Thursday, October 31, 2019

FAMILY LAW Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

FAMILY LAW - Essay Example Alternatively, you may also be eligible for a lump sum payment and an equitable distribution of assets on a mathematical basis, although the Court is likely to take into consideration the fact that your husband is the legal titleholder of the property you now live in. I present below, for your information, an assessment of ancillary relief that you may be eligible for in the event that you choose to divorce your husband. Firstly, I would like to bring to your notice that one of the objectives of modern law in the case of a breakdown of a marriage between two parties is to achieve a clean break and â€Å"encourage each to put the past behind †¦. and to begin a new life which is not overshadowed by the relationship which has broken down.†1 This would appear to be the best solution and perhaps in your case, after your discovery of your husband’s adultery, you may be keen to pursue a clean break from him and look for a financial settlement that would ensure such an end. However, in your case, there are two small children involved2, who are only six and two years old. The welfare of your children is at stake so the Court may not necessarily allow a clean break from your husband, since your children need continued maintenance and your husband, as the earning member of the family, will need to contribute monies towards their continued maintenance, as well as providing for your upkeep, especially if your primary function is that of taking care of your children. As a result, your husband as the earning parent will be responsible for paying maintenance to you for looking after the children3. In some instances the Courts have not allowed maintenance when a pressing need does not exist or where the parties are only cohabiting4, as was the case with your husband and Sandra Quartro. However in your case, since you are married and are employed full time in taking care of the children who are very small, you may be eligible for maintenance

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Server Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Server - Essay Example The computer network should also be secured from damages that may result from physical factors and dangers caused by computer virus. Thus, network security is extremely essential in any company; the chief information officer should be aware of how to ensure network security. There are several ways in which unauthorized users can gain access to the peer-to-peer networks in a company. First, they can access the peer networks by using any of the networked computers to type a unique username as well as password. This can be prevented by making sure that the networked computers cannot be accessed physically. To achieve this, the BIOS security should be enabled; this makes sure that the user sets an access name and password for the computers (Maiwald, 2003). Maiwald (2003) asserts that hackers and other unauthorized users can gain access to a company’s sever-based network by using the name and password of another person. In such a case, passwords should be changed on a regular basis, and they should not also be written down. This way, it will be extremely difficult for unauthorized users to access the company’s network. Data encryption can also be used to ensure that the network is secure and not accessible to unauthorized persons. Data should be encrypted before sending it onto the network. This way, the data will become unreadable even by a person who may attempt to tap the cable and read the data when it passes over the network. Upon arrival at the proper computer, the code designed to decipher encrypted data divides it into bits. The code then translates the bits into information that can be understood (Gollmann, 2011). According to Brown (2000), the network infrastructure of a company should also be protected from computer viruses which may infect the operating systems and files. Viruses can be transmitted through direct cable connection, floppy disks or CDs. Other means in which viruses can be transmitted include electronic ways such as through

Sunday, October 27, 2019

A Business Plan For Nivea For Men Marketing Essay

A Business Plan For Nivea For Men Marketing Essay Mens grooming industry is one of the fastest growing markets in recent years (Euromonitor International: Mens Grooming Products Thailand, 2009). This sector is dramatically booming in Asian countries, especially Thailand. One of the leading brands in mens grooming market in Thailand is NIVEA FOR MEN brand, operated by Beiersdorf Thailand, which is selected to be the case study in this research. To be the leading brand in this fast growing industry, NIVEA FOR MEN needs to create business plan with a very strong strategic marketing plan. In general, a business sets the overall direction for the company through a business plan. The business plan is created in order that the goals and objectives of the company are to be achieved. In other words, goals and objectives of a business are the underlying foundation of the business plan (The times 100, 2008). The marketing plan is certainly a vital part of the business plan and plays active roles to achieve the targets. The strategic marketing planning process flows from a mission and vision statement to the selection of target markets, and the formulation of specific marketing mix and brand or product positioning objective (RESTREPO, N.A.). Moreover, Kotler (1994) presents the organization as a value creation and delivery sequence. To choose the value, the strategist needs to proceed to segment the market, select an appropriate market target, and develop the offers value positioning, which is known as a vital strategy of Market-oriented perspective. It seems to be unavoidable that Beiersdorf Thailand has to come up with the marketing strategies to penetrate and to be the leader in mens grooming market by doing the right segmentation, selecting the best-suited target markets, and creating the competitive brand/product positioning. In sum, the formula of segmentation, targeting, positioning, STP strategies, is the heart of strategic marketing (Kotler, 1994). The literature review is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses on the previous work on market-oriented approach, as opposed to resource-base view perspective. The second part covers the relevant work on the process of segmentation, targeting, and positioning as well as implementation of the marketing strategy. Part 1: Market-oriented perspective and Resource-based view perspective Part 2: Three essentially related topics Market Segmentation Market Targeting Market Positioning Part 1: Market-oriented perspective and Resource-based perspective This part will specifically study on market-oriented perspective, which underlies a market power imperative, through previous academic research. There are many studies about the implication of resource-based view and market-oriented perspective for a company to be successful in terms of profitability. Also, there are discussions about what perspective is the appropriate one. According to Porter (1991), a successful company has to use market-oriented approach to study the external market and then apply to internal resources. Market orientation , according to Kohli and Jaworski (1990), requires various departments in an organization to engage in activities geared towards developing an understanding of customers needs, and then develop the products to meet target customers needs (Hooley et al., 2008). In addition, Porters (1991) work relies heavily on the pursuit of advantages which are determined by firms exogenous variables that require analysis of the competitors and opportunities in the market. In Porters (1991) theory of competition strategy, he stated that the competition strategy of a firm is to seek an advantageous competitive position in the marketplace or to build up a profitable market position by drawing on varieties of factors that are critical to being competitive in an industrial sector. Following the Porters work, a recent research from Ren, Xie, and Krabbendam (2010) also studied the sustainable competitive advantage with the market-oriented perspective, which covered market innovation. Their work strongly supported the use of market-oriented perspective, with the conclusion that market-oriented approach can lead companies to success and gain more profits. Additionally, they suggested that companies analyse various marketing factors to discover new competitive advantages in order to achieve marketing innovation. However, Prahalad and Hamel (1990) and Sharkie (2003) undertake different perspective by arguing that external focus, in the view of market orientation, which requires the company to concentrate on conditions and constraints in the external environment cannot create competitive advantage for a company. Nonetheless, the resource-based view approach is believed to somehow lead to competitive advantages as it suggests that a firms unique resources and capabilities provide the basis for a strategy. In a previous study, Grant (1991) proposed a practical framework for resource-based approach to strategy formulation. The organizing framework for his study is a five-stage procedure for strategy formulation which are 1) analysing the firms resource-base, 2) appraising the firms capabilities, 3) analysing the profit-earning potential of firms resources and capabilities, 4) selecting a strategy, and 5) extending and upgrading the firms pool of resources and capabilities. Ren, Xie, and Krabbendam, (2010) had a reservation on the use of resource-base view, explaining that resources would contribute to sustainable competitive advantage just when a firm possesses valuable, scarce, inimitable and irreplaceable resources. They stated that in the real world, not every company has the resources with all of those characteristics (Ren, Xie, and Krabbendam, 2010). Part 2: The Process of Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning 2.1 MARKET SEGMENTATION 2.1.1 Definition of Market Segmentation Market segmentation is defined as the division of a mass market into identifiable and distinct groups or segments, each of which have common characteristics and needs and display similar responses to marketing actions (Rosscraig, 2007). As the market consists of diverse types of products, customers, and personnel needs, the marketers should divide the market into distinct group of buyers in order to appropriately determine which market segment offers the best opportunity for achieving company objectives. Perner (2008) indicated that it is very unlikely that one product could meet the satisfaction of all consumers. In this perspective, a company which chose to focus on a specific group of consumers rather than customers in general would be more successful in terms of profitability. Dibb (1998) suggested that companies divide large markets into smaller segments in order to identify customers purchasing behaviors. Furthermore, Brassington and Pettitt (2003) also suggested that marketers find ways of breaking the market down into manageable parts, groups of customers with similar characteristics in terms of commonly used classifications to measure demographics, which include socio-economics, geographic and personality, and to concentrate their efforts on selecting one or more of these areas. While various literatures stated that it is essential to consider the market segmentation, MC Donald (1998) argued that market segmentation always faced the problem that many different types of customers used the same products in diverse markets. It meant that these different types of customers were in fact subsumed under the same category. Besides, Moschis (1997) also stated the problems of segmentation that the demographics change and the aging of the population change were significant factors that affected the age composition of the consumer market. Day and Wensley (1983) criticised that the market segmentation relating to the consumer market sector alone was not sufficient as it generally reflected the one-sidedness of marketing. The competitive structure was to be taken into account as it yielded the basic information on segment formation. The research from Day and Wensley (1983) concluded that the formation and selection of segments could be improved if theoretical aspects of competitor orientation are included. Dibb (1997) outlined three condition classifications which help identify potential consumers in each segment; those are as follows The expected benefits must be identifiable; Having identified these benefits, marketers must divide people into recognisable segments; One or more of the resulting segments must be accessible to the firms marketing efforts. 2.1.3 Segmentation Variables/ Market Segmentation in Consumer Markets To segment consumer markets, the market information, in terms of customer variables, product variables, and situation related variables, must be collected for further analysis. In the study of The Application of Social Class in Market Segmentation, Carman (1965) stated that social class was a major segmentation variable to divided customers into groups. However, later on in 1994, Raaij and Verhallen argued that social class cannot be used as a main segmentation variable as the society had become less vertically organised with more buying power across larger layer of society, and also concluded that social class concept had lost its unique segmentation value. They claimed that other demographic variables, such as age and education, and other psychological characteristics were more appropriate for segmentation. Raaij and Verhallen (1994)s research studied the market segments and types of people as target groups for marketing activities; market segmentation is then classified into three main levels according to the level of generality of the variables which were general, domain-specific, and brand-specific levels (figure [2-1]). Level of Variable Objective Subjective General (behavioural patterns: Person characteristics) Age Income Education Behavioural patterns General values Lifestyle Personality Domain-specific (product-class usage) Situation Frequency of use Substitution Behaviour Opinions Perception Attitude Domain-specific values Brand-specific (brand-usage) Brand loyalty (behavior) Frequency of use Action Brand Loyalty (attitude) Preference Evaluation Purchase intention Figure [2-1]: Classification of Segmentation Variables by Raaij and Verhallen (1994) However, in the late of 2000s, Rosscraig (2007) suggested that media usage and technology usage could be a concern of market segmentation approach (See Appendix [2-1]). He stated that the variables used in segmenting consumer markets could be broadly divided into three main classes including: Profile criteria: Background customer characteristics Psychological criteria: customer attitudes Behavioral criteria: Actual behavior in the market place (Figure [2-1]). Consumer Criteria Profile Psychological Behavioural Demographic Socio-economic Geographic Who and Where Lifestyle Personality Perceptions Attitudes Motives Benefit sought Why and Who Purchase/transaction Consumption/ usage Media usage Technology usage Who, How, Where, and When Figure [2-2]: Segmentation criteria in consumer markets Profile Criteria With respect to profile criteria, customer characteristics are to be examined with isolation from the specific market of interest. The profile segmentation criterion is used for identiflying the target consumers and in the consumer goods markets which are most suitable to them (Rosscraig, 2007). According to Rosscraig (2007), this simple segmentation variable includes using demographic method, socio-economic method, and geographic method. Demographic method can be determined by age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, family size, generation, and etc. This method is useful in assisting media planning and marketing communications as the media selection criteria have been developed around these variables. Socio-economic method can be shaped by occupation, income level, social class, and education. Socio-economic status determines whether a consumer will be able to afford a product. Geographic location method is shaped by geographical areas; markets can be considered by country or region, by town or size of city, by population density such as urban, suburban, or rural areas, or by postcode. This approach is useful when there are clear location differences in tastes, consumption, and preferences. Moreover, this method is widely applied with direct sales operations as they can use census information to develop better customer segmentation and predictive models. The profile segmentation approach is criticised in respect of uncertainly. While one segment is based on consumer background characteristics, members of each variable may behave differently in the marketplace for various reasons while members in the different segments may seek for the same things and have the same interest in a particular product/brand (Hooley et al., 2008). In shorts, this type of segmentation variable describes who and where the consumers are, but it does not explain the basic reasons why consumers behave so. Psychological Criteria The psychological criteria draw a casual relationship between customer profiles and marketing behavior (Hooley et al., 2008). The psychological variable includes the characteristics of attitude of the customers. Attitudes to the product class and attitudes toward brands in the market have both been used as productive bases for market segmentation (Hooley et al., 2008). According to Rosscraig (2007), psychological variables used for segmenting consumer product markets include using attitudes and perceptions, lifestyle of consumers, and the types of benefit sought by customers from products and brands and their consumption choices. The use of attitudes and perceptions aims at identifying segments of respondents who view the products on offer in a similar way (Green et al., 1989). Consumer lifestyles segmentation is based on the analysis of consumers activities, interactions with others, and opinions to understand consumers individual lifestyles and patterns of behavior (Hooley et al., 2008). In 2003, Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) developed a UK Lifestyle Typology based on lifestyles and classified the following types of lifestyle categories which are belonger, survivor, experimentalist, conspicuous consumer, social resistor, self-explorer, and the aimless (Rosscraig, 2007). The most important benefits of consumer lifestyle research are for guiding the creative content of advertising (Hooley et al., 2008). The main idea of the benefit segmentation is that the company should provide customers with exactly what they want, based on the benefits that they derive from the products that they use, not based on how the company designs products for them (Rosscraig, 2007). According to Hooley et al. (2008) benefit segmentation tells the basic reasons why customers buy the products and why customers are attracted to the product offerings. Holley (1982) also suggested that the development in techniques of analysis make them particularly suitable for identifying benefit segments (Hooley, 1982). Overall, segmentation on the basis of psychological yields more useful basis for marketing strategy development than merely consumer profile characteristics (Hooley et al., 2008). It gets closer to the underlying reasons for behavior of consumers, so it should be used as the basis for segmenting the market (Hooley et al., 2008). However, there are some major drawbacks of Psychological segmentation techniques, one of which is that this techniques require often costly primary research and sophisticated data analysis techniques (Hooley et al., 2008). Behavioral criteria Doing segmentation on the basis of the behavior of consumers in the market is the most direct method of segmenting markets. Behavioral segmentation includes purchase behavior, consumption behavior, media usage and technology usage (Rosscraig, 2007). Purchase behavior approach concentrates on the time of purchase which is early or late in the products overall life cycle, and the patterns of purchase which is the identification of brand-loyal customers. This approach could concentrate on innovator segmentation, concerning with initial purchase. Marketers will pay high attention to innovator groups when new products are launched. Innovators as initial target segments can improve the products chances of acceptance on the market (Hooley et al., 2008). In addition, brand loyalty has been widely used as a basis for segmentation, concerning with the repeat purchasing (Hooley et al., 2008). A company may segment a market on the basis of how often a customer uses its products, categorizing these into high, medium, and low users, by usage rate (Rosscraig, 2007). The examination of usage patterns and volume consumed can pinpoint where to focus marketing activity and can be used to develop service specifications or marketing mixes for each of these groups of users (Hooley et al., 2008). Cook and Mindak (1984) have shown that product and brand usage has a major advantage over many other situation-specific segmentation variables as it can be obtained, in case of many consumer products, from secondary sources. It is very essential to understand and profile audience media usage in the process of communication planning (Chatterjee, Hoffman, and Novak (1998). Since 1950s the information of media consuming, such as television viewing, radio listening, and print reading, have been continuously collected. And in more recent years, web usage data has also been collected by market researchers to help profile web users, basing on usage characteristics (Rosscraig, 2007) (See Appendix [2-2]). Furthermore, according to Olney, Holbrook, and Batra (1991) and Holbrook and Gardners (1993), duration of use is critical measure of consumption experiences and is a useful behavioral indicator of advertising effects (See Appendix [2-3]). By following this method of segmenting, marketers can observe the behavior of consumers while utilising the products and media, and this segmentation can be used as an important source for new products ideas, new product design, and product development (Rosscraig, 2007). Additionally, marketers can then create appropriate communication themes for product promotion and can specify new markets for existing products after having the right behavioral segmentation. In recent years, behavioral segmentation has become more popular as marketers tend to study the consumers media usage and technology usage in order to further create successful advertising campaigns. To support this, it was asserted by Advertising.com(TM), Inc., a leading provider of results-based interactive marketing services to advertisers and publishers, (2004), that behavioral segmentation helped improve advertising campaign performance by revealing that targeting campaign delivery based on real-time user behaviour increases advertisers ROI by reaching the audience segments most likely to respond to an ad message. Moreover, Hallerman (2004), a senior analyst at e-Marketer, a New York-based research company, stated that the logic behind behavioural segmentation and targeting gets to the heart of the internets potential as an advertising medium. His opinion is hereby quoted: In todays world of audience fragmentation, its much more effective to reach individuals not by abstract demographics but through their actions online. 2.1.4 Segmentation in Male Grooming Products According to Mintel (1995), a study about mens toiletries industry, male grooming products and toiletries is a fast growing industry. In 1980s, the market of male grooming products started to be segmented with the development of products types, including male body spray and shower cream (Sturrock et al., 1998). According to Sturrock et al. (1998), in 1998, the market of mens products were divided into different categories of products based on consumers needs and uses, including body sprays, deodorants, mens shaving, fragrances, shampoo, shower cream, etc. Dunn (1995) and White (1995) studied characteristics of men who use male grooming products and concluded that men used grooming products as they want to increase self-care practice and self-concept. Moreover, Langer (1986) has prior stated that using mens grooming products helps encourage a concern to stay attractive. For consumer products, Milner and Fodness (1996) has done a research on product gender perception and concluded that specific gender of the products is critically important to the consumers when deciding to buy a particular product. In the segmentation process, Milner and Fodness (1996) claimed that gender is the first segmentation variable that most marketers apply for consumer products. The reason behind is that both men and women want to use the products that were specifically made for them. According to Milner and Fodness (1996), many consumers clearly are psychologically uncomfortable using products which do not seem made for them. Therefore, many companies, particularly manufacturers of consumer products, divided consumers into segments by using gender variables. In skin care industries, products are conventionally made for women. However, in the post modern era, a lot of skin care products are launched to serve male consumers (Sturrock et al., 1998). The products for male consumers are launched as a result of segmentation strategy which companies divide its consumer market into two broad categories, male and female markets. The benefit sought variable is also one of the best ways for companies to segment its market. This statement is supported by Kotler (1997) and Wedel and Kamakura (1998), stating that the real features of products have been considered the most actionable bases for segmentation. It is critically important that consumer products must offer real benefits to users to create product positioning (Blythe, 2005). In men face care market, companies and brands always divided consumers segments based on products features. For example, NIVEA FOR MEN offers wide ranges of facial cleansers with benefits of whitening, oil-control, wrinkle protection, refreshing skin, and moisturizing effects (Nivea Website, 2010). Loreal Men Expert offers benefits for facial cleansers which are whitening, anti-tightness, anti-fatigue, pure matte oil control, anti-regreasing (Loreal website, 2010). There are some researches showing that competitive brands have similar ways of segmentation (Dawes, 2006, and Fennell et al., 2003). In other words, competitive brands often appeal to consumers who have similar demographic or psychographic characteristics. Moreover, Ehrenberg et al. (2004) supported this statement by stating that different brands in the same product category tend to offer a similar range of product variants. 2.1.5 Loyalty Segmentation and Relationship Segmentation A focus on Loyalty segmentation provides strategic and tactic insights that will assist in building a strong brand (Aaker, 1996). It is necessary to build customer loyalty as it is a key success of growth for a business (Crosby et al., 2004). By having loyalty segmentation, a company can learn more about the profiles of loyal customers, and this leads to the focus at the highest value segment (Markey et al., 2007). Crosby et al. (2004) stated that the purpose of the loyalty-based segmentation is to seek to address the managerial questions as follows. Who are the most/least potential customers? How can customers be segmented according to the types of relationships they would like to have with the product/brand/company? Which loyalty segment should be targeted? What changes are required to instill the highest levels of loyalty among the targets? Crosby et al. (2004) affirm that loyalty-based segmentation is the complement of existing segmentation frameworks and it can also be used to discover new segmentation frameworks by starting with customer loyalty research. According to Aaker (1996), in focus of the loyalty segmentation, a market can be divided into the following groups. Non-customers: those who buy competitor brands or not product class users, Price switchers: those who are price sensitive, The passively loyal: those who buy out of habit rather than reasons, Fence sitters: those who are indifferent between two or more brands, and The committed: those who are committed to the brand, or a loyal customer. Loyalty segmentation can be very successful when the company can increase the number of customers who are not price switchers and who would pay more to use the brand while the fence sitter and the committed should be critically managed (Aaker, 1996). Especially in high competitive markets, companies should exercise best efforts to enhance the loyalty of the fence sitters and the committed by developing and strengthening the relationship between customers and the brand (Aaker, 1996 and Drypen, 2010). Research from Raaij and Verhallen (1994) indicates that the company should also segment its market by loyalty segmentation method. The results of the research shows that the company should move customers from the lowest level of loyalty pyramid which is overall total potential customers to the highest level which is the heavy buyers. The major marketing strategy is to increase the frequency and intensity of their purchases and to take measures to maintain customers for as long as possible (Raaij and Verhallen, 1994). This also highly relates to the relationship marketing which develop relationship between buyers and brand to stimulate purchasing. 2.2 MARKET TARGETING 2.2.1 Definition of Targeting The next step of the market segmentation in STP process is market targeting. It is the process of determining which segments should be targeted and made the focus of a comprehensive marketing programme. Moreover, in the process of market targeting, a group of customers are identified for whom the offering should be right, and to whom firms will direct the majority of its marketing resources, time, and attention (Cahill, 1997). Choosing the target market, before creating positioning and marketing mix, is a part of developing effective marketing strategy. In order to target the right group of customers, the firm has to study the needs and buying behaviours of customers in each segment. Then the firm will be able to develop marketing strategies that suit requirements of each segment. According to Cahill (1997), a target market is simply the market of submarket at which the firm aims its marketing messages. By specifying customer targets, the company will also know which segments are not the target groups so that the company will not make special effort to serve them. Cahill (1997) said that market targeting is essential because it forces the company to focus at the customers and the markets by determining the best fits between target customers and the product offerings. Kotler and Armstrong (2001) suggested that a firm make the decision how many and which segments to target in their market positioning and its decision should be based on a clear understanding of companys resources and capabilities, nature of the competition, and the characteristics of the market. The company should evaluate market segments by first collecting and analysing data on current segment sales, growth rates, and then determine which segment can constantly enable the company to receive the greatest opportunities in terms of profitability and market demands in order to target main customers. However, Wright (1996) denied statement of validity of market targeting by claiming that there was no logical reason to adopt target marketing. Wright and Esslemont (1994) studied the logical formulations of the target marketing argument and summarised that target marketing did not necessarily give the best overall market response and also does not constantly give superior return than other approaches such as mass marketing. The two main targeting strategies are suggested by Dibb (1997). They are concentration strategy, and multi-segment strategy. Concentration strategy is defined as a process that a company manages its marketing efforts towards a single target. When targeting to one single segment, a firm can better satisfy target customers needs and requirement. However, this strategy is not always effective and the company may face business failure if target customers demand for the products decline or shift to other segments Multi-segment strategy is described as a strategy that a company directs its market efforts towards two or more market targets. The company should then develop appropriate marketing mix to suit each type of target groups, by all together considering product diferrentiation, target price, distribution method, and promotional strategies. In brief, the step of the selection of the potential target market is very critical in creating and developing comprehensive marketing strategy. The robust competitive positioning will then be developed after the market targets are clearly identified and the requirements and motivations are fully examined. 2.2.3 Doing Targeting in Different Market Environment Marketers have to decide whether to target single segment or multiple segments in the product market; there are several factors affecting the managements targeting strategy decisions, including stage of maturity, industry structure, companys capabilities and resources, and opportunities for gaining competitive advantage (Cravens, and Piercy, 2009). The maturity is used as a basis for considering different targeting situations; the market target strategy will be varied in each market environment or stage of product-market maturity. Four different product-market stages, closely related to product life cycle (PLC) stages, include emerging product-market, growing product-market, mature product-market, and declining product-market. The strategists can use product life cycle model to analyse the maturity stage of the products and also industries in order to develop the strategies that should be implemented. Growing product-market Source: Spencer (2009) According to Cravens, and Piercy (2009), segments are likely to be found in the stage of growth in the product life cycle, as identifying customer segments with similar value requirements improves targeting. In growth stage of product life cycle, consumers tend to gain awareness of products and to understand the benefits of the product, and company will likely to expect a rapid sales growth and will also try to build brand loyalty and increase market share (Spencer, 2009). High growth markets is very attractive, therefore it can attract a lot of competitors who want to compete for market shares. Cravens, and Piercy (2009) revealed their finding about the market structure that at the growth stage, existing companies tend to enter new product-market as they have capabilities and resources to support the market entry,

Friday, October 25, 2019

Cognitivism Essay -- Psychology Essays

Cognitivism Cognitivism is considered the dominant approach in psychology today. The dramatic shift from behaviorism to cognitivism occurred in the early part of this century. After years of almost exclusively behaviorist research, psychologists and educators became discontent with the limitations of behaviorism. Although behaviorism encouraged observable and measurable research in the field of psychology, it did not incorporate mental events. This paper will present a general overview of the origin of cognitivism and a discussion of three widely accepted cognitive theories—the Atkinson-Shriffin stage model, Craik and Lockhart’s levels of processing theory, and the parallel distributed processing approach. Finally, this paper will briefly summarize some ways that cognitivism has influenced instructional design theories. Origin of Cognitivism The origin of cognitivism can be traced back to the early part of this century when the Gestalt psychologists of Germany, Edward Chase Tolman of the United States, and Jean Piaget (1896-1980) of Switzerland had a tremendous influence on psychology and the shift from behaviorist theories. Behaviorists argued that mental events were impossible to observe and measure and could not therefore be studied objectively. Consequently behaviorists could not explain the ways learners attempt to make sense of what they learn. Cognitivists proposed that through empirical research and observation inferences could, indeed, be drawn about the internal, cognitive processes that produce responses. According to Matlin, Cognitive psychologists generally agree that the birth of cognitive psychology should be listed as 1956†¦During this prolific year, a large number of researchers published influ... .... (1990). The child’s conception of the world. New York: Littlefield Adams. Piaget, J., Gruber, H. (Ed.), & Voneche, J.J. (Ed.). The essential Piaget (100th Annicersay Ed.). New York: Jason Aronson. Renner and others. (1976). Schumaker, R. (1996). Anniversary: Jean Piaget—A foundational thinker. UNESCO Courier, n11, 48-49. Scott, B. D. (1997). Constructivism: Teaching for understanding of the Internet. Communications of the ACM, v 40n10, 112-117. Striebel, M. (1995). Instructional plans and situationed learning. In G.J. Anglin (Ed.), Instructional technology: Past, present, future (2nd ed). (ppl. 145-166). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc. Vygotsky, L. & Vygotsky, S. (1980). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. Boston: MIT Press.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

The Life and Times of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare is widely regarded as the world’s greatest playwright, and there’s no real reason to dispute that. People are still seeing his plays 400 years after he wrote them, not because it’s â€Å"trendy† or â€Å"hip,† but because they’re so good. His insight into the human spirit has never been equaled. This paper is a brief biography of Shakespeare and a discussion of the times in which he lived. Discussion His life: It’s somewhat difficult to find factual information about Shakespeare, because the â€Å"first attempts at biographical research were not begun until over half a century after Shakespeare’s death† (Best, 2005).In addition, there were few biographies written of important persons at this time, especially dramatists, since plays were not considered â€Å"serious literature† (Best, 2005). In addition, the Puritans closed the theaters in 1642, and many manuscripts and other records were lost (Best, 200 5). It also doesn’t help that there are numerous spellings of his name. Nevertheless, scholars have pieced together a fairly complete picture of his life, and where facts are not known, they have drawn reasonable inferences (Best, 2005).However, the fact remains that much of what we know is based on indirect information. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon some time in April, 1564, the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden (Hanna – Life). Although there is no record of the exact date of his birth, there is a baptismal record at the church, so most scholars put his birthday as the 23rd of April, 1564 (Hanna – Life). John Shakespeare was a â€Å"prominent and prosperous alderman† in Stratford, and was â€Å"granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds† (Hanna – Life).Little is known of Shakespeare’s boyhood but it is believed that he probably attended the â€Å"Stratford Grammar School† (Hanna – Life). There is no record of him having gone on to either Oxford or Cambridge, both of which were well established by his time (Hanna – Life). Shakespeare’s name turns up next in 1582 when he marries Anne Hathaway, some eight years his senior (Hanna – Life). Their daughter Susanna was born in 1583 and twins, Judith and Hamnet, were born in 1585 (Hanna – Life).Once again Shakespeare disappears from the records and doesn’t turn up again for seven years, by which time he is â€Å"recognized as an actor, poet and playwright† (Hanna – Life). His recognition comes in the form of an insult from a rival, Robert Greene, who calls Shakespeare â€Å"an upstart crow† in his (Greene’s) play, A Groatsworth of Wit (Hanna – Life). It’s thought that at about this time (1592) Shakespeare joined an acting troupe known as The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, one of the best in London (Hanna – Life).The troupe leased the theater (named, unoriginally, â€Å"The Theatre†) where they performed; they lost the lease in 1599 (Hanna – Life). By this time, though, the troupe had enough money to build their own theater, across the Thames on the less fashionable South Bank; this new theater was, of course, The Globe (Hanna – Life). The Globe opened in July, 1599, with some of the old timbers salvaged from The Theatre used in its construction (Hanna – Life). The Globe featured â€Å"Totus mundus agit histrionem† (A whole world of players)† as its motto (Hanna – Life).When James I ascended the throne in 1603, the company changed its name to the â€Å"King’s Men† or â€Å"King’s Company† (Hanna – Life). The company’s instructions, conveyed to them in Letters Patent, told Shakespeare and eight other company members specifically to â€Å"use and exercise the art and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Interludes, Mor als, Pastorals, stage plays †¦ as well for recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure† (Hanna – Life). Things went well for the newly-christened King’s Men for another ten years, until 1613 (Hanna – Life).Then, on June 19, a cannon fired from the theater’s roof during a â€Å"gala performance of Henry VIII† set the Globe’s thatched roof on fire and the theater burned to the ground (Hanna – Life). The audience was so absorbed in the play that at first they ignored the fire, but when the walls and curtains went up, they surely must have run (Hanna – Life). By some miracle â€Å"there were no casualties, and the next spring the company had the theatre ‘new builded in a far fairer manner than before’† (Hanna – Life).Shakespeare â€Å"invested in the rebuilding† effort, but by that time he had retired to Stratford, to the â€Å"Great House of New Place† that h e’d bought in 1597 (Hanna – Life). There were considerable land holdings associated with the house, and Shakespeare remained there, where he continued to write, until his death in 1616 (Hanna – Life). Ironically, he died on his alleged birthday, April 23 (Hanna). He was 52. Although he died at what we would consider a young age, he left behind a body of work that has made him immortal, and continues to light up theaters around the world.His Times: The world 400 years ago is often seen as romantic and noble, but it was brutal, unsanitary and often terrifying. We’re familiar with a lot of the history of the time through films and TV shows; a movie about Elizabeth I was released recently. Shakespeare lived at a time of political upheaval and court intrigue, as well as a time of exploration. For example, a man named John Hawkins sailed to the New World a second time in 1561 (Hanna – Times). Trips like this were dangerous and daring, but also yielded tr easure and more importantly, lands for the Crown. From 1577-1580 â€Å"Francis Proke sailed around the world† (Hanna – Times).In 1586 when he was 22, Mary Queen of Scots was tried for treason and executed the following year (Hanna – Times). And in 1588 one of the greatest events in English history took place: the English under the command of Queen Elizabeth I defeated the Spanish invasion fleet known as the Armada (Hanna – Times). Unfortunately, this was also the time of the great plagues; plague swept through London in 1592-93, necessitating the closure of the theaters; plague struck again in 1603 (Hanna). This was also the year that Elizabeth I died and James IV, King of Scotland became James I of England (Hanna – Times).It was at this point that the â€Å"Lord Chamberlain’s Men† became the â€Å"King’s Men†; James I liked the theater and was a writer himself, publishing works on such subjects and witchcraft and  "the divine right of kings† (Best-James I, 2005). In 1605, the â€Å"Gunpowder Plot† was hatched and Guy Fawkes lead a group of Catholics in an attempt to assassinate James and blow up Parliament (Hanna – Times). The English still celebrate â€Å"Guy Fawkes Day. † As we saw, the Globe burned down in 1613 by which time Shakespeare had returned to Stratford. He lived only another three years.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Research-based Strategies for English Language Learners Essay

Today, it is common in schools to combine English language learners of differing ability in one class. Students are classified according to their English language ability in order to facilitate cooperative learning groups and to track their progress. A student’s English language ability can be classified into ELL (Emergent language learner) – someone who has just begun learning English, Limited English Proficient (LEP) – someone who has reached a level between Basic Interpersonal Communication (BIC) that permit the student to intermingle with peers on a social level and Cognitive Academic Language (CALP) that allows the student to intermingle at a deeper level with content, and Native English speaker –someone whose first language is English. This arrangement can present many obstacles learning. Teachers will be up to more challenging tasks in creating a language receptive classroom where all students could reach their highest potential in learning. The teacher should create a classroom environment where students would feel comfortable in trying a new language. Adapting to language and culture is very difficult and could take years. The teacher should also foster an environment that is respectful of language and culture. Ideally; it should be free from taunting and embarrassment. An interactive classroom should open more opportunities for ELL to use English in communicating with native speakers. They need to experiment with new language terms and test their ideas of putting words together. In addition, certain strategies have been found to be particularly helpful in providing a learning community where everyone has access not only to learning English, but also the content. This paper determines to examine the effectiveness of these strategies according to current researches and to examine the implementation of these strategies to English language learners. These strategies could help even the most season teacher and the inexperienced ones. Pre-instruction activities Pre instruction activities help students acquire new knowledge by building on the English language learner’s prior knowledge. These activities are of assistance for all the students in the classroom to get ready for the new information. Some of the things that can be employed as pre-instruction activities that can be used are semantic webs, graphic organizers, timelines and charts and graphs. These strategies determine where the students stand in relation to the content of the upcoming lesson. Pre-instructional materials help prepare the student to learn new lessons. Semantic webs, graphic organizers and K-W-L charts are useful for students in organizing their thoughts and ideas. These pre instruction activities can be used daily, building on the prior knowledge and adding more and more information to store knowledge. Pre-instruction activities also stimulate critical thinking through the development of charting and mapping skills, Graphic organizers, webs and charts can also help students understand the relationship of information being presented and the application of that information. (Reiss, 2006). K-W-L chart is an example of a graphic organizer. K -W-L is an instructional activity for supplementing framework development and constructing meaning from text to students. This tool can be used for all levels of students. This chart is usually introduced in kindergarten. This instructional activity basically consists of three parts. For example, the students are asked to identify what they previously KNOW about the lesson. Second, they would be lead to what they WANT to know about the lesson. Lastly, the students identify what they have LEARNED from the lesson. Through this activity the student trigger his stored knowledge for the lesson, he becomes caught up in the discussion and becomes more focused in learning the lesson (Allen, 2004). Another pre-instruction activity is to provide the key words and phrases relevant to the upcoming lesson. Providing these key words to the students before the lesson or even during the discussion can excite the student to encounter the vocabulary in the lesson. If the students have them early then they can use a simplified English or bilingual dictionary to learn the meanings and familiarize themselves with the words. This approach also helps students identify prior knowledge about the topic from their native languages. If the students are familiar with the there is a better chance of interest and recognition since they have some idea of the content. The students actively learn in using pre-instruction activities evading being a â€Å"passive learner† who memorizes all of the information. The teachers need to directly instruct and exhibit how to use the charts and graphs and how to manage the information. These tools can prove to be important for all students as review materials comes exam time, but most importantly to the ESL (English Second Language) and ELL (English Language Learners) students to be able to put their information together and understand how that information works together for them (O’Loughlin & Haynes, 1999). The result of the pre-instruction activities can remove much of the uneasiness and frustration of learning new concepts and lessons because students would feel that they are as competent as everyone in building their own prior knowledge. Visual Aids, Realia, Maps, Pictures, Multimedia Using these materials makes it easier for students to easily learned new concepts by seeing the relationships of concepts and concretes. Even if all the students are of differing English ability level they can all get the meaning of words represented by visuals. Using images and media also heightens the interest of students and creates a fun atmosphere for learning. Images, objects and body movements keep the students interested and focused, help them make connections and commit to memory language that they are learning. Films, videos, and audio cassettes with books allow students to visualize and make connections to what is being taught. For example, film-viewing prior to the discussion of lesson help students recalls more vividly the information from the film relating to the lesson (O’Loughlin & Haynes, 1999). â€Å"Realia is a term for any real, concrete object used in the classroom to create connections with vocabulary words, stimulate conversation, and build background knowledge† (Herrell, 2000). Schools organize to collect funds for realias that teachers and students can use. . Teachers can use models, photographs, illustrations, and artwork when the real object is inaccessible or is impractical. The use of realia can also be a model way to study different cultures included in a lesson. For example, in studying the eating habits of some culture a set eating utensils and kitchen appliances (chopsticks, a tortilla press, a tea set, a wok) can build vocabulary and increase comprehension. Another good example is the study of different clothing items from different cultures. (Herrell, 2000) It would also be helpful to label everything in classroom so that newcomers see the names of objects in the school environment. Incorporating posters, photos or graphs is another way to encourage comprehension and development in students as well. These items can encourage understanding through illustrating the concepts and meanings of the topics/words (Reiss, 2006). Multimedia can be used to teach parts of speech such as verbs, adjectives, etc. Multimedia clips such as films show the use of language in actual use exposing the conversational use of language to increase the student’s ability to use English in a conversation. Audio clips also helps students learned the correct pronunciations of letters and words. The learning outcome of this strategy is that a student is more likely to find the support and understanding in the lessons and the content that is being introduced. They are able to make the connection easier through the combined audio and visual exposure. Graphic representations, the use the words/phrases in pictures, videos, audio, etc., aid in the effort of reinforcing the verbal and the written word and encourage content comprehension of the students (Reiss, 2006). Cooperative Groups, Peer Coaching Cooperative learning can be successful for all students at all academic levels and learning styles. Cooperative learning involves student participation in small-group learning activities that promote positive interactions. Cooperative learning makes sense for teachers because all students are given frequent opportunities to speak and because a spirit of cooperation and friendship is fostered among classmates. (Cochran, 1989) Students benefit through a shared learning activity, from observing how their peers learn. Face-to-face verbal interactions is advantageous for English language learners because it promote communication that is natural and meaningful (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 1994) Teachers take several roles in planning cooperative learning. First, teachers make pre-instructional decisions about grouping students and assigning appropriate tasks. Teachers have to be able to fully explain the academic tasks and the grouping structure and roles to students and then must observe and get involved when necessary. Finally, the teacher is also the one who is responsible for evaluating the group and individual performance as well as the effectiveness of each group’s work (Cohen, 1998). Teachers do have to spend time in planning for cooperative learning to work. But, as illustrated in the example, once cooperative learning is organized the activities can be done again and again in different settings and in different content areas (Yahya & Huie, 2002). Cooperative learning is valuable when students have an interesting thought through task such as a set of discussion questions about a story they just read, producing a mental map of the story, or making up a puppet show to highlight character traits. Cooperative learning groups or peer coaching promotes a positive outcome when everyone involved understands the underlying purpose of this method. These methods are effective and successful because students tend to listen to one another and motivate one another to learn (NWREL, 2003). The value of cooperative learning and peer coaching strategy is to effectively promote the transfer of group ideas to individual learning. Repeat and Rephrase The repeat and re-phrase technique works by emphasizing key words and phrases in the discussion. Repetition is a key part of learning. The more times information is repeated. It is more likely that information will be easily recalled. Repeating the statement or question and re-phrasing it can illuminate the discussion. This strategy also helps in the student’s deeper understanding of the lesson. Much repetition and paraphrasing is required in this strategy. The teacher’s key role is to highlight the ideas that have already been discussed and modify them to give the same meaning, but a new understanding of the same idea. Through this the teacher could help students see the connection and transformation of the old information to a new one. The repeat and re-phrasing method is successful for instructions or classroom discussions. When speaking, the teacher needs to make sure that they articulate clearly and slowly, not making unnatural sounds to distinguish between important words or phrases; but placing a natural emphasis on the key words. Repeating frequently and paraphrasing the important information ensures that the concepts are comprehended. (Dunlap, Weisman, 2006) For example while discussing the teacher can repeat the central ideas or elaborate them over an extended period of time, for the purposes of emphasizing them for their students or slowly rephrase them in simpler terms to be more understandable. In this strategy the teacher could ask a question or utter a statement â€Å"Lisa sits quietly while listening to the teacher†. The teacher raises a question to repeat the concept. â€Å"Can Lisa listen to the teacher if she’s noisy†? If the student does not understand, the teacher can ask the same question, but in a different form, â€Å"Can you listen to our discussion if everyone is noisy?† In repeating and re-phrasing, the goal is to enhance a student’s independence in understanding and comprehension. The use of repetition can be a consistent reminder of the information that has been introduced, making sure that the students pick up on the concepts. (O’Loughlin, Haynes 1999) Using this strategy enables the teacher to associate interrelated concepts by changing their structure into a sentence or question and further rephrase and repeat these but still arriving at the same answer. Music and Jazz Chants One of the most powerful English language learning strategies is the use of music and jazz chants because music is universal to all languages. Every culture sees music as a form of self expression. Jazz chants help non-native learners get the â€Å"feel† of American English. The student learns the stress, rhythm and intonation patterns by imitating them. It’s a very effective and pleasurable way to learn. Songs are often easier to remember than just plain words and sentences. Jazz chants stimulate and appeal to multiple senses of learning. They also use the rhythmic presentation of the natural language which is important to successfully speaking English (Tang & Loyet, 2004). Helping non-native speakers develop confidence in their pronunciation abilities requires that they have a good understanding of speech rhythms in English. These students need reading practice for fluency and pronunciation. Jazz chants and music are a fantastic way of practicing. This method also works for memorization. For example, it is much easier to memorize the English alphabet using the alphabet song learned in Kindergarten. Music is effective in memorizing long lists such as periodic tables, alphabets, numbers, etc. This method can be used to introduce long concepts without anxiety. Students remember information in the form of song, and sometimes tossing in a little dance or hand movement for fun. Teachers frequently use this activity as a method of memorizing information and pronunciation (Short, 1991). Adding a tune or rhythm to a poem, a verse or a series of regular words and sentences can make it an engaging way to learn to read and remember (Bridges, Wright, 2006). For example, a teacher could choose a song such as Ella Fitzgerald’s wonderful rendition of the classic â€Å"Blue Moon,† a song that is not only beautiful but also practical for its interesting lyrics and a clear singing style. First is to start creating a close exercise (i.e. fill-in-the-blank) and leave empty spaces for words that will challenge students to listen carefully. The teacher would need to play the song two or three times depending on the difficulty of the exercise or questions about vocabulary (e.g. â€Å"adore† not â€Å"a door.†) When the close exercise is complete, play the song again the students would sing along with it. The next activities may include a scrutiny of the lyrics on a literary or grammatical level or an open discussion about the historical significance behind the idea of the â€Å"Blue Moon,† or an introduction to the music (both literal and figurative) of Ella Fitzgerald may prove interesting to students. (Roberts, M. 2007). Most people have had a song that is always playing in his head every now and then. Jazz chants just do that. They play continuously in the students’ heads even after class ends. Students remember the lyrics of songs, more than likely, for a long time. Songs will help students to learn long string of words. Students are receptive using this method and this makes the information easy to acquire and retain. Students generally join eagerly in activities like jazz chants because of the unique and fun way of learning the lesson unaware that they are learning. The result of this strategy is longer memory retention of information for the English language learners. If a song is playing in their heads over and over again, information is retained and can be easily access by the teacher (O’Loughlin, J. & Haynes, J.1999). Conclusion These English language learner strategies are proven to effectively helps teachers facilitate learning and to efficiently retain language information to non-native learners. The methodology of carrying out these strategies would be very successful if they are done properly. The techniques that have been reviewed are essential to the success of an ELL classroom. However, there is no perfect strategy for every student or teacher. Teachers must carefully examine the needs of each student and each of their receptivity to learning new information. From there, the teacher would be able to generate a strategy that would be optimal for learning for all the students. These strategies are very helpful and best used simultaneously to expose students to different pathways to learning new information. There are many more strategies out there for teachers of ESL and ELL students. Teachers could also create their own strategies in delivering lesson plans. The teacher’s most important tasks is to foster interactivity by creating a learning atmosphere in the classroom and to uphold the value of respect for differences in language ability and culture. These strategies are effective because it is synchronized on how the brain process new information that is to build on prior knowledge, classical repetition of central ideas, and an abstract-concrete connection for visual aides. They are also fun and interactive such as multimedia, cooperative learning and music and jazz.   They help eliminate the anxiety of ELLs in learning a new language. They also become more receptive and interested in learning because these are fun and enjoyable References Allen, J. (2004). Tools for Teaching Content Literacy. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Retrieved on March 30, 2008 from http://www.u-46.org/dbs/roadmap/files/comprehension/4KWL.pdf Bridges, L. & Wright, A. (2006). Using jazz chants for bilingual/ESL students. Retrieved March 29, 2008 from http://litsite.alaska.edu/uaa/workbooks/jazzchants.html Cohen, E.G. (1998). Making cooperative learning equitable. (Realizing a positive school climate.) Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved March 29, 2008 from http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/classics/pig/12allenglish.htm Cochran, C. (1989). Strategies for involving LEP students in the all-English-medium classroom: A cooperative learning approach. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Retrieved March 29, 2008 from http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/pigs/pig7.htm Herrell, A. L. (2000). Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. Retrieved March 29, 2008 from http://multilingual.fresno.k12.ca.us/eld/eldg1/ELD%20Rec.Strategies.pdf Dunlap,C. Z. & Weisman, E. M. (2006). Helping English language learners succeed. Huntington Beach: Shell Educational Publishing. Johnson, D. W., Johnson R. T., & Holubec, E.J. (1986). Circles of learning: Cooperation in the classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book. Retrieved March 29, 2008 from http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/classics/pig/12allenglish.htm NWREL. (2003). General principles for teaching ELL students. Retrieved March 29, 2008 from http://www.nwrel.org/request/2003may/general.html O’Loughlin, J. & Haynes, J. (1999, April). Strategies and activities for mainstream teaching. Tell Training Manual. Retrieved March 29, 2008, from http://www.kennesaw.edu/tell/tell_manual.htm Reiss, J. (2006). 102 Content strategies for english language learners: Teaching for academic success in Grades 3-12. Columbus, Ohio: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall. Roberts, M. (2007). Music really plays in ESL classes. Retrieved March 29, 2008, from http://esl-programs-lessons.suite101.com/article.cfm/music_really_plays_in_esl_classes Short, S (1991). Integrating language and content instruction: strategies and techniques. Tang, F., & Loyet, D. (2004). Celebrating twenty-five years of jazz chants. Retrieved March 29, 2008, from http://www.nystesol.org/pub/idiom_archive/idiom_fall2003.html The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at Stony Brook University (n.d.). Tips for teaching ELL’s: Strategies for promoting success for the second language learner in grades K-12. Retrieved March 29, 2008, from http://www.celt.sunysb.edu/ell/tips.php#Strategy_12 – not in text Yahya, N. & Huie, K. (2002). Reaching english language learners through cooperative learning. The Internet TESL Journal, 8(3). Allen, J. (2004). Tools for Teaching Content Literacy. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Retrieved on March 30, 2008 from http://www.u-46.org/dbs/roadmap/files/comprehension/4KWL.pdf

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Mp3

Mp3 Mp3s and the file sharing programs need to be kept free because of its availability, ease to get, use, play, put on a cd, and for the wonderful price of nothing once gotten off of Napster. In the beginning a couple of college kids worked on a science experiment on an idea that hadn't been tried completely before. Like Henry Ford, they put together the ability to make an amazing resource readily available, but unlike Henry Ford, they didn't profit. Although they didn't even profit, big companies accuse the mp3 sharing programs of stealing money and breaking down musical artists careers in just a couple months, and now people must fight to keep the dream of free unlimited music alive.Companies believe that the sales of cds and other forms of music will decrease rapidly and mp3s will destroy the record industry with free music. Instead the opposite happened, and in most places, nothing really changed.I have too many mp3s and files in my laptop, it's ...

Monday, October 21, 2019

Best Analysis Love and Relationships in The Great Gatsby

Best Analysis Love and Relationships in The Great Gatsby SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Love, desire, and sex are a major motivators for nearly every character in The Great Gatsby. However, none of Gatsby’s five major relationships is depicted as healthy or stable. So what can we make of this? Is Fitzgerald arguing that love itself is unstable, or is it just that experiencing love and desire the way the characters do is problematic? Gatsby’s portrayal of love and desire is complex. So we will explore and analyze each of Gatsby’s five major relationships: Daisy/Tom, George/Myrtle, Gatsby/Daisy, Tom/Myrtle, and Jordan/Nick. We will also note how eachrelationship develops through the story, thepower dynamics involved, and what each particular relationship seems to say about Fitzgerald’s depiction of love. We will also include analysis of important quotes for each of the five major couples. Finally, we will go over some common essay questions about love, desire, and relationships to help you with class assignments. Keep reading for the ultimate guide to love in the time of Gatsby! Roadmap Analyzing the characters via the major relationships (including key quotes) Marriages Tom/Daisy George/Myrtle Relationships/Affairs Daisy/Gatsby Tom/Myrtle Nick/Jordan Common Essay Prompts/Discussion Topics Quick Note on Our Citations Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text. Analyzing The Great GatsbyRelationships We will discuss the romantic pairings in the novel first through the lens of marriage. Then we will turn our attention to relationships that occur outside of marriage. Marriage 1:Daisy and Tom Buchanan Tom and Daisy Buchanan were married in 1919, three years before the start of the novel.They both come from incredibly wealthy families, and live on fashionable East Egg, marking them as members of the â€Å"old money† class. Daisy and Tom MarriageDescription As Jordan relates in a flashback, Daisy almost changed her mind about marrying Tom after receiving a letter from Gatsby (an earlier relationship of hers, discussed below), but eventually went through with the ceremony â€Å"without so much as a shiver† (4.142). Daisy appeared quite in love when they first got married, but the realities of the marriage, including Tom’s multiple affairs, have worn on her. Tom even cheated on her soon after their honeymoon, according to Jordan: â€Å"It was touching to see them together- it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers too because her arm was broken- she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel† (1.143). So what makes the Buchanans tick? Why has their marriage survived multiple affairs and even a hit-and-run? Find out through our analysis of key quotes from the novel. Daisy and Tom Marriage Quotes Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. (1.17) Nick introduces Tom and Daisy as restless, rich, and as a singular unit: they. Despite all of the revelations about the affairs and other unhappiness in their marriage, and the events of the novel, it’s important to note our first and last descriptions of Tom and Daisy describe them as a close, if bored, couple. In fact, Nick only doubles down on this observation later in Chapter 1. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." "You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so- the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated- God, I'm sophisticated!" "The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged." (1.8-120) In this passage, Daisy pulls Nick aside in Chapter 1 and claims, despite her outward happiness and luxurious lifestyle, she’s quite depressed by her current situation. At first, it seems Daisy is revealing the cracks in her marriage – Tom was â€Å"God knows where† at the birth of their daughter, Pammy – as well as a general malaise about society in general (â€Å"everything’s terrible anyhow†). However, right after this confession, Nick doubts her sincerity. And indeed, she follows up her apparently serious complaint with â€Å"an absolute smirk.† What’s going on here? Well, Nick goes on to observe that the smirk â€Å"asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.† In other words, despite Daisy’s performance, she seems content to remain with Tom, part of the â€Å"secret society† of the ultra-rich. So the question is: can anyone – or anything – lift Daisy out of her complacency? "I never loved him," she said, with perceptible reluctance. "Not at Kapiolani?" demanded Tom suddenly. "No." From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air. "Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?" There was a husky tenderness in his tone. ". . . Daisy?" (7.258-62) Over the course of the novel, both Tom and Daisy enter or continue affairs, pulling away from each other instead of confronting the problems in their marriage. However, Gatsby forces them to confront their feelings in the Plaza Hotel when he demands Daisy say she never loved Tom. Although she gets the words out, she immediately rescinds them – â€Å"I did love [Tom] once but I loved you too!† – after Tom questions her. Here, Tom – usually presented as a swaggering, brutish, and unkind – breaks down, speaking with â€Å"husky tenderness† and recalling some of the few happy moments in his and Daisy’s marriage. This is a key moment because it shows despite the dysfunction of their marriage, Tom and Daisy seem to both seek solace in happy early memories. Between those few happy memories and the fact that they both come from the same social class, their marriage ends up weathering multiple affairs. Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement. They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale- and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. (7.409-10) They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . . (9.146) By the end of the novel, after Daisy’s murder of Myrtle as well as Gatsby’s death, she and Tom are firmly back together, â€Å"conspiring† and â€Å"careless† once again, despite the deaths of their lovers. As Nick notes, they â€Å"weren’t happy†¦and yet they weren’t unhappy either.† Their marriage is important to both of them, since it reassures their status as old money aristocracy and brings stability to their lives. So the novel ends with them once again described as a unit, a â€Å"they,† perhaps even more strongly bonded since they’ve survived not only another round of affairs but murder, as well. Daisy and Tom MarriageAnalysis Neither Myrtle’s infatuation with Tom or Gatsby’s deep longing for Daisy can drive a wedge between the couple. Despite the lying, cheating, and murdering that occurs during the summer, Tom and Daisy end the novel just like they began it: careless, restless, and yet, firmly united. The stubborn closeness of Tom and Daisy’s marriage, despite Daisy’s exaggerated unhappiness and Tom’s philandering, reinforces the dominance of the old money class over the world of Gatsby. Despite so many troubles, for Tom and Daisy, their marriage guarantees their continued membership in the exclusive world of the old money rich. In other words, class is a much stronger bond than love in the novel. Tom and Daisy somehow end the novel with a stronger marriage! Want to get better grades and test scores? We can help. PrepScholar Tutors is the world's best tutoring service. We combine world-class expert tutors with our proprietary teaching techniques. Our students have gotten A's on thousands of classes, perfect 5's on AP tests, and ludicrously high SAT Subject Test scores. Whether you need help with science, math, English, social science, or more, we've got you covered. Get better grades today with PrepScholar Tutors. Marriage 2: Myrtle and George Wilson In contrast to Tom and Daisy, Myrtle and George were married 12 years before the start of the novel. You might think that since they’ve been married for four times as long, their marriage is more stable. In fact, in contrast from Tom and Daisy’s unified front, Myrtle and George’s marriage appears fractured from the beginning. Myrtle and George Marriage Description Although Myrtle was taken with George at first, she overestimated his money and â€Å"breeding† and found herself married to a mechanic and living over a garage in Queens, a situation she’s apparently unhappy with (2.2). However, divorce was uncommon in the 1920s, and furthermore, the working-class Myrtle doesn’t have access to wealthy family members or any other real options, so she stays married – perhaps because George is quite devoted and even in some ways subservient to her. A few months before the beginning of the novel in 1922, she begins an affair with Tom Buchanan, her first affair (2.7). She sees the affair as a way out of her marriage, but Tom sees her as just another disposable mistress, leaving her desperate and vulnerable once George finds out about the affair. Myrtle and George MarriageQuotes I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: "Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down." "Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity- except his wife, who moved close to Tom. (2.15-17) As we discuss in our article on the symbolic valley of ashes, George is coated by the dust of despairand thus seems mired in the hopelessness and depression of that bleak place, while Myrtle is alluring and full of vitality. Her first action is to order her husband to get chairs, and the second is to move away from him, closer to Tom. In contrast to Tom and Daisy, who are initially presented as a unit, our first introduction to George and Myrtle shows them fractured, with vastly different personalities and motivations. We get the sense right away that their marriage is in trouble, and conflict between the two is imminent. "I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe." "You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine. "Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there." (2.2-4) Here we get a bit of back-story about George and Myrtle’s marriage: like Daisy, Myrtle was crazy about her husband at first but the marriage has since soured. But while Daisy doesn’t have any real desire to leave Tom, here we see Myrtle eager to leave, and very dismissive of her husband. Myrtle seems to suggest that even having her husband wait on her is unacceptable – it’s clear she thinks she is finally headed for bigger and better things. Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn't working he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When any one spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colorless way. He was his wife's man and not his own. (7.312) Again, in contrast to the strangely unshakeable partnership of Tom and Daisy, the co-conspirators, Michaelis (briefly taking over narrator duties) observes that George â€Å"was his wife’s man,† â€Å"worn out.† Obviously, this situation gets turned on its head when George locks Myrtle up when he discovers the affair, but Michaelis’s observation speaks to instability in the Wilson’s marriage, in which each fights for control over the other. Rather than face the world as a unified front, the Wilsons each struggle for dominance within the marriage. "Beat me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!" A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting; before he could move from his door the business was over. (7.314-5) We don’t know what happened in the fight before this crucial moment, but we do know George locked Myrtle in a room once he figured out she was having an affair. So despite the outward appearance of being ruled by his wife, he does, in fact, have the ability to physically control her. However, he apparently doesn’t hit her, the way Tom does, and Myrtle taunts him for it – perhaps insinuating he’s less a man than Tom. This outbreak of both physical violence (George locking up Myrtle) and emotional abuse (probably on both sides) fulfills the earlier sense of the marriage being headed for conflict. Still, it’s disturbing to witness the last few minutes of this fractured, unstable partnership. Myrtle and George MarriageAnalysis While Tom and Daisy’s marriage ends up being oddly stable thanks to their money, despite multiple affairs, Myrtle and George’s marriage goes from strained to violent after just one. In other words, Tom and Daisy can patch things up over and over by retreating into their status and money, while Myrtle and George don’t have that luxury. While George wants to retreat out west, he doesn’t have the money, leaving him and Myrtle in Queens and vulnerable to the dangerous antics of the other characters. The instability of their marriage thus seems to come from the instability of their financial situation, as well as the fact that Myrtle is more ambitious than George. Fitzgerald seems to be arguing that anyone who is not wealthy is much more vulnerable to tragedy and strife. As a song sung in Chapter 5 goes, â€Å"The rich get richer and the poor get- children† – the rich get richer and the poor can’t escape their poverty, or tragedy (5.150). The contrasting marriages of the Buchanans and the Wilsons help illustrate the novel’s critique of the wealthy, old-money class. Myrtle and George are a very slow burn that eventually explodes. Relationship 1: Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby The relationship at the very heart of The Great Gatsby is, of course, Gatsby and Daisy, or more specifically, Gatsby’s tragic love of (or obsession with) Daisy, a love that drives the novel’s plot. So how did this ill-fated love story begin? Daisy and Gatsby Relationship Description Five years before the start of the novel, Jay Gatsby (who had learned from Dan Cody how to act like one of thewealthy) was stationed in Louisville before goingto fight in WWI. In Louisville, he met Daisy Fay, a beautiful young heiress (10 years his junior), who tookhim for someone of her social class. Gatsby maintained the lie, which allowed their relationship to progress. Gatsby fell in love with Daisy and the wealth she represents, and she with him (though apparently not to the same excessive extent), but he had to leave for the war and by the time he returned to the US in 1919, Daisy has married Tom Buchanan. Determined to get her back, Gatsby falls in with Meyer Wolfshiem, a gangster, and gets into bootlegging and other criminal enterprises to make enough money to finally be able to provide for her. By the beginning of the novel, he is ready to try and win her back over, ignoring the fact she has been married to Tom for three years and has a child. So does this genius plan turn out the way Gatsby hopes? Can he repeat the past? Not exactly. Daisy and Gatsby RelationshipQuotes "You must know Gatsby." "Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?" (1.60-1) In the first chapter, we get a few mentions and glimpses of Gatsby, but one of the most interesting is Daisy immediately perking up at his name. She obviously still remembers him and perhaps even thinks about him, but her surprise suggests that she thinks he’s long gone, buried deep in her past. This is in sharp contrast to the image we get of Gatsby himself at the end of the Chapter, reaching actively across the bay to Daisy’s house (1.152). While Daisy views Gatsby as a memory, Daisy is Gatsby’s past, present, and future. It’s clear even in Chapter 1 that Gatsby’s love for Daisy is much more intense than her love for him. "Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay." Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor. (4.151-2) In Chapter 4, we learn Daisy and Gatsby’s story from Jordan: specifically, how they dated in Louisville but it ended when Gatsby went to the front. She also explains how Daisy threatened to call off her marriage to Tom after receiving a letter from Gatsby, but of course ended up marrying him anyway (4.140). Here we also learn that Gatsby’s primary motivation is to get Daisy back, while Daisy is of course in the dark about all of this. This sets the stage for their affair being on unequal footing: while each has love and affection for the other, Gatsby has thought of little else but Daisy for five years while Daisy has created a whole other life for herself. "We haven't met for many years," said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be. "Five years next November." (5.69-70) Daisy and Gatsby finally reunite in Chapter 5, the book’s mid-point. The entire chapter is obviously important for understanding the Daisy/Gatsby relationship, since we actually see them interact for the first time.But this initial dialogue is fascinating, because we see that Daisy's memories of Gatsby are more abstract and clouded, while Gatsby has been so obsessed with her he knows the exact month they parted and has clearly been counting down the days until their reunion. They were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room. (5.87) After the initially awkward re-introduction, Nick leaves Daisy and Gatsby alone and comes back to find them talking candidly and emotionally. Gatsby has transformed – he is radiant and glowing. In contrast, we don’t see Daisy as radically transformed except for her tears. Although our narrator, Nick, pays much closer attention to Gatsby than Daisy, these different reactions suggest Gatsby is much more intensely invested in the relationship. "They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such- such beautiful shirts before." (5.8). Gatsby gets the chance to show off his mansion and enormous wealthy to Daisy, and she breaks down after a very conspicuous display of Gatsby’s wealth, through his many-colored shirts. In Daisy’s tears, you might sense a bit of guilt – that Gatsby attained so much just for her – or perhaps regret, that she might have been able to be with him had she had the strength to walk away from her marriage with Tom. Still, unlike Gatsby, whose motivations are laid bare, it’s hard to know what Daisy is thinking and how invested she is in their relationship, despite how openly emotional she is during this reunion. Perhaps she’s just overcome with emotion due to reliving the emotions of their first encounters. His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. (6.134) In flashback, we hear about Daisy and Gatsby’s first kiss, through Gatsby’s point of view. We see explicitly in this scene that, for Gatsby, Daisy has come to represent all of his larger hopes and dreams about wealth and a better life – she is literally the incarnation of his dreams. There is no analogous passage on Daisy’s behalf, because we actually don’t know that much of Daisy’s inner life, or certainly not much compared to Gatsby. So we see, again, the relationship is very uneven – Gatsby has literally poured his heart and soul into it, while Daisy, though she obviously has love and affection for Gatsby, hasn’t idolized him in the same way. It becomes clear here that Daisy – who is human and fallible – can never live up to Gatsby’s huge projection of her. "Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now- isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once- but I loved you too." Gatsby's eyes opened and closed. "You loved me too?" he repeated. (7.264-66) Here we finally get a glimpse at Daisy’s real feelings – she loved Gatsby, but also Tom, and to her those were equal loves. She hasn’t put that initial love with Gatsby on a pedestal the way Gatsby has. Gatsby’s obsession with her appears shockingly one-sided at this point, and it’s clear to the reader she will not leave Tom for him. You can also see why this confession is such a blow to Gatsby: he’s been dreaming about Daisy for years and sees her as his one true love, while she can’t even rank her love for Gatsby above her love for Tom. "Was Daisy driving?" "Yes," he said after a moment, "but of course I'll say I was." (7.397-8) Despite Daisy’s rejection of Gatsby back at the Plaza Hotel, he refuses to believe that it was real and is sure that he can still get her back. His devotion is so intense he doesn’t think twice about covering for her and taking the blame for Myrtle’s death. In fact, his obsession is so strong he barely seems to register that there’s been a death, or to feel any guilt at all. This moment further underscores how much Daisy means to Gatsby, and how comparatively little he means to her. She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him- he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there- it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy- it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the h ouse, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions. (8.10, emphasis added) In Chapter 8, when we get the rest of Gatsby’s backstory, we learn more about what drew him to Daisy – her wealth, and specifically the world that opened up to Gatsby as he got to know her. Interestingly, we also learn that her â€Å"value increased† in Gatsby’s eyes when it became clear that many other men had also loved her. We see then how Daisy got all tied up in Gatsby’s ambitions for a better, wealthier life. You also know, as a reader, that Daisy obviously is human and fallible and can never realistically live up to Gatsby’s inflated images of her and what she represents to him. So in these last pages, before Gatsby’s death as we learn the rest of Gatsby’s story, we sense that his obsessive longing for Daisy was as much about his longing for another, better life, than it was about a single woman. Gatsby and Daisy RelationshipAnalysis Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship is definitely lopsided. There is an uneven degree oflove on both sides (Gatsby seems much more obsessively in love with Daisy than Daisy is with him). We also have difficulty decipheringboth sides of the relationship, since we know far more about Gatsby, his past, and his internal life than about Daisy. Because of this, it’s hard to criticize Daisy for not choosing Gatsby over Tom – as an actual, flesh-and-blood person, she never could have fulfilled Gatsby’s rose-tinted memory of her and all she represents. Furthermore, during her brief introduction into Gatsby’s world in Chapter 6, she seemed pretty unhappy. â€Å"She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village- appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand† (6.96). So could Daisy have really been happy if she ran off with Gatsby? Unlikely. Many people tie Gatsby’s obsessive pursuit of Daisy to the American Dreamitself – the dream is as alluring as Daisy but as ultimately elusive and even deadly. Their relationship is also a meditation on change – as much as Gatsby wants to repeat the past, he can’t. Daisy has moved on and he can never return to that beautiful, perfect moment when he kissed her for the first time and wedded all her hopes and dreams to her. Gatsby's problem is seeing time as circular rather than linear. Relationship 2: Tom Buchananand Myrtle Wilson In contrast to Gatsby and Daisy’s long history, the novel’s other affair began much more recently: Tom and Myrtle start their relationship a few months before the novel opens. Tom and Myrtle Relationship Description Myrtle sees the affair as romantic and a ticket out of her marriage, while Tom sees it as just another affair, and Myrtle as one of a string of mistresses. The pair has undeniable physical chemistry and attraction to each other, perhaps more than any other pairing in the book. Perhaps due to Myrtle’s tragic and unexpected death, Tom does display some emotional attachment to her, which complicates a reading of him as a purely antagonistic figure – or of their relationship as purely physical. So what drives this affair? What does it reveal about Tom and Myrtle? Let’s find out. Tom and Myrtle RelationshipQuotes "I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?" "That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars." The airedale- undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white- changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture. "Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately. "That dog? That dog's a boy." "It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it." (2.38-43) This passage is great because it neatly displays Tom and Myrtle’s different attitudes toward the affair. Myrtle thinks that Tom is spoiling her specifically, and that he cares about her more than he really does – after all, he stops to buy her a dog just because she says it’s cute and insists she wants one on a whim. But to Tom, the money isn’t a big deal. He casually throws away the 10 dollars, aware he’s being scammed but notcaring, since he has so much money at his disposal. He also insists that he knows more than the dog seller and Myrtle, showing how he looks down at people below his own class – but Myrtle misses this because she’s infatuated with both the new puppy and Tom himself. Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom. "It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm- and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.' " (2.9-20) Myrtle, twelve years into a marriage she’s unhappy in, sees her affair with Tom as a romantic escape. She tells the story of how she and Tom met like it’s the beginning of a love story. In reality, it’s pretty creepy – Tom sees a woman he finds attractive on a train and immediately goes and presses up to her like and convinces her to go sleep with him immediately. Not exactly the stuff of classic romance! Combined with the fact Myrtle believes Daisy’s Catholicism (a lie) is what keeps her and Tom apart, you see that despite Myrtle’s pretensions of worldliness, she actually knows very little about Tom or the upper classes, and is a poor judge of character. She is an easy person for Tom to take advantage of. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name. "Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai- - " Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. (2.124-6) In case the reader was still wondering that perhaps Myrtle’s take on the relationship had some basis in truth, this is a cold hard dose of reality. Tom’s vicioustreatment of Myrtle reminds the reader of his brutality and the fact that, to him, Myrtle is just another affair, and he would never in a million years leave Daisy for her. Despite the violence of this scene, the affair continues. Myrtle is either so desperate to escape her marriage or so self-deluded about what Tom thinks of her (or both) that she stays with Tom after this ugly scene. There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control. (7.164) Chapter 2 gives us lots of insight into Myrtle’s character and how she sees her affair with Tom. But other than Tom’s physical attraction to Myrtle, we don’t get as clear of a view of his motivations until later on. In Chapter 7, Tom panics once he finds out George knows about his wife’s affair. We learn here that control is incredibly important to Tom – control of his wife, control of his mistress, and control of society more generally (see his rant in Chapter 1 about the â€Å"Rise of the Colored Empires†). So just as he passionately rants and raves against the â€Å"colored races,† he also gets panicked and angry when he sees that he is losing control both over Myrtle and Daisy. This speaks to Tom’s entitlement – both as a wealthy person, as a man, and as a white person – and shows how his relationship with Myrtle is just another display of power. It has very little to do with his feelings for Myrtle herself. So as the relationship begins to slip from his fingers, he panics – not because he’s scared of losing Myrtle, but because he’s scared of losing a possession. "And if you think I didn't have my share of suffering- look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful- - " (9.145) Despite Tom’s abhorrent behavior throughout the novel, at the very end, Nick leaves us with an image of Tom confessing to crying over Myrtle. This complicates the reader’s desire to see Tom as a straightforward villain. This confession of emotion certainly doesn’t redeem Tom, but it does prevent you from seeing him as a complete monster. Tom and Myrtle RelationshipAnalysis Just as George and Myrtle’s marriage serves as a foil to Tom and Daisy’s, Tom and Myrtle’s affair is a foil for Daisy and Gatsby’s. While Daisy and Gatsby have history, Tom and Myrtle got together recently. And while their relationship seems to be driven by physical attraction, Gatsby is attracted to Daisy’s wealth and status. The tragic end to this affair, as well as Daisy and Gatsby’s, reinforces the idea that class is an enormous, insurmountable barrier, and that when people try to circumvent the barrier by dating across classes, they end up endangering themselves. Tom and Myrtle’s affair also speaks to the unfair advantages that Tom has as a wealthy, white man. Even though for a moment he felt himself losing control over his life, he quickly got it back and was able to hide in his money while Gatsby, Myrtle, and George all ended up dead thanks to their connection to the Buchanans. In short, Tom and Myrtle’s relationship allows Fitzgerald to sharply critique the world of the wealthy, old-money class in 1920s New York. By showing Tom’s affair with a working-class woman, Nick reveals Tom’s ugliest behavior as well as the cruelty of class divisions during the roaring twenties. Tom's subtlety in dealing with Myrtle. Want to get better grades and test scores? We can help. PrepScholar Tutors is the world's best tutoring service. We combine world-class expert tutors with our proprietary teaching techniques. Our students have gotten A's on thousands of classes, perfect 5's on AP tests, and ludicrously high SAT Subject Test scores. Whether you need help with science, math, English, social science, or more, we've got you covered. Get better grades today with PrepScholar Tutors. Relationship 3: Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker We’ve covered the novel’s two married couples – the Buchanans and the Wilsons – as well as the affairs of three out of four of those married parties. But there is one more relationship in the novel, one that is a bit disconnected to the others. I’m talking, of course, about Nick and Jordan. Nick and Jordan Relationship Description Nick and Jordan are the only couple without any prior contact before the novel begins (aside from Nick apparently seeing her photo once in a magazine and hearing about her attempt to cheat). Jordan is a friend of Daisy’s who is staying with her, and Nick meets Jordan when he goes to have dinner with the Buchanans. We can observe their relationship most closely in Chapters 3 and 4, as Nick gets closer to Jordandespite needing to break off his relationship back home first. However, their relationship takes a back seat in the middle and end of the novel as the drama of Daisy’s affair with Gatsby, and Tom’s with Myrtle, plays out. So by the end of the novel, Nick sees Jordan is just as self-centered and immoral as Tom and Daisy, and his earlier infatuation fades to disgust. She, in turn, calls him out for not being as honest and careful as he presents himself as. So what’s the story with Nick and Jordan? Why include their relationship at all? Let’s dig into what sparks the relationship and the insights they give us into the other characters. Nick and Jordan RelationshipQuotes I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before. (1.57) As Nick eyes Jordan in Chapter 1, we see his immediate physical attraction to her, though it’s not as potent as Tom’s to Myrtle. And similarly to Gatsby’s attraction to Daisy being to her money and voice, Nick is pulled in by Jordan’s posture, her â€Å"wan, charming discontented face† – her attitude and status are more alluring than her looks alone. So Nick’s attraction to Jordan gives us a bit of insight both in how Tom sees Myrtle and how Gatsby sees Daisy. "Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon." "Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of- oh- fling you together. You know- lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing- - " (1.131-2) Throughout the novel, we see Nick avoiding getting caught up in relationships – the woman he mentions back home, the woman he dates briefly in his office, Myrtle’s sister – though he doesn’t protest to being â€Å"flung together† with Jordan. Perhaps this is because Jordan would be a step up for Nick in terms of money and class, which speaks to Nick’s ambition and class-consciousness, despite the way he paints himself as an everyman. Furthermore, unlike these other women, Jordan isn’t clingy – she lets Nick come to her. Nick sees attracted to how detached and cool she is. "You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all." "I am careful." "No, you're not." "Well, other people are," she said lightly. "What's that got to do with it?" "They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident." "Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself." "I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you." Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. (3.162-70) Here, Nick is attracted to Jordan’s blasà © attitude and her confidence that others will avoid her careless behavior – an attitude she can afford because of her money. In other words, Nick seems fascinated by the world of the super-wealthy and the privilege it grants its members. So just as Gatsby falls in love with Daisy and her wealthy status, Nick also seems attracted to Jordan for similar reasons. However, this conversation not only foreshadows the tragic car accident later in the novel, but it also hints at what Nick will come to find repulsive about Jordan: her callous disregard for everyone but herself. It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." (4.164) Nick, again with Jordan, seems exhilarated to be with someone who is a step above him in terms of social class, exhilarated to be a â€Å"pursuing† person, rather than just busy or tired. Seeing the usually level-headed Nick this enthralled gives us some insight into Gatsby’s infatuation with Daisy, and also allows us to glimpse Nick-the-person, rather than Nick-the-narrator. And again, we get a sense of what attracts him to Jordan – her clean, hard, limited self, her skepticism, and jaunty attitude. It’s interesting to see these qualities become repulsive to Nick just a few chapters later. Just before noon the phone woke me and I started up with sweat breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf links had come sailing in at the office window but this morning it seemed harsh and dry. "I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon." Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid. "You weren't so nice to me last night." "How could it have mattered then?" (8.49-53) Later in the novel, after Myrtle’s tragic death, Jordan’s casual, devil-may-care attitude is no longer cute – in fact, Nick finds it disgusting. How can Jordan care so little about the fact that someone died, and instead be most concerned with Nick acting cold and distant right after the accident? In this brief phone conversation, we thus see Nick’s infatuation with Jordan ending, replaced with the realization that Jordan’s casual attitude is indicative of everything Nick hates about the rich, old money group. So by extension, Nick’s relationship with Jordan represents how his feelings about the wealthy have evolved – at first he was drawn in by their cool, detached attitudes, but eventually found himself repulsed by their carelessness and cruelty. She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little, jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn't making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye. "Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while." We shook hands. "Oh, and do you remember- " she added, "- - a conversation we had once about driving a car?" "Why- not exactly." "You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride." "I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor." (9.129-135) In their official break-up, Jordan calls out Nick for claiming to be honest and straightforward but in fact being prone to lying himself. So even as Nick is disappointed in Jordan’s behavior, Jordan is disappointed to find just another â€Å"bad driver† in Nick, and both seem to mutually agree they would never work as a couple. It’s interesting to see Nick called out for dishonest behavior for once. For all of his judging of others, he’s clearly not a paragon of virtue, and Jordan clearly recognizes that. This break-up is also interesting because it’s the only time we see a relationship end because the two members choose to walk away from each other – all the other failed relationships (Daisy/Gatsby, Tom/Myrtle, Myrtle/George) ended because one or both members died. So perhaps there is a safe way out of a bad relationship in Gatsby – to walk away early, even if it’s difficult and you’re still â€Å"half in love† with the other person (9.136). If only Gatsby could have realized the same thing. Nick and Jordan RelationshipAnalysis Nick and Jordan’s relationship is interesting, because it’s the only straightforward dating we see in the novel (it’s neithera marriage nor an illicit affair), and it doesn’t serve as an obvious foil to the other relationships. But it does echo Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship, in that a poorer man desires a richer girl, and for that reason gives us additional insight into Gatsby’s love for Daisy. But it also quietly echoes Tom’s relationship with Myrtle, since we Nick seems physically drawn to Jordan as well. The relationship also is one of the ways we get insight into Nick. For instance, he only really admits to his situation with the woman back at home when he’s talking about being attracted to Jordan. â€Å"I'd been writing letters once a week and signing them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free† (3.170). Through Jordan, we actually see Nick experience exhilaration and love and attraction. Finally, through his relationship with Jordan, we can easily see Nick’s evolving attitude toward the wealthy elite. While he allows himself to be charmed at first by this fast-moving, wealthy, and careless world, he eventually becomes disgusted by the utter lack of morality or compassion for others. It's shocking that calmly saying goodbye is a rarity in this world. More often? Breakup by violent death. Discussion and Essay Topics on Love inThe Great Gatsby These are a few typical essay topics surrounding issues of love, desire, and relationships you should be prepared to write about. Some of them give you the opportunity to zoom in on just one couple, while others have you analyze the relationships in the book more generally. As always, it will be important to close-read, find key lines to use as evidence, and argue your point with a clearly-organized essay. (You can read more of our essay writing tips in our Character Analysis article.) So let’s take a look at a few common love and relationships prompts to see this analysis in action! Is there any couple in The Great Gatsby that has true love? For any essay topic that asks if characters in a book represent some kind of virtue (whether that’s true love, honesty, morality, or anything else), you should start by coming up with a definition of the value. For example, in this case, you should give a definition of â€Å"true love,† since how you define true love will affect who you choose and how you make your argument. For example, if you argue that true love comes down to stability, you could potentially argue Tom and Daisy have true love, since they actually remain together, unlike any of the other couples. But if you argue true love is based on strong emotion, you might say Gatsby’s love for Daisy is the truest. So however you define true love, make sure to clearly state that definition, since it will shape your argument! Remember it’s also possible in a prompt like this to argue that no one in the book has true love. You would still start by defining true love, but then you would explain why each of the major couples does not have real love, and perhaps briefly explain what element each couple is missing. Is The Great Gatsby a love story or a satire? Some essays have you zoom way out and consider what The Great Gatsby’s overall genre (or type) is. The most common argument is that, while Gatsby is a tragic love story on the surface (the love of Gatsby and Daisy), it’s really more of a satire of wealthy New York society, or a broader critique of the American Dream. This is because the themes of money, society and class, and the American Dreamare pretty constant, while the relationships are more of a vehicle to examine those themes. To argue which genre Gatsby is (whether you say â€Å"it’s more of a love story† or â€Å"it’s more of a satire†), define your chosen genre and explain why Gatsby fits the definition. Make sure to include some evidence from the novel’s final chapter, no matter what you argue. Endings are important, so make sure you link Gatsby’s ending to the genre you believe it is. For example, if you’re arguing â€Å"Gatsby is a love story,† you could emphasize the more hopeful, optimistic parts of Nick’s final lines. But if you argue â€Å"Gatsby is satire,† you would look at the sad, harsh details of the final chapter – Gatsby’s sparsely-attended funeral, the crude word scrawled against his back steps, etc. Also, be sure to check out our post on the novel's ending for more analysis. Is what Gatsby feels for Daisy love, obsession, affection, or accumulation/objectification? What is Fitzgerald’s message here? A really common essay topic/topic of discussion is the question of Gatsby’s love for Daisy (and sometimes, Daisy’s love for Gatsby): is it real, is it a symbol for something else, and what does it reveal about both Daisy and Gatsby’s characters? As we discussed above, Gatsby’s love for Daisy is definitely more intense than Daisy’s love for Gatsby, and furthermore, Gatsby’s love for Daisy seems tied up in an obsession with her wealth and the status she represents. From there, it’s up to you how you argue how you see Gatsby’s love for Daisy – whether it’s primarily an obsession with wealth, whether Daisy is just an object to be collected, or whether you think Gatsby actually loves Daisy the person, not just Daisy the golden girl. Analyze the nature of male-female relationships in the novel. This is a zoomed-out prompt that wants you to talk about the nature of relationships in general in the novel. Still, even though we have clearly identified the five major relationships, it might be complicated for you to try and talk about every single one in depth in just one essay. Instead, it will be more manageable for you to use evidence from two to three of the couples to make your point. You could explore how the relationships expose that America is in fact a classist society. After all,the only relationship that lasts (Tom and Daisy’s) lasts because of the security of being in the same class, while the others fail either due to cross-class dating or one member (Myrtle) desperately trying to break out of her given class. You could also talk about how the power dynamics within the relationships vary wildly, but only the couple that seems to have a stable relationship is also described as â€Å"conspiratorial† and often as a â€Å"they† – that is, Tom and Daisy Buchanan. So perhaps Fitzgerald does envision a sort of lasting partnership being possible, if certain conditions (like both members being happy with the amount of money in the marriage) are met. This prompt and ones like it give you a lot of freedom, but make sure not to bite off more than you chew! What’s Next? Wondering how else you can pair these characters in an essay? Check out our article on comparing and contrasting the most common character pairings in The Great Gatsby. Why is money so crucial in the world of the novel? Read more about money and materialism in Gatsbyto find out. Need to get the events of the book straight? Check out our chapter summaries to get a handle on the various parties, liaisons, flashbacks, and deaths. Get started with our book summary here! Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: