Benjamin Franklin Essay -- Benjamin Franklin American History Essays

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706. He would be the tenth out of seventeen children that his father, Josiah Franklin, would have. His father had plans for Benjamin to join the clergy when he came of age and was sent to grammar school to prepare. He would excel in reading at a very young age but would find that he could not master math so easy. He would be at the grammar school for less than a year before his father would come to terms with not being able to support a college education for Benjamin and supporting the rest of the large family. Benjamin would then be sent to another school which would teach him basic math and English skills. There, he would surpass the rest of class in English while eventually failing arithmetic yet again causing his father to pull him from school all together. At the age of 10 Benjamin would be taken home to learn the family business. While learning to make soap and candles from his father, Benjamin became restless; he yearned to go to sea much like his brother Josiah. He would go out the lake and play like the other children but Benjamin did not swim as well as the others, so he devised a tool that was made from sticks and cloth to cover his hands and feet to help him tread. Swimming fins would be one of his first inventions. From a young age Benjamin proved to be very different from his father and the rest of his family. His father sensing his child’s unhappiness would help him look for a new trade. Unbeknownst to Benjamin, watching the common man work would influence him down the path of inventor he would inevitably take, â€Å"He therefore sometimes took me to me to walk with him, and see joiners, bricklayers, braziers, etc. at their work, that he might observe my inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other on land, and to construct little machines for my experiments, while the intention of making the experiments was fresh and warm in my mind.†(p 12, Benjamin Franklin) His father would see his son was found of reading so an apprenticeship would be set up for twelve year old Benjamin with his twenty-one year old brother. During his five year apprenticeship Franklin would live under strict guidelines which included taverns being off limits as well as gambling and marriage. Franklin would continue to long for the sea but found that while on land he would indeed pr... ...ranklin. Published by the University Press of Kentucky. Copyright 2000 Doren, Carl Van, Benjamin Franklin. Published by Penguin Group. Copyright 1938 Internet Sources Consulted Benjamin Franklin.† PBS. 2002. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l2_wit.html "Benjamin Franklin." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 11 Apr. 2015. http://www.biography.com/people/benjamin-franklin-9301234 The Hollowverse. 2012. Web. 12 Apr. 2015. http://hollowverse.com/benjamin-franklin/ Fea, John. â€Å"Religion And Early Politics: Benjamin Franklin and His Religious Beliefs.† Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. 2011. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/history/20018/benjamin_franklin_and_his_religious_beliefs/1014592 â€Å"Benjamin Franklin His Autobiography 1706-1757.† American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond. 2012. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/benjamin-franklin/a-short-biography.php Franklin, Benjamin. â€Å"Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself.† Project Gutenberg. 6 Jun. 2011. Web. 10 Apr. 2015. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36338/36338-h/36338-h.htm

Explore the ways E.A. Poe uses his narrators to create a sense of terror and suspense Essay

Throughout all the stories I have read during the course of studying Edgar Allen Poe, the narrating has been fairly similar and a great sense of tension, fear and believability have been created inn all of them. The stories are all written in the first person, so it is more like a story is being told to you by some one, which makes them all more believable. In ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell Tale Heart’, it is something that drives the narrator mad that forces him to commit the murders, and in ‘The Premature Burial’ his fear, being buried alive, is driving him mad. In fact he is being driven over the edge of insanity in all the stories we have studied except two – ‘The Fall of the house of Usher’ and ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, both in which he is nearly killed. In all of them we learn a lot about the narrator, for example, in ‘The Premature Burial’, we learn about his background, and a lot about catalepsy and his fear of being buried alive. The narrators are very descriptive of the other characters in the stories and this really adds atmosphere, and makes the reader feel as if they are part of the tale. For example, in ‘The Tell Tale Heart’, Poe describes the old man- â€Å"One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with a film over it.† He often uses similes and metaphors, which also helps and makes symbols using characters or objects he mentions, for example, in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, he describes the candles on a table, as angels, next to the jury that was about to sentence him to death by torture, as images of the devil. In all of the stories we studied, I can’t remember the narrators describing any of the other characters as ‘good’; they were all evil or bad. I don’t know whether this portrays that Edgar Allen Poe stereotyped people as bad or evil, but all of the narrators he wrote about did. The emotions that were felt by the narrators were very varied, at times they were scared, at other times, they were afraid, but whatever emotions they were feeling, they were very well portrayed and very detailed vocabulary was used. For example- ‘I was sick- sick unto death with that long agony; and when that at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me’. The emotions that the narrators felt affected the stories and the more descriptive they were, the more you could picture them and the more the story came to life in your imagination. This could be why Poe was such a successful writer. The narrators always describe their surroundings and the position they are in very well and this also makes it a lot easier to picture the story in your head. For example, in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ the opening page is only the narrator describing, in detail, the house and it’s surroundings: – â€Å"During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens.† This amount of description continues for over a page and sets the scene very effectively. You feel like you are there, almost as if you are telling the story from personal experience. All of the stories we have studied have had very good description in them and all scenes were set very believably. For another example, in ‘The Pit and The Pendulum’, the introduction is in Latin, which gives you the impression that the story was set or written a long time ago. After that, there is a long, descriptive page, setting the scene of the story- â€Å"It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution – perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel† The narrators’ reactions to either the murders they had committed or events that were about to happen to them were different every time, unlike the narrator’s feelings about other characters, which were often similar. In ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ the narrator did not seem particularly concerned when he saw the sight of his own certain death swinging above him – â€Å"While I gazed upwards at it (for it as position was directly above my own) I fancied that I saw it in motion†. But as the pendulum dropped, his language became much more descriptive and intense – â€Å"Down – still unceasingly – still inevitably down!† It gripped you more and makes you want to read on. Maybe this is why he had so many occasions in his stories when he was irate or mad, so the reader became gripped and more interested. The endings of Poe’s stories are often the most memorable part as it is often in the last part of the story where the main murder or event occurs. For example, in ‘The Black Cat’, ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ and ‘The House of Usher’, the main event/murder is at the end of the story, with little said after it. In ‘The Black Cat’ for example, after the murdered cats and wife are found, there are only about twenty lines left of the story, which is not much, considering the huge amount of description Poe uses- † I walled up the monster within the tomb† In a sense it is really only the narrators in his stories that create all the tension, terror and suspense. If it was written in anything other than first person, the same effect would not be given and I don’t think his stories would be as good, or as effective.

The Debate On Constitutional Interpretation - 1730 Words

The debate on Constitutional interpretation is far from a new one. For years, the argument over how the Constitution should be read has varied, from the strict textualist approach to the most lenient, the instrumentalist position. The Constitution has long been referred to in terms of being a living or dead document, and its interpretation has significant ramifications on this country’s legal climate. This paper will analyze and compare two different forms of Constitutional interpretation: originalism and activism. While the intent of the Framers should certainly not be ignored in reading and applying the Constitution’s words, it is important to view the document with a certain degree of modernity. The originalist approach towards†¦show more content†¦He posits that each word is the result of arduous argument between the Framers and that to take an approach that doesn’t view the Constitution with the intent of the Framers in mind is to ignore the documen t’s meaning. Perhaps his most persuasive attack on the activist position was his argument against the use of penumbras, a concept heavily used by the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut. â€Å"Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy. . .retained by the people.† Meese swiftly combats this idea by mocking the very nature of penumbras and their use. He writes, â€Å"Instead they have grounded their rulings in appeals to social theories, to moral philosophies or personal notions of human dignity, or to ‘penumbras,’ somehow emanating ghostlike from various provisions -identified and not identified - in the Bill of Rights.† This is a logically sound point that aptly points out a major flaw of the penumbral argument - if this interpretation doesn’t come from the body of the Constitution, let alone the Framers’ intent, there is no Constitutional interpretation happening whatsoever. Meese’s argument greatly falters, however, when he admits that the Framers could not foresee all issues that would arise for judicial review. This simple sentiment effectively invalidates the rest of his argument by admittingShow MoreRelatedThe Debate Over The Method Of Constitutional Interpretation1556 Words   |  7 PagesThe debate over the method of constitutional interpretation has passionate and convincing rhetoric from both sides of the aisle. 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