Chaucers Canterbury Tales Essay Example for Free

Chaucers Canterbury Tales Essay The term character can be applied in several ways. It can mean either a physical being, or to their total pattern of behavior. In Chaucers Canterbury Tales, one is used to complement the other. He often uses certain physical characteristics to dictate exactly how the person is going to act*. This is most evident in the Summoners Tale. The Summoner is ugly, with a scary face, but also turns out to have a very ugly personality, between his job, attitudes, and values, which come out through his physical descriptions. **.Chaucers use of physical characteristics is most obvious in the Summoners Tale. The Summoner is a scary sight, but not only because he looks so hideous. He also has a hideous job- a summoner is a kind of religious bounty hunter. He seeks down people that need to do their penances and make sure they do them. He is described as having acne so bad no quicksilver, lead ointment, tartar creams,/ no brimstone, no boracic, so it seems,/ could make a salve to cure his whelks of knobby white. So, when people saw him coming, they would already be repulsed simply by his physical image. However, if they knew who he was, they would also be afraid that he was coming to get them. So, he is scary in more than one way. His behavior is as ugly as his face. Questio quid juris was his tag. The Latin phrase questio quid juris means the question is, what is the point in law? He is supposed to be upholding the Churchs law, but was known to turn his back (for a fee). Finally, he was an extortionist, with a heart as black as his beard. He would learn peoples secrets and then tell them he would tell the Church. They would pay him to keep his mouth shut. Sometimes he even set them up with a girl for wine. Chaucers image of the Summoner with his face on fire helps describe his fiery attitudes, even though it directly refers to his facial features. He is prone to drunken rages, often spouting Latin phrases and arguing with people. In fact, his whole tale is told because he was mad at the Friar for insulting him. He is very argumentative, and vulgar. He tells a crude story about the afterlife of Friars, in revenge for the Friars Tale, as way of prologue into his tale. Even his tale is about a greedy Friar, who is so desperate he looks beneath a sick mans buttocks for something hidden there for secrecy. Upon receiving a loud fart, he is shocked, but what else can  he have expected? According to the Summoner, Friars are greedy and stupid, a very immature attempt to gain revenge on the Friar, demonstrating how vindictive he is. Finally, he does not believe in the traditional values of medieval Christianity, although he is supposed to be one of its proponents. He is described as having a garland set upon his head, leading the reader into believing he is a homosexual. He allows men to commit sins, like adultery, without punishment as long as they paid him. Usually he took his payments in the form of wine, but also accepted cash. Why hed allow -just for a quart of wine- / any good lad to keep a concubine/ a twelvemonth! He was very corrupt, a common theme in Chaucers clergy. By accepting bribes to keep his mouth shut, he was essentially blackmailing the men of the community, instead of telling someone like he was supposed to. As his description says he Sang deep seconds to [the Pardoners] song, a love song. He has a deep voice, and is singing harmony to the Pardoner, suggesting their relationship is more than business related. Homosexuality was almost a sin in the Middle Ages, but for one who was supposed to make other pay for their sins he had a propensity for disregarding them. As he pleased the man could bring duress/ on any young fellow in the diocese/ he knew their secrets, they did what he said. He held them in fear of being cursed, and leave them no hope for salvation, by dangling their sins over their heads. So they must do as he says. A Medieval man is not supposed to cause others harm, but try to help them. In fact, his job was to try to save them by making sure they atoned for their sins and gained entry into heaven. So even by the nature of his job, he isnt holding to traditional values. In conclusion, Chaucer effectively sketched the character of the Summoner, using physical traits to attempt to analyze the underlying traits of the character. The reader can become very familiar with who he is (liar, drinker, extortionist) simply by the way Chaucer describes him physically (ugly, large pimples and boils on his face), even though the image is backed up by the characters own actions (drinking, letting young men commit adultery and other sins).

Jeffery Dahmer Essay example -- Serial Killer - Cannibal

Jeffery Dahmer is arguably the most notorious serial killer -cannibal in history. Targeting men and boys, Dahmer‘s life of crime began with drinking and sex offending. His murders were exceptionally gruesome, often involving rape, torture, necrophilia, dismemberment, and cannibalism. The media often commented on how â€Å"normal† Dahmer appeared. Jeffrey Dahmer made everyone question how one develops into such a monster. By the time of his apprehension, Dahmer had sodomized, murdered, and cannibalized at least seventeen men, mostly black, Hispanic or Asian, in the Milwaukee area between the years of 1978 until his arrest in 1991 (Williams pg.1). Jeffrey Dahmer was born in Milwaukee on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. Despite the difficulties of Joyce's pregnancy, he was wanted and adored as a child. By all accounts, Dahmer displayed traits of a happy, bubbly youngster. However, several events from his childhood indicated that the young boy was becoming more and more disturbed. When Jeff was four, his father swept out the remains of some small animals from under the house. As his father gathered the tiny animal bones, Jeff seemed strangely entertained by the sound they made (Bardsley Ch. 13). At the young age of six, Dahmer suffered a double hernia and needed surgery to correct the problem. After the operation, he was never the same socially. Adding insult to injury, the family then moved from Iowa to Ohio where it became apparent Dahmer had grown distant, shy, and nearly uncommunicative (Bardsley Ch. 13). As a young student, Dahmer, very fond of one of his elementary school teachers, took her a bowl of tadpoles he had caught. Soon Dahmer learned that his teacher had given the tadpoles to his friend Lee. He ... ...rocess of ‘walking through’, in which the patient and therapist examine the same issues repeatedly in the course of several sessions, each time with greater clarity. This process is enduring, usually lasting for a number of years (Comer 41). Due to the presence of such a multitude of abnormal behaviors, the most helpful form of psychodynamic treatment available would be the short-term psychodynamic therapies that focus on one individual issue at a time. Perhaps the abnormalities could have been deciphered and treated separately through this type of therapy in order to improve his behavior. It is impossible to say for sure, but had Dahmer sought or been forced into treatment for his many abnormal behaviors, therapists may have been reasonably successful in identifying the underlying causes before he felt compelled to take innocent lives.

Inherent Fallacies Essay

We humans live in a world were illogical fallacies run rampant. In 12 Angry Men the author illustrates everyday illogical fallacies people have in the setting of a court jury. Jurors: 3, 4, 7 and 10 have their own fallacies that are unique to them in the play; but can be found in common people in everyday people. In 12 Angry Men the illogical fallacy for Juror Number 3 is a general fallacy. This fallacy is the result of an emotional prejudice by juror 3 has as he compares the defendant with his own child. Juror 3 says in the play, You’re right. It’s the kids.  The way they are—you know? They don’t listen. I’ve got a kid. When he was eight years old, he ran away from a fight. I saw him. I was so ashamed, I told him right out, â€Å"I’m gonna make a man out of you or I’m gonna bust you up into little pieces trying. † When he was fifteen he hit me in the face. He’s big, you know. I haven’t seen him in three years. Rotten kid! You work your heart out†¦. All right, let’s get on with it. (Reginald Rose 8) His emotional prejudice gets in the way of his critically thinking through the evidence because he has emotional conflict with his own son. He is grouping all teens together because of his altercation with his son, and Juror 3 is just punishing the young man on trial because he cannot come to turns with his own failings as a parent with his child. Towards the end of the play Juror 3 is all alone on the vote count; he â€Å"looks around at all of them for a long time. They sit silently, waiting for him to speak, and all of them despise him for his stubbornness. Then, suddenly, his face contorts as if he is about to cry, and he slams his fist down on the table† †¦ (thundering) All right† (30). Juror Number 4 and 10 each has prejudices about slum dwellers. This prejudice gives way to genetic fallacies in each juror’s thinking that at the beginning of the deliberations cause them to vote guilty in the initial preliminary vote. Juror 4, for example, says, We’re missing the point here. This boy—let’s say he’s a product of a filthy neighborhood and a broken home. We can’t help that. We’re not here to go into the reasons why slums are breeding grounds for criminals. They are. I know it. So do you. The children who come out of slum backgrounds are potential menaces to society. 23) The play says that he is a man of wealth and position. We can also determine this by his attitude about people from the ghetto from his previously mentioned statement. Juror 10 is prejudice for the fact that he came from the slums,I don’t mind telling you, mister. We don’t owe him a thing. He got a fair trial, didn’t he? You know what that trial cost? He’s lucky he got it. Look, we’re all grownups here. You’re not going to tell us that we’re supposed to believe him, knowing what he is. I’ve lived among ’em all my life. You can’t believe a word they say. You know that. 5) This line of thinking also can be seen when Juror 4 tells them, â€Å"Next, the boy claims that on the way home the knife must have fallen through a hole in his coat pocket, that he never saw it again. Now there’s a story, gentlemen. You know what actually happened. The boy took the knife home and a few hours later stabbed his father with it and even remembered to wipe off the fingerprints† (9). Juror Number Seven has no need to go over the facts again; he votes with whatever the majority of the vote is deciding. Juror 7 is in a hurry to get to the play he has tickets for as noted on page 3, â€Å"Right. This better be fast. I’ve got tickets to The Seven Year Itch tonight. I must be the only guy in the whole world who hasn’t seen it yet. (He laughs and sits down. ) Okay, your honor, start the show† (3). His prejudice that gets in the way of him critically thinking through the case is selfishness, which leads to a slippery slope illogical fallacy in the play. He says to the foreman,I don’t know, most of it’s been said already. We can talk all day about this thing, but I think we’re wasting our time. Look at the kid’s record. At fifteen he was in reform school. He stole a car. He’s been arrested for mugging. He was picked up for knife-fighting. I think they said he stabbed somebody in the arm. This is a very fine boy. (7) This statement highlights the laziness of juror 7 to mean for not necessarily do any of those things correlate with killing his father. The prejudices of all jurors are the basis of the story. These prejudices lead to many illogical fallacies that are shown and resolved throughout the play for each juror. They are attempts by the author to show how every day are riddled with fallacies of logic and how people’s personal conflicts cloud their critical thinking to reason. This play suggests that we all need to examine ourselves before we rush to any type of judgment.

Acid-Base Titration Calculation

An acid-base titration is a neutralization reaction performed in the lab to determine an unknown concentration of acid or base. The moles of acid will equal the moles of the base at the equivalence point. So if you know one value, you automatically know the other. Heres how to perform the calculation to find your unknown: Acid-Base Titration Problem If youre titrating hydrochloric acid with sodium hydroxide, the equation is: HCl NaOH → NaCl H2O You can see from the equation there is a 1:1 molar ratio between HCl and NaOH. If you know that titrating 50.00 ml of an HCl solution requires 25.00 ml of 1.00 M NaOH, you can calculate the concentration of hydrochloric acid, HCl. Based on the molar ratio between HCl and NaOH, you know that at the equivalence point: moles HCl moles NaOH Acid-Base Titration Solution Molarity (M) is moles per liter of solution, so you can rewrite the equation to account for molarity and volume: MHCl x volumeHCl MNaOH x volumeNaOH Rearrange the equation to isolate the unknown value. In this case, you are looking for the concentration of hydrochloric acid (its molarity): MHCl MNaOH x volumeNaOH / volumeHCl Now, simply plug in the known values to solve for the unknown: MHCl 25.00 ml x 1.00 M / 50.00 ml MHCl 0.50 M HCl