Richard Feynman Essay -- biographies biography bio

Richard Feynman was born on May 11, 1918 in Brooklyn to Lucille and Melville Feynman. Feynman's childhood home was in the community of Far Rockaway, in the outskirts if Manhattan. When Feynman was born, his father, Melville, had already determined that Feynman would grow up to be a scientist. Melville had always dreamed to be a scientist. Unfortunately, Melville's dream was left unsatisfied only to live it through his son. Melville encouraged Feynman not to focus on things he knew, but rather things he did not know. This was the base of Richard Feynman's understanding. Feynman believed sincerely that what was important was not knowing the answers to questions, but instead asking the right questions. He believed that the answers wait patiently to be discovered. Richard Feynman's mother, Lucille, also influenced his future success as a scientist. Lucille taught Feynman to take life lightly and to have a powerful sense of humor. While Melville allowed Feynman the tools to explore his future, Lucille taught him to laugh, take life lightly, and have courage in himself. Both of Feynman's parents played an important role in guiding their son to success. When Feynman grew to be a young man in school, he fell in love with Arline Greenbaum, the girl of his dreams. It didn't take much for Arline to become the most important person in Feynman's life. Arline seemed to share his take on life. It is said that the pair were made for each other. Later in his life, Feynman attended college as a physics major. He finished his first four years in 1939 at MIT, and then moved on to Princeton for graduate school. While at Princeton, Feynman proposed to Arline. The two planned to be married after hecom... ...an Lectures on Physics," was published in 1963 and remains a leading text in physics classes. In "Lectures," Mr. Feynman responded to charges that scientific understanding detracts from an esthetic appreciation of nature: "The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I was a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there . . . It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. Far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined!" Mr. Feynman leaves his wife, Gweneth; a son, Carl; a daughter, Michelle, and a sister, Joan Feynman. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Gatsby: Nature of Romantic Love Essay

The Great Gatsby is a story about a man, Gatsby, who is stuck in alternate reality. He is stuck in a past life and wants to remain in it forever. The Great Gatsby reflects a story about the great American dream and, as some may view, a beautiful love story. The Great Gatsby is not a story about perfect love. In fact, it actually mocks the notion that love having no flaws. Fitzgerald writes about the corruption of love and illustrates the obstacles and dangers of corrupted love. The â€Å"love† presented in The Great Gatsby is unethical. Fitzgerald depicts the nature of love in the novel to revolve around obsession, self-destruction, and greed. The Great Gatsby lacks true love and affection to make it a perfect love story. Gatsby is a character with an unrealistic conscience. He is blinded by an idea of love that only he can see. The love he sees is not true love, but in fact an obsession with lust. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who studies human behavior states in â€Å"The Brain In Love†, â€Å"Romantic love is an addiction†¦a perfectly horrible addiction when it’s going poorly. And indeed it has all the characteristics of an addiction. You focus on the person, you obsessively think about them, you crave them.† This quote taken from a TED Talk portrays Gatsby’s nature of love perfectly. He is addicted to the idea of Daisy. The addiction is horrible because all he does is focus on her and only her. Even though he has not spoken to her in years after the war, he still craves her. It is very clear that Fitzgerald wanted the audience to notice Gatsby’s frightening obsession with Daisy. He follows her every move. He becomes rich for her and buys a mansion for he and holds countless outrageous parties, all because of her. Gatsby says, â€Å"Look at this. Here is a lot of clippings-about you† (Fitzgerald 90). Gatsby documents Daisy’s life. He creates a scrapbook with countless pages regarding Daisy’s life. He collects every possible thing that relates to Daisy. He alters his life to make Daisy love him. â€Å"Infatuation then develops in a specific  psychobiological pattern†¦beginning with intrusive thinking† (The Nature of Romantic Love). This applies directly to Gatsby’s behavior. He consumes his time thinking about Daisy and planning his life accordingly to Daisy’s likes, dislikes, and interests. And after being rejected, the obsession worsens. Daisy has countless flaws including being indecisive, cowardly, and materialistic. She is not the type of person someone would typically fall in love with. But once again, the element of Gatsby’s obsession comes into play. His obsession causes blindness and he is unable to see Daisy’s flaws. In Helen Fisher’s â€Å"The Nature of Romantic Love she states, â€Å"But the limerent casts these flaws aside and fixates on those characteristics that he or she finds unique and charming† (The Nature of Romantic Love). Gatsby’s fixation on Daisy obliges him to only see the good in Daisy that was barely even there anymore. She doesn’t have the best qualities. She has the power to leave Tom, yet she doesn’t. Why? Because she has everything she needs by staying with him. He supplies her with money, luxuries, and lives a comfortable life with him. Daisy puts her wants before the feelings and regards of others. Gatsby is sightless when it comes to pointing out Daisy’s negative qualities. The love presented in The Great Gatsby is self-destructive. It breaks Gatsby and forces him to partake in illegal activities to impress his significant other. The terrible obsession Gatsby has for Daisy causes him to not see the real Daisy. He is in love with the Daisy from the past. This essentially ruins him. He is not in love with the cowardly, shallow Daisy, but the sweet, comforting one from the past. Gatsby’s reality distorts after Daisy leaves him. Helen Fisher states in her TED talk, â€Å"You distort reality. Your willingness to take enormous risks to win this person.† Gatsby does just this. He corrupts and endangers his life because of his willingness to do anything for Daisy. He misrepresents his reality and does not see any harm in part icipating in illegal things. Gatsby takes risks for Daisy. In Helen Fishers TED talk she explains that this is a factor of love. Fitzgerald illustrates this factor in his novel by developing Jay Gatsby’s character into someone who will take massive risks. He is willing to jeopardize his own life to impress Daisy. Tom Buchanan says, â€Å"That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong† (Fitzgerald 134). In this statement, Tom is reflecting his opinions on Gatsby, believing that Gatsby  contributes to unjust acts. Tom was correct. Gatsby does partake in illegal activities and slowly destroys his reputation by doing so. People know of Gatsby’s misdemeanors. This is just another example of how unethical the love that exists in the novel really is. The love depicted in The Great Gatsby revolves around greed. The environment Daisy was raised in caused her to only view a materialistic life. Helen Fisher writes, â€Å"Culture, for example, plays an essential role in one’s choice of partner and the timing and process of courting.† Daisy grows up in a very luxurious environment, where money is a factor that contributes to a person’s personality. Why does Daisy suddenly fall back in â€Å" love† with Gatsby when he finally acquires a lot of money? Daisy’s idea of love is blinded with greed. For many years, she forgets about Gatsby when he goes to war and focuses and devotes her life to Tom Buchanan. Tom, a man of wealth, gives Daisy all she need, except love. Tom has multiple affairs with other mistresses, yet this does not bother Daisy. She is content living her life with Tom until Gatsby reveals himself. She falls back in love with Gatsby due to the amount of money he has. Only then does she decide to pursue a relationship with him. Daisy acts like a coward in the novel. Greed is what she has fallen in love with, not Gatsby nor Tom. Dais y’s greed gets in the way of the love that could have been between Gatsby and herself. Daisy’s importance in life orbits around material comforts. She says, â€Å"They’re such beautiful shirts it makes me sad because I have never seen such beautiful shirts† (Fitzgerald 89). The stunning silk shirts represent all of the material luxuries Daisy obsesses over. She has fallen in love with the idea of Gatsby, but not him. Both Daisy and Gatsby confuse greed with love. They long for money and material possessions and corrupt love to fulfill their American Dreams. He believes money will bring him anything, even Daisy’s love. Fitzgerald writes in his novel, â€Å"Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths — so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden† (78). Gatsby spends hundreds of thousands buying a mansion out of greed. He is ravenous for Daisy’s attention. Daisy represents a life filled with luxuries and money and essentially, the Am erican Dream. Gatsby was never able to let that idea go so he devotes the majority of his time to Daisy. Fitzgerald’s novel represents a life full of corruption and mimics the idea of love. It intertwines the ideas of obsession, destruction, and greed among the characters. Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship focuses on the materialism of the era. Instead of truly falling in love with one another, they fell in love with the idea of each other. Gatsby fell in love with the Daisy that no longer existed and Daisy fell in love with what Gatsby represented; greed, money, corruption, and luxuries. The love presented in The Great Gatsby was not love, but an unhealthy infatuation of obsession and greed. Fitzgerald describes the nature of love to be unscrupulous. The characters were not in love, but rather in love with a perfect idea of one another that did not exist.

Teenage Suicide in Death by Landscape Essay - 756 Words

Teenage Suicide in Death by Landscape Margaret Atwood is the Canadian author of Death by Landscape which is a short story pulled from her novel, Wilderness Tips. This story highlights a huge problem in todays society, teenage suicide. Wilderness Tips was published in 1991, which is during the time of suicide clusters in the teenage population. These so called clusters began in the late 80s. Some experts indicate that suicide has always been a problem but was never seriously acknowledged until the late 1980s. Ms. Atwood incorporated this real life epidemic in her short story. Margaret Atwood is known for her effort to discuss real life matters in her writings. She believes that expressing oneself is not the goal to†¦show more content†¦One major sign of a suicidal teen is a change in habits (Suicide 1). Each summer that Lucy returns to camp she has a new hobby. Lois thinks of these changes exciting but in reality, Lucy cannot find anything to make her happy. Another indicator of suicide is more or less sl eeping (Schleiter 42). Lois comments on the fact that Lucy is harder to wake up in the mornings. She is also quieter and more pensive. Another indicator is a high stress level; teens who commit suicide are often overwhelmed by stress from the beginning. A trigger event then becomes the final catalyst (Frankel 34). In Lucys case this trigger event could very well be the divorce of her parents. Lucy says she does not like her new stepfather and her father has also remarried. She mentions running away from home. Another possible trigger is the move away from home. Research shows that depression seems to mark teens who have recently moved away. They are more or less uprooted from the place where they have grown up and started their own lives. There are myths surrounding suicide, such as, people take their own lives on gloomy days (Frankel 38). In reality, people suffering from depression feel worse on sunny days because the people around them seem to be more cheerful. Lucy jumps of the cliff on a beautiful summer day. She is on the much anticipated canoe trip but none of that seems to matter. Another myth is when people mention suicide it is for attention (Frankel 38). LucyShow MoreRelatedTeenagers and Drug Abuse Essay1613 Words   |  7 PagesIt has been discovered that most people who struggle with drug addiction began experimenting with drugs in their teens. Teenage drug abuse is one of the largest problems in society today and the problem grows and larger every year. Drugs are a pervasive force in our culture today. To expect kids not to be influenced by the culture of their time is as unrealistic as believing in the tooth fairy (Bauman 140). 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