Richard B. Sewall Claims That Melvilles Vision In Moby-Dick Is A Cruel

Richard B. Sewall claims that Melville's vision in Moby-Dick is a cruel reminder of the original terror, in which all moral judgements are accompanied by tensions, paradoxes, and ambiguities. In response to this statement, I agree that all moral judgements are fraught with tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities. Much of Ishmael's experiences while on land and at sea deal with making moral judgements; the act of forming an opinion by discerning what is right and wrong. Melville uses Ishmael to prove his vision that moral judgements are derived from (life) experiences directly affected by tensions, paradoxes, and ambiguities. Melville uses excellent representations of how tension can impact moral judgement making. Ishmael undergoes a particular situation in which tension directly affects his process of analyzing and judgement making. There is an obvious tension between Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod due to Ahab's silent intensity and self-concentrated desire to kill Moby-Dick. Ahab seems to be in his own world, loosing himself to the temptations of getting revenge on the White Whale. Ishmael makes note of this unspoken tension while looking for him during his watch. ...I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation...but whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness-to call it so-which I felt...(Melville, 109). Although Ishmael had not seen Ahab yet, he found it peculiar that he remained secluded in his quarters below the deck. This instance creates tensi on in Ishmael's mind, making him second-guess his attendance aboard the Pequod. This tension was the perfect recipe to help Ishmael decide how much he would want to interact with Ahab. In other instances, Melville uses the whale to show how paradoxes can affect judgement. When Stubb kills a whale in Chapter 61, Ishmael lingers around the incident, explaining first exactly what the dart is and what the crotch is. When Ishmael wants to examine representations of whales, he looks at monstrous and less erroneous pictures of whales and then depictions of whales in paint, teeth, wood, sheet-iron, stone, mountains, and stars. This commitment to analyzing the whale in general creates a paradox in that Ishmael either underestimates or overestimates the whale and its characteristics. It is a constant contradiction that affects Ishmael's judgement in a way that makes him feel either at ease or unrest with the whale. Melville states the ambiguity of experience in the chapter Queequeg in his Coffin. When Queequeg is seized by fever, he orders his coffin in the shape of a canoe. When he recovers, he uses it as a storage chest and an object of art. Later, the coffin is used as a life preserve/buoy for Ishmael. The general idea Melville portrays is that the meaning of an object is determined by an individual, and not in itself. Melville uses Ishmael as the direct link to Queequeg and his coffin when the ship sinks. The different perceptions of the coffin more or less deal with foreshadowing, and Ishmael's desire to analyze the future and judge for himself what is best for him. Melville had many ways of portraying how moral judgements can be impacted. I believe Sewall's claim that all moral judgements are fraught with tensions, paradoxes, and ambiguities to directly apply to moral judgement, as Melville portrayed this through Ishmael and particular events that took place in the novel. Sewall was accurate in his statement in that these three elements can greatly affect a person and their moral sense of judgement. Richard B. Sewall claims that Melville's vision in Moby-Dick is a cruel reminder of the original terror, in which all moral judgements are accompanied by tensions, paradoxes, and ambiguities. In response to this statement, I agree that all moral judgements are fraught with tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities. Much of Ishmael's experiences while on land and at sea deal with making moral judgements; the act of forming an opinion by discerning what is right and wrong. Melville uses Ishmael to prove his vision that moral judgements are derived from (life) experiences directly affected by tensions, paradoxes, and ambiguities. Melville uses excellent representations of how tension can impact moral judgement making. Ishmael undergoes a particular situation in

Background and Impact of The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Background and Impact of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 The fight against racial injustice did not end after the passage of the  Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the law did allow activists to meet their major goals. The legislation came to be after President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Congress to pass a comprehensive civil rights bill. President John F. Kennedy had proposed such a bill in June of 1963, mere months before his death, and Johnson used Kennedys memory to convince Americans that the time had come to address the problem of segregation. Background of the Civil Rights Act After the end of Reconstruction, white Southerners regained political power and set about reordering race relations. Sharecropping became the compromise that ruled the Southern economy, and a number of African-Americans moved to Southern cities, leaving farm life behind. As the black population in Southern cities grew, whites began passing restrictive segregation laws, demarcating urban spaces along racial lines. This new racial order eventually nicknamed the Jim Crow era did not go unchallenged. One notable court case that resulted from the new laws ended up before the Supreme Court in 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer Plessy was a 30-year-old shoemaker in June of 1892 when he decided to take on Louisianas Separate Car Act, delineating separate train cars for white and black passengers. Plessys act was a deliberate decision to challenge the legality of the new law. Plessy was racially mixedseven-eighths whiteand his very presence on the whites-only car threw into question the one-drop rule, the strict black-or-white definition of race of the late 19th-century U.S. When Plessys case went before the Supreme Court, the justices decided that Louisianas Separate Car Act was constitutional by a vote of 7 to 1. As long as separate facilities for blacks and whites were equal separate but equal Jim Crow laws did not violate the Constitution. Up until 1954, the U.S. civil rights movement challenged Jim Crow laws in the courts based on facilities not being equal, but that strategy changed with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) when Thurgood Marshall argued that separate facilities were inherently unequal. And then came the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, the sit-ins of 1960 and the Freedom Rides of 1961. As more and more African-American activists risked their lives to expose the harshness of Southern racial law and order in the wake of the Brown decision, the federal government, including the president, could no longer ignore segregation. The Civil Rights Act Five days after Kennedys assassination, Johnson announced his intention to push through a civil rights bill: We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for 100 years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law. Using his personal power in the Congress to get the needed votes, Johnson secured its passage and signed it into law in July 1964. The first paragraph of the act states as its purpose To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes. The bill prohibited racial discrimination in public and outlawed discrimination in places of employment. To this end, the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate complaints of discrimination. The act ended the piecemeal strategy of integration by ending Jim Crow once and for all. The Impact of the Law The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end the civil rights movement, of course. White Southerners still used legal and extralegal means to deprive black Southerners of their constitutional rights. And in the North, de facto segregation meant that often African-Americans lived in the worst urban neighborhoods and had to attend the worst urban schools.  But because the act took a forceful stand  for civil rights, it ushered in a new era in which Americans could seek legal redress for civil rights violations. The act not only led the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 but also paved the way for programs like affirmative action.

OSHA Risk and Hazards Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

OSHA Risk and Hazards - Assignment Example 3) Part 29CFR Part 1910 standard 22 specifies several standards with respect to walking and slipping hazards in the workplace (Baron, 2011). Of these, 29CFR1910.22a(1) and 29CFR1910.22b(1) are the most applicable (Taylor, 2011). The reason for this is that these standards relate to the way in which designated walkways must be maintained and marked appropriately. 4) This can be accomplished by ensuring that standards are worked towards and that employees are provided with adequate training; concerning expectations of action for day to day operations. Random inspections can also help the firm to reduce the amount of risk that this particular set of hazards poses.   5) High severity level. The reason for this risk level being selected is predicated on the fact that mobility in the workplace is a function that nearly each and every employee values as a product of performing useful work. As such, any hazard to the quality of the walkways or hazards pertaining to slipping affect a large number of stakeholders. 1) Hazards regarding heat stress and strain and chemical burns relate only to specific employees within specific sectors of industrial production. As such, issues pertaining to damaged equipment, faulty inputs, lack of monitoring, failure to measure correctly, and other oversights are likely to contribute to issues relating to further hazards associated with these two previously denoted issues. 2) Those employees that find themselves working within industrial production areas or within construction arenas will be those which are most at risk. Yet, it should also be understood that there is an inherent risk for those employees/stakeholders, that work outside these zones as they could be negatively impacted by a breach of safety standards with respect to the aforementioned hazards.   3) Part 29CFR Part 1910 standard 132 specifies several standards with respect to the use of PPE (personal protective equipment) in dealing with high temperature or chemical substances.