The Great Gatsby and the tainted American Dream Essay -- essays resear

Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase, â€Å"American Dream† during the early infancy of our country, proposing this dream as, â€Å"That pursuit of a better existence †¦ [and] a higher quality of life through hard work, determination, and devotion.† While this may be what many of the characters in The Great Gatsby believe (Jay Gatsby in particular), one critical ideal is discarded in Fitzgerald’s twisted refinement of Franklin’s definition: morality. It is apparent that Jay Gatsby achieves his wealth and social status through illegal and immoral means, such as bootlegging alcohol. The irony becomes remarkably stunning when one realizes that the section of Franklin’s autobiography, which outlines his method for achieving this dream, is entitled â€Å"Moral Perfection†. Fitzgerald presents a dark satire by portraying the immoral Jay Gatsby as an icon for the decay of the dream Franklin proposed and promoted so avidly. Fitzgerald masterfull y allows the reader watch the evolution of Franklin’s American dream from its fertilization in the ambition of James Gatz to its dominance over Gatz’s life, eventually spawning Jay Gatsby (Gatz-bye) a self-destructive man holding on to a dream that can never become a reality. In addition to Gatsby’s delusional pursuit of happiness, Nick Carraway, our narrator, suffers from the same addiction to a dream, which, if made true, will never live up to its expectations. It is obvious that Nick envies Gatsby, hence the title of the novel. Nick is in awe of Gatsby’s wealth, social power and moreover, and most of all, the carefree lifestyle it allows. Nick, at the same time he is completely unaware of the illicit means by which Gatsby has gained his wealth. Following Gatsby’s death at the end of the novel, Fitzgerald shows Nick’s awakening from his dream to persuade the reader to walk away from his novel understanding the lesson that Nick learns from Gatsby’s folly. Fitzgerald strives to expose a striking realization that the American dream that Franklin proposed will never be able to deliver its promise of â€Å"a better existence† in a society where morality is tossed aside so casually. Fitzgerald litters the novel with a cast of characters who are struggling to chase either emotionless dreams or impossible ones. All of these other characters suffer from this plague of disillusionment that has come to be known as a staple in modernist writing. Morality... ...ended up had he followed Gatsby and taken that â€Å"job† offer. Tom and Daisy both suffer from the sins of gluttony and avarice that dominate their dreams of happiness, they can’t get away from thinking that the more they own the happier they’ll be. This can be seen in the way Tom mourns little for Myrtle, but only worries about himself when George comes to see him after Myrtle’s death. If he feels a little hurt it’s because he’ll have to go out and find another mistress, and we can’t say for sure whether or not he will. Fitzgerald is bent on making sure the readers take away one message, there is no more American dream. He doesn’t stop there though, he goes on to warn his readers that if you don’t believe him and decide chase your personal American dream and shoot too high or too low, you will end up miserable, possibly for the rest of your life. Lastly, there is no doubt that this novel’s message about the d ecay of the American dream is solely focused on an audience facing some of the most vastly changing times in our civilization’s history and a warning that just like Jay Gatsby found out, there is no way to reclaim the past, that American dream, Franklin’s American dream is gone.

Digital Electronics: Advantages and Disadvantages

Digital electronics, or digital (electronic) circuits, represent signals by discrete bands ofanalog levels, rather than by a continuous range. All levels within a band represent the same signal state. Relatively small changes to the analog signal levels due to manufacturing tolerance, signal attenuation or parasitic noise do not leave the discrete envelope, and as a result are ignored by signal state sensing circuitry.In most cases the number of these states is two, and they are represented by two voltage bands: one near a reference value (typically termed as â€Å"ground† or zero volts) and a value near the supply voltage, corresponding to the â€Å"false† (â€Å"0†) and â€Å"true† (â€Å"1†) values of the Boolean domain respectively. Digital techniques are useful because it is easier to get an electronic device to switch into one of a number of known states than to accurately reproduce a continuous range of values. Digital electronic circuits are usually made from large assemblies of logic gates, simple electronic representations of Boolean logic functions.Advantages An advantage of digital circuits when compared to analog circuits is that signals represented digitally can be transmitted without degradation due to noise. [2] For example, a continuous audio signal transmitted as a sequence of 1s and 0s, can be reconstructed without error, provided the noise picked up in transmission is not enough to prevent identification of the 1s and 0s. An hour of music can be stored on a compact disc using about 6 billion binary digits. In a digital system, a more precise representation of a signal can be obtained by using more binary digits to represent it.While this requires more digital circuits to process the signals, each digit is handled by the same kind of hardware. In an analog system, additional resolution requires fundamental improvements in the linearity and noise characteristics of each step of the signal chain. Computer-cont rolled digital systems can be controlled by software, allowing new functions to be added without changing hardware. Often this can be done outside of the factory by updating the product's software. So, the product's design errors can be corrected after the product is in a customer's hands.Information storage can be easier in digital systems than in analog ones. The noise-immunity of digital systems permits data to be stored and retrieved without degradation. In an analog system, noise from aging and wear degrade the information stored. In a digital system, as long as the total noise is below a certain level, the information can be recovered perfectly. [edit]Disadvantages In some cases, digital circuits use more energy than analog circuits to accomplish the same tasks, thus producing more heat which increases the complexity of the circuits such as the inclusion of heat sinks.In portable or battery-powered systems this can limit use of digital systems. For example, battery-powered cel lular telephones often use a low-power analog front-end to amplify and tune in the radio signals from the base station. However, a base station has grid power and can use power-hungry, but very flexible software radios. Such base stations can be easily reprogrammed to process the signals used in new cellular standards. Digital circuits are sometimes more expensive, especially in small quantities. Most useful digital systems must translate from continuous analog signals to discrete digital signals.This causes quantization errors. Quantization error can be reduced if the system stores enough digital data to represent the signal to the desired degree of fidelity. TheNyquist-Shannon sampling theorem provides an important guideline as to how much digital data is needed to accurately portray a given analog signal. In some systems, if a single piece of digital data is lost or misinterpreted, the meaning of large blocks of related data can completely change. Because of the cliff effect, it can be difficult for users to tell if a particular system is right on the edge of failure, or if it can tolerate much more noise before failing.Digital fragility can be reduced by designing a digital system for robustness. For example, a parity bit or other error management method can be inserted into the signal path. These schemes help the system detect errors, and then either correct the errors, or at least ask for a new copy of the data. In a state-machine, the state transition logic can be designed to catch unused states and trigger a reset sequence or other error recovery routine. Digital memory and transmission systems can use techniques such as error detection and correction to use additional data to correct any errors in transmission and storage.On the other hand, some techniques used in digital systems make those systems more vulnerable to single-bit errors. These techniques are acceptable when the underlying bits are reliable enough that such errors are highly unlikely. A single-bit error in audio data stored directly as linear pulse code modulation (such as on a CD-ROM) causes, at worst, a single click. Instead, many people use audio compression to save storage space and download time, even though a single-bit error may corrupt the entire song. A digital circuit is a circuit that functions on a number of different logic gates.The logic gates differentiate power signals. The power signals are then transferred to different parts of the digital circuit through other gates to create an output signal directly pertinent to the energy level at the moment of signal input. Most digital circuits are comprised mainly of smaller analog components that, because of the logic gate occurrence, only operate within a certain frame of voltages. Usually these operate at extremely low voltage signals. Digital circuits also require that the analog components located throughout the circuit not be placed in a manner that will allow them to perform analog functions.This usu ally means there is a logic gate both before and after the analog component. Digital circuits are becoming more and more popular as technology requires the electronic devices used every day to become smaller and smaller, making the items more readily accessible regardless of location or circumstance. A digital circuit reacts quickly as power or signal is delivered to them, as long as the signal it receives is within the correct frame of voltage or energy. Digital circuits usually work best with low voltage signals, as they are more capable of handling these signals than higher voltages.Analog circuits typically require much more voltage behind the input signal to perform with the speed that digital circuits provide. An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors,transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. The combination of components and wires allows various simple and complex operations to be performed: signals can be amplified, computations can be performed, and data can be moved from one place to another. 1] Circuits can be constructed of discrete components connected by individual pieces of wire, but today it is much more common to create interconnections by photolithographic techniques on a laminated substrate (a printed circuit board or PCB) and solder the components to these interconnections to create a finished circuit. In an integrated circuit or IC, the components and interconnections are formed on the same substrate, typically a semiconductor such as silicon or (less commonly) gallium arsenide. [2] Breadboards, perfboards or stripboards are common for testing new designs.They allow the designer to make quick changes to the circuit during development. An electronic circuit can usually be categorized as an analog circuit, a digital circuit or a mixed-signal circuit (a combination of analog circuits and digital circuits). analo g circuit analog circuit, electronic circuit that operates with currents and voltages that vary continuously with time and have no abrupt transitions between levels. Generally speaking, analog circuits are contrasted with digital circuits, which function as though currents or voltages exist only at one of a set of discrete levels, all transitions between levels being ignored.Since most physical quantities, e. g. , velocity and temperature, vary continuously, as does audio, an analog circuit provides the best means of representing them. However, digital circuits are often preferred because of the ease with which their outputs can be manipulated by computers, and because digital signals are more robust and less subject to transmission errors. There are special analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog circuits to convert from one type of signal to the other.

Theme Of Valediction By Seamus Heaney - 1722 Words

Love is both a beautiful and fragile thing that needs constant care and attention. When one loses someone, it can create a sense of loneliness. Seamus Heaneys Valediction describes this feeling as a poem about how a man feels when his lover is gone. The themes he discusses are love and loss. The poem is about Heaneys feelings for his lover and the feelings he has when his lovers absent. He uses images and metaphors that are associated with sailing to depict his experience of grief when the lady is gone. The poem is a plea for this yearning he is feeling about her. This yearning and grief is a powerful emotion. Seamus Heaneys poem Valediction uses sea imagery and metaphors to discuss the themes of love and loss. The first stanza of†¦show more content†¦The space that had been filled with her presence, the activities they did, the routine they had, conversations, and comfort he felt is now gone. The thing that makes the loss so difficult is the fact that it hurts to think and be reminded of what was. His heart has been ripped open and drained because her presence is no longer there. The next stanza in the poem states, All thought. In your presence/ Time rode easy, anchored (5-6). He is comparing time spent in your presence to a boat at anchor which creates a sense of stability and security (5). He uses a synecdoche who is the lady and the feelings for him as a smile when she leaves. According to Literature: The Human Experience a synecdoche is a, figure of speech in which a part is used to signify the whole (980). The speaker described this time spent with his lady as easy going and steady, calm and collected. She was always able to keep a smile on his face when he was around. Heaney is comparing and contrasting how he felt when his lover was there and not there. There is a lot of sailing imagery. He remembers the days he spent with his lover as easy sailing, smooth, enjoyable and uses the imagery of an anchor holding a sailboat down. But her absence has rocked the boat that is being tossed around and close to falling. The patterns and routine of their lives hav e been lost, and he is drifting along as a boat does at sea. This contrast between when she is