Argiolaus

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Argiolaus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Insecta Order: Lepidoptera Family: Lycaenidae Genus: Argiolaus

Argiolaus is a genus of butterfly in the family LycaenidaeMes loisirs

Moi, je fais beaucoup de choses musique, dramatique, et sportif. à le moment, je n'ai pas un jour quand je ne fais pas quelque chose. Je joue au foot un fois par semaine pour un équipe locale, avec quelques de mes amis. Aussi, je fais du jogging quand j'ai l'occasion - environs un demi-heure, autour d'Edale, ou j'habite. C'est bon pour la santé, et pour la coeur. Aussi, j'aime bien le drama: j'ai les rôles en duex pièces d'école a le moment, par exemple la musicale, "Nous vous rock", que nous exécuterons la semaine prochaine.

Mais mon passion plus important, c'est la musique. Je joue quatre instruments: Le trombone, le tuba, la guitare et le piano. Mon instrument principale, c'est le piano. J'ai joué le piano pour six ans, et je suis maintenant le degré cinq ou six. J'aime bien le piano partiellement car c'est le instrument que je suis le meilleur à joue, et partialement parce-que c'est très versatiles- on peut jouer tous sortes de la musique - le rock, la musique classique, ou le jazz, et il a un grand registre. Quand j'étais petit, je ne m'exercer pas beaucoup. Mais maintenant je practise assez beaucoup - un demi-heure par jour, en moyenne.

Mais un problème avec le piano, c'est qu'il n'est pas un instrument des ensembles. Alors il y a une année et demi j'ai commencé à apprendre le trombone - un instrument de brass, avec une coulisse que changer les notes. J'ai le trouver plus facile que le piano, car on utilise seulement une main. J'ai passer récemment mon examen du degré quatre. J'ai joué le trombone dans Big Band, l'orchestra du jazz de mon école, depuis l'octobre dernier. Il m'amuser- j'aime la musique jazz, et beaucoup de mes amis sont dans l'orchestra aussi. Mais quelques des morceau à pas des partes des trombones intéressant: dans une pièce, nous avons seulement duex notes!

Aussi

The Representation of Evil in Dr Jekyll and My Hyde

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a short novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886. It features Dr Jekyll, a respected doctor and scientist, who has developed a potion that turns him into the evil Mr Hyde. Hyde is a “foul fiend”, who rampages around London, even going as far as murder. Jekyll's friend, Mr Utterson, who narrates most of the book, becomes increasingly worried as Jekyll loses more and more control over his body, transforming into Mr Hyde at random. Written in the Victorian Era, like the two poems studied, it was published when psychology as a science was in its infancy, and the ideas about the duality of human nature and the subconscious that are so prevalent in the book were just beginning to become established. The book, therefore, which today seems quite wordy and sometimes a little boring, was revolutionary at the time, for its examination of the evil in human beings. The book serves many different levels, and there are many different interpretations and many ways in which evil is represented.

The people of the Victorian Era outwardly valued moral, "Christian", respectable behaviour above all else - Dr Jekyll is the personification of this: "A man of... capacity and kindness". But underneath these Victorian values, there was a dark undercurrent. Victorians were very keen on blood, gore and cheap horror stories, and had a lust for scandal. They believed that all men were prey to "animal passions", that could take hold of them anytime -it was for this reason that women were constantly covered up, with even the baring of an ankle seen as an erotic action. It was also believed that men without wives, like Dr Jekyll, were even more prey to these "undignified pleasures". Stevenson demonstrates this, with Dr Jekyll using Mr Hyde to escape the morality and respectability that entraps him. Hyde allows him to "spring headlong into the sea of liberty", and perform these "sinful" activities without the threat of scandal. Stevenson is demonstrating how respectable men of the time were forced underground to receive their "pleasures". Stevenson is suggesting that, once underground, they would, like Hyde, gradually lose control over how far they take the pleasures, and they would soon become a "vicarious depravity". Stevenson is warning the reader that once you start doing evil, you gradually become desensitised, and it becomes natural to do so. Gradually, the evil actions smother the good person underneath - like Hyde gradually taking over Jekyll.

The story could be said to be similar to the story of Satan's rebellion in the Old Testament in the Bible - descriptions of Hyde as "really like satan" back this up. In the biblical story, Satan rebels against God after God threatens to create a son, thus demoting Satan from his high position. Thus God's actions indirectly made Satan evil, disturbing the goodness of heaven - just as Jekyll's actions caused Hyde to be evil. It could be argued that it is not entirely Satan's fault that he is evil, and that we do feel some sympathy for him, cast out and rejected by God, his master. And it could therefore be argued that Hyde is evil through no fault of his own, and it is Jekyll we should despise for bringing the evil into the world, and the Victorians for creating a society that drove him to do it - after all, he himself says that: "Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations," he would not have created the monster.

However, I am not sure how much i subscribe to this view of Hyde as an object of sympathy. I think the portrayal of hyde is fairly two dimensional - I don't think there are really any moments in the book where one genuinely feels pity for him, unless you dig very deep. This may be partly be because of its structure - it is, after all, told from the point of view of a very staid lawyer who appears horrified at even the slightest morally dubious action - he is "humbled to dust" about his misdeeds, even though he is "fairly blameless". Also, the story of the writing of the text goes that Stevenson dreamt up the basic concept in a dream, a "fine bogey tale". He then proceeded to write down the story, in the form of a classic short Gothic horror story. However, his wife, having read the manuscript, saw the potential for allegory, for a parable on the evil in human nature. Stevenson then rewrote the manuscript as an allegorical story, but I believe that quite a lot of the old, horrific Hyde character left in the story. Stevenson makes no bones about how he is wickedness personified, emphasising it throughout the story: he is regarded with "a mixture of loathing and fear"; he has "Satan's signature upon his face" and he is "inherently malign and villainous". His descriptions of Hyde contain many cliched traits of evil: A "husky voice" for example, often seen as untrustworthy in some way.

Hyde is also represented as very much an "animal", the beast inside. He is "Like a monkey", "Apelike" "Troglodytic". Darwin's Theory of Evolution He is somehow inhuman, as though the potion has stripped away everything all the good traits that make a human human, rather than just another kind of monkey.

He is described as "giving an impression of deformity without nameable deformation" and having "Something wrong with his appearance". His evil and deformed soul is reflected in the way he seems to others. It shows what a profound impact pure evil has on those around us, and on society. Stevenson may also be suggesting that those who do or are evil have souls that are damaged and distorted, and that this is reflected in their physical form. He may have been influenced by the Victorian prejudice that those who are deformed on the outside must be in some way deformed on the inside - they called this "the mark of the devil" and two or three centuries before, those with deformities were .

The things Hyde does in the book, as well, present a very standard view of evil. His actions and the way he behaves follow the Christian idea of sin, which would have have been familiar to Stevenson, whose grandfather was a minister. The "undignified pleasures" mentioned correspond to the deadly sin Lust, the way he tramples over the small girl to the sin of Wrath, the way he acts afterwards, with "Black sneering coolness" arguably the sin of Pride. Perhaps the worst of his evil actions is the murder of Carew in cold blood. There is no motive for this crime, and the graphic detail in which is described allows us to fully appreciate his evil: "with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway" could not be construed as anything other than pure evil - in Victorian times at least (nowadays, of course, when evil is far less black and white, it could be argued that Hyde suffered a psychological condition, a hard childhood etc.). Stevenson's view of what makes something evil is very closely allied with the view at the time.

Stevenson also uses some very classic, even cliched, symbols of evil in the book, creating a very sinister atmosphere. To start with, there is the description of the house where Hyde lives. It is described as bearing "The marks of sordid negligence", as "blistered and distained". This graphic language creates a very sinister setting for the book. The descriptions of London, as well, throughout the story, are heavy on mists, full moons and "black winter's mornings. This creates the impression of London as an evil, sinister place in itself. In both the first chapter, when Enfield first comes across Hyde, and the second, when Utterson does, it is described as "silent", giving the impression that there in no one else around and thus adding to the ominous atmosphere- particularly when we learn later how dangerous Hyde is.

Stevenson's view of evil, particularly in respect to mankind, has many different dimensions, as, in fact, does evil itself. First and foremost, and most obviously, there is the idea that "Man is not truly one, but truly two". He is suggesting that man has two distinct sides: an evil and a good, and that we are all a mixture of these two things. Mr Hyde obviously represents the evil side and Jekyll is obviously a mixture. This duplicity can be seen from two different points of view. Firstly, a christian one - the struggle of good verses evil, heaven versus hell. And secondly, a scientific, psychological one: the idea that some people are more in touch with their unconscious evil side, leading them to commit "evil" crimes, fits in perfectly with the story.

There are other interpretations of the book. Among these is the idea that Hyde represents what man originally is, free from the trappings of civilisation. The potion thus strips away all the civilisation and society that has groomed and changed the "Troglodytic" human into what we are today. Again, this can be interpreted from two different viewpoints. Firstly, the christian one, the idea of "original sin". This is the idea that man is born into sin, and that that sin must be conquered. Hyde might therefore represent a human whose sin has not been conquered at all, who is till the evil person they were born as. This interpretation could also be approached from a scientific angle: when the book was written, Darwin had recently published his theory of evolution, the first theory that man may be descended from apes. This would have begun to blur the line between human and animal, and Stevenson may have been aware of this when he wrote Jekyll and Hyde.

In the story, Hyde gradually takes over Jekyll more and more and more, and the "Jekyll" side of him becomes weaker and weaker: "The balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown", Jekyll worries. It also becomes harder and harder for Jekyll to turn back, and he needs more and more of the drug to do so: "I had been obliged to on more than one occasion to double, or even treble the amount". He begins to turn into Hyde at random - yet another sign that Jekyll is losing his grip on his own body. This could be interpreted as suggesting that the more evil Hyde does, the more the more he "drinks pleasure with bestial avidity, the stronger he becomes. This in turn could be interpreted as suggesting that the more evil a person does, the more they lose touch with their old, good self, and the more they become habituated to the evil they are doing, and the harder it is for them to recover and become the decent person they one were.

Stevenson also seems to suggest that evil thoughts lead to evil doings, and to becoming evil. Jekyll decides to let go of Hyde, and once more retain his character as the wise, respected doctor. Soon, however, he begins to once more stray towards the persona of Hyde. He starts to long for the freedom of his other body, and gives in and takes the potion. Later, after the murder of Carew, Jekyll once more retains the mixed side of him. However, as he starts to have "vainglorious" thoughts, thoughts of how he is better than his neighbours, he turns once more into Hyde. Just a few selfish thoughts lead him to become evil once more. Stevenson is suggesting that no matter how good we are on the outside, if we think evil thoughts on the inside, we will become irreversibly evil in our doings to others - as Hyde is.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde demonstrates many aspects of evil. But above all, there is the message that, while all human beings have a "beast" inside them; that while we are all "not truly one, but truly two"; that while we are none of us inherently good or inherently bad, profound, remorseless evil is a very human creation. It is Jekyll's potion that lets out the beast inside him, and his attitude while creating the potion that makes his creation evil. It is his evil thoughts that lead to him turning into Hyde at random, and it is the society at the time, that drives him to resort to this evil. It is the evil that we humans create that does, ultimately, come back to haunt and even destroy us; just as Hyde begins gradually to take over Jekyll, to the point of driving him to suicide.

It is this message, this examination of the evil in men, that has allowed the book to be appreciated from so many angles; be they through the moralistic eyes of a Victorian priest, or the scientific eyes of a contemporary psychologist. And it is this message that has helped the book retain its popularity for over a century, instead of fading into history like so many of the "Shilling shockers" of the Victorian Era.

English Coursework

Porphyria’s Lover and The Sisters

14/02 15:35

Discuss the portrayal of Love, Jealousy and Madness in the two poems.

The poems, Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning and The Sisters by Alfred Lord Tennyson, were both written in Victorian Times. This was an era obsessed by the triple themes of Love, Jealousy and Madness. In a society with an outward morality, “Victorian Values”, the people of the time were privately obsessed with horrific murders and psychopathy.

The first, perhaps most crucial theme in the poems is love. The two poets see love as a very serious issue – an issue, in fact, that is worth killing for.

Love plays the central role in Porphyria’s Lover, in two forms. First, the gentle, concerned love that Porphyria shows her murderer, the persona. Secondly the persona’s love, an, abnormal, obsessive, possessive love that, coupled with the persona’s jealous possession of Porphyria and obvious madness, drives him to murder.

Love is also the motive for murder in The Sisters. Here, the love is mentioned less specifically, but it is still the underlying force beneath the poem. The love in this poem is far less complicated, more normal. There is none of the possessive or obsessive love that features in Porphyria’s lover: it is replaced by idealistic

romantic love, and the shallow love of seduction.

In Porphyria’s Lover, Porphyria treats her lover with compassion, cuddling him and “Murmuring how she loved” him. She clearly worships him in a very strong, lustful way. It is, the poet says “Her hearts endeavour” to give herself to the persona “forever”. She bears her shoulder to him – showing off her sexuality and desire. This devotion could be seen as quite disturbing – even though the persona shows no outward love for her, she still devotes herself to him.

The love between the pair is illicit. They meet in secret, in his cottage in the middle of the forest, and Porphyria escapes the “pride, and vainer ties”, the society and her friends and family that hold her back from him. This would normally appear romantic, soppy even, but Porphyria's murder destroys this notion instantly, shocking the reader, and showing how even the most fairytale relationships can have a nasty underside. In the next poem, The Sisters, there is more of this romantic love: the love between the Earl and the “Fair” sister. They “fall” in love, romantically: “They were together and she fell” (although fell could also imply that the Earl seduced her, almost, against her will).

It is clear how the Sister feels about their relationship. While she does not mention it directly, she is obviously very bitter, having failed to win the Earl's love: “therefore, revenge became me well” she says of it. She used to love him, and this transformation into “the hate of hell”, the moment she sees the two “together” shows how close murderous hatred and love are to each other. The poem also shows how love can be manipulated to hate's end, with the persona seducing the Earl, “winning his love”, in order for her to kill him.

It clear how the persona sees Porphyria. He is obsessed by her, waiting hours, desperately, “With heart fit to break”, before a “Cheerless grate” for her to arrive. As she takes off her wet clothes, he follows her every movement in unusual, obsessive detail, using a whole six lines to describe her motions when he could simply say, “She came in and sat down”.

Normally being worshipped by someone is not seen as a very desirable thing – mutual love is one thing, idolization another. But when the persona “sees that Porphyria worshipped” him, he is happy, his “Heart swells”. He is happy to possess and have control over her: “She is mine, mine”, he says. His drive to possess her forever leads instantly to her murder. It is only once she has died that he shows any passion, giving her a “Burning kiss” – now that he possesses her, now that she is “pure and good” he can do as he wishes with her.

The Sisters features a very different kind of love to worship and obsession: seduction. The persona tempts the Earl with a “Feast”, “Wins His love” (or more specifically, his lust). The poet then paints a very romantic picture, with her kissing his eyelids and gently calming him to sleep. This is designed to be in contrast to the way she murders him in the very next stanza. The poem also show how it is possible to be attracted to somebody whilst hating them at the same time: while the persona likes the Earl’s good looks “passing [i.e. exceedingly] well”, she still hates him “With the hate of Hell”. In the same way, she says how she shows affection to the Earl, how she “Curled and Combed” his hair after she’d killed him – perhaps now that she possesses him, she can treat him as she would have liked to had she won the Earl’s love instead of her sister.

Madness is another theme common to both poems. In Porphyria’s Lover, there can be little doubt that the persona is mad. The very title, “Porphyria”, is a psychological disease, first classified just a few months before the poem was written. The persona even describes himself as “one so pale”, pallor being associated with ill health. The way he recounts Porphyria’s movements in the most minute detail is another sign of this madness, as is the way he seems to have an obsession with Porphyria's hair, constantly mentioning it: “Let the damp hair fall”, “All her yellow hair displaced”, “Spread o’er all her yellow hair” are examples of this. The uneven rhyming of the poem, and the long rambling sentences is more evidence of this madness.

The Sister in The Sisters is less obviously totally mad, but is still not totally sane: the way she stalks the Earl for “Weeks and months” so that she can kill him is obviously not normal behaviour. The poet also suggests she is mad with the recurring line “The wind is blowing in turret and tree”. The verb changes every stanza, getting fiercer and fiercer – this could be interpreted as the storm inside her head getting more and more violent. Violent, eventually, to the point of murder. She kills mainly out of pure jealousy and “the hate of hell” for the Earl, and understands what she is doing – obsessed by hatred, yes, psychopathic, no.

In contrast, the murderer in Porphyria's lover appears far madder. He does not appear to appreciate that she is dead: “Again, laughed the blue eyes without a stain” he says of her after she has been strangled. He convinces that “She felt no pain. I am quite sure she felt no pain”, and that she wanted to die, that it was her “utmost will”. And of course there is just the plain fact that he murders her in such an unplanned, spontaneous way – almost out of love. The persona’s madness is a shock to the reader, and shows us again how even seemingly ordinary, if a little strange, love, can have sinister, disturbing undertones

Both poems feature jealousy. The Sisters has a very ordinary type of envy: The persona envies her sister, as she is the one who wins the love of the Earl, and because she is "Fairer in the face", and she kills the duke as punishment for loving her rather than him: "Therefore revenge became me well". The jealousy in Porphyria's Lover is less specific, the general jealousy the persona feels towards other men, the "Pride and vainer ties" that he is afraid may take Porphyria from him. This possessive jealousy is what drives him to kill her, so that he can keep her forever, "Perfectly pure and good”, untainted by other rivals for her love.

The fair sister in The Sisters is jealous of her sister for all the usual reasons, a usual sibling rivalry. She says, almost bitterly "She was the fairest in the flesh" and, when she mentions how they fell in love, she talks of revenge "Therefore revenge became me well."

This "revenge" could be interpreted in two different ways: Either revenge from her sister, for stealing the Earl from her (fuelled by the jealousy that the sister has the Earl and she does not) and from the Earl because he has snubbed her.

Or it could be interpreted as revenge from the Earl because he has stolen her sister her companion of "one race", and seduced her almost: "They were together, and she fell". Her sister then dies: "She died: she went to burning flame / and mixed her ancient blood with shame". The "shame" mentioned would in this interpretation be the prudish, Victorian, shame of having been "together" with the Earl, a man to whom she was not married. The persona then sets out to avenge the Earl for having brought shame on her family.

Each of these interpretations are supported by the poem, as Tennyson leaves it ambiguous as to whether the sister is killed by the persona or dies naturally, but I am more inclined to the former. Partly because sexual jealousy is more often a drive for murder than sibling protection, and partly because it has been suggested that the poem bears a resemblance to the Scottish ballad "The Twa’ Sisters". In this, an older "Dark" sister scorned in love does kill her sibling, the "fair" sister, after their suitor scorns the elder in love.

In the poem, the persona is driven to murder, fuelled by the hatred for the Earl that springs from her jealousy for the Earl and her sister, gradually festers over the “weeks and month”.

The poems show us how dangerous love can be, how it can turn so quickly into “the hate of hell” as in The Sisters, or how the desire to possess can turn, fuelled by madness, into an impulsive murder, as in Porphyria’s Lover.

It shows us how dangerous jealousy is, as well, and how specific jealousy can drive venomous hatred towards its targets, and how general jealousy, the worry that there maybe someone out there to take your lover, can also result in terrible possession.

And finally they give us an insight into the minds of murderers, and show us how normal, everyday jealousy and love can gradually eat away at perfectly ordinary minds, driving them, ultimately to murder.

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