dowler, 2003). Recently, Reiner (2008) argued that crime stories often exaggerate the crime risks faced by higher-status people and always disproportionately representing women, children, or older people as victims, and this might heighten publics fear of crime. Over the past decade, researchers have attempted to integrate fear of crime into macro and micro levels of analysis (Ferraro, 1995; Jackson, 2004). At the macro-level, publics fear of crime is related to crime prevalence in society and local communities; whereas, at the micro-level, neighbourhood characteristics and personal characteristics (e.g. previous victimization experience, anxiety and everyday worry) may interact to produce differential perception of risk which, in turn, produces either fearful or adaptive reactions to crime (or both) (Farrall, Gray and Jackson, 2007). In future research it might be interesting to examine how these factors interact with age and gender to produce different levels of fear of being cheated. The second possible limitation is that the current findings could not be generalized into diverse cultures with different age groups. In this study, subjects were undergraduates or postgraduates recruited from a local university and they might have similar ag e, background, living situation, and ethnicity; therefore, their crime experience will be alike. In the future study, participants from various age groups and cultures are needed in order to generalize the results outside the Chinese society.

John Gardners Grendel and the Greater Power :: Grendel Essays

John Gardner's Grendel and the Greater Power Many of the characters in Grendel have direction and purpose in their lives. Wealtheow is self- sacrificing, and Hrothgar is out for personal glory. Unferth and Beowulf spend their lives trying to become great heroes so that their names may outlast their flesh. The dragon believed in nihilism, and the Shaper used his imagination to create something to believe in. Some of the characters’ philosophies may not have been commendable, but Grendel could not find any direction or purpose for his life whatsoever. Grendel looked for the intervention of a power higher than himself to lay the truths of the world upon him, an experience that the Romantics would characterize as an experience of the sublime. John Gardner portrays Grendel as someone who wants to find a philosophy, whether his own or someone else’s, that fits him and gives him an identity or a reason to live. By looking at the text from this perspective we can see how Gardner believes people should pursue, or rather, e mbrace a power greater than themselves. Grendel started his search for meaning with solipsistic beliefs, thinking himself the creator of the world he lived in. â€Å"I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink† (21-22). However, after speaking to the existentialist Fire Dragon, Grendel realized that aspects of his first theory didn’t make sense and that even after his death things will continue to exist. â€Å"Every rock, every tree, every crystal of snow cries out cold-blooded objectness† (172). When Grendel notices that events occur before he can think them into existence, his theory that he creates the world â€Å"blink by blink† is undermined. â€Å"†¦I think, trying to suck in breath, and all that I do not see is useless, void. I observe myself observing what I observe. It startles me. ‘Then I am not that which observes!’ I am lack. Alack! No thread, no frailest hair between myself and the universal clutter! I listen to the underground river. I have never seen it† (29). Because Grendel realizes his solipsistic theory does not hold true, he searches for a new theory, discovering one where he is nothing to the world but an object taking up space.