Chinese Whispers Essays

Chinese Whispers Essays Chinese Whispers Paper Chinese Whispers Paper Inform your response with reference to the novels narrative structure, James use of language to characterise the governess and your knowledge of the texts historical, cultural and critical context This essay will argue that neither the governess nor her narrative is reliable. This essay will argue its case by looking at the narrative structure, Henry Jamess use of language to characterise the governess and will also refer to other historical, cultural and critical opinions of the novel. Through all this, the essay will show how the story we are reading is not an ideal source of true events and then by looking at the psychological state of the Governess, this essay will show why she shouldnt be believed either. The story starts of with a man named Douglas telling a story to guests at a dinner party. It is from a manuscript passed down to him by the governess before she died. The manuscript tells us the main story of the governess. The story is set in the late 19th Century and is about the governess who is now in charge of the care of two orphans. Although the children seem to be well behaved and affectionate at first, she becomes more and more uneasy as she starts to see ghosts of her predecessors * The first point this essay will pick up on is the narrative unreliability. As the essay has briefly explained already, we are not getting that story directly from the governess. Instead the Turn of the Screw is one of the guests at the party, telling us the story which Douglas gave him which came from a manuscript given to him by the governess, which she wrote about her experience at Bly over twenty years ago, phew. Douglas said it was long ago Because this story has gone through so many people, there will probably be a Chinese Whispers effect, meaning that parts of the story have been subject to change since the events happened. Douglas also says that this narrative is from an extract of my own much later. This means that the story has been prone to alteration by the people passing it on and so we are probably not getting the true story of events. This greatly undermines the narrative reliability as its structure indicates that some parts of the narrative have been altered while others have been forgotten. The governess also wrote this as a retrospective account of events. She comments on her dreadful liability and how her story is true enough. The manuscript was written by the governess after events had occurred. She also says that I scarce know how to put my story into words. This is another example of how parts of the actual series of events are missed showing how we cant rely on this narrative to give us the true and exact series of events. Not only could parts have been forgotten, but parts could also have been added. There are examples where you can tell the governess has added parts to her narrative. She will often come up with massive long speeches that give the impression that she is in control: No, never from the hour you came back. You seemed so perfectly to accept the present. She also includes signposts in her narrative e. g the separation of the governess and Miles from Mrs Grose and Flora Mrs Grose and Flora had passed into the church We were for a minute alone If parts have been added to cover up her mistakes, then perhaps other things may have been removed disproving her claims. This therefore undermines the narrative reliability. The perspective in which the governesses story is written also undermines the narrative reliability. As it is written in the 1st person by the governess, the entire narrative is subject to the governesses influence and her influence alone. She uses plenty of 1st person pronouns I remember it which proves this is her personal account of events. She refers to her story with the words the strings of my invention This gives the impression that this story is her puppet and she has full control over it. We should not trust this story as it is heavily subjectivised and therefore it is unlikely that it will be entirely correct. There is only one other character in the story who could give us an extra perspective on events: Mrs Grose. However, Mrs Grose is being manipulated by the governess throughout the book. The governess admits she had formed the habit of keeping Grose well in hand. There are also examples where Mrs Grose takes on the governesses reasoning after being pressured by the governess Lord how I pressed her now. We only get the governesses perspective and any interjections from the interlocutor Mrs Grose are likely to be influenced by the governess. It also seems that the other characters in the book cannot be relied on for the truth.

The Top 10 Unsolved Questions in Economics

The Top 10 Unsolved Questions in Economics There are many problems in the economic world that have yet to be solved, and fortunately, Wikipedia  has compiled a list of the greatest ones to date - from what caused the Industrial Revolution to whether or not money supply is endogenous. Although great economists like Craig Newmark and members of the AEA have taken a stab at solving these tough issues, the true solution to these problems - that is to say the generally understood and accepted truth of the matter - has yet to come to light. To say a question is unsolved implies that the question potentially has a solution, in the same way 2x 4 8 has a solution. The difficulty is, most of the questions on this list are so vague that they cannot possibly have a solution. Nevertheless, here are the top ten unsolved economic problems. 1. What Caused the Industrial Revolution? Although there are many factors at play in causing the Industrial Revolution, the economic answer to this question has yet to be sussed out. However, no event has a single cause - the Civil War was not wholly caused by slavery and World War I was not wholly caused by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. This is a question without a solution, as events have numerous causes and determining which ones were more important than others naturally involves some subjectivity. While some might argue that a strong middle-class, mercantilism and the development of an empire, and an easily moveable and growing urban population who increasingly believed in materialism led to the Industrial Revolution in England, others might argue the countrys isolation from European continental problems or the nations common market led to this growth. 2. What Is the Proper Size and Scope of Government? This question again has no real objective answer, because people will always have differing views on the argument of efficiency versus equity in governance. Even if a population managed to fully understand the exact trade-off that was being made in each case, the size and scope of a government largely depend on its citizenrys dependence on its influence. New countries, like the United States in its early days, relied on a centralized government to maintain order and oversee rapid growth and expansion. Over time, it has had to decentralize some of its authority to the state and local levels in order to better represent its vastly diverse population. Still, some might argue the government should be larger and control more due to our reliance on it domestically and abroad. 3. What Truly Caused the Great Depression? Much like the first question, the cause of the Great Depression cant be pinpointed because so many factors were at play in the eventual crash of the United States economies in the late 1920s. However, unlike the Industrial Revolution, whose many factors also included advances outside of economy, the Great Depression was primarily caused by a catastrophic intersection of economic factors. Economists commonly believe five factors ultimately resulted in the Great Depression: the stock market crash in 1929, over 3,000 banks failing throughout the 1930s, reduction in purchasing (demand) in the market itself, American policy with Europe, and drought conditions in Americas farmland. 4. Can We Explain the Equity Premium Puzzle? In short, no we have not yet. This puzzle refers to the strange occurrence of returns on stocks being much higher than returns on government bonds over the past century, and economists are still baffled by what could truly be the cause. Some posit that either risk aversion may be at play here, or antithetically that large consumption variability accounted for the discrepancy in return capital. However, the notion that stocks are riskier than bonds isnt enough to account for this risk aversion as a means to alleviate arbitrage opportunities within a countrys economy. 5. How Is It Possible to Provide Causal Explanations Using Mathematical Economics? Because mathematical economics relies on purely logical constructions, some might wonder how an economist might use causal explanations in their theories, but this problem isnt quite that difficult to solve. Like physics, which can provide causal explanations like a projectile traveled 440 feet because it was launched at point x from angle y at velocity z, etc., mathematical economics can explain the correlation between events in a market that follow the logical functions of its core principles. 6. Is There an Equivalent of Black-Scholes for Futures Contract Pricing? The Black-Scholes formula estimates, with relative accuracy, the price of European-style options in a trading market. Its creation led to a newfound legitimacy of the operations of options in markets globally, including the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and is often used by participants of options markets to predict future returns. Although variations of this formula, including notably the Black formula, have been made in financial economic analyses, this still proves to be the most accurate prediction formula for markets around the world, so there is still yet to be an equivalent introduced to the options market. 7. What Is the Microeconomic Foundation of Inflation? If we treat money such as any other commodity in our economy and as such is subject to the same supply and demand forces, reason would suggest it would be just as susceptible to inflation as goods and services are. However, if you consider this question like one considers the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, it may be best left as a rhetorical one. The basis, of course, is that we do treat our currency like a good or service, but where this originates doesnt truly have one answer. 8. Is the Money Supply Endogenous? Wikipedia follows up this question with a simple statement: Mainstream economics claims that it is; post-Keynesian economics claims that it is not. However, the issue isnt uniquely about endogeneity, which, strictly speaking, is a modeling assumption. If the question is properly constructed, I think this could be considered one of the key problems in economics. 9. How Does Price Formation Occur? In any given market, prices are formed by a variety of factors, and just like the question of the microeconomic foundation of inflation, theres no true answer to its origins, though one explanation posits that each seller in a market forms a price depending on probabilities within the market which in turn depends on the probabilities of other sellers, meaning that prices are determined by how these sellers interact with one another and their consumers. However, this idea that prices are determined by the markets overlooks several key factors including that some goods or service markets dont have a set market price as some markets are volatile while others are stable - all depending on the veracity of information available to buyers and sellers. 10. What Causes the Variation of Income Among Ethnic Groups? Much like the causes of the Great Depression and the Industrial Revolution, the exact cause of income disparity between ethnic groups cannot be pinpointed to a single source. Instead, a variety of factors ​are at play depending on where one is observing the data, though it mostly comes down to institutionalized prejudices within the job market, availability of resources to different ethnic and their relative economic groups, and employment opportunities in localities featuring varying degrees of ethnic population density.