Doris Duke :: Essays Papers

Doris Duke Many people may think that money is the key to happiness, but Too Rich, written by Pony Duke and Jason Thomas proves this theory wrong. Doris Duke was one of the richest people in the world, in fact at her time, she was the richest woman in the world, but money does not make all people happy. Actually, being rich could lead to and extremely lonely life, such as Doris Duke’s. Well, of course money can buy a person any and every material item that they want, but some things are priceless. Even the MasterCard commercial says so, â€Å"Your child’s first baseball game, priceless. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.† Money cannot buy happiness and companionship. The reason that a biography was written about Doris Duke is because she was the richest woman in the world. Her family and she used their money towards worthy causes. Doris’ father founded Duke University and Doris helped to preserve national forests and monuments. The Duke fortune started with the American Tobacco Company. At one point their tobacco company was a monopoly, but then others formed. When Doris was born she was referred to as the one million-dollar tyke. This became true when her father, Buck Duke died. The message conveyed in this novel is that money can buy most things, but it cannot buy happiness. Happiness is the one thing that Doris Duke craved and needed in her life more than anything else in the world. She was very lonely and trusted too many people. The most important lesson that her father taught her that she did not follow was not to trust anyone. The dedication of the book reads, â€Å"This book is dedicated to Doris Duke, who should have believed the person who told her ‘never trust anyone’†(iv). Doris wanted to be loved. She tried to find real affection from so many people, but found mostly fortune hunters. Doris also grew up alone and isolated. All of the people she allowed into her life did not love her for her, which she found out sooner or later, but later much more often than sooner. Doris is portrayed as a lonely loving woman, who would do almost anything for anyone if she offered before she was asked.

How Does Robespierre Justify the Use of Terror?

What began as a march to Versailles to acquire King Louis XVI’s attention to end the grievances of the general population in 1789, soon spiraled into what became known as The French Revolution. With the execution of Louis XVI in 1973, this new â€Å"regime† still had many problems to overcome including the continuing war that constantly needed men and money. The National Convention (which was created in 1792 as part of a campaign to convert France into a constitutional monarchy) amid high pressures, decided to set in place a centralized government which provided everyone with food, support and direct the war effort, and punish counterrevolutionaries (611). Headed by Maxmilien Robespierre, this new government was based on the principles of virtue, in which the government sought to educate and/or force the citizens to become virtuous. Inspired by enlightenment thinkers Montesquieu and Rousseau, he believed in the importance of a government by terror. Robespierre justified his beliefs by saying stuff like: â€Å"To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is barbarity. † So began what is now known as the Reign of terror. Robespierre strictly believed that â€Å"terror† would set the citizens in place; with this terror, the public along with the upper class could be controlled. This so called terror was blanketed with the idea of nationalist pride- pride in their nation, backed by songs, posters, books, engravings, paintings, sculptures, and slogans (615). Robespierre justified his regime by constantly exclaiming that virtue was born from terror. Robespierre said, â€Å"The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. â€Å" Although this quote seems confusing at first, further studied despotism is another word for tyranny or dictatorship, which basically means that a government in revolution is the tyranny of liberty against tyranny- the tyranny of freedom over tyranny. Before his reign, the guillotine was used for only nobles condemned to death and commoners were usually hanged, but when in power it was Robespierre’s instrument of choice when it came to dealing with the people that disagreed with him or was a threat to the government. Also created was a Committee of Public Safety, which sent deputies on missions to purge unreliable officials and organize the war effort (612). Of course, with every regime, there is always a resistance. In this case, many were unhappy and showed their unhappiness. Soon it all turned into a civil war with the appearance of many counterrevolutionary armies and uprisings. â€Å"Across the country, the official Terror cost the lives of at least 40,000 French people, and as many as 300,000 (1/5 of the French people) went to prison as suspects between March 1793 and August 1794 (619). Robespierre was overthrown on July 27 of 1794 and was executed the next day on the guillotine. Some 150 years later, we saw more leaders who possessed the same ideologies: Stalin, who himself launched what was known as The Great Purge to get rid of people accused of treachery and treason in the Communist Party and Hitler, who rose to power by initially winning the hearts of people by starting a new movement totally different from the movement. Today, we see the same agenda on the minds of terrorists. Since a great deal of the human population have a greater understanding of democracy and many are democratic nations, it isn’t common to see a leader who will take complete charge, become a dictator and issue a reign of terror. There are, of course, many militant groups that form and commit acts of terrorism with the thought that â€Å"fear will instill virtue. † These days, people are more resistant to being forced to do something, even if it is violent. There will be a great resistance and the people who attempt to use fear to instill virtue will be put on most wanted and threat lists by many nations.

Definition and Examples of Received Pronunciation

Received pronunciation, commonly abbreviated as RP, is a once prestigious variety of British English spoken without an identifiable regional dialect. It is also known as  British Received Pronunciation, BBC English, the Queens English, and posh accent.  Standard British English  is sometimes used as a synonym.  The term  received pronunciation  was introduced and described by  phonetician  Alexander Ellis in his book Early English Pronunciation  (1869). History of the Dialect Received Pronunciation is only around 200 years old, said linguist David Crystal. It emerged towards the end of the 18th century as an upper-class accent, and soon became the voice of the public schools, the civil service, and the British Empire (Daily Mail, October 3, 2014).   Author Kathryn LaBouff gives some background in her tome, Singing and Communicating in English: It was standard practice until the 1950s for university students to adjust their regional accents to be closer to RP. RP was traditionally used on stage, for  public speaking, and by the well-educated. In the 1950s, RP was used by the BBC as a broadcast standard and was referred to as BBC English. Since the 1970s, the BBC label has been dropped and RP has slowly been more inclusive of regional influences throughout the United Kingdom. By the turn of the twenty-first century RP was spoken by only 3 percent of the population. Today BBC broadcasters do not use Received Pronunciation, which actually today now sounds out of place; they use a neutralized version of their own regional accents that is intelligible to all listeners.  (Oxford University Press, 2007) Characteristics of RP Not every dialect in Britain has a pronounced h sound, which is one difference between them, among differences in vowels.  The prestige British accent known as received pronunciation (RP) pronounces  h  at the beginning of words, as in  hurt, and avoids it in such words as  arm. Cockney speakers do the reverse;  I urt my harm, explained David Crystal.  Most English accents around the world pronounce words like  car  and  heart  with an audible  r; RP is one of the few accents which does not. In RP, words like  bath  are pronounced with a long  a (bahth); up north in England it is a short a. Dialect variations mainly affect the  vowels  of a language.  (Think on My Words: Exploring Shakespeares Language. Cambridge University Press, 2008) Prestige and Backlash Having a dialect or manner of speaking  associated with different classes is called a  social dialect. Having esteem or social value to a manner of speaking is called linguistic  prestige. The flip side of that coin is called accent prejudice. In Talking Proper: The Rise and Fall of the English Accent as a Social Symbol, author Lynda Mugglestone wrote, Adoptive RP, a common feature of the past, is in this sense increasingly a rarity in modern language use as many speakers reject the premise that it is this accent alone which is the key to success. Reversing the polarities still further, RP... has regularly been deployed for those roundly depicted as villains in, for example, Disneys films The Lion King and Tarzan. (Oxford University Press, 2007) Afua Hirsch wrote in  The Guardian  about the backlash in Ghana: [A] backlash is growing against the old mentality of equating a British accent with prestige. Now the practice has a new acronym, LAFA, or locally acquired foreign accent, and attracts derision rather than praise.In the past we have seen people in Ghana try to mimic the Queens English, speaking in a way that doesnt sound natural. They think it sounds prestigious, but frankly it sounds like they are overdoing it, said Professor Kofi Agyekum, head of linguistics at the University of Ghana.There has been a significant change now, away from those who think sounding English is prestigious, towards those who value being multilingual, who would never neglect our mother tongues, and who are happy to sound Ghanaian when we speak English. (Ghana Calls an End to Tyrannical Reign of the Queens English. April 10, 2012)