The White Tiger Essay Example for Free

The White Tiger Essay The significance of the Darkness and the Light in the book The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga The contrast between the Darkness and the Light is often mentioned in this book. The darkness is described as the poor and miserable areas of the rural India, while the light is the opposite. In the light there are often flourishing cities crawling with entrepreneurs and hard workers. In The White Tiger one gets to follow Balram Halwai’s journey from the darkness to the light. Needless to say, India is far from the American dream. Once you are born into a certain type of caste you will probably spend your entire life with a fixed position in the social hierarchy. When Balram refers to the darkness he often mentions the poverty, ignorance and most importantly, the lack of education. â€Å"Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling† -Balram Halwai Primarily, what separates the light from the darkness is the level of education. Many people from the darkness end up being servants or drivers for their masters from the light. Balram describes the other servants as ignorant and unengaged. Nonetheless, what separates Balram from the others is his willingness to learn. While driving, he picks up a lot of interesting information by eavesdropping on his master, Mr. Ashok. With knowledge comes the ability to question and increased ambition, I think his increased knowledge is what inspires Balram to take the leap from the darkness to the light. Unlike the other servants he does not feel inferior to his master. â€Å"†¦ The tale of how I was corrupted from a sweet, innocent village fool into a citified fellow full of debauchery, depravity and wickedness.†- Balram Halwai In the big cities the traditional moral values do not apply anymore, instead money talks. Corruption is widespread, ranging all the way from the bottom to the top in the social hierarchy. Most cities in the light are clashes of  western and indian cultures. This means that materialism has gained the upper hand in these parts. Over time, Balram slowly transforms from the innocent village boy to the more egocentric city denizen. This is clearly shown when he abruptly stops sending payments to his family and spends this money rather on alcohol and debauchery. â€Å" I was looking for the key for years/ but the door was always open†- Iqbal, Pakistani poet I think this quotation is one of the most thematic for the book. Balram was discontent with his present situation and wanted a way out of the rooster coop that he was trapped inside. He eventually realized that the change originated within him, the door out of the coop was always open. All it took was someone who stood out from the rest/ a white tiger to break out of the coop, which took the form of killing his own master. However, by doing so, Balram fulfilled his journey from the darkness to the light and thus becoming his own master. Finally, the darkness and the light divide India in two very different categories, extreme poverty versus wealth, or â€Å"small bellies and big bellies† as Balram puts it. The contrast between the darkness and the light is so big that in the same country people can live in mansions with luxury cars and multiple servants while others can only afford a water buffalo in order to get nutrition to survive. Albeit, India has at this time a growing middle class and a developing economy it still has its social problems. Just look at what’s going on right now, women and children get raped and left to die whithout judicial priority. Although I think these problems are hard to deal with since moral values are hard to change, but by solving problems like these and the educational gaps that are brought forth in â€Å"The White Tiger†, India can take a step towards a more equal society and hopefully erase the world that Balram refers to as â€Å"the Darkness†.

Lack of Male Intimacy :: Feminism Feminist Women Criticism

The Lack of Male Intimacy As I sit in the auditorium of the school I attend, I listen to the speaker of the day make his fatal mistake. He has done well up until now, relating to us only facts and ideas. Now, he has suffered from a lapse in judgment, and seems to have forgotten his surroundings - an all male audience. He has the audacity to display genuine, vulnerable emotion. I wait for the response I know he will get. The sound fills my ears. The all male audience brings forth a sarcastic and mocking chorus of "awwwwwww." One could not imagine the same event transpiring in an all female group. It is pretty much commonly accepted that men do not show emotion. It is pretty much commonly accepted among men that men should not show emotion. The group in the auditorium had bought into this stereotype. Most of them were probably not accustomed to seeing men display their emotions, and it made them nervous and uncomfortable. So, they reacted with the two most common defenses used when one is uncomfortable in the face of something one does not understand: criticism and humor. In "Locker Room Talk," Stephen Dunn notes that the danger of a man having sex is the possibility of "admitting he felt something...". So, Dunn believes that many males see the display of emotions as something along the same lines as an admission of guilt. Something they would try to avoid in most situations. I agree. I think it is pretty clear that men, as a rule, have trouble sharing their emotions. So, the real questions are, "why do m en have this problem," and "can things change, and how?" While there are probably a few reasons for this condition, and the answer cannot be given with absolute certainty, I think the answer can be found by looking back through time. This abstinence from intimacy is probably as old as the family structure. When humans began to settle down as families, responsibilities were assigned in the way that the family could survive the most efficiently. The children would have to be taken care of, and food would have to be provided. It made sense for one person to handle one of the two major tasks. It was logical for the mother to attend to the children, because she had carried each of them for nine months, and was required to breastfeed them.

The Biography of John Forbes Nash †The Mathematician

John Forbes Nash, Junior was born on the 13th of June, 1928. He is one of the renounced mathematicians in annuls of history, and an American born brilliant citizen. He bagged a Nobel memorial prize in 1994 in the field of Economic sciences. This Nobel Prize he shared with other game theorists like Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi. John Nash is a senior research officer of the mathematics department in Princeton University. In addition to his attainments, he made significant contributions to game theory, equations of partial differentiation, and geometrical differentiation.Family Background Nash is equally an important figure in Hollywood movie. Of notable was â€Å"A beautiful Mind† which was credited as the eight Oscars. The early life of John Nash was spent in West Virginia. His father, John Forbes Nash (Snr) was an electrical electronic while his mother was Margaret Virginia Martin. John Nash was a voracious reader in his early life. Some of the materials found accustomed with were Time Magazine, Life Magazine and Compton’s Encyclopedia. At a tender age of twelve, John demonstrated a life of self-worth irrespective of rejection from his colleagues.He returned vibes and a sense of intellectual superiority for social rejection from his peers. This in a way made him suffered no inferiority complex. For John Nash, the rejection was rather an opportunity to carry out scientific researches without distraction but with utmost concentration. Since there was less interest in his contribution amidst his peers, he maximized the time working alone in his rooms – demonstrating scientific prowess. He demonstrated oddity, doing things in his own way. This was noted by his mother and sister. Attempt at resolving it failed.Nash confessed that it was a book title – Men of Mathematics that got his interest in mathematics ignited. Though he was in high school, he visited Bluefield College regularly for extra study. With Westinghouse Scholarship, Nas h attended Carnegie Mellon University at Pennsylvania where he bagged Bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics. He crossed over to the study of mathematics after some academic experience firstly in the department of chemical engineering and chemistry. He bagged master’s degree in 1948. Shortly, Nash took a summer job where he worked on Navy research project at White Oak, Maryland.This was for a while. Academic Achievements Professor of mathematics, R. J. Duffin recommended the appointment of John Nash into the Princeton’s Mathematics department. The singular whole write-up was – â€Å"This man is a genius†. Following this recommendation, Solomon Lefschetz (Chairman, Princeton University Mathematics Department) pursued and persuaded John Nash to drop his second interest in Harvard University for his department. On evaluating that Princeton University placed more value on him, John Nash joined the team at Princeton in 1948.At this univers ity, his work on equilibrium theory speaks volume in the current mathematical world. With a dissertation report in ‘non-cooperative games’, he earned a doctorate degree two years later. Four of his published articles on this theory are; â€Å"equilibrium Points in N-person games†, in the Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, â€Å"The Bargaining Problem† in Econometrica, â€Å"Two-person Cooperative Games† in Econometrica and â€Å"Real Algebraic Manifolds†, Annals of mathematics (on algebraic geometry). â€Å"His most famous contribution in pure mathematics was the Nash embedding theorem.The theorem showed that any abstract Riemannian manifold can be isometrically realized as a sub-manifold of Euclidean space. His contribution to the theory of nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations is also noted†. He is a genius indeed. Personal Life, Marriage and on Schizophrenia In mid 50s, Nash suffered arrest on moral charge of gay sexual involvement. This led to him losing a post at RAND Corporation. According to Nasar, â€Å"After this traumatic series of career-threatening events, he decided to marry† John Nash met his wife Alicia Lopez-Harrison de Larde in 1951.She is a student of physics in Massachusetts Institute of Technology where Nash lectured. Six years later they got married. In 1959, Nash was admitted to psychiatric hospital for mental treatment where he was diagnosed of paranoid schizophrenia, depression and low self-esteem. Shortly after the incidence, the pregnant Lopez-Harrison birthed their son. He remained nameless for over a years when John Nash could have a fair say on his child. According to Sylvia Nasa’s 1998 biography of Nash in A beautiful Mind, Nash remarried his wife on June 2001 after an interval of seven years divorce.The Nobel Prize won in Economic (1994) was said to be have been somehow instrumental to the reunion. Alicia suffered â€Å"boarder†. In he r words â€Å"†¦we lived like two distantly related ones under the same roof† Nash received some other awards; he was awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize for his invention of ‘non-cooperative equilibria (now called The Nash Equilibria). He won the Leroy P. Steele Prize as at 1999. Also in 1994, he won Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His recent work on advanced game theory has invented two popular games viz. Hex and So Long Sucker.In all, he had published 23 scientific reports. What a successful life lived! References Kuhn W. , Harold; Sylvia Nasar (Eds. ). The Essential John Nash (PDF) Introduction, xi. Princeton University Press. Retrieved on 2008-04-30. Nasar, Sylvia. A Beautiful Mind, page 46-47. Simon & Schuster, 1998 Levy, Emanuel (2003, page 145). All about Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards. Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 0826414524. Retrieved on 2008-04-30. http://cepa. newschool. edu/het/profiles/nash. ht m http://nobelprize. org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1994/nash-autobio. html

Racial Segregation And The United States - 2133 Words

In the United States, inequalities are an unfortunate evil that resonate throughout low-income individuals and minorities. Though these problems are sometimes viewed as coincidences, in the past and even in the present, there have been legislation put in place that have negatively affected specific populations in the US. Because of the injustices in the system socially constructed ideologies about race, ethnicity, and poverty, and our lacking health care system, many people experience inequalities in health. One of the biggest factors that has affected minority and low-income populations is residential segregation. An article by Boustan defines residential segregation as â€Å"the separation of racial groups in urban space.† Residential†¦show more content†¦Many factors influence why and how residential segregation occurs in our neighborhoods. This literature review will focus on topics surrounding the history of residential segregation, the effects on health through local, state, and national residential segregation as well as its influence on our nation’s school system. Before diving into the present effects of residential segregation, it’s vital that the history behind it is understood as well. An article by McGrew points out, that in the year 1990, â€Å"11% of the population in 100 of the largest cities in the United States lived in neighborhoods of extreme poverty, compared to 5% in 1970† (McGrew, 1997). After World War I, the demand for workers in large cities caused a large migration of southern blacks into the line of industrial work. The large influx created racial tension and city officials began promoting racial divisions by supporting segregation and discrimination in housing, employment, and social services. The introduction of zoning laws in the US also separated communities even further. After the end of the war, the government believed that home ownership could bring on new ideas of economic and political freedom. The concept of suburban neighborhoods were born to segregate from the harshness of industrial cities, but st ill provide relative closeness to services and employment opportunities. Unfortunately, these wonderful neighborhoods created to provide a new lifestyle to American citizens