Sonny Blue's And The Language Of Snails
“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is a short story that tells of the redemption and communion between two once-estranged brothers. How does the symbol of a cup containing scotch and milk that are blended together by the force of Sonny’s piano-playing serve to represent the coming-together of these lost siblings? Where else does Baldwin use religions symbolism to represent family healing?
Marcia Douglas’ “The Language of Snails” is rooted in Jamaican folklore in which human beings can turn into animals via sorcery and magic. Most organized religions tell us that human are very different from animals, but Evolution tells us we are all one interrelated Tree of Life. How does Douglas explore the strange, blurry line between humans and non-human animals?
Sample Solution
Towards resolving the 30-year terrorism definition conflict, Weinberg, Pedahzur and Hirsch-Hoefler (2004) compared Schmid’s definition, (see excerpt below), a product of a survey in which 22 definitional elements were identified in the 109 definitions of terrorism retrieved from 200 participants; to the application of the concept in three terrorism-based academic journals: Terrorism, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Terrorism and Political Violence. Of the 22, Weinberg, Pedahzur and Hirsch-Hoefler (2004) observed that only 16 elements appeared in Schmid’s definition (p. 780).
Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual group, or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat – and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organisation), (imperilled) victims, and main target (audiences (s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought (Schmid & Jongman, 1988, p. 28)
For their study, Weinberg, Pedahzur and Hirsch-Hoefler selected 73 definitions from the 55 articles and compared these to Schmid’s (1988) 22 elements. The exercise yielded mixed results. For example, while some components such as the psychological elements of terrorism were in decline (41.5% to 5.5%), probably due to the absence of contributors from the field of psychology; the authors of the articles i