Brian Friels Translations Essay Example

Brian Friels Translations Essay Example Brian Friels Translations Paper Brian Friels Translations Paper Characters and their relations are effectivelly established in different ways by Brian Friel in his play Translations. Friel uses the relations of characters to emphasise certain characteristics. By being subjected to the interpretation of a character through the opinions of other characters allows the reader to form a judgement of the character. Friel uses stage directions to build-up a character. Once the character is present on stage, if the character lives up to the characteristics mentioned in the stage directions the reader or audience can easily focus on these flaws or assets and therefore get a better understanding of the character. Manus is one of the first characters that is introduced in Act one. He is described to be in his late/early thirties, shabbily dressed aswell as, pale-faced, lightly built This description shows Manus to be a weak and feeble figure and this physial description suits his character well as when reading Act one, one learns that he is a very lame character who is easily manipulated by his father. Manus weakness is shown through his relations with three characters, his father Hugh, Maire and his brother Manus. Although Hugh is an extremely able man, Manus accepts being ordered out by his father as though he were his servent. An example of this is, almost immediately after Hugh makes his first appearance in Translations, he requests for Manus to bring him tea and soda bread. Hugh shows no sign of gratification for Manus duties and the tone in which he speaks to Manus is patronising. His lame personality is also shown in his relationship with Maire. One of Maires stage directions is, Again Maire ignores Manus This stage direction sums up Maire and Manus relationship. It is made clear to the audience or reader that Maire and Manus have fallen out and instead of acknowledging that Maire wants nothing to do with him and moving on with his life, Manus desperately chases after her in hope of winning her back. His reluctance to move on shows how weak he is. Manus and his brother Owen, obviously do not have a close bond. This is apparent when Owen returns from living in the city for six years and Manus returns Owens warm greeting by saying, Youre welcome, Owen From this cold greeting one can assume that Manus is not pleased to see Owen yet he does not show his true feelings for his brother and remains civil. Manus tendency to avoid conflict is also shown when Owen translates Lanceys speech and although Manus knows Owen has lead the community into false apphrensions, he bites his tongue and tells none of them. Although Manus is a lame character, he has a lot of depth to him and this is seen through his teachings. When his father is out drinking, Manus takes on his fathers role and teaches the hedge-school students. His passion in teaching Sarah how to speak and the way in which he treats everyone in the classroom equally, ignoring his superior position, shows how his weak side can also be seen as an asset as he is always trying to avoid hurting and condemming people and tries to help people to his fullest extent and be curtious and civil. Manus father, Hugh is a lot less considerate of others feelings. His teaching methods include humiliating students and not giving them a chance to proove themselves. Brian Friel establishes Hughs character in Act one by building his character up through the other characters impersinations of him. In a heated discussion on Hugh, Doalty pretends he is Hugh in an extremely mocking manner. Ignari, stulti, rustici pot-boys and peasant whelps semi-literates and illegitimates Doaltys immitation of Hugh shows that Hugh looks down on his students and feels that his age and position as a teacher renders him to act superior to those around him. Doalty continues to mock Hugh by saying, Three questions. Question A Am i drunk? Question B Am I sobre? From this comment, the audience learn that Hugh is often drunk. Due to the English take over, the constant fear of potato blight and the poverty that Irish people such as Hugh had to live in, it was not unusual for the Irish to want to find an escape from reality; Hughs escape is to drink. Doalty never gets to the third question but the audience learn that he does this intentionally as Hugh can never get to his third point. This implies that Hugh can never get to where he wants to be in life. This inference makes perfect sense when Hughs Latin is takin into consideration. Hugh constantly bomards his students with the Latin language and seems to speak more Latin than Irish. He always refuses to teach his students languages such as English, as he says that English is for the purpose of commerce This suggests that Hugh is relucatant to move on with the times and is stuck in the past, holding on to dying languages instead of moving on with languages that will keep him alive. Hughs loyalty to the old languages is not shared by his son Owen, who comes back to Baile Beag to help the English translate Irish place names. None-the-less, Hugh adores his youngest son and when Owen returns, Hughs eyes are moist partly with joy, partly the drink Hugh does not show any true respect to any other characters in the play except Owen. Owens presence overwhelms Hugh, who is usually a very cold character. This suggests that Owen makes his father proud, unlike his brother Manus. Hugh has good reason to be proud of his son, as Owen moved out of the dying town of Baile Beag and became a successful buisnessman owning nine shops. It is also clear that Owen is probably the most loved character in Baile Beag, as practically the whole community get on well with Owen and are glad that he has returned home. Owens reason for returning home, is to help the English translate Irish place names in to the English language. Many Irishmen would not have considered helping the English let alone work along side them. This shows Owen to be an open-minded character who does not give in to the prejudice attitudes of most of his people. Owen even calls the two English soldiers that he works with ,

The Environment and Free-Range, Organic, and Local Meat

The Environment and Free-Range, Organic, and Local Meat Meat and other animal products are a serious environmental issue, leading the Atlantic chapter of the Sierra Club to call animal products, a Hummer on a plate. However, free-range, organic, or local meats are not the solution. Free-Range, Cage-Free, Pasture-Raised Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Factory farmers are not animal-hating sadists who confine the animals for fun. Factory farming started because scientists in the 1960s were looking for a way to meet the meat demands of an exploding human population. The only way the U.S. can feed animal products to hundreds of millions of people is to grow grain as an intense monoculture, turn that grain into animal feed, and then give that feed to intensively confined animals. There isn’t enough available land on earth to raise all livestock free-range or cage-free. The United Nations reports that livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to produce feed for livestock. Free-range, pasture-fed animals would require even more land on which to feed. They require even more food and water than factory farmed animals, because they are exercising more. To meet the increasing demand for grass-fed beef, South American rainforests are being cleared to produce more pasture for organic, grass-fed beef to be exported. Only 3 percent of the beef produced in the U.S. is grass-fed, and already, thousands of wild horses are displaced by this relatively small number of cattle. The U.S. alone has 94.5 million beef cattle. One farmer estimates that it takes 2.5 to 35 acres of pasture, depending on the quality of the pasture, to raise a grass-fed cow. Using the more conservative figure of 2.5 acres of pasture, this means we need approximately 250 million acres to create grazing pastures for every cow in the U.S. Thats over 390,000 square miles, which is more than 10 percent of all the land in the U.S. Organic Meat Raising animals organically does not reduce the amount of food or water required to produce meat, and the animals will produce just as much waste. Under the National Organic Program administered by the USDA, organic certification for animal products has certain minimum care requirements under 7 C.F.R. 205, such as access to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, and direct sunlight (7 C.F.R. 205.239). Manure must also be managed in a manner that does not contribute to contamination of crops, soil, or water by plant nutrients, heavy metals, or pathogenic organisms and optimizes recycling of nutrients (7. C.F.R. 205.203) Organic livestock must also be fed organically produced feed and cannot be given growth hormones (7 C.F.R. 205.237). While organic meat does offer some environmental and health benefits over factory farming in terms of residue, waste management, pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, the livestock do not consume less resources or produce less manure. Animals raised organically are still slaughtered, and organic meat is just as wasteful, if not more wasteful, than factory farmed meat. Local Meat We hear that one way to be eco-friendly is to eat locally, to reduce the amount of resources required to deliver food to our table. Locavores strive to build their diet around food produced within a certain distance from their home. While eating locally might reduce your impact on the environment, the reduction is not as great as some might believe and other factors are more important. According to CNN, an Oxfam report titled, Fair Miles - Recharting the Food Miles Map, found that the way in which food is produced is more important than how far that food is transported. The amount of energy, fertilizer, and other resources used on the farm may have more environmental significance than the transportation of the final product. Food miles are not always a good yardstick. Buying from a small, local conventional farm may have a greater carbon footprint than buying from a large, organic farm thousands of miles away. Organic or not, the larger farm also has the economy of scale on its side. And as a 2008 article in The Guardian points out, buying fresh produce from halfway around the world has a lower carbon footprint than buying local apples out of season that have been in cold storage for ten months. In The Locavore Myth, James E. McWilliams writes: One analysis, by Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, showed that transportation accounts for only 11% of foods carbon footprint. A fourth of the energy required to produce food is expended in the consumers kitchen. Still more energy is consumed per meal in a restaurant, since restaurants throw away most of their leftovers... The average American eats 273 pounds of meat a year. Give up red meat once a week and youll save as much energy as if the only food miles in your diet were the distance to the nearest truck farmer. If you want to make a statement, ride your bike to the farmers market. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, become a vegetarian. While buying locally produced meat will reduce the amount of fuel needed to transport your food, it does not change the fact that animal agriculture requires an inordinate amount of resources and produces a great deal of waste and pollution. Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network stated: There is only one way of being sure that you cut down on your carbon emissions when buying food: stop eating meat, milk, butter and cheese... These come from ruminants- sheep and cattle- that produce a great deal of harmful methane. In other words, it is not the source of the food that matters but the kind of food you eat. All things being equal, eating locally is better than eating food that has to be transported thousands of miles, but the environmental advantages of locavorism pale in comparison with those of going vegan. Lastly, one can choose to be an organic, vegan locavore to reap the environmental benefits of all three concepts. They are not mutually exclusive.