Monthly Archives: September 2018

According to Pope, what place do human beings have in the universe in relation to other creatures?

Pope wrote this Poem to indicate  the relationship between humanity and God. He acknowledges that human beings are not special but just a part of the large system that God have created. He also states that all God’s creation is significant since taking out one piece would ruin the entire system. However, he believes that humans are below God, spirits and angles but are above plants, animals and inanimate objects.

Why do you think Toyo-o continues to be involved with Manago even after he suspects that she is a demon of some sort?

Toyo-o Continues to be involved with Manago despite suspecting that she is a demon of some sort for various reasons. The first reason is that Toyo-o appreciates the fact that Manago likes him and sees him as a great man. Many people see Toyo-o as a useless person, takes as an example his father who sees him as a family disappointment and his brother who gives up on him contributing to society. Due to the despiteful perception that society gives him, it is evident that Toyo-o is a man desperated for love and attention and he is ready to welcome any love and attention from anyone regardless of whether the person that love his is a demon.

This is pretty late, but my name is Amr Moustafa, and this is my third year at Baruch. I missed the first two weeks of the semester because I was in Egypt attending my cousins wedding. I transferred in from the University at Buffalo after my freshman year, and lost a couple of credits, so I’ll be at Baruch for an extra semester, three semesters in total. I was a computer science major at Buffalo, and now I have switched over to the finance major and economics minor here.  

I was born in Alexandria, Egypt and came to the states when I was five months old. Growing up in Brooklyn in a magnet school for the arts, my childhood consisted of musicals, clarinet and chorus recitals, and soccer pick-up games at the local high school field. Unfortunately, I later moved to Staten Island. My family and I would spend our summers in Egypt with our relatives, and I used to consider it a burden sometimes when I was young to waste my summer vacation away from my friends. Some years I would choose to stay behind to spend the vacation here. But as the years passed, I started to feel homesick and resumed my travels back to Alexandria. However, I am afraid that soon I will not have time to go for more than a week once I start working a regular job.

For the past couple of years I have been switching majors, unsure of what I want to study and ultimately do for the rest of my life. I’ve decided to stick with studying finance and will most likely end up working in investment banking for the first couple of years after graduation if I don’t decide to switch career paths again. Since I have set up my classes so that I only come to campus two days a week, I have a lot of free time on my hands. I usually spend that free time writing and filming videos with my friends. But ever since I got Netflix and Amazon prime video back, all of that has come to a screeching halt. If I wake up in the morning and decide to watch one episode of The Sopranos, it’s game over. The whole day will pass by while I sit on the living room couch trying to finish season two before my parents come home from work. I have been watching so many movies and shows recently, my father often tells me that I should be studying film instead of finance. However, it would be three years too late for that kind of change. These online streaming platforms are truly the enemy of productivity. Hopefully, I’ll soon realize that Netflix is wasting all of my time and cancel my account. All in good time.

All in all, I am here studying finance but I’m not that happy about it, I am Egyptian, and I am a Netflix addict. That pretty much summarizes who I am. I look forward to the rest of the semester.

1.  What is the narrator’s purpose in writing these “confessions”?  How do you know?

2.  For Rousseau, what is the relationship between feeling and thinking?

3.  How does Rousseau describe his childhood?  What significance can we draw from this description

4. Why do you think Rousseau chooses to include the anecdote about stealing from his employer?

5. Using your own language, how would you describe the narrator, given his self-presentation in The Confessions?

Alexander Pope in this poem goes basically against the principle of the Enlightenment. The movement in which people started to question tradition such as religion and other traditional believes. According To Alexander Pope human are not that special in this universe. We are just on part of God larger creation. Alexander Popes wants human to be less pride and down to earth because the human lack of power or precise vision for example shows how God equitably dispatched ability to every single creatures.

1.  Pope describes the purpose of his poem as “to vindicate the ways of God to man.”  What do you think he means by this?

2. Choose one metaphor that Pope uses to describe the universe and explain its significance.

3.  What would it mean to believe that “whatever is, is right?”  How would that affect one’s outlook or behavior?

4.  According to Pope, what place do human beings have in the universe in relation to other creatures?

Describe the character of Orgon. Why do you think he’s so vulnerable to Tartuffe?

In Tartuffe, Orgon is heavily devoted to religion and is more concerned for it than his own family. Because of his devotion, he allowed Tartuffe, a sinner who contradicts what the Catholic church praises, to create conflict inside the household. Furthermore, Orgon was so blinded by his “services” to the family that he dismissed what everyone else in his family claimed about Tartuffe being a hypocrite. This belief in Tartuffe being superior to everyone else due to his status is Orgon’s weakness and why he was so easily deceived throughout the story. Another reason for Orgon’s vulnerability could be his selfishness and that he thought supporting a religious figure could make him a suitable candidate for heaven despite being unaware of him being a major hypocrite. In the end, Orgon was the victim of his own personality. He cared so much about his own religious actions that he allowed an imposter to take advantage of him and eventually bring him down by the story’s end.

Why do you think people (both in the 18th century, when Akinari was writing, and in our own day) are attracted to ghost stories or tales of the supernatural?

I think people are attracted to tales of the supernatural because people are naturally inclined to be curious about the world. People want to find anything unusual since they believe that they’ve seen all there is to the world already (both in the 18th century and nowadays). They’d like to believe that these tales are true since it would be interesting and grant a new aspect of life for them to experience.

Describe the character of Orgon. Why do you think he’s so vulnerable to Tartuffe?

Orgon is dangerously looking for a source of comfort that can tell him he will go to heaven when he inevitably passes away. Combined with a very gullible and trusting personality, this is a recipe for disaster. He is willing to trust Tartuffe’s word over his family, including his son, daughter, and even wife. Tartuffe knows this and pries into Orgon’s life in a deviant manner which indirectly begins to ruin his family’s  lives as well.

It’s a harsh reality but it’s also the one we live in. Where the strong prey on the weak, much like Tartuffe on Orgon. Even today we have scammers that try and persuade the elderly to spend hundreds on fake insurance policies that would benefit their grandkids when in reality they don’t exist. You can either blame Orgon for being how he is or Tartuffe for taking advantage.

-Describe the character of Orgon. Why do you think he’s so vulnerable to Tartuffe?

Throughout the play Moliere, presents Argon a man who falls prey to misplaced adoration, someone who no longer cares about the welfare of his family to the extent of claiming that he would not feel any pain if his family members would die. His character also play that he is a funny person who is introduced to a religious lifestyle for the first time and end up being swayed by new ideas or people in the religion.

His character end up being let down because of his decision making and thinking at some point he contended with Valere marrying his daughter but later he changes his mind when is influenced by Tartuffe. This decision also show how Orgon has been lost and devoted to Tartuffe. I believe the reason that he is so vulnerable to him is because of his newly acquired believes and seeing what Tartuffe believe in as the righteous and devoted way of life. Another reason that makes Orgon vulnerable is his devotion to God and his incertitude regarding his acceptance in to the heaven which results to him not caring about his family and people around him. He insinuate that having Tartuffe by his side will secure his place to heave by following his command. The use of religious nature in impressing Organ is seen to have worked in deceiving him and letting Tartuffe get into the family.