Powerful Symbols and Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie :: Glass Menagerie essays

Powerful Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie      Ã‚  Ã‚   Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie is a classic among classics for a number of reasons. The narrator, Tom Wingfield, gives the reader an inside look into the lives of a common family living in the pre-war depression era. The members of this family experience a great deal, and their lives are made much more vivid and meaningful through Williams' use of symbolism. Three well-crafted symbols are the fire escape, which provides hope and an escape to the outside world and from it; the glass menagerie, which is a metaphor for Laura's fragility and uniqueness; and rainbows, which symbolize unrealized hopes and aspirations. Through the use of these symbols, the reader is presented with the universal theme that unfulfilled hopes and desires are an unwanted, albeit important aspect of the human experience. This theme is revealed in a stylized, artistic manner, which is one of the reasons why The Glass Menagerie is a meaningful classic.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Symbols are a major part of this play that Tom, who is a poet, admits he has a weakness for. One of the first to be presented in the story is the fire escape that serves as the passageway to the apartment. The escape has a different meaning and function for each character and is also said to have an "accidental poetic truth" (21). For Tom, it is a means of escape from fire, "the slow and implacable fires of human desperation"(21). This is especially true of Tom's apartment, which is "both literally and metaphorically a trap which Tom and his mother, at least, wish to escape" (Bigsby 34). His mother, Amanda, is devastated after her daughter Laura's failure to cope in business college. This is a let down of Amanda's hopes of escaping because she has "invested what little she had to free both herself and Laura" (Bigsby 34). Amanda then becomes obsessed with finding Laura a gentleman caller so that she can marry and be supported as another means of escape, at least f or Laura. When this caller finally comes, and it seems like it was meant to be, as they dance and kiss, he announces he is engaged, and dashes their hopes. The ever-fragile Laura, temporarily drawn out of her dream-world shell of her glass collection and the victrola, draws further back into herself. Now a terrible desperation fills the apartment, and Tom decides he must escape the suffocating environment to follow his own calling.

The Mexican Peso Crisis of December 1994

There are three different types of foreign exchange regimes that can be used by developing countries once their currency has stabilized. The first one is called the managed float. Also called the dirty float, the managed float is a system when exchange rates are able to change due to the nature of the market, but leaves the option for the government to intervene if the fluctuation is not desired. It is the regime that has been used by the monetary system since 1973. The second regime is called the crawling band. The crawling band, in this case, would combine Mexico’s crawling peg with a wider band. The crawling band is a compromise between a system of entirely fluctuating exchange rates and those that are inflexible. The parity levels would be adjusted either up or down as a moving average of the actual exchange rates that would fluctuate on a wider band. The exchange rate would be only allowed to move a maximum percentage. The amount of the percentage is called the annual crawling peg. The wider band that would cover the crawling peg would allow for the actual exchange rate to fluctuate. The third regime is called the floating exchange rate system. Also called the flexible exchange rate system, the exchange rate fluctuates based solely on market forces in this regime. A floating system allows countries to have independent monetary and fiscal policies. Also, central banks would not have to hold onto a large international reserve to back a fixed exchange rate system. Capital flight was one of the main reasons for Mexico’s financial collapse of the peso. Capital flight is when assets and money flow out of a country due to an economic event that doesn’t assure investors things are okay. Capital flight differs from capital flow because capital flight occurs when investors feel that prices are about to fall and it becomes a race to get your money out before the prices fall. The assassination of presidential candidate Luis Colosio definitely played a factor in the capital flight out of Mexico. In 1994, the United States, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a few others created a rescue package for Mexico. The United States put up $20 billion of the $50 billion for Mexico. The IMF guaranteed a credit agreement with Mexico for about $17. 7 billion. The Bank of International Settlements offered $10 to Mexico and The Bank of Canada offered about $1 billion. It was not just Mexico mismanagement that caused this crisis. The assassination of the presidential candidate was something that could not have been avoided and it caused to crisis to worsen even more. It seems like that event was the â€Å"last straw on the camel’s back†, so to say. In order to prevent this crisis from happening in the future, Mexico should pay closer attention to its current account balance. Now that this has happened once, Mexico should know what to look for in order to stop it before it gets even worse. Overall, the aid package was risky on the United States to do. No one was certain that Mexico would be able to pay back the money. The United States could just not do anything though. We have close ties with Mexico through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). We weren’t just going to let Mexico fail. Just like the IMF helped Mexico back in 1994, they are currently lending to countries in need today. Countries with emerging markets such as Belarus, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine are receiving capital from the IMF. Almost always, low-income countries are also receiving money from the IMF.

A Separate Place by John Knowles - 514 Words

A Complex Friendship The undying will of friendship can be seen as more powerful than love, but Finny and Gene base this powerful connection for their own benefit instead. A Separate Peace begins with Gene and Phineas attending a private school called Devon in 1942. Gene lacks self fulfillment and looks to Finny for help. John Knowles presents Gene as a symbol of struggle of emotions because he is affected by the war. Gene uses Finny as a way to subside his upsetting past, and thinks of everything as a competition. Because of this thriving passion to have Finnys instincts, their relations are based on a friendship at which only Gene will benefit from. This takes their friendship to a complex level, as there are not only one but two wars. World War 2 and Genes war with himself show how the turmoil of war destroys relationships. Indeed friendship is altered through real events such as war which makes a jumble of feelings toward how you view a friend. The war makes Gene compare his academic ability to that of Finnys athletic ability as he is close to being drafted. He realizes that academics will not help him on a battlefield, but his physicality will. Gene becomes envious of Finny and turns everything between them into a direct competition. Gene wants to do anything Finny does and strives to be like him, even if he knows it is not wrong, What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? (17). This is all a result of how warShow MoreRelatedEssay on A Separate Peace: Friends or Foe?1117 Words   |  5 PagesDuring the 1940’s in America, times were hard. It was a time of war. In this period of history, people found themselves looking for peace and innocence. John Knowles’s A Separate Peace illustrates a boarding school, one of the only places left to find peace, where the main characters, Gene and Phineas, face their own internal wars with each other. 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While both authors use extended flashback to start their narration about the past events, Knowles chooses to tell the story from the perspective of Gene who is extremely in volved in Finny’s dream, while