Anne Rice A Fascinating Story Essays - Anne Rice, Existentialists

Anne Rice: A Fascinating Story Because of her fascination with the supernatural, her life in New Orleans, and her daughter's death, Anne Rice exhibits powerful and dark emotions in her writings. Anne Rice's family life was not always a happy one. Her family was one of the lower middle class, struggling to make it. Katherine, her mother, became stressed over keeping a household and took to drinking. (Ramsland, 41) Anne's mom continued this habit throughout her life. I feel that this drinking had a major effect on Anne's writing style. Anne's books are full of vivid detail. They are written as if they were seen through the eyes of a drunk. Lamz 2 Anne's mother continued drinking until the day of her death in 1956. (Ramsland, 383) Katherine's death hit her daughter very hard. Since her mother had died, Anne had to become a mother to her two younger sisters, Tamara and Karen. Anne hated to assume this role and looked for a way out. Her father gave this to her in the form of St. Joseph Academy, a boarding school. (Ramsland, 53) This was not a very good solution considering how much Anne hated the school. She cried every night for about a year, and would later write about her experiences an a novel, The Witching Hour. When Anne became sixteen her father remarried. Howard(Anne's father) and his new wife, Dorothy, decided to move to Texas to follow Howard's' work. This decision shocked Anne and she was very opposed; the move still took place. At her new school, Anne met a boy named Stan Rice. Stan was very involved with poetry and he and Anne instantly hit it off. Stan had an influence on Anne like no other person had. He was the first boy she kissed which was an experience she wrote about in Lamz 3 her second novel, The Feast of All Saints- here is the excerpt. (Ramsland, 60) Richard had kissed Marie and she had never felt a sensation akin to what she'd experienced when he was holding her lightly, gently, as if he might break her, in his arms. His hands had spread out firmly against her back, pressing her to his chest so that the buttons of his frock coat had touched her breasts. And when that had happened, a shock had passed through her, so keenly pleasurable that she had let her head fall back, her lips apart, and felt that shock's consummation in one shuddering instant as his lips pressed against hers. . . She had been obliterated in that instant, everything she had ever been taught had been obliterated, all that she was before had simply gone away. In 1961 Stan proposed to Anne by telegram. She accepted, and on October fourteenth they were married. (Ramsland, 383) Anne and Stan began experimenting with drugs as a way to express emotions Lamz 4 more fully, and to appreciate themselves more. Anne shows this new outlook on life (that of being ?high?) as a way to experience things like none other. Such an experience is the way a vampire first sees the world when he becomes a vampire. Here is an outtake of Interview With the Vampire that shows this new vision. (Ramsland, 96) It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first time. I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat that I looked at nothing else for a long time. . . When I saw the moon on the flagstones, I became so enamored with it that I must have spent over an hour there . . . and with my awakened senses, I had to preside over the death of my body . . . I simply regret I was not more attentive to the process. This excerpt is the way the main character in Interview With the Vampire, Louis, sees the world through his ?Vampire Eyes?. After smoking marijuana and experimenting with LSD for about a year Anne had a disturbing vision. She began wondering what happens when a person dies and if that person knows they are dead. Lamz 5 (Ramsland, 100) She was on the verge of insanity for several months, but recovered by not using drugs. She started a new job and her life improved, then she became pregnant.(Ramsland, 103) Anne was very happy about becoming pregnant, and looked forward to becoming a mother. Her daughter was born Michele

Wal-Mart effects on Small Buisnesses

Wal-Mart effects on Small Buisnesses Free Online Research Papers The large Wal-Mart Corporation is moving into small communities and is taking over. The competition that the smaller companies must face is too much for them to overcome and be able to survive in the declining state of the area they function in. HH hardware after being in business for a long period of time in their small country town where they sold field equipment a Wal-Mart was given a grant by the state and was allowed to move into the county here the Wal-Mart opened and sent the smaller businesses into a state of decline or in most cases bankruptcy. In any case the smaller companies would not stand a chance for the competition with Wal-Mart. The Wal-Mart industry has taken a vertical integration by taking over all points of the production lines. First they have the production lines taken over and run by people in foreign countries and underpaying the workers by a large degree. Also the workers here in America are also underpaid and often cheated of most of their wages that they have rightfully earned. The managers have even been taught how to go into the system under a false username and move a person’s wages from one week to the next to ensure they do not have to pay current overtime wages hereby saving the Wal-Mart company a majority of money. Some people have seen this and taken to getting back what is rightfully theirs and they have filed lawsuits against the Wal-Mart industry to get back the money they deserve. Wal-Mart also sucks the small town economies dry by getting all the funding they need while the solo independent workers have to go off only their personal funds. Wal-Mart has forced several people to go into the countries funding because they wish to fill their own pockets. The people that work for them are underpaid and need the raises. I take the Wal-Mart company is hurtful and helpful at the same time. While the company forces hundreds of thousands of workers into poverty and mistreat the workers of their company the company still helps those that do not work at the company with the lower prices which are the only bit of help people receive. In the foreign countries the companies underpay the people so much and mistreat them that the people are not even in suitable living conditions. The CEO’s of the company make over 20 million dollars a year while their workers are barely making minimum pay. If the CEO’s would simply give even 25% of the money that they make for their personal self they could help the workers much more save the tax payers dollars and help to give the industry a better living life. The company is hurting us more than it helps us and barely gives back to the country. Wal-Mart has even told its workers that programs are out there to help them when the company itself makes more money than any other industry in the world. Also in the other countries the company forces its workers to work overtime under penalty of being fired or even worse they could be abused. All in all the company has been hurtful to the economy and needs to show more respect to the industry in which it operates. I think that if it does not give back more and help its employees more it should be treated as a monopoly and separated like the government would separate a monopoly. Research Papers on Wal-Mart effects on Small BuisnessesTwilight of the UAWAnalysis of Ebay Expanding into AsiaNever Been Kicked Out of a Place This NiceThe Effects of Illegal Immigration19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraAssess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 EuropeDefinition of Export QuotasResearch Process Part OneMarketing of Lifeboy Soap A Unilever ProductWhere Wild and West Meet

How Neorealism before 1950 Affected Film History Essay

How Neorealism before 1950 Affected Film History - Essay Example Instead of overblown and idealistic propaganda films celebrating the ideals of a fascist state, film makers turned to the simple lives of rural peasants, and the struggles of ordinary workers in the cities. The three most famous neorealist directors are Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchina Visconti. One critic notes that the neorealist movement is widely regarded to have started with Rossellini’s gritty and unsentimental about a resistance prieced Rome, Open City in 1945. This kind of film became famous for â€Å"a sparse style of shooting on actual locations, with mostly nonprofessional players, and emphasizing themes of basic human problems and issues.† (Hamilton, 2006, p. 61) Children often feature, as in the film Shoeshine by Vittorio De Sica, which tells the at times harrowing tale of two boys who dream of owning a horse and fall into the hands of some corrupt policemen. The realistic portrayal of the sufferings of the boys in prison, raises issues abou t the kind of society that Italy can and should be setting up now that the war is over. Another critic notes: â€Å"neorealism became the repository of partisan hopes for social justice in the postwar Italian state.† (Marcus, 1986, p. xiv). The films of Rossellini deal with the devastation that has been caused by the war in Europe, and he made a trilogy which explored how the poorer people in Italy and German came to terms with the turmoil. These films do not have a traditional narrative line, but show episodes which between them build up a picture of life in those difficult days. Small visual items can have symbolic meaning far beyond the immediate context of the film, and the skill of Rossellini and others was to use the camera to illuminate deeper issues through images. The camera work is the opposite of Hollywood’s slick and artificial interiors, preferring the rather stark and ugly landscape of the war-torn countryside, and the dirty streets where people have to s cratch a living any way they can. The films were popular at the time, despite their lack of a clear plot. People learned to look at the films in a new way, as a window on life itself: â€Å"Even the Italian neorealist directors, who stress everyday reality in their films and deny the validity of invented stories, argue that their particular brand of everyday reality is not boring because of its complex echoes and implications† (Boggs and Petrie, 2000, p. 37) Another feature of the neorealist directors’ work was that it had universal appeal, despite being very firmly tied to local scenery. Rossellini’s vision of a bombed and derelict Berlin in Germany, Year Zero, for example, juxtaposes a blond child and the colossal ruins of the city, with tragic consequences. The overwhelming message of the film is the destruction and futility of war. Heaps of rubble obliterate the civilization that was there before, leaving the boy adrift and hopeless, with no past and no futu re. The second film in Rossellini’s trilogy, Paisan, depicts the American soldiers’ encounter with demoralized Italian rural people in different regions, distilling the experiences of the war years in to the faces and conversations of unsophisticated farm workers. The human cost of the war is depicted starkly, and there is newsreel footage interspersed with the fictional episodes. The director makes every effort to present the material in a clear, unadorned way, so that