Complications of pregnancy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Complications of pregnancy - Essay Example Delayed menstruation for 1-2 weeks followed by spotting or bleeding is a typical sign of ectopic pregnancy. Gastrointestinal problems may also occur along with lightheadedness and dizziness. Yet if tubal pregnancy remains undetected for 4-6 weeks after conception, the fallopian tube becomes more distended and can rupture leading to symptoms like excruciating abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and faintness. In some cases, the patient may go into shock or rapid pulse, decreased blood pressure, restlessness, sweating may lead to hemorrhage (Smeltzer, 2009). Adnexal mass might be found upon pelvic examination along with tenderness (Doherty, 2010). Complications/risks: Failure to diagnose ectopic pregnancy especially in patients with few symptoms can increase the risk of internal bleeding which can result in hemorrhage or shock. Management: Treatment choices include surgical intervention either laparotomy or laparoscopy and medication. Surgical management may be salpingectomy (removing the concerned fallopian tube) or salpingostomy (preserving the affected tube) depending on patient’s wish. However, salpingostomy increases the risk of persistent trophoblast and ectopic pregnancy whereas salpingectomy avoids these risks but only one tube remains with reproductive ability. Non-surgical medication treatment includes the use of anti-cancer drug methotrexate (Tembhare, 2010) which can be administered intravenously or intramuscularly (Wolfson, 2009). Delivery before 37th week of pregnancy is classified as pre-term labor (WHO, 1994). Clinical presentations: Clinical signs of preterm labor include uterine contractions, menstrual like cramps, diarrhea, back-ache, pelvic pressure, increased vaginal discharge(Littleton, Engebretson, 2002)vaginal bleeding, ruptured membranes, initial cervical dilation greater than 3 cm and contraction frequency of 4 per hour or more (Creasy, Resnik and lams, 2004). Complications/risks: Risk factors to the mother are largely associated with tocolytic agents used in treatment. Respiratory depression/arrest, pulmonary edema, hypotension and cardiac arrest are complications associated with administration of magnesium; similarly, terbutaline may induce hyperglycemia, hypokalemia and myocardial ischemia. Other drugs (nifedipine and indomethacin) may produce side effects like gastrointestinal problems, renal failure and hepatitis (Littleton, Engebretson, 2002). Neonatal may suffer from renal dysfunctions, nec rotizing enterocolitis, patent ductus arteriosus, intracranial hemorrhage preterm deliveries. Management: Obstetric practices for averting preterm labor include bed rest, home uterine activity monitoring, sedation and hydration, however, little evidence is present about success rates of these methods (Goldenberg, 2002). Tocolytic therapy is used for the hindering uterine contractions which include calcium channel blockers (nicardipine, nifedipine), magnesium, ?-mimetics (terbutaline, fenoterol etc.), non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents (indomethacin) and ethanol. Evidence suggests that tocolytic therapy is significant in preventing preterm labor (Berkman et al., 2003 ). In addition, cervical cerclage is employed where cervical incompetence is found, in which a suture (rescue cerclage) is placed to prevent further dilations. Management of preterm labor includes avoiding neonatal complications through use of corticosteroids and antibiotics to prevent traumatic delivery and streptoc occal neonatal sepsis (Goldenberg, 2002) Pre-eclampsia is a condition in which pregnant patient experiences a triad of

Supreme Court Appeals Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Supreme Court Appeals - Essay Example This refers to a court order that requests lower courts to send documents as well as materials pertaining to the case to the Supreme Court. The justices are required to vote to make a decision on whether or not the case has merit before granting a writ of certiorari (Denis et al, 2014). It takes a combination of different criteria for the Court to judge if a case is â€Å"certworthy.† A Circuit Conflict is the first criterion employed by the Supreme Court in granting certiorari. This criterion is used when there is a conflict amongst the lower federal courts concerning an issue. The conflict must be unbearable and current. The reputation of the lower courts involved in the conflict is a variable when employing this criterion (â€Å"Granting Certiorari† par.7). The Importance of a case is also another criterion for judging if a case is ‘certworthy.’ There are a number of different ways that a case can be important enough to attract the Supreme Court’s attention. Similarly, cases that are important to the polity due to the societal and political impact of their resolution, for example Brown v. Board of Education as well as Roe v. Wade, can attract the attention of the Court. As a rule, two other factors influence the Court’s assessment of the importance of a case: breadth, that is, the potential impact on many people as well as the effect on the federal government (â€Å"Granting Certiorari† par.9). Another criterion is the areas of Interest to the Justices of the Supreme Court. Some justices may have a particular hobbyhorse and that can influence on whether the Court awards certiorari or not. Repeatedly, a Justice’s area of interest is determined by personal history as well as geographic origin. For instance, justices from the West might be favor of granting certiorari in water rights cases. Flagrant abuses of justice or flagrant disregard for accepted legal doctrine can sometimes

McDonalds Marketing Strategy Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

McDonalds Marketing Strategy - Case Study Example Shifting lifestyles, aging population and healthy food consumption trends hamper industry growth. Despite McDonald's many successes and long-standing position as a global industry leader, the golden arches are showing evidence of tarnish. Over the last years the company has shown signs of failure to identify with its customers and this has lead to retarded growth and unmet expectations. In this paper I will examine in greater detail latest industry trends and I will critically evaluate McDonald's marketing strategy. The final part of the paper discusses strategic alternatives and suggested strategies for McDonald's Corporation. The fast food market is dynamic and growing, it amounts to $99.6 billion and is expected to grow by 15% by 2009 (Datamonitor, Global Fast Food, 2005). To the west growth has been driven by changing consumer lifestyles. The restaurants segment benefits from the reduction of leisure time, accompanied by increasing trends away from preparing food at home (Datamonitor, Global Restaurants, 2005). The growth in the Far Eastern countries, on the other hand, is fuelled by growing population, economic development and rising purchasing power of local population (Datamonitor, Foodservice China, 2005). Still, the bright future of the fast food sector is not secur... The growth in the Far Eastern countries, on the other hand, is fuelled by growing population, economic development and rising purchasing power of local population (Datamonitor, Foodservice China, 2005). Still, the bright future of the fast food sector is not secured and it's again consumer trends that hamper its development. Aging population in US and Europe tends to favour more sophisticated food and service offers to fast-food restaurants (Datamonitor, Global Restaurants, 2005). A major threat to the fast-food industry is the trend towards healthy food that shifts consumption away from fast food market. Intense competition among fast food retailers has forced major chains to focus on value chain efficiencies in order to improve profits (Datamonitor, Global Restaurants, 2005). Additionally, local markets have put high legal and market-driven entry barriers for international retailers (Ball et al, 2005). Customer analysis All in all, the McDonald's fast food offer is attractive to people from all age groups. The company specifically targets children and middle-class households that are less demanding in their choice for sophisticated product offer. Rising incomes in developing markets make the McDonald's offer more feasible and better accepted even in places where the company has been regarded as rather expensive, one example is India. The American identity of fast food products in Japan and other countries in the Far East enhances their image. According to a survey by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, 50 % of teenagers prefer Western foods to traditional dishes. As a result, American companies in Japan account for half the business (Ball et

Freshmen Should Be Required to Live in the Dorms Essay

Freshmen Should Be Required to Live in the Dorms - Essay Example As well as Studies show, students who live on campus perform better academically than students living at home, said Michael Coakley, associate dean of student affairs and executive director of housing. Coakley added â€Å"National and institutional studies have continually shown that students who live in school housing for their first year of study have significantly higher retention rates, graduates according to the school calendar, and have greater involvement in campus life,† Campus housing not only provides academic and social benefit to the freshmen but also has advantages of free and available food, just like home even though it does not taste good like home food, but at least they know they have available ready-made food when needed. Also, there is a warm place to live, sleep, study and save, oppose to the student who stay outside campus, they will have to balance between studies and household chores like buying and cooking food, and paying bills i.e. electricity, water . One cannot serve two masters at a time (studies vs. household chores); therefore, freshmen students should live in campus in order to save resources like money and use it for something else like business, clothing, partying, or donations. Living outside campus especially as a freshman, students miss campus life experiences like dorms offer support and learning experiences, in such a way students who wants to study late in the libraries can do so, without worrying about taxi, train fares, or security like mugged, raped, or worse murdered on the way home. I believe living at school makes one socially prepared for life since they will be able to learn to be independent away from their parents, meet many people with a common interest as theirs, above all a friend a person make in college will often be friends for life. Living in campus will also allow them to join extra curriculum activities like clubs and sports, which allow students to step out from their comfort zone and experience new interest giving room for social connection and bonding. Though, many students complain about overcrowding in dorms, annoying roommates, noises and denial of freedom, freshmen are young adults, and they need to know that in every institution globally there are different individuals with different personalities, beliefs and cultures. Therefore, in order to survive, they need to deal with different people and situation. Nevertheless, rules are everywhere to be followed. Young people need rules, which remind them of their misleading acts, being shown where to live is not some kind of juvenile treatment and lack of freedom to choose, but on the brighter side, it works like a charm by reducing financial hardship to students who came from other states or under scholarships/ bursaries. Students should live in their dormitories during the first year because it allows them to network with other students easily. It has been proven through various social science studies that students with strong networking skills prove to be more successful in their careers as opposed to independent or isolated individuals. Networking also provides students with skills on problem solving and decision making in issues they face in life. Therefore, to obtain knowledge for lifelong success individuals need to live with career-oriented colleagues. The disadvantages of campus housing are some students may be

A Jury of Her Peers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

A Jury of Her Peers - Essay Example Throughout the story, Glaspell clearly depicts how men in those times regarded women as remarks thick with chauvinist undertones are exchanged between the male characters. For instance, while conducting the investigation in the Wright's abode, the county attorney asked Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife, to keep an eye for anything that maybe helpful in revealing the real motive for Mr. Wright's brutal murder. To this, Mr. Hale quickly asserts, "would the women know a clue if they did, come upon it" Another example is when the three men overheard Mrs. Hale's query about the quilt, an important evidence missed by the men that would ultimately uncover Mrs. Wright's motive. Mrs. Hale asks, "Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it" Upon hearing this, the sheriff threw up his hands in incredulity then remarks, "They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!" and, "There was a laugh for the ways of women." In light of the chauvinist banter, it becomes evident how the men openly mock the women. These points intend to open the eyes of readers to the reality as to how the society perceives women's ways and undertakings. There is an implication that the society highly values only the activities engaged in by men like their work s. On the other hand, women's activities such as the household chores are given minimal economic significance. These go to show how the chauvinist society distinguishes "women matters" as trivial, thus, of relatively less importance as compared to "men matters." People, even women themselves, fail to realize that women, just like the men, possess the ability and power to contribute to a cause, although in a different manner. As illustrated in Glaspell's story, it is actually Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, being the way they are, who solved the mystery unbeknownst to the men. With their sensitivity to details and common distressing experiences, they have shed light to Mrs. Wright's real motive for taking her husband's life. Social Pressures on Women Based on Mrs. Hale's recollection, Mrs. Wright, the once vivacious lad "used to wear pretty clothes and be lively-when she was Minnie Foster." When this description is juxtaposed with Mr. Hale's image of Mrs. Wright "pleatin' at her apron", the readers are given the idea on the immense change undergone from Minnie Foster, the pretty lady who gleefully sings in the choir down to Mrs. Wright, the lifeless woman who suffered much from her husband's masculine oppression. All it takes is marriage to an oppressive man. It is then revealed that Mrs. Wright murders her husband for killing the bird, her only source of hope that serves as her constant reminder of what her life used to be. Such scenario depicts how the society imposed social pressures on women, especially those who are married. Married women, as if placed in uniform boxes, are packaged by the patriarchal society as obedient wives who readily do their husbands' every bidding. In fulfilling their domestic roles, what becomes central is that they tend to their families' needs primarily. In a way, these result in women developing an ambiguous self-image, which as Mrs. Peter's describes, "as if

English Lit Coursework Essay Example for Free

English Lit Coursework Essay Compare the ways in which the authors present contrasting worlds/ places and their thematic significance in Othello and two other texts. In all of the novels; Othello, Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby, the authors, Shakespeare, Bronte and Fitzgerald, demonstrate how contrasting worlds disrupt equilibrium, especially the harmony or even possibility of relationships. The ultimate disruption within all of these texts is the barrier of class. In Wuthering Heights, Bronte compares the two houses; Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, to highlight the distance class creates between Heathcliff and Cathy, by embodying the characters and their values in the imagery of the houses. Wuthering Heights essentially is a deteriorating farm house. Bronte represents Heathcliff with this house, its anaesthetically pleasing and neglected, described as a perfect misanthropists heaven, giving reclusive and desolate connotations, reflecting the way Heathcliff becomes remote from society and isolated. On the other hand, Bronte describes Thrushcross Grange grandly, carpeted with crimson, crimson covered chairs and tables, this choice of colour gives rich connotations, of a splendid place, The choice of lexis splendid giving an upper class tone . Nevertheless neither of Cathy or Heathcliff seems to prefer the luxurious Thrushcross Grange. Bronte does present Cathy to be superficial at times, but when Cathy tells Nelly about her dreams she explains that heaven did not seem to be my home and that she woke up sobbing for joy when she was flung into the middle of the heath on top of Wuthering Heights, Bronte uses this therefore to signify that Cathy sees Wuthering Heights and the moors as her heaven. Likewise she wants the window open when ill at Thrushcross Grange; here Bronte enforces the theme of imprisonment and entrapment, in a foreign world. Equally Thrushcross Grange has always been an alien and uncomfortable place to Heathcliff as we see when he chooses to grieve on the out skirting grounds of Thrushcross Grange in contrast with Edgar who stays inside. Nevertheless Bronte relates Cathy, a Linton to be, to Thrushcross Grange, a world of refinement and elegance, complimenting Cathys own descriptions as she grows into a lady Similarly to Wuthering Heights, Fitzgerald presents the comparison in class of two places, the buildings of East and West Egg in particular. West Egg is seen to be the less fashionable of the two, lacking in conventional aesthetics of refined and classy housing estates. This is shown by the fact Nicks bungalow is carelessly built in the space between two mansions, this paints a garish image of clashing buildings. Whereas East Egg is glittered with houses that are described as white palaces with well kept lawns, suggesting well kept, good quality people, over all setting a lavish and opulent scene. Never the less, the houses themselves are concentrated on more so in Wuthering Heights as they are the dominant symbol of the two separate worlds, whereas Gatsby concentrates on the society around East Egg and West Egg, in order to emphasize the difference of the world Daisy and Tom inhabit in comparison to Gatsbys world. Fitzgerald creates the symbolism of East and West Egg by choosing to rename Great Neck and Manhasset. West Egg is a place of newly rich settled opportunists, many like Gatsby who are seen to have acquired a fortune overnight and boast this through extravagant houses. West Egg has an overall vibrancy shown through spectroscopic gayety with this Fitzgerald suggests a bright, colourful and energetic lifestyle. East Egg however is a fashionable part of Long Island, where the wealthy descendants, of a previous money making generation, live. In contrast with the West, they seem to be more withdrawn from enjoying themselves and proud of their staid nobility, with the exception of a few lapses at Gatsbys parties. This lack of living for the moment comes across also in the way that they seem to want more in life in the East, but have no intentions of looking for it. Fitzgerald mocks the ambitionless simplicity of life that for example is demonstrated in Jordan and Daisys superficial conversation, We ought to plan something, All right Whatll we plan? What do people plan? Similarly people lack genuine qualities, everything is based on etiquette and image, a prime example of this is when Mrs Sloane invites Gatsby to supper out of politeness but doesnt expect him to actually come. Equally Shakespeare employs the theme of class, as a barrier between Othello and Desdemona, but unlike Bronte and Fitzgerald, he demonstrates the distinction through the discrimination drawn upon Othello. None the less, Shakespeare does use a comparison of two separate locations, Venice and Cypress. Shakespeare accomplishes a dramatic tone in the play Othello through the use of a variation of techniques, for example dramatic irony. Likewise Shakespeare uses contrasting worlds, for instance the contrast between Venice and Cyprus, Venice is portrayed to be a respected origin, it has a positive representation in the play, being the place in which Desdemona and Othello fell in love. Cypress on the other hand is surrounded in conflict, described as a war-like isle, a direct comparison to Venice; it is also the place where Othello and Desdemonas love suffers. The two countries are essential to Shakespeares comparison between the worlds of war and love and how Othello struggles to find a balance between the two. The warlike moor encounters the conflict between the roles of being an inexperienced loving husband and a hardened military soldier. Hes used to of course an all male environment, a soldiers life style, uneducated in the domestic world of females. He can deal with the flinty and steel couch of war yet is little blessd with the soft phrase of peace. Shakespeare devises Othellos dialogue to show how he is more comfortable with language from the semantic field of war than pet nick names, calling Desdemona My fair Warrior. Othello may be respected for his military efforts, after all this is all we see him praised for, no credit is given to the fact he is marrying Desdemona even their wedding celebration is shared with a military celebration. Considering this Shakespeare presents him very much as an outsider, the only black protagonist, he doesnt qualify as a gentleman, and is included in society purely as he is an acquaintance of Brabantio and Cassio.

Why Literature Essay Example for Free

Why Literature Essay It has often happened to me, at book fairs or in bookstores, that a gentleman approaches me and asks me for a signature. It is for my wife, my young daughter, or my mother, he explains. She is a great reader and loves literature. Immediately I ask: And what about you? Dont you like to read? The answer is almost always the same: Of course I like to read, but I am a very busy person. I have heard this explanation dozens of times: this man and many thousands of men like him have so many important things to do, so many obligations, so many responsibilities in life, that they cannot waste their precious time buried in a novel, a book of poetry, or a literary essay for hours and hours. According to this widespread conception, literature is a dispensable activity, no doubt lofty and useful for cultivating sensitivity and good manners, but essentially an entertainment, an adornment that only people with time for recreation can afford. It is something to fit in between sports, the movies, a game of bridge or chess; and it can be sacrificed without scruple when one prioritizes the tasks and the duties that are indispensable in the struggle of life. It seems clear that literature has become more and more a female activity. In bookstores, at conferences or public readings by writers, and even in university departments dedicated to the humanities, the women clearly outnumber the men. The explanation traditionally given is that middle-class women read more because they work fewer hours than men, and so many of them feel that they can justify more easily than men the time that they devote to fantasy and illusion. I am somewhat allergic to explanations that divide men and women into frozen categories and attribute to each sex its characteristic virtues and shortcomings; but there is no doubt that there are fewer and fewer readers of literature, and that among the saving remnant of readers women predominate. This is the case almost everywhere. In Spain, for example, a recent survey organized by the General Society of Spanish Writers revealed that half of that countrys population has never read a book. The survey also revealed that in the minority that does read, the number of women who admitted to reading surpasses the number of men by 6. 2 percent, a difference that appears to be increasing. I am happy for these women, but I feel sorry for these men, and for the millions of human beings who could read but have decided not to read. They earn my pity not only because they are unaware of the pleasure that they are missing, but also because I am convinced that a society without literature, or a society in which literature has been relegatedlike some hidden viceto the margins of social and personal life, and transformed into something like a sectarian cult, is a society condemned to become spiritually barbaric, and even to jeopardize its freedom. I wish to offer a few arguments against the idea of literature as a luxury pastime, and in favor of viewing it as one of the most primary and necessary undertakings of the mind, an irreplaceable activity for the formation of citizens in a modern and democratic society, a society of free individuals. |[pic] | e live in the era of the specialization of knowledge, thanks to the prodigious development of science and technology and to the consequent fragmentation of knowledge into innumerable parcels and compartments. This cultural trend is, if anything, likely to be accentuated in years to come. To be sure, specialization brings many benefits. It allows for deeper exploration and greater experimentation; it is the very engine of progress. Yet it also has negative consequences, for it eliminates those common intellectual and cultural traits that permit men and women to co-exist, to communicate, to feel a sense of solidarity. Specialization leads to a lack of social understanding, to the division of human beings into ghettos of technicians and specialists. The specialization of knowledge requires specialized languages and increasingly arcane codes, as information becomes more and more specific and compartmentalized. This is the particularism and the division against which an old proverb warned us: do not focus too much on the branch or the leaf, lest you forget that they are part of a tree, or too much on the tree, lest you forget that it is part of a forest. Awareness of the existence of the forest creates the feeling of generality, the feeling of belonging, that binds society together and prevents it from disintegrating into a myriad of solipsistic particularities. The solipsism of nations and individuals produces paranoia and delirium, distortions of reality that generate hatred, wars, and even genocide. In our time, science and technology cannot play an integrating role, precisely because of the infinite richness of knowledge and the speed of its evolution, which have led to specialization and its obscurities. But literature has been, and will continue to be, as long as it exists, one of the common denominators of human experience through which human beings may recognize themselves and converse with each other, no matter how different their professions, their life plans, their geographical and cultural locations, their personal circumstances. It has enabled individuals, in all the particularities of their lives, to transcend history: as readers of Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dante, and Tolstoy, we understand each other across space and time, and we feel ourselves to be members of the same species because, in the works that these writers created, we learn what we share as human beings, what remains common in all of us under the broad range of differences that separate us. Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth that invariably appears in great literature: that men and women of all nations and places are essentially equal, and that only injustice sows among them discrimination, fear, and exploitation. Nothing teaches us better than literature to see, in ethnic and cultural differences, the richness of the human patrimony, and to prize those differences as a manifestation of humanitys multi-faceted creativity. Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure, of course; but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness. |[pic| |] | his complex sum of contradictory truthsas Isaiah Berlin called themconstitutes the very substance of the human condition. In todays world, this totalizing and living knowledge of a human being may be found only in literature. Not even the other branches of the humanitiesnot philosophy, history, or the arts, and certainly not the social scienceshave been able to preserve this integrating vision, this universalizing discourse. The humanities, too, have succumbed to the cancerous division and subdivision of knowledge, isolating themselves in increasingly segmented and technical sectors whose ideas and vocabularies lie beyond the reach of the common woman and man. Some critics and theorists would even like to change literature into a science. But this will never happen, because fiction does not exist to investigate only a single precinct of experience. It exists to enrich through the imagination the entirety of human life, which cannot be dismembered, disarticulated, or reduced to a series of schemas or formulas without disappearing. This is the meaning of Prousts observation that real life, at last enlightened and revealed, the only life fully lived, is literature. He was not exaggerating, nor was he expressing only his love for his own vocation. He was advancing the particular proposition that as a result of literature life is better understood and better lived; and that living life more fully necessitates living it and sharing it with others. The brotherly link that literature establishes among human beings, compelling them to enter into dialogue and making them conscious of a common origin and a common goal, transcends all temporal barriers. Literature transports us into the past and links us to those who in bygone eras plotted, enjoyed, and dreamed through those texts that have come down to us, texts that now allow us also to enjoy and to dream. This feeling of membership in the collective human experience across time and space is the highest achievement of culture, and nothing contributes more to its renewal in every generation than literature. |[| |p| |i| |c| |]| t always irritated Borges when he was asked, What is the use of literature? It seemed to him a stupid question, to which he would reply: No one would ask what is the use of a canarys song or a beautiful sunset. If such beautiful things exist, and if, thanks to them, life is even for an instant less ugly and less sad, is it not petty to seek practical justifications? But the question is a good one. For novels and poems are not like the sound of birdsong or the spectacle of the sun sinking into the horizon, because they were not created by chance or by nature. They are human creations, and it is therefore legitimate to ask how and why they came into the world, and what is their purpose, and why they have lasted so long. Literary works are born, as shapeless ghosts, in the intimacy of a writers consciousness, projected into it by the combined strength of the unconscious, and the writers sensitivity to the world around him, and the writers emotions; and it is these things to which the poet or the narrator, in a struggle with words, gradually gives form, body, movement, rhythm, harmony, and life. An artificial life, to be sure, a life imagined, a life made of languageyet men and women seek out this artificial life, some frequently, others sporadically, because real life falls short for them, and is incapable of offering them what they want. Literature does not begin to exist through the work of a single individual. It exists only when it is adopted by others and becomes a part of social lifewhen it becomes, thanks to reading, a shared experience. One of its first beneficial effects takes place at the level of language. A community without a written literature expresses itself with less precision, with less richness of nuance, and with less clarity than a community whose principal instrument of communication, the word, has been cultivated and perfected by means of literary texts. A humanity without reading. untouched by literature, would resemble a community of deaf-mutes and aphasics, afflicted by tremendous problems of communication due to its crude and rudimentary language. This is true for individuals, too. A person who does not read, or reads little, or reads only trash, is a person with an impediment: he can speak much but he will say little, because his vocabulary is deficient in the means for self-expression. This is not only a verbal limitation. It represents also a limitation in intellect and in imagination. It is a poverty of thought, for the simple reason that ideas, the concepts through which we grasp the secrets of our condition, do not exist apart from words. We learn how to speak correctlyand deeply, rigorously, and subtlyfrom good literature, and only from good literature. No other discipline or branch of the arts can substitute for literature in crafting the language that people need to communicate. To speak well, to have at ones disposal a rich and diverse language, to be able to find the appropriate expression for every idea and every emotion that we want to communicate, is to be better prepared to think, to teach, to learn, to converse, and also to fantasize, to dream, to feel. In a surreptitious way, words reverberate in all our actions, even in those actions that seem far removed from language. And as language evolved, thanks to literature, and reached high levels of refinement and manners, it increased the possibility of human enjoyment. Literature has even served to confer upon love and desire and the sexual act itself the status of artistic creation. Without literature, eroticism would not exist. Love and pleasure would be poorer, they would lack delicacy and exquisiteness, they would fail to attain to the intensity that literary fantasy offers. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that a couple who have read Garcilaso, Petrarch, Gongora, or Baudelaire value pleasure and experience pleasure more than illiterate people who have been made into idiots by televisions soap operas. In an illiterate world, love and desire would be no different from what satisfies animals, nor would they transcend the crude fulfillment of elementary instincts. Nor are the audiovisual media equipped to replace literature in this task of teaching human beings to use with assurance and with skill the extraordinarily rich possibilities that language encompasses. On the contrary, the audiovisual media tend to relegate words to a secondary level with respect to images, which are the primordial language of these media, and to constrain language to its oral expression, to its indispensable minimum, far from its written dimension. To define a film or a television program as literary is an elegant way of saying that it is boring. For this reason, literary programs on the radio or on television rarely capture the public. So far as I know, the only exception to this rule was Bernard Pivots program, Apostrophes, in France. And this leads me to think that not only is literature indispensable for a full knowledge and a full mastery of language, but its fate is linked also and indissolubly with the fate of the book, that industrial product that many are now declaring obsolete. |[pic| |] | his brings me to Bill Gates. He was in Madrid not long ago and visited the Royal Spanish Academy, which has embarked upon a joint venture with Microsoft. Among other things, Gates assured the members of the Academy that he would personally guarantee that the letter - would never be removed  from computer softwarea promise that allowed four hundred million Spanish speakers on five continents to breathe a sigh of relief, since the banishment of such an essential letter from cyberspace would have created monumental problems. Immediately after making his amiable concession to the Spanish language, however, Gates, before even leaving the premises of the Academy, avowed in a press conference that he expected to accomplish his highest goal before he died. That goal, he explained, is to put an end to paper and then to books. In his judgment, books are anachronistic objects. Gates argued that computer screens are able to replace paper in all the functions that paper has heretofore assumed. He also insisted that, in addition to being less onerous, computers take up less space, and are more easily transportable; and also that the transmission of news and literature by these electronic media, instead of by newspapers and books, will have the ecological advantage of stopping the destruction of forests, a cataclysm that is a consequence of the paper industry. People will continue to read, Gates assured his listeners, but they will read on computer screens, and consequently there will be more chlorophyll in the environment. I was not present at Gatess little discourse; I learned these details from the press. Had I been there I would have booed Gates for proclaiming shamelessly his intention to send me and my colleagues, the writers of books, directly to the unemployment line. And I would have vigorously disputed his analysis. Can the screen really replace the book in all its aspects? I am not so certain. I am fully aware of the enormous revolution that new technologies such as the Internet have caused in the fields of communication and the sharing of information, and I confess that the Internet provides invaluable help to me every day in my work; but my gratitude for these extraordinary conveniences does not imply a belief that the electronic screen can replace paper, or that reading on a computer can stand in for literary reading. That is a chasm that I cannot cross. I cannot accept the idea that a non-functional or non-pragmatic act of reading, one that seeks neither information nor a useful and immediate communication, can integrate on a computer screen the dreams and the pleasures of words with the same sensation of intimacy, the same mental concentration and spiritual isolation, that may be achieved by the act of reading a book. Perhaps this a prejudice resulting from lack of practice, and from a long association of  literature with books and paper. But even though I enjoy surfing the Web in search of world news, I would never go to the screen to read a poem by Gongora or a novel by Onetti or an essay by Paz, because I am certain that the effect of such a reading would not be the same. I am convinced, although I cannot prove it, that with the disappearance of the book, literature would suffer a serious blow, even a mortal one. The term literature would not disappear, of course. Yet it would almost certainly be used to denote a type of text as distant from what we understand as literature today as soap operas are from the tragedies of Sophocles and Shakespeare. |[pic| |] | here is still another reason to grant literature an important place in the life of nations. Without it, the critical mind, which is the real engine of historical change and the best protector of liberty, would suffer an irreparable loss. This is because all good literature is radical, and poses radical questions about the world in which we live. In all great literary texts, often without their authors intending it, a seditious inclination is present. Literature says nothing to those human beings who are satisfied with their lot, who are content with life as they now live it. Literature is the food of the rebellious spirit, the promulgator of non-conformities, the refuge for those who have too much or too little in life. One seeks sanctuary in literature so as not to be unhappy and so as not to be incomplete. To ride alongside the scrawny Rocinante and the confused Knight on the fields of La Mancha, to sail the seas on the back of a whale with Captain Ahab, to drink arsenic with Emma Bovary, to become an insect with Gregor Samsa: these are all ways that we have invented to divest ourselves of the wrongs and the impositions of this unjust life, a life that forces us always to be the same person when we wish to be many different people, so as to satisfy the many desires that possess us. Literature pacifies this vital dissatisfaction only momentarilybut in this miraculous instant, in this provisional suspension of life, literary illusion lifts and transports us outside of history, and we become citizens of a timeless land, and in this way immortal. We become more intense, richer, more complicated, happier, and more lucid than we are in the constrained routine of ordinary life. When we close the book and abandon literary fiction, we return to actual existence and compare it to the splendid land that we have just left. What a disappointment awaits us! Yet a tremendous realization also awaits us, namely, that the fantasized life of the novel is bettermore beautiful and more diverse, more comprehensible and more perfectthan the life that we live while awake, a life conditioned by the limits and the tedium of our condition. In this way, good literature, genuine literature, is always subversive, unsubmissive, rebellious: a challenge to what exists. How could we not feel cheated after reading War and Peace or Remembrance of Things Past and returning to our world of insignificant details, of boundaries and prohibitions that lie in wait everywhere and, with each step, corrupt our illusions? Even more than the need to sustain the continuity of culture and to enrich language, the greatest contribution of literature to human progress is perhaps to remind us (without intending to, in the majority of cases) that the world is badly made; and that those who pretend to the contrary, the powerful and the lucky, are lying; and that the world can be improved, and made more like the worlds that our imagination and our language are able to create. A free and democratic society must have responsible and critical citizens conscious of the need continuously to examine the world that we inhabit and to try, even though it is more and more an impossible task, to make it more closely resemble the world that we would like to inhabit. And there is no better means of fomenting dissatisfaction with existence than the reading of good literature; no better means of forming critical and independent citizens who will not be manipulated by those who govern them, and who are endowed with a permanent spiritual mobility and a vibrant imagination. Still, to call literature seditious because it sensitizes a readers consciousness to the imperfections of the world does not meanas churches and governments seem to think it means when they establish censorshipthat literary texts will provoke immediate social upheavals or accelerate revolutions. The social and political effects of a poem, a play, or a novel cannot be foreseen, because they are not collectively made or collectively experienced. They are created by individuals and they are read by individuals, who vary enormously in the conclusions that they draw from their writing and their reading. For this reason, it is difficult, or even impossible, to establish precise patterns. Moreover, the social consequences of a work of literature may have little to do with its aesthetic quality. A mediocre novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe seems to have played a decisive role in raising social and political consciousness of the horrors of slavery in the United States. The fact that these effects of literature are difficult to identify does not imply that they do not exist. The important point is that they are effects brought about by the actions of citizens whose personalities have been formed in part by books. Good literature, while temporarily relieving human dissatisfaction, actually increases it, by developing a critical and non-conformist attitude toward life. It might even be said that literature makes human beings more likely to be unhappy. To live dissatisfied, and at war with existence, is to seek things that may not be there, to condemn oneself to fight futile battles, like the battles that Colonel Aureliano Buenda fought in One Hundred Years of Solitude, knowing full well that he would lose them all. All this may be true. Yet it is also true that without rebellion against the mediocrity and the squalor of life, we would still live in a primitive state, and history would have stopped. The autonomous individual would not have been created, science and technology would not have progressed, human rights would not have been recognized, freedom would not have existed. All these things are born of unhappiness, of acts of defiance against a life perceived as insufficient or intolerable. For this spirit that scorns life as it isand searches with the madness of Don Quixote, whose insanity derived from the reading of chivalric novelsliterature has served as a great spur. |[pi| |c] | et us attempt a fantastic historical reconstruction. Let us imagine a world without literature, a humanity that has not read poems or novels. In this kind of atrophied civilization, with its puny lexicon in which groans and ape-like gesticulations would prevail over words, certain adjectives would not exist. Those adjectives include: quixotic, Kafkaesque, Rabelaisian, Orwellian, sadistic, and masochistic, all terms of literary origin. To be sure, we would still have insane people, and victims of paranoia and persecution complexes, and people with uncommon appetites and outrageous excesses, and bipeds who enjoy inflicting or receiving pain. But we would not have learned to see, behind these extremes of behavior that are prohibited by the norms of our culture, essential characteristics of the human condition. We would not have discovered our own traits, as only the talents of Cervantes, Kafka, Rabelais, Orwell, de Sade, and Sacher-Masoch have revealed them to us. When the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha appeared, its first readers made fun of this extravagant dreamer, as well as the rest of the characters in the novel. Today we know that the insistence of the caballero de la triste figura on seeing giants where there were windmills, and on acting in his seemingly absurd way, is really the highest form of generosity, and a means of protest against the misery of this world in the hope of changing it. Our very notions of the ideal, and of idealism, so redolent with a positive moral connotation, would not be what they are, would not be clear and respected values, had they not been incarnated in the protagonist of a novel through the persuasive force of Cervantess genius. The same can be said of that small and pragmatic female Quixote, Emma Bovary, who fought with ardor to live the splendid life of passion and luxury that she came to know through novels. Like a butterfly, she came too close to the flame and was burned in the fire. |[pic| |] | he inventions of all great literary creators open our eyes to unknown aspects of our own condition. They enable us to explore and to understand more fully the common human abyss. When we say Borgesian, the word immediately conjures up the separation of our minds from the rational order of reality and the entry into a fantastic universe, a rigorous and elegant mental construction, almost always labyrinthine and arcane, and riddled with literary references and allusions, whose singularities are not foreign to us because in them we recognize hidden desires and intimate truths of our own personality that took shape only thanks to the literary creation of Jorge Luis Borges. The word Kafkaesque comes to mind, like the focus mechanism of those old cameras with their accordion arms, every time we feel threatened, as defenseless individuals, by the oppressive machines of power that have caused so much pain and injustice in the modern worldthe authoritarian regimes, the vertical parties, the intolerant churches, the asphyxiating bureaucrats. Without the short stories and the novels of that tormented Jew from Prague who wrote in German and lived always on the lookout, we would not have been able to understand the impotent feeling of the isolated individual, or the terror of persecuted and discriminated minorities, confronted with the all-embracing powers that can smash them and eliminate them without the henchmen even showing their faces. The adjective Orwellian, first cousin of Kafkaesque, gives a voice to the terrible anguish, the sensation of extreme absurdity, that was generated by totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century, the most sophisticated, cruel, and absolute dictatorships in history, in their control of the actions and the psyches of the members of a society. In 1984, George Orwell described in cold and haunting shades a humanity subjugated to Big Brother, an absolute lord who, through an efficient combination of terror and technology, eliminated liberty, spontaneity, and equality, and transformed society into a beehive of automatons. In this nightmarish world, language also obeys power, and has been transformed into newspeak, purified of all invention and all subjectivity, metamorphosed into a string of platitudes that ensure the individuals slavery to the system. It is true that the sinister prophecy of 1984 did not come to pass, and totalitarian communism in the Soviet Union went the way of totalitarian fascism in Germany and elsewhere; and soon thereafter it began to deteriorate also in China, and in anachronistic Cuba and North Korea. But the danger is never completely dispelled, and the word Orwellian continues to describe the danger, and to help us to understand it. |[pic| |] | o literatures unrealities, literatures lies, are also a precious vehicle for the knowledge of the most hidden of human realities. The truths that it reveals are not always flattering; and sometimes the image of ourselves that emerges in the mirror of novels and poems is the image of a monster. This happens when we read about the horrendous sexual butchery fantasized by de Sade, or the dark lacerations and brutal sacrifices that fill the cursed books of Sacher-Masoch and Bataille. At times the spectacle is so offensive and ferocious that it becomes irresistible. Yet the worst in these pages is not the blood, the humiliation, the abject love of torture; the worst is the discovery that this violence and this excess are not foreign to us, that they are a profound part of humanity. These monsters eager for transgression are hidden in the most intimate recesses of our being; and from the shadow where they live they seek a propitious occasion to manifest themselves, to impose the rule of unbridled desire that destroys rationality, community, and even existence. And it was not science that first ventured into these tenebrous places in the human mind, and discovered the destructive and the self-destructive potential that also shapes it. It was literature that made this discovery. A world without literature would be partly blind to these terrible depths, which we urgently need to see. Uncivilized, barbarian, devoid of sensitivity and crude of speech, ignorant and instinctual, inept at passion and crude at love, this world without literature, this nightmare that I am delineating, would have as its principal traits conformism and the universal submission of humankind to power. In this sense, it would also be a purely animalistic world. Basic instincts would determine the daily practices of a life characterized by the struggle for survival, and the fear of the unknown, and the satisfaction of physical necessities. There would be no place for the spirit. In this world, moreover, the crushing monotony of living would be accompanied by the sinister shadow of pessimism, the feeling that human life is what it had to be and that it will always be thus, and that no one and nothing can change it. When one imagines such a world, one is tempted to picture primitives in loincloths, the small magic-religious communities that live at the margins of modernity in Latin America, Oceania, and Africa. But I have a different failure in mind. The nightmare that I am warning about is the result not of under-development but of over-development. As a consequence of technology and our subservience to it, we may imagine a future society full of computer screens and speakers, and without books, or a society in which booksthat is, works of literaturehave become what alchemy became in the era of physics: an archaic curiosity, practiced in the catacombs of the media civilization by a neurotic minority. I am afraid that this cybernetic world, in spite of its prosperity and its power, its high standard of living and its scientific achievement would be profoundly uncivilized and utterly soullessa resigned humanity of post-literary automatons who have abdicated freedom. It is highly improbable, of course, that this macabre utopia will ever come about. The end of our story, the end of history, has not yet been written, and it is not pre-determined. What we will become depends entirely on our vision and our will. But if we wish to avoid the impoverishment of our imagination, and the disappearance of the precious dissatisfaction that refines our sensibility and teaches us to speak with eloquence and rigor, and the weakening of our freedom, then we must act. More precisely, we must read. MARIO VARGAS LLOSAs new book, The Feast of the Goat, will be published by Farrar, Straus Giroux in November. He is professor of Ibero-American Literature and Culture at Georgetown University.