Radioactivity In Ionisation Smoke Alarms Environmental Sciences Essay

Radioactivity In Ionisation Smoke Alarms Environmental Sciences Essay In this coursework, I will be discussing the role of radioactivity in ionisation smoke alarms; I will focus primarily on the main radioactive substance used in smoke alarms, americium 241, and will analyse its effects as well as its half life. I will also analyse a variety of data based on smoke alarms, and finally, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of smoke alarms. In smoke detectors, Alpha radiation is given out. Alpha particles are made of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. This means that they have a charge of +2, and a mass of 4. Alpha particles are relatively slow and heavy. Alpha emitters must be used for smoke detectors since alpha particles ionise air the most, are mostly likely to be absorbed by cells and are least penetrating. Gamma rays and beta particles easily pass through air without causing ionisation, Beta particles are absorbed by a thin sheet of Aluminium and Gamma is absorbed by either concrete or thick lead. The radiation given out from the smoke detector is essentially zero and in any case very much less than that from natural background radiation. This is the radiation which all around us. The alpha particles  are absorbed within the detector. The small amount of radioactive material that is used in these detectors is not a health hazard and individual units can be disposed of in normal household waste. However, Alpha radiation is most dangerous inside the body because it is most likely to be absorbed by the organs whereas Beta and Gamma radiation is more dangerous outside the body because the skin cannot stop them. Americium-241 is dangerous if it is taken into the body in soluble form. The data which I mainly used for my coursework was from www.communities.gov.uk. I think this website is reliable and valid because it is a government website. It has not been created for the purpose of sale so it isnt biased. However there are a few problems with this website. The problem lies in the data which shows how the % of homes with smoke alarms has changed between 1988-2005. This data is unreliable and invalid. It is invalid because they change from smoke alarm ownership to working smoke alarm ownership in conclusion to that it also has data missing from some years. It is not as valid as it should be because it not the same as what was being looked at in the beginning. But as for the rest of the information, I think it is reliable and valid because it is a government website, not any website just put up on to the internet. The way in which we could make sure that the data we have it valid and reliable is by comparing them with other results from other sources. By doing this we would be able to see if they are similar or they are different and we would be able to find out if they are correct or not. The results which I got could be improved if they were collected in a number of different ways. For example data could be collected from the history of the emergency services, data could also be collected by handing out questionnaires and surveys or even collected via the phone. Advantages and Disadvantages of Smoke Alarms There are many benefits of a smoke alarm and many disadvantages. Below are some advantages of a smoke alarm. Firstly the most important benefit of a smoke alarm is that it saves lives. Smoke alarms are a powerful and effective fire safety technology. The smoke detector also allows the emergency services to react quicker so they are able to get to the fire quicker and save lives. The most important thing is the life of a person. Besides this, a smoke detector also saves money and property. Some people may have money stored at home. For these people it would be a great loss if they were to lose everything in a fire. With a smoke detector, a person is able to quickly put out the fire so a lot of the property does not get damaged. Another advantage is that the americium-241 is very sensitive. Ionization smoke alarms respond first to fast flaming fires. A flaming fire consumes flammable extremely fast, spreads rapidly and generates considerable heat with little smoke. It responds very quickly to small amounts of smoke. Americium-241 has a half life of 442 which is not too long or too short. It is just right. If it had a long half-life then it wouldnt have to be replaced very often but it would stay dangerous for a long time. If it had a short half-life then it would fall to safe level quickly but it would have to be replaced very often. The Americium is just right, not too short or too long, in the middle. One advantage is that to have a smoke detector reduces the insurance cost. This is because a house which has a smoke detector has less chance of burning down because the smoke alarm will detect the fire so the occupants are able to put it off. For this reason there is cheaper insurance for the house which has a smoke alarm. Finally, smoke alarms are very cheap. They are even free for many houses but for some people who have to buy it, it is of a very low price. With the advantages, there are also disadvantages of smoke detectors. Below are some disadvantages of smoke alarms. The biggest disadvantage is that it contains a very small amount of radioactive material. These devices are probably not a problem unless they burn, in which case the Americium would be released in particulate form an inhalation hazard. Another big disadvantage is that it is a bit too sensitive. It can be vulnerable to nuisance alarms if placed too close to cooking. It goes off many times especially if it is kept near a kitchen. This can be very annoying especially if it happens repeatedly. One disadvantage is that because there are many smoke alarms which give out radiation in this country, they will be radioactive for 1000 of years. The radioactivity in the environment will increase. The disposal of this type of smoke alarm is very harmful, when the building is demolished and new buildings are made, the smoke alarm still emits radioactivity which is not good for the environment. Finally, another disadvantage is that it works on battery and after a long period, the battery runs out. Therefore, smoke detector stops working so the batteries have to be replaced. Overall, I think that smoke detectors are beneficial because it could save a persons life if a fire was to occur and its also very cheap to buy but it has it drawbacks that it emits radioactive material, however the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Windsor Coursework

My project is about Windsor, it is to find out if it is a good or bad tourist attraction. My main aims are to find out: 1. If Windsor is a successful tourist centre? 2. Is there any conflict of interest between residents and tourists? 3. What is being done to resolve any conflict? Tourism is a tertiary segment of the working industry. A tourist is someone that travels in their country or around the world. There has been an increase in tourism worldwide, this is because of: More leisure time: the older population has increased and the when they retire they use up their leisure time by going on holiday. * Shorter working time: the number of hours an employee has to work has decreased over years. * Longer holidays with pay: it is now casual for employees to be given holidays with paid accommodation and flight tickets. * More money: salaries paid to employees have increased significantly alongside with paid holidays has given the possibility to go on holidays more than once. * Greater accessibility: the increase of transport via planes, ferries and cars have enabled more people to travel easily. The benefits of tourism is that there are more jobs available, more money is spent by the tourists which makes the area richer and the area can maintain and preserve historic sites and keep the area clean. However, there are many disadvantages of tourism. Residents complain that there is over-crowdedness due to many tourists or that too much pollution in the area and in most cases there are too many high prices being charged. There are many kinds of tourist destinations a few are: theme parks, adventure parks, museums etc. Windsor is a historic tourist centre. What makes a good place to live is more often usually a good accommodation and situated in an area with easy access to shops like supermarkets, newsagents, etc†¦ At Windsor they offer a range of attractions. Eton is where the residents live, a river, the guildhall designed by Christopher Wrenn where Prince Charles and his wife Camilla were married; they offer bus tours, the long road, Legoland and Windsor castle. Method Within the classroom, I was introduced to the Windsor project. We discussed what makes a good place for residents to live in. We looked at the benefits and costs of tourism and how at our day at Windsor we will need to write if it is a good place for residents and if there is any conflict with the tourists. For Windsor we were given questionnaires and we had to try and get a sample of five residents and if they had any problems with the tourists and we had to find five tourists to find out what they thought of Windsor if they thought Windsor was a successful tourist attraction. Windsor is in the Royal County of Berkshire, 18 miles West of Queens Park. Our coach journey took us 55 minutes. We took the A406, A40, A412 and the M4. We was given a tour by our teachers at Windsor, we got to see the guildhall, the castle, Peasecod Street and Crooked Street the shortest street in Britain. We was then given time to fill in the questionnaires. Getting time to fill in the questionnaires from the residents and tourists was the hard bit and I felt that many people felt intimidated by our group because we has a black boys in our group and there were practically no black people around and when we asked people to give a little bit of time so that we could answer a little questionnaire they refused and said â€Å"sorry, we do not have time,† this happened with the first seven/eight people we asked but eventually we started to get people to help us who were younger aged and pretty soon we filled out all of the survey, in the end it was a difficult task for my group because it took us ages to get people to help us answer our questionnaire however in the end my research was successful. When we got back to school we exchanged our results with each other and got twenty resident answers with ten male and ten female of all ages, we also got twenty tourist answers with ten male and ten female this was done so that it was more of a balanced sample. A balanced sample is important for this investigation because asking only five people in the whole of Windsor did not really mean anything. The more people we asked and questioned would make it a better survey. The forty people we asked really made it fair and more secure prediction of what Windsor tourist and resident people thought of it. To write my introduction, I had to write about what tourism is, why there was an increase in tourism since the past fifty years, I had to find the advantages and disadvantages of tourism, what type of tourist destinations there are, where in Britain it is and include a map of Windsor. The method was writing about what class work, homework and research i had to do follow by the trip to Windsor we had and had to explain if there were any difficulties to obtain the answers to the questions. I then had to make graphs of my results of the twenty male and female residents and tourists. With the graphs i had to explain what each graph represented and what it suggested. This pie chart shows the percentage of male and female tourists. This graph shows the percentage of residents that I asked for my questionnaire This graph shows the number of problems residents have in Windsor for male. This graph shows the number of benefits that 10 female residents have. This graph shows the number of problems 10 female resident's have. This graph shows the number of benefits 10 Female residents have in Windsor. This pie chart shows the percentage of male and female residents. This graph shows the number of tourists that were either from the U.K or a visitor to the U.K. This graph shows the transport that tourists used to get to Windsor. This graph shows the attraction which the tourists chose to visit whilst on their tour in Windsor. This graph shows the number of changes that tourist think had changed. This graph shows how many out of the 20 tourists recommend Windsor. EVALUATION OF METHOD Overall, the trip was successful, we had a great time and we conducted our results eventually. However, i could improve the project if it was to be done all over again by putting white boys or girls in my group. I am not trying to be racist, but people at Windsor seemed to be scared of talking to black people and it is a fact that on that day I did not see many black people in the area maybe because they are influenced by the criteria given to black people they thought we too might be trouble makers but in fact we really wanted to do our work. The fact that we had to get our results from younger members of the area really did not make my survey fair. But the girls in my class did ask the older people in the community and I was then allowed to exchange answers with them. I realised, that the questions on our survey were a bit exaggerated, we could have made them shorter and saved allot of time and it did make the tourists/residents a little bored of it. At home it was quite easy to do my research, i logged on to the Windsor council website and got all the pictures and information i needed. EVALUATION OF RESULTS My main aims were to find out: 1. If Windsor is a successful tourist centre? 2. Is there any conflict of interest between residents and tourists? 3. What is being done to resolve any conflict? 1. From my results i have found out that Windsor is a successful tourist centre, i can prove this from the above graphs by the primary data provided but not only that, whilst i was at Windsor two residents said that whilst we have lived in Windsor (approximately ten years) tourists think Windsor is not only a successful tourist centre providing many historic scenes, famous areas and fun places like Legoland, but it is a place filled with information of our history making Windsor a British historic site representative and this fact makes Britain such a visited place by tourists which brings many benefits to the area and credit for the country. This proves that the first aim has been accomplished by Windsor by making it a successful tourist centre. 2. I have also found out if there is any form of conflict between residents and tourists. Currently, as my graph shows that many residents have problems with shop prices, crowds and parking facilities. However, the council has made a separate street for residents to shop in which has lower prices than at the close attraction areas. The council has also made roads going around the tourist areas so that they can avoid the rush. Even the parking facility have improved immenselely and has made it easier for residents so as currently all the main problems have been solved. 3. There isn't really any conflict between residents and tourists. The council has tried their best to make Windsor in both favours so that they can solve any sort of conflict between them to make it a peaceful yet successful tourist centre. 4. I reckon this investigation is very accurate because the questionnaire has been asked from all ages, of all genders and of races through primary data and the exchange of a few survey answers to make it a fair and accurate test. CONCLUSION In this project, I have proved that: * Windsor is a successful tourist centre. * There is a little conflict of interest between residents and tourists. * However, the council has made sure that all problems for both sides have been solved. In this project, I have learnt the role of the council in a community. Windsor Coursework In my course work I will be investigating 3 main questions. 1. Is Windsor a successful tourist centre? 2. Is there a conflict of interest between resident and tourist? 3. What has been done to attempt in solving any conflict? I will be analyzing the benefits and drawbacks for residents who live in a location which is a popular tourist centre. I will be investigating how popular Windsor is and what factors make it in to a good tourist attraction. Windsor can be located in the county of Berkshire. From London to Windsor via coach it approximately took an hour. Tourism Tourism is when people from overseas or other cities have a holiday or day out in other certain areas for recreational or leisure purposes. Tourists can sometimes spend up to a single day or several weeks at the area they are touring .There are many types of tourist destinations such as beaches in Spain, mountains in Kenya, ice regions in the alps, religious pilgrimage like in Mecca and historical like Windsor. Tourist is the term used for a group of people that are touring a certain area. There are many advantages of tourism. Tourism creates opportunities and provides a vast amount of jobs. Tourism makes a city richer, due to the tourist staying over at hotels and eating at restaurants, these places all pay tax to the government which gives the government more money to spend. Like for example Windsor is a rich area because the tourist spend a lot of money and the council use the money to develop the area .Tourism increases the popularity of a certain area and also builds a reputation for the place, when a lot of tourist come they will recommend it to other or re visit which makes even more tourist come. Tourism provides understanding and interaction with different races and cultures. However there are many disadvantages of tourism. Tourism causes overcrowding; so many people densely packed in tourist attractions for example Oxford Street. Tourism also causes annoyance to the residents as they ask questions for directions etc. Tourism increases noise pollution and pollution as they have places to go, and places to see they will be using a lot of transport like buses and cars which causes more global warming, this is also connected to the increase of traffic on the streets. Many factors are required to build up a good tourist centre. A good tourist centre must have many facilities of good quality to satisfy the needs of a tourist. In a good tourist centre there must be restaurants to eat, hotels to stay over for how ever long their stay is. There should be a leisure and sports centre. There should be a hospital if there is a problem with a tourist's health. Good tourist's attractions must provide toilets, places of entertainment, gyms, places of worship and shopping centres. There must be a main attraction for example France has the Eiffel tower and Windsor has Windsor castle. A good place to live in needs to provide cheap transport like buses and train, as some families may not be able to afford a car. There needs to be places of education such as public school and colleges. There must be emergency services such as, fire brigades, ambulances, police officers. Of course there needs to be chemist and hospitals to look after the health of residents. Cheap shops, cheap super markets are required so families can buy food, clothing, and house hold goods for cheap prices. Tourism has now increased in our modern society because of today's transport which is much better and quicker, we are now able to get to the other side of the world in a matter of hours, 100 years ago we didn't have Heathrow, British airlines, national express etc. Now it's easier to use aero planes just simply book the ticket, trains are much faster gets you from destination A to B overcoming the problem of traffic, we have motorways and companies that let people travel in coaches .The world is much richer now so more people have money in their hands to spend, plus more people would like to go and enjoy holidays for relief of stress. People now days want to spend their money on leisure with family and friends. Instead of wanting to stay at home people desire to seek and visit other places for enjoyment. What is Windsor? Windsor is a small town located to the West of London on the outskirts just off the M4 at junction 6. You can get to Windsor by train, Windsor & Eton Riverside Rail Station; or at Windsor & Eton Central Rail Station or can travel on a bus/coach prices may vary with different agencies. Windsor is a popular tourist centre and is known as a historical attraction. Windsor has many attributes which makes it famous like Windsor castle, Windsor Great Park, the crooked house, the guild hall, Lego land, river and Peasecod Street. Windsor has the famous Eton College which David Cameron (the conservative party leader) and Prince William attended. Tourist like to visit Windsor due to its interesting historical background, such as Windsor castle, which has been around for decades, and is still being used by the Queen during the weekends. Many Kings and Queens have lived in Windsor castle but isn't the only thing to make Windsor famous. Windsor involves other historical content such as Method Here I will summarise exactly what I did during the trip in Windsor. There is various ways in which how we can collect data, which consist of: Questionnaires, documentary evidence, observations and interviews. Questionnaires – A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. The disadvantage for this method is that people may not have time to fill out the questionnaire and not fill it out for you. However a questionnaire enables you to design the questions you like and be able to gather the information you so require, therefore being my choice of method. Observations- Is when one analyses the activity of a living being. If we were to observe how the people of Windsor and the tourist felt and so on it would have been largely time consuming and would only record the information we observe. But observing some time we could eventually be able to answer questions we want to know as we can observe how other tourist react in Windsor to. Interviews- An interview is a conversation between two or more people, the interviewer and however many interviewees there maybe. When in an interview one may not feel completely comfortable when asked questions maybe they wouldn't like to answer such as â€Å"what is your annual salary?†When in an interview you can see the reaction of the person you're interviewing and unlike a questionnaire where the person writes down the answer you can fill out what the interviewee says. Documentary evidence- Documentary evidence is any evidence introduced at a trial in the form of documents. But information may also be preserved through media. The method which we chose was a questionnaire, due to it being effective inexpensive and having the ability to acquire as many answers in possible within a certain period of time. We had arrived at Windsor, approximately around 10: 00 am, from coach. We had first past Queen Victoria's transport, the stream train. Then we went to a couple of tourist stores and had picked up a Windsor maps to assist us around the place. We had walked down Peasecod Street and come across to different coloured post boxed, blue and red, also with an unused well alongside. We stood there, while the teacher explained to us more about Windsor. We then looked at the park, and viewed the amazing long path. From there our teacher sent us off to start the questionnaire. We went off in groups of about 4 or 5. We went to the high street with all the shops and first approached a middle aged lady, and asked her if she could help us out in filling the survey. After her, we continued until we had asked 5 tourists. If some one rejected us and did not want to answer the survey, we walked away and said thank you for your time. This did not take long really, since there were so many people walking around. It approximately took about 15 minutes for our group. After that we had to look for 5 residents to help us out, and this took slightly longer as some were at work, university and so on. After about an hour, the job had been completed. I had filled in all gaps and questions on both sheets, and felt comfortable because my data was primary and reliable. The following day as we went back to school, I had put the information from my survey in to a large collection data sheet. I made sure all my results were balanced and equal by putting in a variety of ages and gender .I totalled up all my results and had converted the results in to graphs. The graphs had all seemed to have a similar correlation. I believe it is vital to have an equal and balanced sample of results to confirm, that my results are very reliable and fair. Evaluation of method My trip to Windsor was an enjoyable experience, and was good time learning about the history and attractions of Windsor. I could have improved my method by possibly practicing the questionnaire at school with my class mates, which would have made me more fluent when asking people to assist me in filling out my survey, and it would have boosted my confidence. But the idea of standing on the main road where, there was a lot of shops was good, due to the fact many people were passing through. So it was not much of a problem in finding tourists to fill out the survey, and it was not time consuming. I believe it would have been much easier if we were given a different segment of time to ask the residence of Windsor, as many of them were at work, university, college etc. Primary research Primary research is when you collect primary data by yourself. This is information that only you yourself has attained. My primary research was used to answer certain questions about Windsor. Primary research includes questionnaires and observations. Questionnaire is something I designed to collect the information that I required. I was able to answer the questions I choose to by using my primary research. Secondary research Secondary research is when you use information from an outside source. Where as in primary research you gather the information independently you gather information from places like the internet, library, and magazines. But may not be as reliable as primary since you haven't gathered the information yourself. Graphs of survey Places that tourist chose to visit This is a graph where tourist told us the places they have visited and places they have not. We can tell from this graph that the park and lego land was most popular amonsgt the tourist we had asked. Tourist seem to not want to attend the tours or visit the river. Lego land is most certainly a top attraction for windsor and must be gainig alot of income for the town. Improvements needed in windsor according to tourist This is a graph where tourist told us thing they felt needed to be improved, stuff which wasnt at the standard they had assumed. This graph tell us tourist was least impressed with the prices and traffic. Which is understandable because a normal can of coke is not at the regular price of 50p and the roads of windosr are constantly filled with cars and traffic jams. Type of transport tourist used to reach windsor People use Cars, trains and buses or coaches this shows windsor has many ways for tourist to visit windsor. Windsor provides many parking facilities for visitors. A lot of people came by coach or bus which displays to us there are companies and agencies providing transport for those who wish to visit windsor therefore windsor must be a good tourist centre if coach agencies are able to get customers to brintg to windsor. Windsor also has train stations around which tell us there are various ways to visit windsor what ever a tourist may feel to use. Would tourist visit windsor again This graph records whether tourist would definatly come to windosr again. Tourist are most content with windsor as we can see, only 2 people would not visit and 18 out of 20 people would definatly or is planning to visit windsor again. Surely the majority of tourist are impressed with windsor which must mean windsor is a good tourist centre. Would tourist reccomend Windsor? The tourist that have attended windsor told us if they would reccomend it to others such as family and friend or if they wouldn't bother. Of course if you are willing to reccomend a tourist attraction it must be a succesful tourist centre, from the results 17 out of 20 tourist would or are going to reccomend windsor to others. Only 2 people said they wouldn't reccomend windsor, therefore windsor must be a succesful tourist centre. Attractions that tourist are planning to visit This graphs shows us places where a set of tourist were planning to visit, many of them were planning to attend the tours and go lego land probaly due to the children with them. Tourist must have been told or seen in a brochure the attractions of windsor and were here to view it them selves. Improvements needed according to residents This is a graph that tells us what improvements residents felt that needed to be taken. From this graph we can tell traffic, pedestrians and prices are the things residents are not happy with. Most residents are ok about the toilets and cafes. However like the tourist residents are not enjoying the roads constantly packed with cars. Are there places residents would not go to avoid tourist? 6 out of 20 residents that I asked wouldn't go to certain places due to tourists this somewhat shows to us there are certain places residents do not feel comfortable to go due to tourist. This proves there must be a conflict of interest if residents avoid certain places in their own home due to tourists. Do residents feel there is any conflict with tourist? Only a few tourist feel that there is some sort of conflict. But I doubt anything major that would escalate to some sort of physical contact. Tourist do not feel as comfortable with tourist and pretty much have to put up with it all the time, new people coming to see windsor which is their home town. I personally believe the conflict is not of much interest and is of little importance as it is only 5 out of 20 people feel there is some sort of conflict. What benefits residents feel that tourist bring This graphs shows what things tourist bring to windsor according to residents. The graph shows that Tourist help out the most with reputation as to why so may people visit, income spending a lot of money on the attractons and other things to buy e.g. food and facilities such as good attractive restaurants. Evalutaion of my results In this paragraph I will explain what I have discovered from my results, and answer the three main questions according to my results. In my personal opinion Windsor is a good tourist centre and the graphs that were produced from the information I gathered from the tourists and residents of windsor . My results show that 18 out of 20 people I asked would visit windsor again and that 17 out of 20 would recommend Windsor to family and friends these results show that the tourist are happy and impressed with there trip to windsor and what windsor had to offer them as a whole. Therefore yes windssor is a succesful tourist centre which means there are a large number of tourist visiting regularly. There is a conflict of intrest as you can see the residents do not like so many cars coming in and out of windsor because it causes to much traffic and means there is more noise and pollution created by the tourists and also the tourist pedestrians walking around means residents tend to avoid leaving the house due to overcrowding. Also tourist feel they are treated unfairly due to Residents being entitled to something knows as † The advantage card† which allows resident to visit the attractions 3 times a year for free. Even though tourist may feel its unfair as they have to pay the expensive cost to enter an attraction I feel it is fair as residents should benefit from something since they are living there. The council may have plans to widen roads and pavements to lessen the congestion cause by the tourist thus making life easier for both residents and tourists. Conclusion The information that I have gathered (primary and secondary) shows us how Windsor is a successful tourist centre. This is proven by the graphs, also there is a conflict of interest between tourists and residents as we can see resident are annoyed with tourist for constantly coming in and out of the places they live in. Tourists feel that it's unfair since residents get the advantage card. I myself feel Windsor is a great place and would definitely visit again maybe with more friend and family. Windsor is beautiful has an amazing historical background and everything seem to be so cheerful, however of course I do feel that traffic could be improved on and the prices for some goods are higher for the tourists than they are for the residents of Windsor. According to my results it clearly shows that Windsor is a very succesful tourist centre and the tourist really enjoyed visiting Windsor as my results shows that the ratings of every single attrations in Windsor is very high. The second important point which im going to make is that there is a big conflict between the tourist and the residents as the residents don't like the way the prices in Windsor keep going up every time, the toilets, parking and the streets being very crowded. Local authority has made a lot of effort to resolve the conflict for e.g. they have introduced advantage cards to the residents through which residents can visit all the attratcions in Windsor for a cheap price and they also have free parking. The council has tried to seperate the tourist and residents by dividing them in to two different areas of town for example when the tourist arrive in Windsor that part of the town is very far away from the residential bit of the town and the prices in that area is very high compared to other areas of the town. All of my graphs prove that my hypothesis was correct and Windsor is a very successful tourist centre but there is a lot of conflict in interest between the tourist and the residents.

Les miserables: character analysis

Jean ValjeanJean Valjean is a central character of Les Miserables. His story is that of misery, pain, and injustice. Valjean is an epitome of change. He makes transitions from one kind of man to another, as dictated by his drastic experiences in life. Valjean’s life is a story of how an honest and good man can be hardened by society in general, and prison in particular.Because of Valjean’s unfortunate experience in prison, he hardens into a criminal and a social outcast. This transformation in Valjean’s life is a recognition of the observed truth and pattern of human behavior, wherein man changes, either for better or for worse, as a result of external forces such as society. The most important part of Valjean’s personality is his resilience and positive attitude towards life and change in general. He accepts the positive effect of other people in his life, and learns to love and care for such people.Ultimately, however, the good character of Valjean surfa ces, and even the bishop realizes that, as shown by this passage:â€Å"The bishop approached him and said, in a low voice, ‘Do not forget, ever, that   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.' Jean    Valjean, who had no recollection of any such promise, stood dumbfounded. The   Ã‚   bishop had stressed these words as he spoke them. He continued solemnly,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   perdition, and I give it to God!†FantineFantine is one of the characters in Les Miserables who lived the less appealing life. She had been deprived of good opportunities since her childhood, such as education and care. Thus, she grew up to be an uneducated girl whom everyone else found easy to victimize.Fantine can easily be categori zed as a victim of society, since she had been deprived of education without her fault, and yet society readily found her corrupt and unfit for fruitful activity and relationships. A lot of people took advantage of her lack of knowledge, education and experience, and thereafter left her out in the cold. Fantine’s character is a perfect illustration of the bigotry in human society and the story of her life is but a perfect example of the way injustice ruins lives.Brought by her experiences, Fantine learned to have a different view of morality, as expressed in her statement, â€Å"[T]he guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.†CosetteThe character of Cosette is in many respects similar to that of Valjean, an effect largely influenced by the latter’s taking charge over her education and upbringing. Thus, like Valjean, Cosette exhibits her kindheartedness and morality through her actions, thereby manifesting that her initial exp erience with the cruel Thà ©nardiers did not corrupt her character. Cosette, at one point in the story, said, â€Å"[W]e bow to the man who kneels. A faith is necessary to man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.† Such a statement reflects her belief about man, and shows how pure Cosette’s character has remained.Fortunately for Cosette, she had not been exposed to the kind of cruelty and hardship that Valjean went through, although she expressed resentment over Valjean’s overprotective stance. When viewed as a whole, Cosette’s character does not provide a lot of conflict, she being one of the lucky personalities in the story.

The Force of Women in The Odyssey - 632 Words

The Force of Women in The Odyssey To the average person, The Odyssey is a Greek tale about a man, Odysseus, just trying to find his way home. However, it is much more than an entertaining tale of a man, gods, and monsters. It serves as a cultural exemplar of different kinds of people, roles, and relationships of ancient Greece, including the role of women. In The Odyssey, women are often portrayed as suasive and strong people, prime examples being Athena, Arete, and Penelope. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and battle, is the most powerful and influential non-human being in The Odyssey. Athena was the one to start Odysseus’s journey home. By stating that her heart broke for Odysseus, who was away from home for 20 years and had suffered much, Athena was able to convince Zeus to make Calypso release Odysseus, although it was against Poseidon’s wishes. Also, Athena could be credited with helping Telemachus become a true man instead of the boy he used to be. Disguised as Mentes, Athena’s advice to Telemachus about the suitors and his mother was to either drive the suitors away or throw his mother out of the house and take over the house. After this, Telemachus, for the first time, stood up to the suitors and told them to leave, or he would call the gods and Zeus would punish the suitors. However, as benevolent as she may seem, she is additionally unforgiving. When she had decided that all the suitors shall die, she stuck to it. Even when Athena told Odysseus to begShow MoreRelatedEssay on Women in The Odyssey702 Words   |  3 PagesWomen in The Odyssey In The Odyssey the main character, Odysseus, meets and entertains an impressive array of women. All of the women that he meets are very different and have different personalities and Homer clearly states his attitude towards each of the women. Some of the women are seen as essentially good or essentially bad. It is also clear that Homer adopts a sexist attitude towards the women in his novel. 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