Slaughterhouses and the packing companies Essay -- Literary Analysis,

â€Å"I wished to frighten the country by a picture of what its industrial masters were doing to their victims; entirely by chance I stumbled on another discovery--what they were doing to the meat-supply of the civilized world. In other words, I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach† (Bloom). With the publication of a single book, Upton Sinclair found himself as a worldwide phenomenon overnight. He received worldwide response to his novel and invitations to lectures all over the world including one to the White House by President Roosevelt. In late 1904, the editor of the Appeal to Reason, a socialist magazine sent Sinclair to Chicago to tell the story of the poor common workingmen and women unfairly enslaved by the vast monopolistic enterprises. He found that he could go anywhere in the stockyards provided that he â€Å"[wore] old clothes†¦ and [carried] a workman’s dinner pail†. Sinclair spent seven weeks in Chicago livi ng among and interviewing the Chicago workers; studying conditions in the packing plants. Along with collecting more information for his novel, Sinclair came upon another discovery--the filth of improper sanitation and the processing of spoiled meat. With the publishing of his novel, Sinclair received international response to its graphic descriptions of the packinghouses. The book is said to have decreased America’s meat consumption for decades and President Roosevelt, himself, reportedly threw his breakfast sausages out his window after reading The Jungle. However, Sinclair classified the novel as a failure and blamed himself for the public’s misunderstanding. Sinclair’s main purpose for writing the book was to improve the working conditions for the Chicago stockyard workers. Sinclair found it... ...ivities. Sinclair promotes socialism, government owned companies that endorse more rights for its worker’s, as government own corporations will be less about the individual profit but the common good. Sinclair publicities socialism in The Jungle in many methods: a capitalist society provides their workers with sickening working condition, a capitalist society consists of corruption all over the board, and a socialistic society will mean a perfect world. Upton Sinclair was dubbed by President Roosevelt as â€Å"a muckraker†, a writer who investigates and publishes issues happening around America. Even though Sinclair’s novel did not do as much for the poor as he hoped, it did bring about change to America: stricter meat packing regulations, standards of cleanliness in processing plants, and public knowledge of what the Chicago corporations were doing to their canned meat.

Tommy Hilfiger Versus Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Battle of Conformity :: essays research papers

I turn my head and see a streak of blouse and miniskirt flouncing by, its wearer dark and supple with the tan of a Pittsburgh January and luxuriously blonde from the bottle of her favorite stylist. Her male companion wears a sweater that cost him more than the herd of sheep from whence its essential material came, with baggy blue jeans marked with the name of a certain Hilfiger fellow, and shoes pioneered by one Dr. Martin, likely a prominent podiatrist somewhere in the world. The girl giggles airily and shoves her companion playfully with a hand accented by newly (and plastically) long, manicured, French-tipped nails. A small wonder it is indeed that she did not lose her balance in so doing, for her towering shoes elevate her feet to such an alarming angle that I am scarce able to understand exactly how she is able to walk.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  They continue sauntering along together, linking arms and looking reminiscent of a modeling photo shot for that certain Abero-something-or-other clothing store, only in color and live action. I conjecture the communal price of their clothing and fashionable accessories. On second thought, I do not even want to conjecture; I have quite enough of an idea. â€Å"’The virtue in most request is conformity,’† I think to myself, repeating the adage mentioned by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay on Self-Reliance, â€Å"and from that standpoint, this is a very ‘virtuous’ couple indeed.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Emerson precedes himself in wisdom. I heartily agree with his standpoint on conformity. Society today encourages many different aspects of compliance, but perhaps the most prominent one is conformity of appearance. There are societal standards for males, females, young and old that make them either ideal or outlying, and most of these standards are dependent upon cosmetic appearance. Ours is a superficial society, a manufactured American view of perfect people and perfect beauty thrives almost universally unbounded by resistance, whether passive or powerful. The manners in which people conform to the society’s image of beauty are many, including cosmetics, fashions of clothing and shoes, hair styles, modish colors; everything down to the size of purse a woman carries is first spotted in a magazine and then purchased and used once deemed to be worthy of public sight. Outlandish fashions become the mode primarily because they are advertised as being â€Å"th e things you simply cannot live without!† It is a universal truth that fashion is a form of ugliness so hideous that it must be changed every four months; but the public is content to stay within the confines of the current trend in order to conform, and not necessarily because the fashion is attractive.

Wedding Speech from the Father of the Bride -- Wedding Toasts Roasts S

Wedding Speech from the Father of the Bride Thank you for that welcome, I haven’t had applause like that since Frank’s bachelor party in Angels lap dancing club! Ladies and Gentlemen, for those of you who don’t know me I’m Mike, Claire’s Dad and on behalf of my wife Angela and I, I would like to welcome you all here today to celebrate the marriage of our daughter Claire to Frank I would like to welcome Frank’s Mum, Margaret, partner Don, sister Helen and husband Simon as well as all our relatives and friends. I know a few have travelled considerable distances to be here. Thank you, its very much appreciated. At this point I would like to mention three important people who are not here today. Firstly Frank’s Dad who died a few years ago when Frank was a boy. Of course I never knew Dave but I have recently seen a photograph and could hardly believe it wasn’t a photo of Frank, they were so alike. I believe that’s where Frank gets his passion for fast cars and motor bikes from. I would also like to mention Claire’s Grandfather Les, who also passed away about ten years ago. Claire and Les shared the same birthday He doted on Claire and vice versa. And I would like to mention Doris, Claire’s grandmother, who died just a month ago, she was so looking forward to seeing Claire walking down the aisle today but unfortunately she succumbed to her illness. They are all here in spirit and I’m sure they are ... ... morning. At our silver wedding celebrations, we brought the box down from the loft, you know the one with the wedding album , order of service sheets etc. I also came across these (produce two L Plates) As I said I’m fully qualified now and I was going to throw them away, but then I thought I know who could do with these (give one each to the bride and groom.) Just before I close, ladies and gentlemen, some of you will know my own parents will celebrate their own Golden Wedding in February. My Mother was born Molly Robson and became a Bartle , now fifty years later it’s typical of Claire to address the inbalance. So ladies and Gentlemen would you please be upstanding†¦ the toast is Mr and Mrs Robson.

Consumer Attitude and Beliefs Essay

1. Explain a person’s attitude towards visiting Disneyland in Hong Kong in terms of the tri-component model. The tri-component attitude model is made up of three major components: (i) The Cognitive Component – a consumer’s attitude is initially based upon their own knowledge and perception through direct experience with the attitude object and related information from other sources. Prior Visit: if an individual has looked at brochures or searched up Hong Kong Disneyland online, then their attitude towards it should be positive, relating to their also positive perception received through information from sources After Visit: after visiting HK Disneyland, the individual would have had direct experience with the attitude object, thus their attitude would be based upon their experience there. (ii) The Affective Component – the emotions and or feelings a consumer associates with a particular brand or product. Prior Visit: assuming that the individual is a fan of rides and an adrenaline rush, the affective component would mostly likely involve the feeling of excitement of visiting Disneyland After Visit: if the individual’s visit to HK Disneyland was positive, they would probably have feelings of happiness and maybe even an emotion of sadness that they have to leave (iii) The Conative Component – the likelihood or tendency of a consumer to undertake a specific action or behave in a certain manner with regard to the attitude object. Prior Visit: since this component is based on an individual’s tendency to act (and not the actual acting), it would depend on each individual’s unique behaviour towards something; e.g. one may have the tendency to get too excited and not be able to concentrate on work properly. After Visit: an individual may hav e the tendency to boast to their friends about how fabulous their visit to HK Disneyland was. 2. Explain how the product manager of a breakfast cereal might change consumer attitudes toward the company’s brand by: a) Changing beliefs about the brand The product manager could change consumer beliefs about the brand by using the cognitive component of the tri-component attitude model, where a consumer’s knowledge and perceptions are acquired via direct experience with the attitude object plus information from other sources. (E.g. adding a  health attribute to the product so that consumers perceive the cereal brand as healthy, changing their beliefs about the brand.) b) Changing beliefs about competing brands The product manager of a breakfast cereal is obviously not able to change the packaging or advertising of a competitor’s brand, thus their marketing strategy to change a customer’s attitude toward competing brands must be accomplished via packaging and advertising strategies of their own breakfast cereal brand. This may be accomplished by assuring that consumers are aware that the breakfast cereal is unique from its competitors and has something to offer that other brands do not. Advertising to customers that this cereal has extra to offer or that other brands have been simply imitating this brand would cause customers to believe that competing brands have simply been deceiving. c) Changing the relative evaluation of attitudes Changing the relative evaluation of attitudes would involve the product manager coming up with a strategy that positively affects and engages a larger number of consumers. This would include appealing customers by making the breakfast cereal stand out amongst other competitors, such as highlighting a significant attributive strength that other breakfast cereals do not offer. The product manager would want to use powerful positive statements to achieve this. d) Adding an attribute Consumer attitudes toward the breakfast cereal could be enhanced by adding a health attribute to the cereal. For example, consumers are most likely to believe there has been product improvement if the product manager decides to add positively perceived ingredients such as protein, fibre, minerals, etc. 3. What sources influenced your attitudes about studying buyer behaviour before class started? Has your initial attitude changed since the unit started? If so, how? The sources that influenced my attitude towards studying buyer behaviour prior starting the unit was mostly based on the unit description from the unit guide and how friends had described the unit  to be like. My current attitude towards the unit has not changed much, except for the fact that the group assignment was actually not as boring as expected but rather quite interesting. 4. Should the marketer of a popular computer graphics program prefer consumers to make internal or external attributions about the success that people have using the program? The marketer of a popular graphics program would most likely prefer consumers to make external attributions about the success that people have using the program. External attributes focus on the properties or features that are externally visible such as reliability and maintainability, hence this type of successful information would appeal more to consumers compare to internal attributions that are not visible. 5. Find an ad for a free service trial (e.g. carwash, free brake check or a free software trial). What attributions would consumers make about the advertiser? What self-attributions would a consumer make if he or she accepted the trial offer? A consumer may make the attribution that the advertiser of Spotify is personally a fan and recommends it. A free trial advertisement sends across a message somewhere along the lines of: â€Å"It’s great. You don’t believe me? Try it for yourself then.† From a consumer’s point of view, it makes the advertiser positive that an individual will not regret testing it out and want to actually purchase it again for an actual monetary amount. Possible self-attributions that a consumer may make if they accept the trial offer would be that they are now in the â€Å"social loop†, or praise themselves for accepting the trial offer and receiving free music on their phone and laptop for 30 days without having to pay. If they enjoyed the trial then an individual would make positive self-attributes and vice-versa. 6. Find examples of advertising that uses fear and humour and discuss why you think they are effective or not effective. Example of Advertisement Using Fear: This advertisement that uses fear in order to raise awareness and prevent people from smoking is effective in my opinion. A non-smoker who saw this would most likely be too scared to ever pick up cigarettes even to test it out knowing the possible consequences can be this bad, let alone death from lung cancer. An actual smoker would hopefully look at this and realise what they are doing to their own bodies and also take into account that this may be them at some point in time. It may not be strong enough to get an addict to completely quit smoking, but hopefully at least cut down. Example of Advertisement Using Humour: Personally I think the use of humour in this advertisement is the perfect way to capture the attention of consumers and potential consumers. Not only would LEGO fans be lured into the advertisement, but even those who have no clue about LEGO or are simply not interested are likely to take notice of the advertisement purely because it is humorous. It also indirectly targets Star Wars fans, allowing the advert to appeal to a whole range of individuals.

Alfred Edward Housman

A.E.Housman (Alfred Edward Housman) was born on March 26th 1859 in Fockbury, Worcerstershire. He was basically a classical scholar and an English origin poet. He was famous for his poem A Shropshire Lad. These short and poetic poems were written before the 19th century. The thoughful suggestion of fated youth in England, their auxilary, language and chracteristic description was appealing to the Geogian and and Edwardian composer prior and following the WW1.Housman was reckoned among the leading classic writers of his time. He had created a name for himself after printing as a private scholar and because of which he was selected as a Latin Professor at the College London University and than later at the prestigious Cambridge. His famous editions of Lucan, Juvenal and Manilius are said to be very well respected. With these settings of poetry, the generation was strongly linked and were also were much connected with the Shropshire poems as well. Alfred Edward Housman was the son of a c ountry solicitor and the eldest of his seven siblings. His sister Clemence Housman and Laurance Housman also became writers.A.E.Housman went to school at King Edward and than later to Bromsgrove school where he had a strong academic foundation and won numerous prizes for his poetry. He got a scholarship at St Johns College, Oxford in 1877 where he got education in classics.He was amazing in analyzing texts. He became so much involved into Texts that he did not retake philosophy and ancient history and even did not take a passing degree. He did not make much friends with his only friends being his roommates A.W.Pollard and Moses Jackson. Alfred Housman had a hard and usually reserved feelings for his friend Moses Jackons which were refused by Jackson as he was hetrosexual. This refusal by Moses led to Alfred unpredicted failure in his exams in 1881.Jackson got a clerk job in the Patent office in London and also got Housman a job there. They started sharing an apartmen with Adalbert w ho was the elder brother of Jackson. They stayed there till 1885 after which Housman moved into his own apartment on his own. In 1887 Moses married and moved to Karachi (Than in India) and later in 1982 Adalbert Jackson died. Alfred still continued to write classical studies on his own and also published some quality articles on numerous authors like Sophocles, Ovid, Aeschylus, Propertius, Horace and Euripides.In this period, Alfred managed to study Roman and Greek classics very throughly. He became a Latin Professor at Cambridge Trinity College in 1911 and till his death he had held the position. Alfred Housman managed to gain fame with his classic editions of the famous poets of Rome mainly Manilus, Juvenal and Lucan and also for his thorough and clever comments and his contempt for the unscholarly.Poems of Alfred Edward HousmanDuring his life Alfred Housman had managed to publish only two poetry volumes: One being published in 1896 by the name of Shropshire Lad and the other in 1 922 which was Last Poems.A Shropshire lad is a collection of his 63 poems with the majority written after his close friend Adalbert Jackons death in 1982. The main themes of the peoms were based upon unreturned love, green beauty, brief youth, sorrow, demise and the common soldiers patriotism. After his scripts were refused by many of the publishers, he decided to print them on his own expenditure which was a shock for his students and his colleagues.The Shropshire Lad was a rather slow in momentum to gain popularity, the arrival of war, at first in the Boer war and than later in WW1, gave this book a widespread popularity because of its regretfulness potrayal of the English troops. Numerous composers of music managed to make different setting of musical for the work of Housman which increased his popularity.

Arctic Mining Consultants Essay

Synopsis of the Situation Arctic Mining Consultants is a mining consulting company that does mining exploration. This particular case looks into how Arctic Mining Consultants’ crew did not effectively do their job in Eagle Lake, Alaska. Tom Parker is a geological field technician and field coordinator for the company. He acted as the project manager on the job near Eagle Lake, Alaska. His crew of field assistants consisted of John Talbot, Greg Boyce, and Brian Millar. Tom had worked with all three field assistants before. Tom has specialized skills in claim staking, line cutting and grid installation, soil sampling, prospecting, and trenching. This particular job involved skating 15 claims, which consist of marking a line with flagging tape and blazes along the perimeter of the claim. A claim post is cut every 500 yards, meaning 60 miles in line total. Tom hoped to complete the job in a week, and offered the field assistants each a $300 bonus if it was completed in time. This would be added to their fa irly low daily wages. As the job progressed, tension was thick because the deadline was approaching. The field assistants were working long days, and two of them were continually not meeting Tom’s expectations. Tom particularly took his frustrations out on Millar. Key Issues The field assistants are given little motivation to work hard. They are paid fairly low daily wages and are putting in long days. Tom Parker does not offer positive encouragement either, yelling and making the field assistants feel bad could make them care less about the job. The field assistants are provided meals and accommodations, but even Tom admitted that a lot was expected of them in a short amount of time. Tom Parker is not a good leader. He is the one who does the hiring, training and supervising for all of Arctic Mining Consultants programs. It could be possible he is not properly training field assistants to thoroughly meet his  expectations. Tom Parker, on more then one occasion, exploded with anger. He did not coach his team, he just yelled at them. If he was supervising there work on Day 3, he should have communicated with the field assistants and told them how to improve their work then. On Day 6, when the field assistants did show improvement, Parker did not give them any positive reinforcements. Also, even after Paker picked on only Millar for bad performance, he asked him to work for him again. The field assistants seem to have very different capabilities and attitudes. Boyce did not get picked on by Parker, but admitted to Millar that he only worked as hard as he had to. Boyce had the worst results of everyone. Talbot met his quota and stayed to help Boyce meet his. He was a team player. Millar put in more time and effort, by being the first one dropped off Day 6 and 7, last one picked up Day 6 and 7, and not taking lunch Day 5. He worked himself so hard, that he collapsed at dinner, to tired to eat. Define the Problem The key problem in this case is that Tom Parker is not a good leader. He is in charge of hiring, training, and supervising field assistants. Couldn’t the field assistants’ work be reflected on Tom because he did not properly train them? Also, Tom selected the field assistants for this job. He should have known what they were capable of before selecting them. He had worked with al of them before, so he should have had reasonable expectations for each of them. Tom also made a hostile working environment with much stress and little positivity. Alternative Solutions Solution 1: Tom needs to be retained as a project manager. Being a project manager means being a leader. Tom is not a good leader. An effective leader is one who leads by encouraging the employees and making them want to succeed, thereby making the organization meet and exceed its goals over time. (Thakur, 2005). Tom did not handle conflict well; he took his frustrations out on one particular field assistant. Relational leadership is one form of effective leadership. Relational leadership centers around person-to-person relationships. One of the significant components of all relationships is how conflict is handled. (Ferch & Mitchell, 2011). The  advantage of retaining Tom to gain leadership skills would be that Tom potentially could more effectively train field assistants and make a better team dynamic. The disadvantage is that Arctic Mining Consultants would have to spend time and money to re train the trainer, Tom. It would be beneficial for him to develop new leadership skills, but it might be difficult not having a project manager. Solution 2: Tom and Arctic Mining Consultants should offer more incentives to his field assistants. It doesn’t even have to be monetary. Offering positive reinforcement for work well done would be beneficial to Tom and his team. â€Å"While money is important to employees, what tends to motivate them to perform – and to perform at higher levels – is the thoughtful, personal kind of recognition that signifies true appreciation for a job well done. (Eastern, 2012). The advantage of this solution would be that employees would feel better about the work they are doing, and feel good hen they excel. Field assistants would be working in a positive environment. The disadvantage would be employees would start to expect positive reinforcements and bonuses, feeling they are entitled to it. Solution 2: Hire new field assistants. Tom could more carefully select his field assistants for a job. He should do more research on candidates’ capabilities and experience if he has high expectations. The advantage of having a different team of field assistants would be that he could filter out those who do not meet expectations before hand. The negative side of hiring new field assistants is the time it would take to evaluate new candidates as field assistants. Selected Solution I believe the first solution would bee best to solve this case. Tom needs to reevaluate his leadership tactics. He does not communicate effectively with his crew. He needs to think of the crew working together like a team, and he is coach. Tom is not being effective by focusing on the negatives; he needs to analyze what is being done wrong, and coach field assistants to correct their problem. Implementation/Recommendations First, Arctic Mining Consultant should have Tom trains another potential project manager that already works for the company. The candidate should undergo some type of leadership training. Then Tom will engage in a leadership-training program. The candidate will be the project manager while Tom is absent. Then, the two project managers, Tom and candidate, will work as a team to direct field assistants. Tom needs a new outlook on his management style. Implementing this plan will help achieve that. This will also help make more effective work teams. References Thakur, D. (2005, January). Short-term leaders. Quality, 44(1), 24. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.davenport.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA127543673&v=2.1&u=lom_davenportc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w Ferch, S. R., & Mitchell, M. M. (2001). Intentional Forgiveness in Relational Leadership: A Technique for Enhancing Effective Leadership. Journal of Leadership Studies, 7(4), 70. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.davenport.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA76626374&v=2.1&u=lom_davenportc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w Eastern, J. S. (2012, January 1). Employee rewards. Internal Medicine News, 45(1), 78. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.davenport.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA280102141&v=2.1&u=lom_davenportc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

Farewell My Concubine: Self-Identification in Context

Directed by Chen Kaige, a highly acclaimed fifth-generation Chinese film director, Farewell My Concubine has received many international film awards and nominations; among them are the Best Foreign Film and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. In the film, Cheng Dieyi, a Peking Opera actor playing the leading female characters, becomes obsessed with his role as the concubine of the King of Chu and blurs his stage role with the real life he leads. The circumstances in which one grows up in are critical factors in shaping his or her sense of self-identity.This paper attempts to explore the gender identity troubles that Cheng Dieyi has undergone in his self-identification and sexuality in the context of the environment of his upbringing. The story begins when Cheng’s mother takes her son to Master Guan and begs him to take Dieyi (whose nickname was Douzi at the time) into his opera troupe. In order to be a performer in the Peking opera, one must not have any features that are abnormal or that may frighten the audience. Unfortunately, Douzi fails this test because he was born with a sixth finger on one of his hands.His mother was desperate to sell him off and thus cuts off her son’s finger with a cleaver. At this point, Master Guan agrees to accept Douzi as a disciple in his opera troupe. Master Guan notices that Douzi’s â€Å"features were surprisingly delicate; he was almost pretty† , which are perfect for playing female roles. Thus, Douzi is chosen as a dan , or the female lead of the opera troupe. He will play the female roles alongside his best friend, Xiaolou who was chosen to be his sheng, or male lead. Starting from even the earliest scenes of the film, Dieyi’s self-identity has been slowly ripped away from him.Dieyi’s abrupt transition from living in a brothel as a prostitute’s son to becoming a well-disciplined opera singer in the troupe is marked by his mother’s brutal amputati on of his sixth finger. This symbolic castration implies that one must abandon his inherited past in order to seek a new social identity. â€Å"The root of biological determinism has been severed and the subject freed to pursue a place in a symbolic world of gender fluidity† Dieyi’s finger is not the only thing that has been emasculated, but his self-identity has been castrated as well. The film hints at this in the beginning by including the character of Master Ni, a unuch who was physically castrated, losing his male reproductive organs. While Master Ni was physically castrated of his male reproductive organs, Dieyi becomes mentally and emotionally castrated through his harsh upbringing in the opera troupe. Whereas the symbolic castration signifies the possibility of Dieyi’s transition from a biological male to a stereotypical female, the harsh corporal punishment he receives during his training in the opera troupe enforces that transition. Corporal punishment is often used in schools to reinforce the relation between master and student.It instills in students a sense of the power of the social hierarchy and their place within it. Dieyi’s designated â€Å"place† on that hierarchy, sadly, requires that he learns to abandon his male identity. While corporal punishment remakes Dieyi mentally, costume and make up remakes Dieyi physically. As he performs in the long dresses and fancy headdresses, he sees himself capable of reflecting signs of beauty and femininity. He is forced to sing â€Å"I am by nature a girl, not a boy† , and his full transition to femininity went into full motion the moment he mastered this line and accepted it as the truth, that he is by nature a girl, not a boy.Like most of the male dans in the Peking Opera theatre, Cheng Dieyi must be able to create the illusion of a real female that appeals to the male audience, but Cheng’s femininity is apparent not only on stage, but off stage as well. Clearly, Cheng has fully adapted his female roles into his life off stage. He speaks in a low soft voice, his movements are graceful, maintains the delicate hand pose of the Lan huazhi (the artificial feminine hand pose of the male dan), and wears a seductive look that would often be considered a feminine gaze.Most male dans merely imitate these feminine acts on stage, but Cheng Dieyi gradually transforms these â€Å"acts† into an unconscious habit of his. â€Å"The repetition of the stylized female acts embedded in female impersonation and the rigid and violent regulation of these acts eventually bring about Cheng Dieyi’s unconscious identification with Yuji, concubine of the Chu King, constructing in him a feminine sexuality and identity. † Opera performers at the time were expected to play their stage roles for ife. Dieyi’s most notable performance is an epic opera named Farewell My Concubine; it tells the story of the King of Chu (Xiang Yu) and his fa ithful concubine Yuji. Xiang Yu knows that he has lost to his enemy and drinks with Yuji on the last night. Yuji performs a sword dance for him and then cuts her own throat with his sword to express her faithfulness to him. As Dieyi continues to play the role of Yuji into this professional career, he begins to blur the life of Yuji’s character and his own.This becomes very obvious when Dieyi begins to show signs of affection towards his stage partner, Xiaolou, who plays the King of Chu. In multiple times throughout the movie, Dieyi can be seen looking at Xiaolou with a tender, almost romantic gaze and is especially gentle when he helps Xiaolou apply makeup and dress in costume. His romantic feelings for his â€Å"stage brother† are translucent to the audience as he is overcome by jealousy at the news that Xiaolou was getting married to Juxian. He believes that Juxian is robbing him of what was rightfully his.As in the opera when Yu Ji and Xiang Yu swear their love to e ach other, what Dieyi sees is actually he and his stage brother declaring their loyalty to one another. While Cheng Dieyi wholly embodies the female roles he impersonates, the Peking opera stage is essentially the world in which he bases his identity on. As he enters his professional career and makes a name for himself, he thinks that he will always be able to hide behind his feminine charms, and that art will always transcend any situation.For a while, he is proven right. On one occasion, he sings for a Japanese official to help Xiaolou out of jail; in another, he sings for a Chinese official to bail himself out of jail. Duan Xiaolou reminds Dieyi again and again that life is not the stage and he must learn to adjust to the values of the changing times. The film covers a story that spans across 50 years of Chinese history: the rise and fall of the Nationalist Party, the Sino-Japanese War, the rise of the Communist Party, and the Cultural Revolution.As the nation goes through a turb ulent historical period, Cheng simply views it as a backdrop that would never affect his performances. He was never concerned about any of the political upheavals that occurred or the change in regimes. He felt that as long as his art is being appreciated, it does not matter who the political leaders are. When he was put on trial for being a traitor when the Communist Party was in power, he exclaims, â€Å"If the Japanese were still here, Peking Opera would have spread into Japan already,† with no regard to the consequences.The art of Peking opera has always been Cheng’s way of escaping reality, and it is this illusion that he identifies with. However, when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, the identity he has found for himself has been robbed from him once again. The Cultural Revolution is one that advocates extreme reality, and thus traditional art becomes a target of exploitation for distracting people from reality. When Dieyi and Xiaolou are taken out onto t he streets to be reprimanded, his previous illusion that he and Xiaolou would never betray one another, just as Yu Ji and Xiang Yu would never do so, is shattered.Under the humiliation and physical abuse of the Red Guards, Xiaolou calls Dieyi a traitor to the Chinese and a homosexual. Cheng and Duan then turn on each other and expose incriminating details about each other’s past to the Red Guards. This political movement is in a sense, a rude awakening for Cheng. For the first time, it forces him to abandon the identity that he forged for himself on the opera stage, and accept that he lives in a world where loyalty is not always indestructible. It is because of this revolution that causes Dieyi’s blurred lines between opera and reality to slowly reappear.These lines, however, did not have a lasting effect. When Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou reunite on the stage many years after the Cultural Revolution, they make their final Farewell My Concubine performance. At the last scene, Dieyi, playing Yuji, takes the sword and slits his throat. Dieyi wanted so desperately to be Yuji his entire life, and he finally fulfilled that wish, or so he thinks, by boldly committing suicide just as Yuji has done so: for his love, and in a dramatic manner, like a stage opera should be.Cheng Dieyi had grown up with violence and abuse, in a society with constant political turmoil and turbulent changes. As a boy who was already an introvert to begin with, the unsettling changes that revolved around him became too overwhelming. He had no choice but to retreat into a world that he knows best: the opera stage. Though the opera stage is but a fictional world, it is the only place in which he is always the hero(ine).Works Cited Cui, Shuqin. â€Å"Engendering Identity: Female Impersonation in Farewell My Concubine . From Poetic Realm to Fictional World: Chinese Theory of Fictional Ontology (1999) Farewell My Concubine. Dir. Chen Kaige. 1993. DVD. Miramax Films, 1999. Goldstein , Joshua (1999). â€Å"Mei Lanfang and the Nationalization of Peking Opera, 1912–1930† East Asian Cultures Critique 7 (2): 377–420. He, Chengzhou. â€Å"Gaze, Performativity and Gender Trouble in Farewell My Concubine. † Nanjing University (2004): n. pag. Web. Poquette, Ryan D. , Critical Essay on Farewell My Concubine, in Novels for Students, Gale, 2004.