Jem and Scout’s Transformation

Gem and Scout's Transformation Throughout To Kill A Mockingbird America, while being the greatest nation, has had its fair share of problems. Governmental Issues, commerce, making money, and also civil rights. The Issue of the treatment of African Americans is one of the larger, spanning almost two hundred and fifty years of American history. In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, this issue is one of the main topics. In the novel, Gem and Scout learn lessons in morality, being quick to judge, but also keeping strong fundamental values.Our main characters experience events causing them to shift their views on morality. In the beginning of the book, Scout gets Into fights and Is always quick to retaliate. By the end of the book however she learns that sometimes you must hold your head up high and walk away, This Is shown best by Tactics who even when he gets spitted on in public, still walks away without fighting. This is also shown when Gem breaks down and vandalizes Mrs.. Double's f ront yard after her comments about them.He learns that all actions have consequences and that if you would not have done them in the first place, you would eve been able to avoid them all together. The biggest moral lessons they learn is the sinfulness of killing a mockingbird. Mockingbirds do nothing but create sweet music, they don't harm anyone, and It would be a sin to kill one. This relates to Tom Robinson because he is a mockingbird in the sense that he didn't do anything wrong but he is still being punished. Miss Maude says, â€Å"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy†¦ Sing their hearts out for us.That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird† (119). This quote helps explain totes and Scout the importance of accepting others and not hurting those who have done nothing wrong, some of the key themes of the book. These events shape how Gem and Scout perceive the world and alter their opinions about people and Macomb. Gem and Scout learn other important lessons, too. The Finch kids learn from Tactics that you can't be quick to judge others. As children, they hear rumors and make up things about Boo Raddled. Some of these include eating kittens and squirrels.One night, Gem, Scout, and Dill try ND communicate with him by looking through his window but when they try and escape quickly, they get shot at and Gem looses his pants on the fence. When Gem returns retrieve his ripped pants he finds them gently folded and sewed. Events Like this shape how they see the Reader's as not as evil but possibly they just like to be secluded. At then end of the book the children see Arthur, or Boo Raddled, as their protector when he saves them from Bob Lowell. Tactics says, â€Å"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view †¦ Until you limb into his skin and walk around in it† (39). This quote by Tactics really drives in Tactics' morality and how his teachings and overall behavior Influe nce not only his children, but the others In the town like the African American community. It helps the kids really realize that everybody is different and to understand people, you must consider all things from their prospective. Gem and Scout still have stayed the same in some ways. Although the kids have gone through many transformations and have matured rapidly, they have still stayed the same in some regards.Gem is still the example of this is when Scout finds gum in the tree and Gem yells at her to spit it out immediately. Scout says, â€Å"Gem had acquired an alien set of values†¦ Several times he went as far as to tell me what to do† (153). This quote shows how as Gem grows up, he still remains protective of his little sister. He only wants what's best for her NAS sometimes she takes it harshly, when really he is Just trying to keep her safe. Scout is still the innocent little girl who likes to play games and role play.Overall, they haven't hanged in a sense of t heir childlike behavior but instead their look on the world has changed drastically. Gem and Scout have gone through many changes learning empathy and understanding others and have also remained normal kids. They managed to grasp very adult ideas as young children, ideas some adults cannot grasp. Would it be better to have morally strong children who grow not only physically, but also mature mentally, and know the right things to do or would it be better to have children who never grow mentally and live their lives buying into immature and irrational prejudices?

Peace †from what source.? Essay

On 28 June 1914 a hand grenade was rolled beneath a car travelling in a motorcade in the city of Sarajevo in Yugoslavia. The grenade missed its intended target and exploded beneath the following car, injuring several people. The first car continued on its way and the occupants attended a welcome ceremony at the Sarajevo Town Hall. Just a short time later, the VIPs from the first car decided to visit the injured ones who had been taken to the local hospital. On the way there the car stalled, this provided an opportunity for another assassin to shoot and kill the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the Heir to the Austrian Empire and his wife Sophie. These assassinations began a short series of events that led to the start of the Great War – now more commonly called World War 1. This war was so named because it involved countries right around the world. Although centred on Europe, the effects of the War were felt around the world, in fact every inhabited continent had countries involved. The First World War is recognized as a turning point in History. It was the first war where major technological advances contributed to huge casualties. The use of tanks – planes – submarines – huge fighting ships and deadly gas all provided evidence that the modern weapons of War were now so destructive. The devastating effects of World War 1 brought great attention to the  question of global peace. For the first time in history it is recognized that wars between Nations can involve and affect inhabitants of the entire earth. This destructive threat to world peace was continued in the Second World War. Powerful weapons were developed that culminated in the ultimate weapon – the Nuclear bomb. The nuclear bomb has also spawned another close relative. The so-called â€Å"dirty bomb†. This is a deadly device that can spread radiation or a toxic bacteria over thousands of kilometers perhaps killing millions at once – a terrible weapon of war. But it’s not just nations at war that can use these weapons. Terrorists have now become a huge threat to worldwide peace – and the terrifying fact that just one bomb can kill millions of people has awakened an awareness that Global Peace is imperative for the continued future of mankind. The American Historian and Writer Arthur Schlesinger makes a point about the changing nature of the threat to world peace. He wrote at the turn of the last century; â€Å"One set of hatreds replaces another. Lifting the iron grip of ideological repression in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union releases pent-up ethnic, nationalist, religious, and linguistic antagonisms deeply rooted in history and in memory. . . . If the 20th century has been the century of the warfare of ideologies, the 21st century begins as the century of the warfare of ethnicities.† The respected magazine †The Atlantic Monthly† summarises its forecasts for the decades to come; â€Å"Nations break up under the tidal flow of refugees from environmental and  social disaster. . . . Wars are fought over scarce resources, especially water, and war itself becomes continuous with crime, as armed bands of stateless marauders clash with the private security forces of the elites.† Nations or terrorists don’t even need a deadly weapon or vial of bacteria to start an apocalyptic style confrontation anymore. All that’s required is one of these†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ and malicious software designed to disrupt Yes – cyber-tage can start a global war. In fact special malware has already been used by Governments to disrupt vital electronics facilities of rival nations. Governments have even proudly acknowledged their use of this type of sabotage. We could discuss the weapons and means that threaten worldwide peace for a long time. We all know these threats are real and as they say, present. But what about our efforts to curb or even eliminate all threats to peace? What are the measures and steps that have been taken by Governments and Organisations? To eliminate conflicts and bring word peace? 5.00 2 GLOBAL PEACE NOT ATTAINABLE THROUGH HUMAN EFFORTS What has been noted by Historians and scholars has been the effect of WW1 on World Peace. Since the end of that war there has been numerous attempts by mankind to put in place systems to prevent conflicts and ensure we can live in a worldwide peace. Yet can anyone say we live in a peaceful world? Well no we do not. Is it because mankind has lacked effort in trying to make a lasting Peace? Perhaps we can examine efforts to create a worldwide peace but before we do so lets just see what the Bible has to say about man controlling his own  destiny. If we can turn to Jeremiah 10:23 Another scripture we can examine echoes this theme Ecclesiastes 8:9 So we can see that the Bible questions the ability of humans to control their own destiny. Well these words were written thousands of years ago – so what has History proven about our ability to bring about worldwide peaceful conditions for mankind. Modern History is littered with Treaties and Peace Agreements†¦ yet we still live in a World dominated by unrest, conflict and †¦.war. The Treaty of Versailles was the first treaty signed after the end of the First World War and it was a peace settlement between the main combatants in that war. The Treaty though had contentious and controversial points and the politicians of the day knew they urgently needed something else– anything – to bring stability to the world. The League of Nations was then created in1919. The Leagues’ task was simple – to ensure that war never broke out again. The League of Nations was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, was to prevent wars through collective security and disarmament, and settle international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. The League was also tasked with improving labour conditions, ensuring just treatment of native inhabitants, preventing human and drug trafficking  slowing the arms trade, promoting global health, protecting prisoners of war, and the protection of minorities in Europe And after the turmoil caused by the Versailles Treaty, many looked to the League to bring stability to the world. However the League of Nations was unable to bring peace to the world. During its existence, there were wars between Russia and Poland, wars between the Baltic States, between Italy and Albania and then of course the League could not prevent the Second World War. Between the two Great Wars political alliances were made and broken, Peace agreements were made †¦. then broken, treaties weren’t worth the paper they were written on. So one could say the League failed to achieve it’s adjectives. No-one could dispute that The Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini said of the League of Nations†¦.. that †¦.†the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.† That is – it was toothless when it came to making big decisions, especially between nations on the verge of war. Following WW2 and the failure of the League of Nations there was again a call for an organisation that could assure world peace†¦. And so the new organisation the United Nations was born in October 1945. I’d just like to take a moment to read from The UN’s charter. The Purposes of the United Nations are: To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace; To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace; To achieve  international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nati ons in the attainment of these common ends. What about the founders and leaders in the United Nations? What is their take on how successful the organisation has been for global peace? The UN recently celebrated a major anniversary of over 50 years of existence on the UN. One leading Member the president of Finland had this to say; â€Å"Do we live today in a better world than we did 40 years ago? Is there now less violence and warfare? Is there less human suffering in the world? Do the nations feel more secure and confident in their future?† An Online encyclopedia has this to say about the UN: Criticism of the United Nations has been ideologically diverse, although much of it is focused on the UN’s †¦.. inability to handle international conflicts, even on a small scale In 2004, former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold published a book called Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. The book criticized what it called the organization’s moral relativism in the face of (and occasional support of) genocide and terrorism that occurred between the moral clarity of its founding period and the present day. While the UN during its founding period was limited to those nations that declared war on at least one of the Axis powers of World War II, and thus were capable of taking a stand against evil, the modern United Nations has, according to Gold, become diluted to the point where only 75 of the 184 member states during the time of the book’s publication â€Å"were free democracies, according to Freedom House.† He further claimed that this had the effect of tipping the scales of the UN so that the organization as a whole was more amenable to the requirements of dictatorships. The UN General Assembly decided to hold a moment of silence in honor of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il following his death in 2011. Western diplomats criticized the decision. â€Å"An  official at the Czech Republic’s UN mission said the Czechs did not request a similar moment of silence for Vaclav Havel, the playwright-turned-dissident who died† a day after Kim Even organisised crime has cause great concern in the corridors of Power of the the United Nations Evidence is now mounting that criminal groups are spreading their influence worldwide. For years organized crime, with its â€Å"crime families,† has had its links between Italy and the United States. But now UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has warned that â€Å"organized crime on a transnational scale . . . scoffs at frontiers and becomes a universal force.† He said: â€Å"In Europe, in Asia, in Africa and in America, the forces of darkness are at work and no society is spared.† He also said that â€Å"transnational crime . . . undermines the very foundations of the international democratic order. It poisons the business climate, corrupts political leaders and undermines human rights. It can’t be denied that that the UN has failed in It’s primary objective to attain world peace. It fact many true Christians feel as the prophet Jeremiah wrote thousands of years age†¦ Jeremiah 8:15 a hoping for peace, but no good [came];+ for a time of healing, but, look! terror!+ Jeremiah wrote about the failure of peace in Judah but his prophetic words for his people then still ring true today. Why would that be so ?†¦ a hoping for peace, but no good [came];+ for a time of healing, but, look! terror!+ We are intelligent beings†¦.we seem to have a natural inclination to – on the whole- help those less fortunate than ourselves so why and where have we failed over the thousands of years? Did you know the Bible has the answer for mankind’s failure to bring about world peace? Let’s turn to a very salient scripture that really is at the heart of our discussion today. We can find this scripture at 1 John 5:19 19 We know we originate with God,+ but the whole world is lying in the [power of the] wicked one.+ So what does that mean? It means that Satan is in control of this world and has been since 1914, this control that Satan has can be elaborated upon in another discussion but Bible prophecy has indicated that since the year 1914 – and not coincidently when WW1 broke out – Satan has overseen the degrading and peaceless world conditions we witness today. Surely you say though that not all can be fooled. There are plenty of intelligent men and women who trust in the power of man to bring about world peace? We looked at some politicians statements..what about some religious leaders? The Catholic Pope. Leader of millions of catholics around the world, how does he and his predecessors view the UN as a tool for peace. Well as far bac as 1965, after Pope Paul VI visited the United Nations, to read that he had said he had said: â€Å"The peoples of earth turn to the United Nations as the last hope of concord and peace† And more recently the current Catholic pope visited the UN and said Well recently the Pope put all his support behind a solution to peace initialled by the UN Recent quote from this year: The Vatican said the discussions referred to the November 29 UN vote upgrading the Palestinians to the same status as the Holy See: non-member state observer.†¨The Vatican had warmly welcomed the vote, and a Vatican statement said â€Å"it is hoped that this initiative will encourage the commitment of the international community to finding a fair and lasting  solution† to the conflict. The 193-nation General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution to upgrade the Palestinian Authority’s observer status at the United Nations from â€Å"entity† to â€Å"non-member state,† the same status as the Vatican. The Vatican welcomed the resolution, which amounted to an implicit recognition of a Palestinian state. So though decades of failures the major co-called Christian church in the world still puts its faith in a flawed man-made organisation. Even the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of millions of Tibetans, mainly respected around the world, – how does he think world wide peace will come about Well he too is a supporter of the UN but he also makes an interesting point; He recently said; global peace starts with personal peace. We can start eliminating conflict if we work to eliminate anger and hatred as well as other negative emotions within ourselves. By cultivating peace within ourselves, in our families, in the community, we contribute to world peace. ..and that is true isn’t it. Although his trust remains with the UN he recognizes that if we do not have peace within our family, – within our community – or within our town – then how can man achieve global peace? Again it’s time to turn to the Bible our one constant of wisdom that hasn’t changed over the centuries. In this case lets turn to a scripture many Jehovah’s Witnesses are familiar with; 2 Corinthians 4:4 4 among whom the god* of this system of things*+ has blinded the minds* of the unbelievers,+ that the illumination*+ of the glorious good news+ about the Christ,* who is the image+ of God, might not shine through.+ That is really a statement that holds true today just as much as it was written thousands of years go. Satan – Jehovah’s Adversary – a spiritual creature that is now in his role as the God of This System – has actively blinded the minds of imperfect humans. In fact his role was also predicted many years ago – even from the first century ce . Revelation 12:9 9 So down the great dragon+ was hurled, the original serpent,+ the one called Devil+ and Satan,+ who is misleading the entire inhabited earth;*+ he was hurled down to the earth,+ and his angels were hurled down with him. We don’t have time to discuss the reasons why Satan has been allowed by Jehovah to continue to mislead mankind – that’s for another discussion – but the fact is Jehovah’s wisdom and law allowed a time period for Satan to challenge God’s Sovereignty. If God then has allowed this why doesn’t he intervene so save His followers from man-made destruction? Well we can be assured that Jehovah has provided a contingency plan. And this is through His Kingdom rule.

Chalice Chapter 9

He was introduced to her with a tremendous flourish, although no reason was given for his presence; which, with the air and the flourish, was explanation enough, and her heart plummeted. By the time the Grand Seneschal informed her, stiffly, that this was the Overlord’s choice for the next Master’s Heir, she didn’t need to be told, and in her anger and frustration she said, â€Å"That is hasty,† before she remembered to whom she spoke, and she bit her lip, waiting for the rebuke. But none came. She was so surprised she looked into his face. He scowled at her at once, the familiar contemptuous, disapproving scowl, but when she ducked her head and then glanced back again a moment later, his face had relaxed into what looked a lot like sadness. The new man’s name was Horuld. She paid little attention to his breeding, that several of his forebears’ lines ran directly from Willowlands, and several more had crossed in the ensuing generations, and which Deager was very eager to tell out, over and over and over, even to such unworthies as the demesne’s shabby and erratic new Chalice, who was herself one of the indications (Deager didn’t say this but he didn’t have to) that the demesne was still in trouble, over a year after she had taken her place in the Circle. So far as she knew no Chalice had ever been deposed. But she had never seen any record of a Chalice chosen when there was no Master to hold the land steady while the Circle did its work either. It had very occasionally happened that an apprentice died with or before her Chalice; but then too there had always been an experienced Master. And there were stories of Chalices who had not been able to bear the work they were called on to do – even those who had had their proper apprenticeships – and broken under it. There were only a few of these stories, but one was too many, and there was more than one. She believed that one such Chalice was the Chalice she herself followed. She was surprised – even more surprised than she had been at the Grand Seneschal missing a chance to reprimand her – when Horuld seemed disposed to talk to her. There were other, more prepossessing and conversationally skilful members of the Circle he could address himself to; demesne hierarchy declared that Chalice was Second of the Circle, but that had to be remembered only when there was work to be done. Her Circle recollected it only when they had to, as did the Overlord’s agent – or they always had done previously. She was, as Chalice, compelled to be present for the agent’s visit, and – as Chalice – she would serve whatever Master fate set over Willowlands. That was enough. Perhaps the training she hadn’t had would have included how to hold superfluous discourse with people she would rather avoid. When she was standing Chalice or performing a ritual she did not have to chat; but Horuld’s first visit was informal. In other circumstances this would have seemed friendly and considerate; as it was it seemed ominous and coercive. Deager, having proved to his own satisfaction, if not all of his audience’s, that Horuld’s bloodlines were an excellent choice, wished to make it clear – he said – that the Overlord was merely anxious that an unambiguous Heir should be in place, after the recent disaster. If such an accident should happen again, the demesne might fall apart entirely. It had been without a Master for seven months; it could not survive this a second time. She tried to tell herself that a declared Heir was a sensible precaution; their present Master was the end of his family. The previous Master should have declared an Heir when he sent his only brother to Fire. She wondered why the Overlord had not obliged him to do so; she had only been a small woodskeeper then, and small woodskeepers heard little about Overlords’ decisions. The demesne gossip said merely that the Master was a young man, and hale, and he would produce Heirs – had probably produced a few already, the uneasy joke went. But they would be bastards, and prohibited. By the time the ordinary folk of the demesne had begun to realise that their young Master seemed to have no intention of marrying and producing a proper Heir, especially in combination with his increasingly alarming general behaviour, the fear of what this meant also meant that no one wanted to talk about it. And then the worst had happened. Perhaps she should try to believe that the Overlord was merely doing the responsible thing – the responsible thing he had failed to do before – but again she wondered. It was too soon to tie an Heir to the present Circle; Willowlands was still too precarious. However necessary an Heir was, forcing him upon them now would unbalance it further. Would the next thing be that she was obliged to take an apprentice? She had no energy for the binding that would entail. Leaving aside that she had nothing to teach one. Perhaps it was only her dislike of both Deager and Horuld that made her feel the agent was making it clear that Horuld was being introduced to Willowlands as the Heir only after he had made something else even more clear, if not in so many words: that the Overlord would like to see Horuld taking up this inheritance soon. She was too quick to feel she needed to defend the Master, she told herself. But what she had taken from the agent’s description of Horuld’s bloodlines was that if he was the best that could be done for her poor demesne, the Overlord should be straining every muscle to support the present Master. Did the Overlord want to break Willowlands entirely? Surely not. The disruption would damage the Overlord’s grip too†¦no. He would be counting on riding it out; might he, more, be betting on the huge increase of his own power the successful changeover would produce? She knew almost nothing of the politics among Overlords. Demesne folk did not travel to the crown city nor visit the court of the king; and as practising Chalice she was furthermore indissolubly tied to her land. But whatever else she knew or thought of the Grand Seneschal, he would not have kept such a piece of news as a visit from the Heir from the rest of the Circle; and Deager glossed, or slithered, over the question of why Willowlands had not known who was coming with him, which made it plain that there had been no message that had gone awry. She had mixed the cup she would offer to the company before she came. She had mixed it for the visit from the Overlord’s agent, and that was all. That was how it was done; that was why it was important that a Chalice know in advance who would drink from her cup, and for what reasons. Last-minute changes were destabilising, which was why battlefield cups, which were perforce rare, were also notoriously volatile. It should not have been a good omen, that a Master’s Heir should be left out of the first cup he received from the Chalice. Perhaps the Overlord, or some other of his plotters, had decided that being left out was better than a Chalice throwing her weight against him, which a loyal Chalice might be suspected of doing upon the presentation of any outblood Heir. Chalices were parochial by definition; of all the Circle, only the Chalice could not set foot across her demesne’s boundaries. Some of the oldest records called the Chalice the Landtied – and because of this literal overidentification, the Chalice’s response to outbloodedness in any member of the Circle was considered crucial. This perhaps explained why Horuld was interested – indeed eager – to talk to her. Perhaps she could be disposed to include him kindly in her mixture for his next visit, after he had been careful to make a good first impression. She would not need to be disloyal. An y Master’s Heir was an important part in the demesne structure; most accepted Heirs attended at least some Circle gatherings; and under the present circumstances the only possible Heir was an outblood. A Chalice must at least punctiliously include her Master’s Heir in any cup he was present for; of course it would be better if she felt at least benign toward him, or even generous. But she did not feel benign or generous. She listened, smooth-faced, when the agent pronounced some blather about how the surprise of presenting Horuld unannounced would create â€Å"clarity† in an awkward situation; that he would be more able to see where he would best fit into difficult circumstances if no one was trying to soften the truth. She knew that a properly schooled Chalice would have some matching blather to offer in return, but she was not a properly schooled Chalice, and it gave her a little meagre pleasure that her silence discomfited the agent, and by his discomfiture he exposed that he knew his action had been dishonourable. Did she loathe Horuld because Deager was a toad? No. Sunbrightener was a toad, and his antics merely made her feel tired and sad. Or because the Chalice was repelled by outbloodedness? She looked at Horuld and every particle of her recoiled. No. She bore the Chalice, she was not engulfed by it. Mirasol had arrived a little late at the House for the meeting with Deager. Just as she was leaving her cottage a young mother had burst into the meadow carrying a wildly weeping child. Mirasol knew them, Kenti and her daughter Tis; they were neighbours. Tis had pulled a kettle of boiling water over. Fortunately it had only been half full, but the child still had a badly burned arm; and the local herbswoman, Catu, was gone to a lying-in, Kenti did not know where. Mirasol hadn’t spoken to Kenti or her husband Danel properly since she had become Chalice, in spite of the fact that Danel and she had grown up together; she had been jealous when he had been apprenticed to a ploughman, for the horses. Kenti said breathlessly, â€Å"Can you do anything? Can you help?† Her eyes went to the back of Mirasol’s right hand, which was holding the edges of her cloak together over the cup of congruence in her left hand, and then hastily rose to Mirasol’s face. But she couldn’t meet the Chalice’s eyes the way she had many times met Mirasol’s, and they dropped away again. Poor Tis was weeping in a miserable, exhausted way that was painful to hear. Mirasol brought them into the cottage and took down a small pot of the honey especially good for burns and smeared it carefully over Tis’ arm. The little girl cried out at the first touch but by the time Mirasol had finished she had fallen silent, and leant back against her mother’s body staring at Mirasol with huge still-wet eyes. Even as Mirasol looked back at her the eyelids drooped, and Tis was asleep. And then Kenti burst into tears. Mirasol led her to the big soft chair by the fireplace where Mirasol did much of her reading and let her collapse. â€Å"It was my own carelessness – I know what she’s like – I let myself be distracted – it was only a moment – and then I heard her scream – and I knew Catu was away – I didn’t know what to do – it was awful† and then she couldn’t say anything for a while. Mirasol made a tisane – a spoonful of her soothing honey with a spoonful of the calming herbs she’d had from Catu herself; in the early months of her Chalicehood she’d drunk it by the bucketful. When she brought a cup to Kenti, Kenti laid Tis tenderly down beside her on the chair, sticky arm uppermost, and took it. She breathed in the steam and gave a little half laugh: she recognised Catu’s mixture. â€Å"I’ve used honey for littler wounds – your mother taught me that when I wasn’t much older than Tis – but this one was so dreadful. And then I remembered – I remembered your hand. I thought, if your – if the Chalice’s honey can cure what a Fire-priest can do, then perhaps it can cure Tis’ arm.† Mirasol said gently, â€Å"The Master cured my hand.† â€Å"He – ?† said Kenti unbelievingly, and Mirasol saw the fear in her face, the same fear she saw in the Housemen’s faces before they bent nearer their Master to slide the chair under him as he sat down; the fear she saw in the faces of most of the others of the Circle when their part in a rite brought them too close to him – the fear of him that made the Master leave the burnt grove before any of his people saw him there. â€Å"Yes. He.† She wanted to say, Tell Danel. Tell your mother. Tell all your friends. But she watched Kenti’s face and knew that she would tell the story – if she believed it. Kenti’s face said that she wanted to believe it – she wanted that hope, not only for herself, but for her demesne. Kenti sat looking at her daughter for a long moment and then said wonderingly, â€Å"Look – the mark is already fading. Your mother’s honey could not have done so much so quickly. It is the Chalice in you, I know, but perhaps – perhaps – perhaps it is also that we have a Fire-priest for Master†¦.† Her voice had sunk to a whisper. Mirasol was still thinking about the hope in Kenti’s face when she walked up to the House. She knew she was late, but it was only Deager, the agent, coming for a – snoop, she thought uncharitably. Overlords’ agents were supposed to visit their Overlords’ demesnes, but she didn’t like the way Deager’s nose twitched, the way his eyes darted around, as if he were hoping to smell something rotten, to see someone doing something illicit or disgraceful. And then she arrived, and there was a surprising number of people churning around in the big hall behind the front doors, and a youngish, weaselly-faced man she had never seen before standing a little too close to Deager’s elbow. The situation was uncomfortable enough to begin with, when it was only Deager and Horuld, herself and the Grand Seneschal and the Seneschal’s apprentice Bringad, and four of the minor Circle (the others were hastily sent for when Horuld was revealed as the Heir) plus the attendants the visitors brought and their own Housefolk. As the word spread about Horuld, more and more people streamed in, and both the noise and the tension level, it seemed to Mirasol, rose, and the ever-worried Bringad looked more worried than she had ever seen him. But when the Master arrived†¦she did not know how to understand it, explain it, even to herself. It was as if the level ground tipped a little in one direction and the high curving sky changed its arc just a little in some other direction. A Master was not expected to greet a mere agent on his arrival; the Grand Seneschal did that. But as the representative of his Overlord, a Master would be churlish as well as foolish not to see him at some point during his visit. She assumed the Grand Seneschal had despatched a message to the Master about Deager’s unexpected companion; it was impossible to read any trace of surprise or disquiet on the Master’s shadowy black and strangely mutable face when he made his entrance. Mirasol heard with what was beginning to be a familiar sinking of the heart the conversation falter and then stop as he was noticed, before the head Houseman announced him. Perhaps all Masters are greeted with a respectful hush, but she doubted that most demesne folk drew together as if for protection when their Master appeared. When Deager (his voice positively quavering as he addressed the Master) described Horuld as the Overlord’s candidate for Heir, the Master merely bowed his head. There was a disagreeable pause, and then the agent rushed to begin telling Horuld’s bloodlines over again, speaking too loudly and too quickly, and at first forgetting his flourishes. But when a Master has no son nor other suitable close relative, the meeting between the Master and the Master’s newly declared Heir was as laboriously and ponderously formal as centuries of tradition could make it, including, in this case, the tradition that an unexpected situation should be treated even more formally than the same situation when everyone knew what was happening. The Grand Seneschal managed to insert an orotund phrase or two (rather like a pole through the spokes of a wheel, Mirasol thought) into the agent’s barrage of genealogy, which had a steadying effect. When Deager finally fell silent, his concl uding bow was as elaborate as if he were being presented to the king. But Mirasol found herself thinking that the Master had bowed his head so very ceremoniously indeed that perhaps he had somehow known of Horuld’s coming before the message from the Grand Seneschal. Most of the initial gestures among any group that required the presence of the Chalice were stylised, just as her offering of the cup was, but during Horuld’s first visit to Willowlands they all seemed to move as if they were puppets in a puppet show, their limbs made of wood, the pulling of their strings performed by a puppeteer. If there had been an audience Mirasol felt they would not have found the performance convincing. Although Deager had insisted in a manner that was obviously meant to be magnificent but came over as merely presumptuous, that this first informal meeting with the Heir should proceed as it would have if Horuld had not been there, this was not possible, as Deager would have known it was not possible. Furthermore any meeting involving the Circle to which the Chalice stood should be precise about the number of people present, the number of people who would be offered the Chalice’s cup – which Deager would also know. And the Willowlands folk were doubtless awkward with surprise. They had known an Heir would be chosen, and Mirasol had held Chalice during the gathering when the Master had acceded to the Overlord’s wish, as presented by Deager, that the Overlord do the choosing. But that had only been a few weeks ago, and they had heard nothing of the progress of the search. She had begun reading about the meeting of a Master with an unknown Heir, so she knew that if it had been a proper meeting she should offer her cup first to the Master and second to the Heir. After a moment’s invisible dithering behind the face she tried hard to keep in an expressionless Chalice mask she did so anyway: let Deager assume this was a manifestation of magnanimity and support; she considered it buying time. The contrast between the Master and an ordinary human had never been so marked, she thought, as between the Master and his Heir when she took the cup from one and offered it to the other. She had directed them to stand on either side of her – which would also have been the correct form for a planned first meeting between the two of them: she could see Deager smiling with satisfaction, but she ignored him. The Master seemed to tower over her, and his natural heat, as she stood close enough to him to hold a cup to his lips, wrapped itself around her as if claiming her – and briefly and disconcertingly she remembered riding home with him after the fire in the Onora Grove. Horuld, who was no more than average size, seemed puny and frail in comparison; and the fact that he was obviously struggling not to flinch away from the Master added to this impression of weakness. She might have helped him, as she often helped the Circle members who were still reluctant to approach the Master, by stepping toward him, by allowing him to maintain a greater distance; but she did not. She offered the cup to the Master with a bent arm, and then turned and offered the cup to Horuld, again with a bent arm, and waited, forcing him to step close, not only to her, but to the Master. He did not try to take the cup from her, but he did raise a hand to grasp it, and she could feel him trembling. There were beads of sweat on his upper lip which she doubted were only from the heat. Before she took the cup on to Deager and the rest of the Circle, she bowed, to the Master, and then to Horuld. The Master must receive the deeper bow, of course, but the Heir might have had one nearly as deep; her bow to the Heir was only enough more than perfunctory not to be offensive. She let her gaze pass as if carelessly over Deager, and saw that he had stopped smiling. She could feel, before she had got halfway round the Circle, that it was not a good binding. When she made her final bow it was almost difficult to stand upright again, and she was exhausted. She had to make a great effort to meet the eyes of Horuld and Deager; the Grand Seneschal’s eyes looked glassy and unfocused, and the Master’s were as unfathomable as they had been the first day, when his hand had slipped and burnt her, and his face was only blurred shadows. She tried to remember the sudden surprising joy of his healing of her hand, of talking to him about what he saw, about her bees being tiny golden sparks in his strange vision – of the night that she had helped him put out the fire in Onora Grove, and the ride home after. But she remembered these things as she might remember something out of a book, a story told of someone else. Even if, by some extraordinary accident, the Chalice had not known beforehand all those who would drink, a well-mixed cup should have had a more positive effect than this. Perhaps she had mixed it injudiciously; that was likeliest. Even without his bringing an unannounced Heir, her dislike of Deager made it onerous for her to mix a cup that she would have to offer to him. But even if a more experienced Chalice might have done better, it was still true that introducing an Heir without proper advance warning was like throwing a boulder on one side of a delicate scales and expecting them still to balance. But perhaps the lack of binding and balance in this gathering was because Horuld was wrong†¦wrong for the demesne, wrong as Heir, wrong even to be here. It had been known in the past that an outblood Heir was rejected by the demesne, however carefully the humans had tried to make the best choice. Perhaps the Overlord had overplayed his game by giving the Master and his Chalice no forewarning that the Overlord’s choice was coming to be introduced to his hoped-for inheritance. By the end of the day, when she could leave the House and make her way back to her cottage, she was shaking and sick. She pulled her hood over her head and held it bunched round her throat with her hands, feeling that what she really wanted to do was disappear: if she wrapped the ends of her cloak around her tightly enough and then tighter still, eventually there would be no one left inside†¦. Usually the gentle thumping of the empty Chalice cup against her hip was comforting: another ritual got through. Today it was not; she felt that she – they – Willowlands had indeed not got through the ritual of the introduction of the Heir. She concentrated on the thought of sitting in the last of the daylight in the clearing by the cottage, listening to her bees. She was still ten minutes’ walk from the cottage when some of her bees came to meet her. She stretched out her arms to them and they landed on her hands and forearms, stroking her skin as if the tiny hairs were sepals they expected to secrete nectar for them. She shook her hood back, and several landed on her face and neck; out of the corners of her eyes she could see more landing on her shoulders. As she walked the last few minutes to the cottage she found herself thinking that her head felt strangely heavy, and that the hum of the bees was unusually loud; and then when she came out of the tree-shadowed path into the sunny clearing around the cottage she saw a great cloud of bees lifting away from her and dispersing, and she realised that she had been wearing a hood and cloak of bees. She watched them scatter about their proper bee business, and wondered. Horuld came twice more in the next few weeks with Deager, and then a third time he came alone. When he came with Deager their visits were announced in advance; but now as the acknowledged Heir, he might come as he pleased – and stay as he pleased. She was in the House library when he came that third time, and the first warning she had was a shadow falling across the open door; she was deep into her research and would not have noticed, except that a half-familiar voice said, â€Å"Chalice,† and her body had recoiled before her mind had recognised who it was. She turned the recoil, she hoped, into a mere startle, and stood up at once to make a ceremonial sign of greeting, saying, â€Å"Forgive me, my mind was lost in what I was doing.† He said smoothly, â€Å"And I have interrupted you; forgive me.† She bowed her head and waited, hoping his appearance was a formal signal only and that he had no business with her. The demesne’s folk were growing used to their new Chalice, and they were now coming to her more and more; this was a relief in some ways, and she knew she must be grateful for the good this was doing Willowlands, but she often had to put aside what other work she had planned on doing. She had fled to the House library today and was hastily reading up on the behaviour toward and reception of outblood Heirs. Part of her problem, she thought, as she had thought many times since the Chalice had come to her, was that she was not by nature a formal sort of person; she found that side of the duties of the Chalice so difficult as sometimes to feel incompatible with her private self. She wondered if this was anything like trying to live in the human world when you were a priest of Fire. Chalice Chapter 9 He was introduced to her with a tremendous flourish, although no reason was given for his presence; which, with the air and the flourish, was explanation enough, and her heart plummeted. By the time the Grand Seneschal informed her, stiffly, that this was the Overlord’s choice for the next Master’s Heir, she didn’t need to be told, and in her anger and frustration she said, â€Å"That is hasty,† before she remembered to whom she spoke, and she bit her lip, waiting for the rebuke. But none came. She was so surprised she looked into his face. He scowled at her at once, the familiar contemptuous, disapproving scowl, but when she ducked her head and then glanced back again a moment later, his face had relaxed into what looked a lot like sadness. The new man’s name was Horuld. She paid little attention to his breeding, that several of his forebears’ lines ran directly from Willowlands, and several more had crossed in the ensuing generations, and which Deager was very eager to tell out, over and over and over, even to such unworthies as the demesne’s shabby and erratic new Chalice, who was herself one of the indications (Deager didn’t say this but he didn’t have to) that the demesne was still in trouble, over a year after she had taken her place in the Circle. So far as she knew no Chalice had ever been deposed. But she had never seen any record of a Chalice chosen when there was no Master to hold the land steady while the Circle did its work either. It had very occasionally happened that an apprentice died with or before her Chalice; but then too there had always been an experienced Master. And there were stories of Chalices who had not been able to bear the work they were called on to do – even those who had had their proper apprenticeships – and broken under it. There were only a few of these stories, but one was too many, and there was more than one. She believed that one such Chalice was the Chalice she herself followed. She was surprised – even more surprised than she had been at the Grand Seneschal missing a chance to reprimand her – when Horuld seemed disposed to talk to her. There were other, more prepossessing and conversationally skilful members of the Circle he could address himself to; demesne hierarchy declared that Chalice was Second of the Circle, but that had to be remembered only when there was work to be done. Her Circle recollected it only when they had to, as did the Overlord’s agent – or they always had done previously. She was, as Chalice, compelled to be present for the agent’s visit, and – as Chalice – she would serve whatever Master fate set over Willowlands. That was enough. Perhaps the training she hadn’t had would have included how to hold superfluous discourse with people she would rather avoid. When she was standing Chalice or performing a ritual she did not have to chat; but Horuld’s first visit was informal. In other circumstances this would have seemed friendly and considerate; as it was it seemed ominous and coercive. Deager, having proved to his own satisfaction, if not all of his audience’s, that Horuld’s bloodlines were an excellent choice, wished to make it clear – he said – that the Overlord was merely anxious that an unambiguous Heir should be in place, after the recent disaster. If such an accident should happen again, the demesne might fall apart entirely. It had been without a Master for seven months; it could not survive this a second time. She tried to tell herself that a declared Heir was a sensible precaution; their present Master was the end of his family. The previous Master should have declared an Heir when he sent his only brother to Fire. She wondered why the Overlord had not obliged him to do so; she had only been a small woodskeeper then, and small woodskeepers heard little about Overlords’ decisions. The demesne gossip said merely that the Master was a young man, and hale, and he would produce Heirs – had probably produced a few already, the uneasy joke went. But they would be bastards, and prohibited. By the time the ordinary folk of the demesne had begun to realise that their young Master seemed to have no intention of marrying and producing a proper Heir, especially in combination with his increasingly alarming general behaviour, the fear of what this meant also meant that no one wanted to talk about it. And then the worst had happened. Perhaps she should try to believe that the Overlord was merely doing the responsible thing – the responsible thing he had failed to do before – but again she wondered. It was too soon to tie an Heir to the present Circle; Willowlands was still too precarious. However necessary an Heir was, forcing him upon them now would unbalance it further. Would the next thing be that she was obliged to take an apprentice? She had no energy for the binding that would entail. Leaving aside that she had nothing to teach one. Perhaps it was only her dislike of both Deager and Horuld that made her feel the agent was making it clear that Horuld was being introduced to Willowlands as the Heir only after he had made something else even more clear, if not in so many words: that the Overlord would like to see Horuld taking up this inheritance soon. She was too quick to feel she needed to defend the Master, she told herself. But what she had taken from the agent’s description of Horuld’s bloodlines was that if he was the best that could be done for her poor demesne, the Overlord should be straining every muscle to support the present Master. Did the Overlord want to break Willowlands entirely? Surely not. The disruption would damage the Overlord’s grip too†¦no. He would be counting on riding it out; might he, more, be betting on the huge increase of his own power the successful changeover would produce? She knew almost nothing of the politics among Overlords. Demesne folk did not travel to the crown city nor visit the court of the king; and as practising Chalice she was furthermore indissolubly tied to her land. But whatever else she knew or thought of the Grand Seneschal, he would not have kept such a piece of news as a visit from the Heir from the rest of the Circle; and Deager glossed, or slithered, over the question of why Willowlands had not known who was coming with him, which made it plain that there had been no message that had gone awry. She had mixed the cup she would offer to the company before she came. She had mixed it for the visit from the Overlord’s agent, and that was all. That was how it was done; that was why it was important that a Chalice know in advance who would drink from her cup, and for what reasons. Last-minute changes were destabilising, which was why battlefield cups, which were perforce rare, were also notoriously volatile. It should not have been a good omen, that a Master’s Heir should be left out of the first cup he received from the Chalice. Perhaps the Overlord, or some other of his plotters, had decided that being left out was better than a Chalice throwing her weight against him, which a loyal Chalice might be suspected of doing upon the presentation of any outblood Heir. Chalices were parochial by definition; of all the Circle, only the Chalice could not set foot across her demesne’s boundaries. Some of the oldest records called the Chalice the Landtied – and because of this literal overidentification, the Chalice’s response to outbloodedness in any member of the Circle was considered crucial. This perhaps explained why Horuld was interested – indeed eager – to talk to her. Perhaps she could be disposed to include him kindly in her mixture for his next visit, after he had been careful to make a good first impression. She would not need to be disloyal. An y Master’s Heir was an important part in the demesne structure; most accepted Heirs attended at least some Circle gatherings; and under the present circumstances the only possible Heir was an outblood. A Chalice must at least punctiliously include her Master’s Heir in any cup he was present for; of course it would be better if she felt at least benign toward him, or even generous. But she did not feel benign or generous. She listened, smooth-faced, when the agent pronounced some blather about how the surprise of presenting Horuld unannounced would create â€Å"clarity† in an awkward situation; that he would be more able to see where he would best fit into difficult circumstances if no one was trying to soften the truth. She knew that a properly schooled Chalice would have some matching blather to offer in return, but she was not a properly schooled Chalice, and it gave her a little meagre pleasure that her silence discomfited the agent, and by his discomfiture he exposed that he knew his action had been dishonourable. Did she loathe Horuld because Deager was a toad? No. Sunbrightener was a toad, and his antics merely made her feel tired and sad. Or because the Chalice was repelled by outbloodedness? She looked at Horuld and every particle of her recoiled. No. She bore the Chalice, she was not engulfed by it. Mirasol had arrived a little late at the House for the meeting with Deager. Just as she was leaving her cottage a young mother had burst into the meadow carrying a wildly weeping child. Mirasol knew them, Kenti and her daughter Tis; they were neighbours. Tis had pulled a kettle of boiling water over. Fortunately it had only been half full, but the child still had a badly burned arm; and the local herbswoman, Catu, was gone to a lying-in, Kenti did not know where. Mirasol hadn’t spoken to Kenti or her husband Danel properly since she had become Chalice, in spite of the fact that Danel and she had grown up together; she had been jealous when he had been apprenticed to a ploughman, for the horses. Kenti said breathlessly, â€Å"Can you do anything? Can you help?† Her eyes went to the back of Mirasol’s right hand, which was holding the edges of her cloak together over the cup of congruence in her left hand, and then hastily rose to Mirasol’s face. But she couldn’t meet the Chalice’s eyes the way she had many times met Mirasol’s, and they dropped away again. Poor Tis was weeping in a miserable, exhausted way that was painful to hear. Mirasol brought them into the cottage and took down a small pot of the honey especially good for burns and smeared it carefully over Tis’ arm. The little girl cried out at the first touch but by the time Mirasol had finished she had fallen silent, and leant back against her mother’s body staring at Mirasol with huge still-wet eyes. Even as Mirasol looked back at her the eyelids drooped, and Tis was asleep. And then Kenti burst into tears. Mirasol led her to the big soft chair by the fireplace where Mirasol did much of her reading and let her collapse. â€Å"It was my own carelessness – I know what she’s like – I let myself be distracted – it was only a moment – and then I heard her scream – and I knew Catu was away – I didn’t know what to do – it was awful† and then she couldn’t say anything for a while. Mirasol made a tisane – a spoonful of her soothing honey with a spoonful of the calming herbs she’d had from Catu herself; in the early months of her Chalicehood she’d drunk it by the bucketful. When she brought a cup to Kenti, Kenti laid Tis tenderly down beside her on the chair, sticky arm uppermost, and took it. She breathed in the steam and gave a little half laugh: she recognised Catu’s mixture. â€Å"I’ve used honey for littler wounds – your mother taught me that when I wasn’t much older than Tis – but this one was so dreadful. And then I remembered – I remembered your hand. I thought, if your – if the Chalice’s honey can cure what a Fire-priest can do, then perhaps it can cure Tis’ arm.† Mirasol said gently, â€Å"The Master cured my hand.† â€Å"He – ?† said Kenti unbelievingly, and Mirasol saw the fear in her face, the same fear she saw in the Housemen’s faces before they bent nearer their Master to slide the chair under him as he sat down; the fear she saw in the faces of most of the others of the Circle when their part in a rite brought them too close to him – the fear of him that made the Master leave the burnt grove before any of his people saw him there. â€Å"Yes. He.† She wanted to say, Tell Danel. Tell your mother. Tell all your friends. But she watched Kenti’s face and knew that she would tell the story – if she believed it. Kenti’s face said that she wanted to believe it – she wanted that hope, not only for herself, but for her demesne. Kenti sat looking at her daughter for a long moment and then said wonderingly, â€Å"Look – the mark is already fading. Your mother’s honey could not have done so much so quickly. It is the Chalice in you, I know, but perhaps – perhaps – perhaps it is also that we have a Fire-priest for Master†¦.† Her voice had sunk to a whisper. Mirasol was still thinking about the hope in Kenti’s face when she walked up to the House. She knew she was late, but it was only Deager, the agent, coming for a – snoop, she thought uncharitably. Overlords’ agents were supposed to visit their Overlords’ demesnes, but she didn’t like the way Deager’s nose twitched, the way his eyes darted around, as if he were hoping to smell something rotten, to see someone doing something illicit or disgraceful. And then she arrived, and there was a surprising number of people churning around in the big hall behind the front doors, and a youngish, weaselly-faced man she had never seen before standing a little too close to Deager’s elbow. The situation was uncomfortable enough to begin with, when it was only Deager and Horuld, herself and the Grand Seneschal and the Seneschal’s apprentice Bringad, and four of the minor Circle (the others were hastily sent for when Horuld was revealed as the Heir) plus the attendants the visitors brought and their own Housefolk. As the word spread about Horuld, more and more people streamed in, and both the noise and the tension level, it seemed to Mirasol, rose, and the ever-worried Bringad looked more worried than she had ever seen him. But when the Master arrived†¦she did not know how to understand it, explain it, even to herself. It was as if the level ground tipped a little in one direction and the high curving sky changed its arc just a little in some other direction. A Master was not expected to greet a mere agent on his arrival; the Grand Seneschal did that. But as the representative of his Overlord, a Master would be churlish as well as foolish not to see him at some point during his visit. She assumed the Grand Seneschal had despatched a message to the Master about Deager’s unexpected companion; it was impossible to read any trace of surprise or disquiet on the Master’s shadowy black and strangely mutable face when he made his entrance. Mirasol heard with what was beginning to be a familiar sinking of the heart the conversation falter and then stop as he was noticed, before the head Houseman announced him. Perhaps all Masters are greeted with a respectful hush, but she doubted that most demesne folk drew together as if for protection when their Master appeared. When Deager (his voice positively quavering as he addressed the Master) described Horuld as the Overlord’s candidate for Heir, the Master merely bowed his head. There was a disagreeable pause, and then the agent rushed to begin telling Horuld’s bloodlines over again, speaking too loudly and too quickly, and at first forgetting his flourishes. But when a Master has no son nor other suitable close relative, the meeting between the Master and the Master’s newly declared Heir was as laboriously and ponderously formal as centuries of tradition could make it, including, in this case, the tradition that an unexpected situation should be treated even more formally than the same situation when everyone knew what was happening. The Grand Seneschal managed to insert an orotund phrase or two (rather like a pole through the spokes of a wheel, Mirasol thought) into the agent’s barrage of genealogy, which had a steadying effect. When Deager finally fell silent, his concl uding bow was as elaborate as if he were being presented to the king. But Mirasol found herself thinking that the Master had bowed his head so very ceremoniously indeed that perhaps he had somehow known of Horuld’s coming before the message from the Grand Seneschal. Most of the initial gestures among any group that required the presence of the Chalice were stylised, just as her offering of the cup was, but during Horuld’s first visit to Willowlands they all seemed to move as if they were puppets in a puppet show, their limbs made of wood, the pulling of their strings performed by a puppeteer. If there had been an audience Mirasol felt they would not have found the performance convincing. Although Deager had insisted in a manner that was obviously meant to be magnificent but came over as merely presumptuous, that this first informal meeting with the Heir should proceed as it would have if Horuld had not been there, this was not possible, as Deager would have known it was not possible. Furthermore any meeting involving the Circle to which the Chalice stood should be precise about the number of people present, the number of people who would be offered the Chalice’s cup – which Deager would also know. And the Willowlands folk were doubtless awkward with surprise. They had known an Heir would be chosen, and Mirasol had held Chalice during the gathering when the Master had acceded to the Overlord’s wish, as presented by Deager, that the Overlord do the choosing. But that had only been a few weeks ago, and they had heard nothing of the progress of the search. She had begun reading about the meeting of a Master with an unknown Heir, so she knew that if it had been a proper meeting she should offer her cup first to the Master and second to the Heir. After a moment’s invisible dithering behind the face she tried hard to keep in an expressionless Chalice mask she did so anyway: let Deager assume this was a manifestation of magnanimity and support; she considered it buying time. The contrast between the Master and an ordinary human had never been so marked, she thought, as between the Master and his Heir when she took the cup from one and offered it to the other. She had directed them to stand on either side of her – which would also have been the correct form for a planned first meeting between the two of them: she could see Deager smiling with satisfaction, but she ignored him. The Master seemed to tower over her, and his natural heat, as she stood close enough to him to hold a cup to his lips, wrapped itself around her as if claiming her – and briefly and disconcertingly she remembered riding home with him after the fire in the Onora Grove. Horuld, who was no more than average size, seemed puny and frail in comparison; and the fact that he was obviously struggling not to flinch away from the Master added to this impression of weakness. She might have helped him, as she often helped the Circle members who were still reluctant to approach the Master, by stepping toward him, by allowing him to maintain a greater distance; but she did not. She offered the cup to the Master with a bent arm, and then turned and offered the cup to Horuld, again with a bent arm, and waited, forcing him to step close, not only to her, but to the Master. He did not try to take the cup from her, but he did raise a hand to grasp it, and she could feel him trembling. There were beads of sweat on his upper lip which she doubted were only from the heat. Before she took the cup on to Deager and the rest of the Circle, she bowed, to the Master, and then to Horuld. The Master must receive the deeper bow, of course, but the Heir might have had one nearly as deep; her bow to the Heir was only enough more than perfunctory not to be offensive. She let her gaze pass as if carelessly over Deager, and saw that he had stopped smiling. She could feel, before she had got halfway round the Circle, that it was not a good binding. When she made her final bow it was almost difficult to stand upright again, and she was exhausted. She had to make a great effort to meet the eyes of Horuld and Deager; the Grand Seneschal’s eyes looked glassy and unfocused, and the Master’s were as unfathomable as they had been the first day, when his hand had slipped and burnt her, and his face was only blurred shadows. She tried to remember the sudden surprising joy of his healing of her hand, of talking to him about what he saw, about her bees being tiny golden sparks in his strange vision – of the night that she had helped him put out the fire in Onora Grove, and the ride home after. But she remembered these things as she might remember something out of a book, a story told of someone else. Even if, by some extraordinary accident, the Chalice had not known beforehand all those who would drink, a well-mixed cup should have had a more positive effect than this. Perhaps she had mixed it injudiciously; that was likeliest. Even without his bringing an unannounced Heir, her dislike of Deager made it onerous for her to mix a cup that she would have to offer to him. But even if a more experienced Chalice might have done better, it was still true that introducing an Heir without proper advance warning was like throwing a boulder on one side of a delicate scales and expecting them still to balance. But perhaps the lack of binding and balance in this gathering was because Horuld was wrong†¦wrong for the demesne, wrong as Heir, wrong even to be here. It had been known in the past that an outblood Heir was rejected by the demesne, however carefully the humans had tried to make the best choice. Perhaps the Overlord had overplayed his game by giving the Master and his Chalice no forewarning that the Overlord’s choice was coming to be introduced to his hoped-for inheritance. By the end of the day, when she could leave the House and make her way back to her cottage, she was shaking and sick. She pulled her hood over her head and held it bunched round her throat with her hands, feeling that what she really wanted to do was disappear: if she wrapped the ends of her cloak around her tightly enough and then tighter still, eventually there would be no one left inside†¦. Usually the gentle thumping of the empty Chalice cup against her hip was comforting: another ritual got through. Today it was not; she felt that she – they – Willowlands had indeed not got through the ritual of the introduction of the Heir. She concentrated on the thought of sitting in the last of the daylight in the clearing by the cottage, listening to her bees. She was still ten minutes’ walk from the cottage when some of her bees came to meet her. She stretched out her arms to them and they landed on her hands and forearms, stroking her skin as if the tiny hairs were sepals they expected to secrete nectar for them. She shook her hood back, and several landed on her face and neck; out of the corners of her eyes she could see more landing on her shoulders. As she walked the last few minutes to the cottage she found herself thinking that her head felt strangely heavy, and that the hum of the bees was unusually loud; and then when she came out of the tree-shadowed path into the sunny clearing around the cottage she saw a great cloud of bees lifting away from her and dispersing, and she realised that she had been wearing a hood and cloak of bees. She watched them scatter about their proper bee business, and wondered. Horuld came twice more in the next few weeks with Deager, and then a third time he came alone. When he came with Deager their visits were announced in advance; but now as the acknowledged Heir, he might come as he pleased – and stay as he pleased. She was in the House library when he came that third time, and the first warning she had was a shadow falling across the open door; she was deep into her research and would not have noticed, except that a half-familiar voice said, â€Å"Chalice,† and her body had recoiled before her mind had recognised who it was. She turned the recoil, she hoped, into a mere startle, and stood up at once to make a ceremonial sign of greeting, saying, â€Å"Forgive me, my mind was lost in what I was doing.† He said smoothly, â€Å"And I have interrupted you; forgive me.† She bowed her head and waited, hoping his appearance was a formal signal only and that he had no business with her. The demesne’s folk were growing used to their new Chalice, and they were now coming to her more and more; this was a relief in some ways, and she knew she must be grateful for the good this was doing Willowlands, but she often had to put aside what other work she had planned on doing. She had fled to the House library today and was hastily reading up on the behaviour toward and reception of outblood Heirs. Part of her problem, she thought, as she had thought many times since the Chalice had come to her, was that she was not by nature a formal sort of person; she found that side of the duties of the Chalice so difficult as sometimes to feel incompatible with her private self. She wondered if this was anything like trying to live in the human world when you were a priest of Fire.

The Arabidopsis Myb Genes MYR1 and MYR2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Arabidopsis Myb Genes MYR1 and MYR2 - Essay Example Arabidopsis is a long day plant that flowers earlier than other plants in long day conditions than in short day conditions. In LD conditions flowering is affected by an increase in expression of the flowering locus T (FT). This gene expression is controlled by CONSTANS (CO). Under low light intensity, homozygous myr1 and myr2 mutants will flower and show an increase in petiole length, apical dominance and leaf angle. Analysis on the genetics of the mutants point out that myr1 and myr 2 phenotype need GA biosynthesis. In determination of the functions of MYR1 and MYR2 roles in plant development and growth two independent T-DNA alleles for every gene. The T- DNA were evaluated and discovered that they eliminated full length expression of MYR1 and MYR2 in plants homozygous to every mutation. The homozygous myr1 and myr2 mutants happened to be identical to WT plants in relation to their leaf color, plant size and morphology. In SD conditions plants that had any of these alleles had an ea rly flowering and this generally indicates that myr1 and myr2 had suppressive effects on flowering. Additionally, flowering locust T was also needed by the Myr1 and Myr2 phenotype responsible for flowering and these mutants also demonstrated an interface with phyB-9 mutant. When Myr1 and Myr2 are over expressed, GA deficiency symptoms are shown which are then eliminated by use of gibberellic acid (GA1). When Myr1 and Myr2 were lost, there was a double boost in GA20ox2 expression and GA1 levels increased by 30%. Myr2 over expression caused a three time GA20ox2 decrease and 50% reduction in GA1 levels. Therefore, it can be concluded that Myr1 and Myr2 ability to limit flowering and elongation of organs is slightly because of their destructive consequence on the bioactive GA levels. In this case, it is possible that the increase in expression for the GA negative regulators showed the property of having a shade avoidance phenotype. The role of MYR1 and MYR2 of affecting the GA2O0x2 expr ession could be the determinant for observed phenotypes and it is in the same line with research on GA2O0x2 genes that indicate their importance in regulating growth and fertility of the Arabidopsis plant. This essay is based on a previous research done by several researchers. It will describe the result, outline the conclusion and give an insight on future work based on this research. In the result that has indicated that MYR1 and MYR2 have a role in plant growth and development, it is indicated that as light intensity became high, the phenotype became weak and double mutants of myr1 and myr2 produced fewer than WT, rosette leaves. In relation, vegetative growth and flowering time characteristic of the myr1 and myr2 mutants exhibited a similarity with phyB mutants. When MYR1 and MYR2 are paralogous and the genes are co-expressed, lengthening of the vegetative period in SD conditions showed a weakening in the phenotype responsible for early flowering. Myr1 and myr2 that were early f lowering under a LD environment was connected with more features that were not present in single mutants. They a longer petiole, lengthy hypocotyls and the leaves were more vertically oriented with a peak in apical dominance. This features show that the early flowering phenotype had been strengthened and that both myr1 and myr2 double mutants expressed the presence of MYR1 and MYR2 redundancy property which was not shown in the single mutant’s myr1 and myr2. In addition it was discovered that MYR1 and M

An Amplified Terms of Reference Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

An Amplified Terms of Reference - Essay Example The paper evaluates the views in three articles to determine the probable choice for a small private physician. The articles cover the benefits and the challenges facing the implementation of EHRs. Key points covered include the probability of quality healthcare, and patients’ privacy. Evaluation of the articles results reveal that implementation of medical health records would be advantageous to a private physician. 1. Background, Sponsor and Problem AT& T organization is a very busy public hospital whose main business is to offer orthopedic services. Due to the large number of customers visiting the hospital every day, the medical records for all the patients continue to pile, considering that the same medical information is being filed manually. Because of this, the Front Office Receptionist continues to have a hard time each day trying to manually open the different folders carrying patients’ the files. Being as hard as that, it implies that the delivery of the serv ices in the hospital does not occur in a satisfactory manner (Selg & Rihel, 2007). The problem of doing the service delivery manually in the hospital has had far-stretching effects to both the hospital and the clients. For the hospital, the slow service delivery has constantly jeopardized the customer relations aspect of the organization. This is because when a client visits the hospital and takes the whole day waiting for the staff to retrieve his or her files and go through the records, next time, he or she will opt to a different hospital. For the clients on the other hand, someone with a critical health condition may not be saved just because his or her medical records are lost. Therefore, the absence of efficient medical coding can worsen the conditions of the patient. The problem resulting from the absence of medical coding system in the hospital mainly affects the Front Office Receptionist. This is because the front office receptionist is the person who is responsible for the production of the medical information for the different clients getting into the hospital. There are a lot of consequences if the problem is ignored. By ignoring the problem, it is very likely that the service delivery in the hospital will continue to be slow. The amount of work for the front office receptionist will continue to increase, and become too much for him or her. This means that the receptionist will be straining each day, trying to serve all the clients. This is not healthy for the receptionist. The hospital will generate less than the expected income. This is because it will not serve the clients in a proper rate (Heerkens, 2002). Voice of the Customer Analysis or Market Analysis is also evident as far as this problem is concerned. With the absence of the medical coding equipment in the hospital, the customers continue to complain that they do not receive the services in a satisfactory manner. Some complain that their records occasionally get lost. Others say that they have to queue for long hours before they can be attended to, while other still complain of their medical documents which have been torn or soiled. 2. Practical Outcomes for Client The research method used is the analysis of some case article evaluating the health sector in the United States. EHRs method of storing patient information will assist the medical institutions enhance their control over the revenue. Revenue enables organizations

The Impact of Globalization and Free Trade on the U.S. Sugar Policy Essay - 1

The Impact of Globalization and Free Trade on the U.S. Sugar Policy - Essay Example The larger economies will at some point influence those not globally invested as their performance begins to evolve and shape the global financial markets. There may be no other free-trade policy like the U.S. sugar program that illustrates such hypocrisy, and the need for reform. The United States has often prided itself as a world leader in terms of the free trade movement. The culture has always pushed for Globalization and the use of technology to integrate economies. However, there are some industries that remain well protected due to the strength of forceful interest groups and absence of pressure to reform. These protection barriers often hurt our domestic economy and counteract the efforts to promote more open markets and trade negotiations around the world.   The U.S. Sugar policy operates under the Farm Bill, which was overwhelmingly passed in 2008 by Congress. The basic premise behind the sugar policy is that supply should equal demand. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has imposed several tools in order to ensure that the sugar policy operates at a minimum cost to the taxpayers. These tools are that: first, they can limit foreign imports to those required in the trade agreement obligation with the exception of Mexico; second, they can control the amount of sugar the U.S. American farmers are allowed to sell; and third, the bill can divert any excess surplus of sugar into ethanol production. (American Sugar Alliance) These tools and policies such as the preferential loan agreements and tariff rate quotas, serve to effectively keep foreign sugar out of the U.S. In return this forces the price of sugar in our market to increase substantially.

Teen Pregnancy Nursing Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Teen Pregnancy Nursing - Term Paper Example Great numbers of teen pregnancies are unintentional. Access to contraceptive, complete education on sexuality and youth development programs can assist teens to choose their options that can guard them from pregnancy at this age. Parents with a busy life are unable to discuss important issues such as sex with their children. Due to the lack of proper guidance, these teenagers are unable to make wise decisions on this subject and this result into teen pregnancy. According to the Journal of Adolescent Health, majority of the teens who indulge in sexual activity are more possibly exposed to sexuality in the media. By glamorizing this, teenagers adapt this as something good and involves in irresponsible sexual activities. If it is something accepted in their group of friends or community, they may try to get pregnant as a means to get social acceptance (Laden et al 2006). A vast number of teenage girls who get pregnant have reported sexual abuse or rape. Sexual harassment leaves them in a state of shock and because of the fact that they have no idea how to proceed and avoid pregnancy many of them conceive. The teens that are more likely to have unintended pregnancy are those who are not educated about sex. Kids who start drinking in their teens are more likely to take other risks as well. This may involve crimes, careless sex and other dangerous activities that may have consequences. According to ‘teenage pregnancy: the interaction of psyche and culture’ many of the women who became mothers in their teens didn’t want it. It had happened because of lack of knowledge about how babies were conceived or they didn’t know or have access to methods of avoiding or aborting their pregnancies (Dean et al 1997). The socioeconomic factors which trigger teen pregnancies are poverty, illiteracy, and peer pressure. Early marriages are even a big factor resulting into this problem faced by young girls. These were some of the causes of teen pregnancy, now we would discuss its effects. There a lot of teenage mothers who ponder what would have happened if they would have been a little more precautious, hadn’t left school or what opportunities did they miss because of the pregnancy. Bringing a child into this world brings a great amount of responsibility on the shoulder of the parents, the baby needs a lot of attention and care that means their irresponsibility lead them away from their dreams and ambitions in life. â€Å"Women who become parents as teenagers are at greater risk of social and economic disadvantage throughout their lives than those who delay child bearing† (Hayes 1987, 138) A lot of teenage girls who get pregnant try to hide it as long as they can therefore are unaware of the care they require at this age. They are affected by malnutrition, depression and frustration that results in miscarriages, death during the delivery and weak babies. This emotional crisis can lead these teens to have something against their new born babies and they blame them for their lost possibilities in life. Kids born to teens most of the times go through emotional conflict, social insecurity and educational failures. ‘Single mothers with limited resources may be subject to multiple stresses in trying to provide such basic necessities as food or shelter, and, thus have little energy or time for their children†

Roots of Constructivist Education Traced to Piagetian Theories Coursework

Roots of Constructivist Education Traced to Piagetian Theories - Coursework Example This project declares that the field of Education has much to be thankful for and that includes Jean Piaget. He has come up with complex theories that he was able to dissect for educators to understand and apply to their learners. His theories have great implications in curriculum design and understanding how children learn best. His work with Vygotsky in formulating the foundations of constructivism is now benefitting thousands of classrooms all over the world. It has been successful in gaining respect for children’s learning. A child learns best when he finds enjoyment in what he is doing, thus learning should be fun. This essay makes a conclusion that Piaget was someone who thought ahead of his time and present-day educators and learners are enjoying the fruits of his labor. His theories have opened a variety of alternatives in educational strategies. The effective teacher can discern which learning strategy would be most appropriate on a case-to-case basis. Imbedded in her are hidden agendas for making her students reach their optimum learning potentials and in effect, the development of a healthy self-esteem. She is aware that she is just an instrument in assisting the students to gain knowledge, and not the source of knowledge herself. She is on hand to ignite the spark of interest and motivation of her students. It is now up to the students themselves to turn that spark into a burning flame that would keep them fired up for more learning.

Managing organisational behaviour Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Managing organisational behaviour - Essay Example The concept of distribution of ‘power and pay’ was first introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early twentieth century. According to him, the total planning and control of an organisation should be in the hands of the owner and the worker should simply perform as per the commands of the owner (Robbins and Coulter, 2006:58). He further added that this concept would lead to maximum productivity and maximum profits and therefore it was widely accepted all over the world. It still continues to be used today in big organizations and banks where senior level executives hold explicit power and enjoy exorbitant income in comparison to their employees (Kular et al, 2008). However, before the analysis, understanding the concept of Organizational Behaviour, Taylor’s ‘Scientific Management’ theory and the ‘Needs Theory’ in brief is deemed necessary. Organizational behaviour is a subject that is concerned with studying the actions of people at work. It focuses on the fact that managers need to understand the elements which influence how employees work. Also, a manager’s success depends upon how well he can manage employees’ behaviour and gets things done through them (Robbins and Coulter, 2006: 372). ... He incorporated his concepts in his book, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) which became a guide book for every manager in every company across the world especially UK and US. Soon ‘Taylorism’ spread to every corner from the workplaces to larger and bigger organizations and became one of the most acceptable patterns of working in the twentieth century (‘Frederick Winslow Taylor Criticism’, 2011). While working in a factory as an engineer, Taylor realized that workers lacked efficiency and wasted a lot of time. He started a series of time management studies and brought forward a system of work which would accomplish organizational goals efficiently without wastage of time. His theory consisted of four main principles – to determine the most efficient way to perform each task; assign work to every worker according to his capability; closely scrutinize each worker’s performance and empower the management for planning and control of th e organization (Walonick, 1993). In other words, he suggested that it is the sole responsibility of the manager to make a complete plan of every single task that every single worker needs to accomplish and also plan the procedures and means to fulfil the task. According to him this system would lead to maximum profitability. Every single business house organized themselves according to the principles of ‘Taylorism’ and the top executives and managers were handed full control of the employees and the workplace, thereby curbing the independence of the employees (Pizzigati, 2004:159). The main objective of Taylor was to achieve maximum satisfaction and profit for the owners as well as to provide

Amazon(e-commerce site) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Amazon(e-commerce site) - Essay Example The question of privacy involves the collection of personal details about individuals as well as their financial details (www.cyber.law.harvard.edu). Customers provide this information for a particular transaction and may not necessarily authorize its transmission to other unauthorized persons. This raises the issue of maintaining the privacy of the data as well as its confidentiality, i.e., not allowing it to be accessed by unauthorized persons. Secure sites could also be compromised in some instances (Feinberg, 2006), so that personal data that is split into units and transmitted across the electronic waves may sill be accessed. The integrity of the data provided is then compromised and the disparate bits of information brought together into a coherent whole can be accessed by unauthorized persons if they gain access to the secure sites. 2. There are three basic sub-categories that can be identified under internal threats: (a) existing employees (b) former employees and (c) employees of third parties.(De Guzman, 2006). Existing employees who have access to confidential information may be of two types (a) malicious – or those employees who have some grudge against the Company and thereby compromise data security to achieve their own ends and (b) accidental – existing employees, who because of their lack of training, or because they fail to follow the correct procedures may engage in acts that compromise the security of data existing on these sites. DeGuzman (2006) has provided several examples of how such data exposure can take place, such as the incident of an employee who accidentally erased a disk containing sensitive information about consumers. Thirdly, compromising of data may also occur through employees of third parties. Since the global environment is becoming more intense and competitive, many companies are resorting to using third parties and outsourcing their functions to these third

English paper Essay Example for Free

English paper Essay Will Durant, a U. S author and historian, writes, â€Å"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. † This means that all the knowledge people once had is misleading to what the truth really is. Similarly, in Plato’s â€Å"Allegory of the Cave† and Frederick Douglass’s â€Å"Learning to Read and Write† a painful process of gaining knowledge through all the ignorance is described. Plato describes a prisoner going on a journey to gain knowledge that is behind him, after he was stuck staring at a wall of shadows his whole life. He goes back to tell the other prisoners of his discoveries and they want to kill him. Douglass is a slave who learns to read and write, going through stages to achieve each step. As he begins gaining knowledge he finds the truth about slavery which startles him. Socrates’ idea that gaining knowledge is a difficult journey to undertake because by doing so it changes the way people see the world, as proven by Douglass’ experiences. In Plato’s â€Å"Allegory of the Cave†, Socrates illustrates a metaphorical story about attaining knowledge. He describes a cave with men who are chained, prisoners of the cave. They face a wall; that is all they can see because they cannot move their heads. They cannot even look behind them to see a walkway and a fire. As a person passes on the walkway, a shadow is projected onto the wall in front of the prisoners; this is all they know. Only the shadows are what is real to them because it’s all they have ever known. Socrates says, â€Å"How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? † (Plato 479). The main point is that people cannot understand anything except what is being projected right in front of them. Socrates’ point is that society has a limited understanding of knowledge, and is ignorant about what is beyond the surroundings. To acquire knowledge of the truth beyond the cave, one prisoner is freed. As his eyes adjust to the light, he starts to see the real objects from the images that are projected onto the wall. He understands how the shadows were a false truth and just an illusion and he feels bad for the other prisoners still stuck in the cave. He understands that they are not seeing the truth. Socrates states, â€Å"What he saw before was an illusion†. So the  prisoner returns to tell the others about his knew knowledge, but they couldn’t understand what they were being told. The other prisoners will not accept the knowledge the escapee has learned and my even put him to death. But the chained prisoners don’t understand that the whole world outside the cave is more real than the false illusions, or the shadows being projected onto the walls. Society doesn’t want to accept knew knowledge; people often resist changing what they know. Socrates’ prisoner goes through stages or the process of knowledge, which is also shown in Douglass. In the allegory, when the prisoner first leaves the cave he stares at the sun and cannot see; it takes time to get accustomed to the brightness. Socrates describes, â€Å"And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves† (Plato 480). In time the prisoner will begin to understand the â€Å"realities† (Plato 480) that he is facing by going through the stages. This is shown in Douglass as well. Douglass is first taught to read by Mistress Hugh, but then she refuses to teach him. So Douglass turns to kids that he makes friends with to finish teaching him to read. Douglass Sates, â€Å"The light broke in upon me by degrees† (Douglass 73); in other words, education is being achieved in stages. This is like the prisoner going through a process of gaining knowledge. Once Douglass is introduced to reading, he teaches himself to write by tricking the white boys into helping him learn. The process endured outside the cave by the prisoner- or the process endured by Douglass- will be â€Å"tedious† (Douglass 74), and take time, but steps must be taken to gain any knowledge. The process of gaining knowledge can be painful; Socrates idea of pain by being enlightened is played out in Douglass. When the prisoner is in a cave he is comfortable with the shadows on the wall and his surroundings, but if the prisoner is freed he will feel pain: â€Å"And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the objects of visions which he can see† (Plato 480). The new knowledge that he will gain is so different than what he is used to. This can be seen likewise in Douglass as well. When Douglass learns to read he learns the truth of slavery which â€Å"tormented† (Douglass 71) him. He writes, â€Å"It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out† This is similar to the prisoner leaving the cave. He understands slavery and his rights are taken away, they ways that they are taken from their homes and made into nothing is so cruelly wrong. This causes him great pain; the only thing he has to look forward to is the hope of being freed. Because becoming enlightened is a painful process, many will resist or challenge what they believe, as illustrated by Socrates and Douglass. After the prisoner goes on his journey of being enlightened, he goes back to the cave to tell his friends what he has learned, but they reject him. Socrates says, â€Å"If any one tried to lose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch he offender, and they would put him to death† (Plato 482). The other prisoners think he is being â€Å"ridiculous† (Plato 481) and want to put him to death for his story about life outside the cave. They don’t understand that they are the ones trapped in ignorance and the freed prisoner is telling them the truth. This also plays out in Douglass. Mistress Hugh began by being a caring lady and teaching Douglass how to read, but slavery soon made a big impact on her. â€Å"I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension† ( Douglass 70). The violence she projected toward Douglass when snatching the paper from him shows the resistance she now has toward him being educated. Many will resist being enlightened because society doesn’t like to change what they already know. While society tends to resist enlightenment, those who are enlightened cannot return to their former ignorance, and pities others who are stuck there; which is shown in Plato and Douglass. When the prisoner went on his journey after being freed from the cave he learned all about the false notions he was living in the cave. Socrates says, â€Å"And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them? † (Plato 481). The prisoner feels bad for the others because they are trapped in ignorance and cannot see the truth like he has. This is also shown in Douglass.