Perfect Life And Perfect Families - 1539 Words

Perfect Life and Perfect Families What is a perfect life or perfect family? From an outsider looking in, what does that life look like for you? Is the pressure of comparing your family with others and realizing that you do not measure up to what you see? We all have dreams of what our ideal life would be. Sometimes these are prompted by the â€Å"model† families that we have seen, or perhaps they are the dreams we had of what our own family should be like. Is there such a thing as perfect families or the perfect life? In the movie Juno and American Beauty some of these families try so hard to look picture perfect, however they are far from it. Remember that looks can be deceiving and comparison unfair. In the movie Juno, sixteen year old Juno is the type of girl that beats to her own drum, and doesn’t really care what other people think of her. Juno ends up pregnant from her boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker. So she decides to have the baby and give the baby up for adoption. Ju no finds the perfect couple to adopt her baby. She finds Mark and Vanessa Loring, a yuppie couple living in the suburbs. Juno likes the Loring’s and in some respect has found what looks to be kindred spirits in Mark, with whom she shares a love of grunge music and horror films. Vanessa is a little more uptight and is the one in the relationship seemingly most eager to have a baby. Juno enters a closed adoption contract with the Loring’s. Throughout the film you find out just how imperfect Mark and VanessaShow MoreRelatedMy Life Of A Perfect Family1659 Words   |  7 Pages As a naà ¯ve young girl, the idea of a perfect family comprised a biological mother, father, brother, grandmother, and grandfather. This beautiful family picture seemed nearly impossible for me while growing up considering the sad fact that one of my grandmothers’ rests in peace and the other, along with one of my grandfathers’ resided in another country. Due to that, I mounted all of my admiration on to the only grandparent figure I grew up with, my father’s dad. I held him on a pedestal since IRead More1950s Nostalgia1298 Words   |  6 Pages1950s Nostalgia Real and Imagined Stephanie Coontz is a professor of Family History at the Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington. She is a nationally recognized expert on the family and an award winning writer. In her 1997 book â€Å"The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America’s Changing Families†, Stephanie Coontz wrote an essay entitled â€Å"What We Really Miss about the 1950s†. In Stephanie Coontz’s â€Å"What We Really Miss about the 1950s†, she argues that we asRead MoreGraduation Speech : My Perfect Attendance Means932 Words   |  4 Pagesfeeling of excitement is equate to graduating twelve years of school with consecutive perfect attendance. Accomplished. I could not have graduated any happier knowing that my twelve years of hard work, dedication, and respect was being recognized. What perfect attendance means to me: being a role model for other students and showing my perseverance. My perfect attendance means different things in different a spects of my life, but they are all tied together by the same value. Having the key principles ofRead MoreUtopia is defined as a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social1000 Words   |  4 Pageshave been working for as a society in terms of acceptance. Utopia is imaginary, and is said to be a perfect place, but there is no shared idea of perfection, so society keeps striving for a utopian society that isn’t achievable, and as a society we are lazy. Some people describe utopia as a real, achievable place or mindset, and I disagree with that. Utopia is completely imaginary. There is no perfect world in which everybody thinks or feels the same way about everything, because everyone is stronglyRead MoreFamily and Culture1010 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"Family culture is a unique way that a family forms itself in terms of rules, roles, habits, activities, beliefs, and other areas† (â€Å"What is family culture?†, 2002). The perception of family is an aspect of family culture; this includes the interactions within the family and with others. Some of these perceptions can be defined as myths. A myth is a belief about someone or something that is believed to be true, but it is false, made-up, or exaggerated (S. Yu, Lecture). There are both positive andRead MoreLittle Miss Sunshine Film Analysis1455 Words   |  6 PagesAffects The Nation   Ã‚  Ã‚   â€Å"Life is one beauty contest after another.† This quote from Little Miss Sunshine depicts the exact meaning behind the movie.. In the movie, a dysfunctional family helps their daughter, who is not the stereotypical pageant girl, attend a beauty contest, although she was far from a beauty queen.   The movie used visual rhetoric to claim although society has a constant need for perfection and certain cultural stereotypes, it is our imperfections that make us perfect.   Ã‚  Ã‚   First and foremostRead MoreThe Perfect Family Is Not Always The Case For Everyone Essay1045 Words   |  5 Pagesdefinition be given to a phrase that has a different meaning for everyone? When someone thinks of what a perfect family is, chances are it looks like a mother, father, and kids all living together. This ideal scenario is not always the case for everyone. There are many circumstances that people are placed in, which would limit them from being able to fit in this stereotypical connotation. A perfect family is normally defined as a group with two parents and their kids, but for anyone who has grown up missingRead MoreThe Jewelry, By Guy De Maupassant And O Connor913 Words   |  4 PagesLantin sees and experiences change through his life after his wife passes away. In Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to find, the grandmother’s actions cost an entire family’s life. Both stories contains a similar theme but in different ways. D espite their short time frames, Maupassant and O’Connor both reveal a similar didactic medium- nobody is perfect. Maupassant’s short story begins with a description of a young girl who represents the perfect woman. Her gentle nature and manners attractedRead MoreEssay On Irish Insurance1034 Words   |  5 PagesInsurance Company for Life Assurance There are many Insurance Companies in Ireland that offer Life covers. Most people find it difficult choosing a perfect insurer. Before getting into details, let us start off by defining a life assurance. This is a policy that pays your beneficiaries a certain amount in the event you die. It must be within the course of your policy. There are multiple covers a person can choose from. They range from joint covers, single life policies and dual life covers among othersRead MoreWhat Makes You Happy And Don  ¬Ã‚ ¥ T Be Afraid909 Words   |  4 Pageswhat you want and follow the path you want to, for your life. Do what makes you happy and don ´t be afraid, if it is meant to be yours it will be. In this way you might find some troubles and bumps to avoid, but nothing that with a little bit of divine help call â€Å"Faith† cannot fix. These ones were the words a voice in my head told my, when my father left my house. In my childhood, my mom and my dad gave me the most beautiful moments, of my life. Together they taught me to help other ones, to be humble

The American Sign Language Community Essay - 1221 Words

Introduction As part of daily life, we communicate and connect ourselves with certain communities. School, jobs, families, sports, extracurricular activities, and many other communities are just a few we come into contact with. Although these may seem to appear the same, there are specific types of communities such as a discourse community. A discourse community is a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field (Webcourses, N.d, Website) that has a share a common set of goals and attempt to achieve these goals (Swales, 1990). According to researcher and educator, John Swales, there are six characteristics that define whether or not a community is considered a discourse community. Following the criteria Swales states is necessary to be a discourse community, I did an in depth research on the American Sign Language community. Through my study, I was able to meet all six characteristics. Literature Review According to Swales, there are two types of communities: speech and discourse. Swales defines a speech community as a group that shares similar linguistic goals, similar language, or both as â€Å"a community sharing knowledge of the rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech† (Swales, 1990). Swales also identifies that speech communities inherit their members, unlike the discourse community that recruits its members (Swales, 1990). Although these two communities may appear to be the same, to be considered aShow MoreRelatedAmerican Sign Language And Numerical Stories1118 Words   |  5 PagesA-Z stories in American Sign Language and numerical stories as well were introduced around the 1940’s (Bauman). Gilbert Eastman stated that A-Z and numerical stories were most likely created as early as the 1900’s at the Ohio School for the Deaf (Bauman). However, with the advanced technology of the 20th century American Sign Language numerical and A-Z stories may be cherished and videorecorded for future generations (American Sign Language Literature). What are A-Z and numerical stories? A-Z storiesRead MoreThe Effects Of Deafness On Deaf Children1669 Words   |  7 Pagesperspective, collectivism, identity, transnationalism, community, and Deaf Space. American Sign Language is a visual-based language that is the primary language used by Deaf individuals. American Sign Language benefits our society due to the language’s visual nature, which produces a creative expression that is otherwise not experienced in oral languages. Research done by Bauman and Murray has shown that â€Å"Deaf individuals who use American Sign Language have more well-developed peripheral vision, a greaterRead MoreChloe Ziff . Professor Gary Rosenblatt. April 13, 2017.991 Words   |  4 PagesProfessor Gary Rosenblatt April 13, 2017 American Sign Language II Seeing Voices By Oliver Sacks Seeing Voices is a profound novel that was written by famous neurologist,  Oliver Sacks in 1989. Seeing Voices is a book that delves into the history of Sign Language and expresses a genuine meaning behind what language truly is.   Oliver Sacks is an engaging and fascinating writer. Being able to explore outside what he is used to, he can expand his knowledge about language. Being knowledgeable on psychiatryRead MoreAsl And The American Sign Language880 Words   |  4 PagesAmerican Sign Language is the interesting, logical, and fun to learn. ASL is the fourth most-used languages in the United States. ASL is used for hearing people to get the messages across to Deaf people and Deaf community. Deaf people use American Sign Language to communicate with their friends, family or their loved one who is deaf. Now parents are teaching their babies to learn ASL. The American Sign Language gives children, their confidence, and self-esteem in their lives. Deaf Community vs. HardRead MoreD eafness Has Been A Negative Label. Being Deaf Is Considered1528 Words   |  7 Pagesperspective, collectivism, identity, transnationalism, community, and Deaf Space. American Sign Language is a visual-based language that is the primary language used by Deaf individuals. American Sign Language benefits our society due to the language’s visual nature, which produces a creative expression that is otherwise not experienced in oral languages. Research done by Bauman and Murray has shown that â€Å"Deaf individuals who use American Sign Language have more well-developed peripheral vision, a greaterRead MoreDeafness And Other Communication Disorders984 Words   |  4 PagesStates (30 million) ... has hearing loss in both ears† (NIDCD 1). The Deaf community will continually experience marginalization because of mass information, obliviousness, and miscommunication. While this may not sound extensive compared to the whole of the population, it is significant enough to warrant attention. While mass misinformation, obliviousness, and miscommunication are three of the major struggles for the Deaf community, there are multiple problems that arise underneath those categories. ForRead MoreThe Importance Of Deaf Culture1445 Words   |  6 Pagesthe hallmarks of Deaf culture such as â€Å"language, heritage art and history†, I began wondering about how the historical significance of each one impacted the modern choices of Deaf individuals (Holcomb 17). Our textbook Introduction to American Deaf Culture makes references to how important American Sign Language is to define the Deaf community which leaves me wondering how strong the foundation of Deaf culture would be if based on heritage rather than on language. Being Jewish I never learned HebrewRead More The Deaf in Society Essay1411 Words   |  6 PagesThe Deaf Community Imagine if you could never experience the sound of your favorite song on the radio. Or you could never hear the voice of a family member wishing you happy birthday. Since these situations are typical we may take them for granted. But these every day scenarios will never be part of a deaf persons life. One out of thousand infants will be born deaf every year, (Deaf Understanding). Most people dont realize the giant impact of the deaf in our society. Deaf persons canRead MoreCulture : The American Culture1014 Words   |  5 PagesThroughout the world there are many different cultures. Culture can can be based on things such as language, religion, and tradition or customs that we were raised in. Culture allows for groups of people to come together with similar interests and backgrounds to come share one common ground. Culture is everywhere we look and is in our everyday lives. I consider myself to be the American culture. My first language is English and I was born and raised in California. Growing up I was raised in a MethodistRead MoreDeaf Americans: Community and Culture1427 Words   |  6 Pagesthe deaf community and carry on the American Deaf culture. There are approximately 35 million people in the United States who are considered deaf or hard of hearing (Culture and Empowerment in the Deaf Community). The majority of these deaf people struggle in the hearing world until they can find a connection to their deafness. They constantly hunger for language and a sense of truly belonging. Once they are exposed to the deaf community, American Sign Language (ASL) as the deaf language and the closeness

Balance Sheet and Sylvan free essay sample

On January 1 2007, Pillar purchased 60% of the common shares of Sylvan for $4,500. On that date, Sylvan had common shares of $1,250 and retained earnings of $3,000. Fair values were equal to carrying values for all Sylvan’s net assets except inventory, capital assets and notes payable. The fair value of inventory was $60 more than book value, the book value of capital assets was $100 greater than fair value and the Notes payable had a fair value of $150 less than book value. Assume that all shares of Sylvan have the same value and no control premium was paid at the date of acquisition. The Consolidated Financial statements will be prepared using IFRS Entity Method. The financial statements for Pillar and Sylvan for the year ended December 31, 2010 were as follows: Balance Sheets December 31, 2010 $000’s PILLAR SYLVAN Cash $680 $435 Accounts receivable 1,755 1,025 Inventory 2,849 1,790 Capital assets—net 3,976 3,000 Investment in Sylvan 4,500 Total assets $13,760 $6,250 Current liabilities $400 $255 Notes payable 5,800 1,185 Common shares 2,000 1,250 Retained earnings 5,560 3,560 Total $13,760 $6,250 Statements of Income and Retained Earnings Year Ended December 31, 2010 PILLAR SYLVAN Sales and all other Income $4,040 $2,710 Cost of sales 1,600 1,140 2,440 1,570 Amortization (480) (310) Other expenses and losses including taxes (500) (210) Net income 1,460 1,050 Additional information: numbers in $000’s 1. Capital assets are to be amortized over an average remaining useful life of 8 years at January 1, 2007 and the notes payable mature on December 31, 2011. Goodwill impairment losses for 2008 and 2010 were $240 and $300 respectively. Straight line amortization is acceptable for all acquisition differentials. 2. At December 31, 2010, Sylvan’s inventory included goods purchased from Pillar for $760. Total purchases from Pillar in 2010 were $1000 all priced at mark-up’s averaging 25% of Pillar’s cost. 3. On December 31, 2009, the inventories of Pillar contained $500 of merchandise purchased from Sylvan. Sylvan earns a gross margin of 30% on all sales to Pillar. During December 2010, Pillar purchased merchandise from Sylvan for $900 and did not pay for$250 of the purchases by December 31, 2010. 40% of the inventory was resold by Pillar before the year end. 4. On July 1, 2010, Sylvan sold a new tract of Land to Pillar for $170. On December 1, 2009, Sylvan had bought the land for $200. The fair market value of the land at July 1, 2010 was $220. 5. On September 30, 2008, Pillar sold Land to Sylvan for $100. The land had a book value of $60 on the date of the sale. 6. On December 1, 2010, Pillar and Sylvan declared and paid dividends of $150 and $100 respectively. 7. Both companies pay taxes at the rate of 40%. Assume all intercompany Transactions are taxed at 40% REQUIRED: Please use a GREEN BOOKLET 1. Prepare a Consolidated Balance Sheet at December 31, 2010. (22 Marks) 2. Prepare an independent calculation of ENDING Consolidated Retained Earnings at December 31, 2010. (11 marks) 3. Assume Pillar wishes to use the equity method in their General Ledger, calculate Investment income from Sylvan for the year ending December 31, 2010 (10 Marks) NOTE: This question will help you prepare for the technical question on the midterm. Do more than the question asks so that you are prepared for any possible questions you may be asked: Eg. Prepare a Consolidated Income statement and an independent calculation of Consolidated Net Income attributable to Parent company shareholders Calculate the Investment Income under the equity method: Note the only difference between the equity method used when significant Influence is present and the equity method used in the general ledger of the parent when control is present is the treatment of downstream transactions. According to IAS 28.28 all unrealized intercompany profits are eliminated proportionately between investor and investee. Therefore if investor owns 30% of investee, 30% of all unrealized profits/losses are removed. When control exists the parent eliminates upstream proportionately with NCI and downstream unrealized profits are eliminated 100% from parent. Check figures: At December 31, 2010 Goodwill at acquisition ($3,140) $2,600 Consolidated total Assets $17,615.6 Capital assets $6916 Consolidated Retained Earnings $5331.28 NCI Balance Sheet $2924.32 Consolidated Net Income Entity $2052.1 Attributable to Parent shareholders 1754.78 Attributable to NCI $297.32 Investment account Balance sheet :equity method $4,271.28 Investment income equity method 2010 $354.78(removing 100% downstream)

Declaration Of Independance Essay Example For Students

Declaration Of Independance Essay National Archives and Records Administration The Stylistic Artistryof theDeclaration of Independenceby Stephen E. Lucas The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a century ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style. Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration.(1) This essay seeks to illuminate that artistry by probing the discourse microscopicallyat the level of the sentence, phrase, word, and syllable. By approaching the Declaration in this way, we can shed light both on its literary qualities and on its rhetorical power as a work designed to convince a candid world that the American colonies were justified in seeking to establish themselves as an independent nation.(2) The text of the Declaration can b e divided into five sectionsthe introduction, the preamble, the indictment of George III, the denunciation of the British people, and the conclusion. Because space does not permit us to explicate each section in full detail, we shall select features from each that illustrate the stylistic artistry of the Declaration as a whole.(3)The introduction consists of the first paragrapha single, lengthy, periodic sentence: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Natures God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.(4)Taken out of context, this sentence is so general it could be used as the introduction to a declaration by any oppressed people. Seen within its original context, however, it is a model of subtlety, nuance, and implication that works on several levels of meaning and allusion to orient readers toward a favorable view of America and to prepare them for the rest of the Declaration. From its magisterial opening phrase, which sets the American Revolution within the whole course of human events, to its assertion that the Laws of Nature and of Natures God entitle America to a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth, to its quest for sanction from the opinions of mankind, the introduction elevates the quarrel with England from a petty political dispute to a major event in the grand sweep of history. It dignifies the Revolution as a contest of principle and implies that the American cause has a special claim to moral legitimacyall without mentioning England or America by name. Rather than defining the Declarations task as one of persuasion, which would doubtless raise the defenses of readers as well as imply that there was more than one publicly credible view of the British-American conflict, the introduction identifies the purpose of the Declaration as simply to declareto announce publicly in explicit termsthe causes impelling America to leave the British empire. This gives the Declaration, at the outset, an aura of philosophical (in the eighteenth-century sense of the term) objectivity that it will seek to maintain throughout. Rather than presenting one side in a public controversy on which good and decent people could differ, the Declaration purports to do no more than a natural philosopher would do in reporting the causes of any physical event. The issue, it implies, is not one of interpretation but of observation. The most important word in the introduction is necessary, which in the eighteenth century carried strongly deterministic overtones. To say an act was necessary implied that it was impelled by fate or determined by the operation of inextricable natural laws and was beyond the control of human agents. Thus Chamberss Cyclopedia defined necessary as that which cannot but be, or cannot be otherwise. The common notion of necessity and impossibility, Jonathan Edwards wrote in Freedom of the Will, implies something that frustrates endeavor or desire. . . . That is necessary in the original and proper sense of the word, which is, or will be, notwithstanding all supposable opposition. Characterizing the Revolution as necessary suggested that it resulted from constraints that operated with lawlike force throughout the material universe and within the sphere of human action. The Revolution was not merely preferable, defensible, or justifiable. It was as inescapable, as inevitable, as unavoidable within the course of human events as the motions of the tides or the changing of the seasons within the course of natural events.(5)Inves ting the Revolution with connotations of necessity was particularly important because, according to the law of nations, recourse to war was lawful only when it became necessaryonly when amicable negotiation had failed and all other alternatives for settling the differences between two states had been exhausted. Nor was the burden of necessity limited to monarchs and established nations. At the start of the English Civil War in 1642, Parliament defended its recourse to military action against Charles I in a lengthy declaration demonstrating the Necessity to take up Arms. Following this tradition, in July 1775 the Continental Congress issued its own Declaration Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms. When, a year later, Congress decided the colonies could no longer retain their liberty within the British empire, it adhered to long-established rhetorical convention by describing independence as a matter of absolute and inescapable necessity.(6) Indeed, the notio n of necessity was so important that in addition to appearing in the introduction of the Declaration, it was invoked twice more at crucial junctures in the rest of the text and appeared frequently in other congressional papers after July 4, 1776.(7)Labeling the Americans one people and the British another was also laden with implication and performed several important strategic functions within the Declaration. First, because two alien peoples cannot be made one, it reinforced the notion that breaking the political bands with England was a necessary step in the course of human events. America and England were already separated by the more basic fact that they had become two different peoples. The gulf between them was much more than political; it was intellectual, social, moral, cultural and, according to the principles of nature, could no more be repaired, as Thomas Paine said, than one could restore to us the time that is past or give to prostitution its former innocence. To try t o perpetuate a purely political connection would be forced and unnatural, repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things.(8)Second, once it is granted that Americans and Englishmen are two distinct peoples, the conflict between them is less likely to be seen as a civil war. The Continental Congress knew America could not withstand Britains military might without foreign assistance. But they also knew America could not receive assistance as long as the colonies were fighting a civil war as part of the British empire. To help the colonies would constitute interference in Great Britains internal affairs. As Samuel Adams explained, no foreign Power can consistently yield Comfort to Rebels, or enter into any kind of Treaty with these Colonies till they declare themselves free and independent. The crucial factor in opening the way for foreign aid was the act of declaring independence. But by defining America and England as two separate peoples, the Declaration reinforced the percep tion that the conflict was not a civil war, thereby, as Congress noted in its debates on independence, making it more consistent with European delicacy for European powers to treat with us, or even to receive an Ambassador.(9)Third, defining the Americans as a separate people in the introduction eased the task of invoking the right of revolution in the preamble. That right, according to eighteenth-century revolutionary principles, could be invoked only in the most dire of circumstanceswhen resistance was absolutely necessary in order to preserve the nation from slavery, misery, and ruinand then only by the Body of the People. If America and Great Britain were seen as one people, Congress could not justify revolution against the British government for the simple reason that the body of the people (of which the Americans would be only one part) did not support the American cause. For America to move against the government in such circumstances would not be a justifiable act of resista nce but a sort of Sedition, Tumult, and War . . . aiming only at the satisfaction of private Lust, without regard to the public Good. By defining the Americans as a separate people, Congress could more readily satisfy the requirement for invoking the right of revolution that the whole Body of Subjects rise up against the government to rescue themselves from the most violent and illegal oppressions.(10)Like the introduction, the next section of the Declarationusually referred to as the preambleis universal in tone and scope. It contains no explicit reference to the British- American conflict, but outlines a general philosophy of government that makes revolution justifiable, even meritorious: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Like the rest of the Declaration, the preamble is brief, free of verbiage, a model of clear, concise, simple statement.(11) It capsulizes in five sentences202words what it took John Locke thousands of words to explain in his Second Treatise of Government. Each word is chosen and placed to achieve maximum impact. Each clause is indispensable to the progression of thought. Each sentence is carefully constructed internally and in relation to what precedes and follows. In its ability to compress complex ideas into a brief, clear statement, the preamble is a paradigm of eighteenth-century Enlightenment prose style, in which purity, simplicity, directness, precision, and, above all, perspicuity were the highest rhetorical and literary virtues. One word follows another with complete inevitability of sound and meaning. Not one word can be moved or replaced without disrupting the balance and harmony of the entire preamble. The stately and dignified tone of the preamblelike that of the introductioncomes partly from what the eighteenth century called Style Periodique, in which, as Hugh Blair explained in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, the sentences are composed of several members linked together, and hanging upon one another, so that the sense of the whole is not brought out till the close. This, Blair said, is the most pompous, musical, and oratorical manner of composing and gives an air of gravity and dignity to composition. The gravity and dignity of the preamble were reinforced by its conformance with the rhetorical precept that when we aim at dignity or elevation, the sound of each sentence should be made to grow to the last; the longest members of the period, and the fullest and most sonorous words, should be reserved to the conclusion. None of the sentences of the preamble end on a single-syllable word; only one, the second (and least euphonious), ends on a two-syllable word. Of the other four, one ends with a four-syllable word (security), while three end with three-syllable words. Moreover, in each of the three-syllable words the closing syllable is at least a medium- length four-letter syllable, which helps bring the sentences to a full and harmonious close.(12)It is unlikely that any of this was accidental. Thoroughly versed in classical oratory and rhetorical theory as well as in the belletristic treatises of his own time, Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the Declaration, was a diligent student of rhythm, accent, timing, and cadence in discourse. This can be seen most clearly in his Thoughts on English Prosody, a remarkable twenty-eight-page unpublished essay written in Paris during the fall of 1786. Prompted by a discussion on language with the Marquis de Chastellux at Monticello four years earlier, it was a careful inquiry designed to find out the real circumstance which gives harmony to English prose and laws to those who make it. Using roughly the same s ystem of diacritical notation he had employed in 1776 in his reading draft of the Declaration, Jefferson systematically analyzed the patterns of accentuation in a wide range of English writers, including Milton, Pope, Shakespeare, Addison, Gray, and Garth. Although Thoughts on English Prosody deals with poetry, it displays Jeffersons keen sense of the interplay between sound and sense in language. There can be little doubt that, like many accomplished writers, he consciously composed for the ear as well as for the eyea trait that is nowhere better illustrated than in the eloquent cadences of the preamble in the Declaration of Independence.(13)The preamble also has a powerful sense of structural unity. This is achieved partly by the latent chronological progression of thought, in which the reader is moved from the creation of mankind, to the institution of government, to the throwing off of government when it fails to protect the peoples unalienable rights, to the creation of new gov ernment that will better secure the peoples safety and happiness. This dramatic scenario, with its first act implicitly set in the Garden of Eden (where man was created equal), may, for some readers, have contained mythic overtones of humanitys fall from divine grace. At the very least, it gives an almost archetypal quality to the ideas of the preamble and continues the notion, broached in the introduction, that the American Revolution is a major development in the course of human events. Because of their concern with the philosophy of the Declaration, many modern scholars have dealt with the opening sentence of the preamble out of context, as if Jefferson and the Continental Congress intended it to stand alone. Seen in context, however, it is part of a series of five propositions that build upon one another through the first three sentences of the preamble to establish the right of revolution against tyrannical authority:Proposition 1: All men are created equal. Proposition 2: They all men, from proposition 1 areendowed by their creator with certainunalienable rights. Proposition 3: Among these mans unalienable rights,from proposition 2 are life, liberty,and the pursuit of happiness. Proposition 4: To secure these rights mansunalienable rights, from propositions 2and 3 governments are instituted amongmen. Proposition 5: Whenever any form of government becomesdestructive of these ends securingmans unalienable rights, frompropositions 2-4, it is the right ofthe people to alter or to abolish it. When we look at all five propositions, we see they are meant to be read together and have been meticulously written to achieve a specific rhetorical purpose. The first three lead into the fourth, which in turn leads into the fifth. And it is the fifth, proclaiming the right of revolution when a government becomes destructive of the peoples unalienable rights, that is most crucial in the overall argument of the Declaration. The first four propositions ar e merely preliminary steps designed to give philosophical grounding to the fifth. At first glance, these propositions appear to comprise what was known in the eighteenth century as a soritesa Way of Argument in which a great Number of Propositions are so linked together, that the Predicate of one becomes continually the Subject of the next following, until at last a Conclusion is formed by bringing together the Subject of the First Proposition and the Predicate of the last. In his Elements of Logick, William Duncan provided the following example of a sorites:God is omnipotent. An omnipotent Being can do every thing possible. He that can do every thing possible, can do whateverinvolves not a Contradiction. Therefore God can do whatever involves not aContradiction.(14)Although the section of the preamble we have been considering is not a sorites (because it does not bring together the subject of the first proposition and the predicate of the last), its propositions are written in such a way as to take on the appearance of a logical demonstration. They are so tightly interwoven linguistically that they seem to make up a sequence in which the final propositionasserting the right of revolutionis logically derived from the first four propositions. This is accomplished partly by the mimicry of the form of a sorites and partly by the sheer number of propositions, the accumulation of which is reinforced by the slow, deliberate pace of the text and by the use of that to introduce each proposition. There is also a steplike progression from proposition to proposition, a progression that is accentuated by the skillful use of demonstrative pronouns to make each succeeding proposition appear to be a n inevitable consequence of the preceding proposition. Although the preamble is the best known part of the Declaration today, it attracted considerably less attention in its own time. For most eighteenth-century readers, it was an unobjectionable statement of commonplace political principles. As Jefferson explained years later, the purpose of the Declaration was not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.(15)Far from being a weakness of the preamble, the lack of new ideas was perhaps its greatest strength. If one overlooks the introductory first paragraph, the Declaration as a whole is structured along the lines of a deductive argument that can easily be put in syllogistic form: Major premise: When government deliberately seeks to reducethe people under absol ute despotism, thepeople have a right, indeed a duty, to alteror abolish that form of government and tocreate new guards for their future security. Minor premise: The government of Great Britain hasdeliberately sought to reduce the Americanpeople under absolute despotism. Conclusion: Therefore the American people have a right,indeed a duty, to abolish their present formof government and to create new guards fortheir future security. As the major premise in this argument, the preamble allowed Jefferson and the Congress to reason from self-evident principles of government accepted by almost all eighteenth-century readers of the Declaration.(16)The key premise, however, was the minor premise. Since virtually everyone agreed the people had a right to overthrow a tyrannical ruler when all other remedies had failed, the crucial question in July 1776 was whether the necessary conditions for revolution existed in the colonies. Congress answered this question with a sustained attack on George III, an attack that makes up almost exactly two-thirds of the text. The indictment of George III begins with a transitional sentence immediately following the preamble: Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. Legalize drugs EssayWhat marks Jeffersons happy talent for composition in this case is the coupling of our sacred Honor with our Lives and our Fortunes to create the eloquent trilogy that closes the Declaration. The concept of honor (and its cognates fame and glory) exerted a powerful hold on the eighteenth-century mind. Writers of all kindsphilosophers, preachers, politicians, playwrights, poetsrepeatedly speculated about the sources of honor and how to achieve it. Virtually every educated man in England or America was schooled in the classical maxim, What is left when honor is lost? Or as Joseph Addison wrote in his Cato, whose sentiments were widely admired throughout the eighteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic: Better to die ten thousand deaths/Than wound my honour. The cult of honor was so strong that in English judicial proceedings a peer of the realm did not answer to bills in chancery or give a verdict upon oath, like an ordinary juryman, but upon his honor.(28)By pledging our sacred Honor in support of the Declaration, Congress made a particularly solemn vow. The pledge also carried a latent message that the revolutionaries, contrary to the claims of their detractors, were men of honor whose motives and actions could not only withstand the closest scrutiny by contemporary persons of quality and merit but would also deserve the approbation of posterity. If the Revolution succeeded, its leaders stood to achieve lasting honor as what Francis Bacon called Liberatores or Salvatores men who compound the long Miseries of Civil Wars, or deliver their Countries from Servitude of Strangers or Tyrants. Historical examples included Augustus Caesar, Henry VII of England, and Henry IV of France. On Bacons five-point scale of supreme honor, such heroes ranked below only Conditores Imperiorum, Founders of States and Commonwealths, such as Romulus, Caesar, and Ottoman, and Lawgivers such as Solon, Lycurgus, and Justinian, also called Second Founders, or Perp etui Principes, because they Govern by their Ordinances after they are gone. Seen in this way, our sacred Honor lifts the motives of Congress above the more immediate concerns of our Lives and our Fortunes and places the revolutionaries in the footsteps of historys most honorable figures. As a result it also unifies the whole text by subtly playing out the notion that the Revolution is a major turn in the broad course of human events.(29)At the same time, the final sentence completes a crucial metamorphosis in the text. Although the Declaration begins in an impersonal, even philosophical voice, it gradually becomes a kind of drama, with its tensions expressed more and more in personal terms. This transformation begins with the appearance of the villain, the present King of Great Britain, who dominates the stage through the first nine grievances, all of which note what He has done without identifying the victim of his evil deeds. Beginning with grievance 10 the king is joined on stag e by the American colonists, who are identified as the victim by some form of first person plural reference: The king has sent swarms of officers to harass our people, has quartered armed troops among us, has imposed taxes on us without our consent, has taken away our charters, abolished our most valuable laws, and altered the Forms of our Governments. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, . . . destroyed the lives of our people, and excited domestic insurrections amongst us. The word our is used twenty-six times from its first appearance in grievance 10 through the last sentence of the Declaration, while us occurs eleven times from its first appearance in grievance 11 through the rest of the grievances.(30)Throughout the grievances action is instigated by the king, as the colonists passively accept blow after blow without wavering in their loyalty. His villainy complete, George III leaves the stage and it is occupied next by the colonists and their British brethren. The heavy use of personal pronouns continues, but by now the colonists have become the instigators of action as they actively seek redress of their grievances. This is marked by a shift in idiom from He has to We have: We have petitioned for redress . . . , We have reminded them . . . , We have appealed to their . . . , and We have conjured them. But they have been deaf to all pleas, so We must . . . hold them as enemies. By the conclusion, only the colonists remain on stage to pronounce their dramatic closing lines: We . . . solemnly publish and declare . . . And to support this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. The persistent use of he and them, us and our, we and they personalizes the British-American conflict and transfigures it from a complex struggle of multifarious origins and diverse motives to a simple moral drama in which a patiently suffering people courageously defend their liberty against a cruel and v icious tyrant. It also reduces the psychic distance between the reader and the text and coaxes the reader into seeing the dispute with Great Britain through the eyes of the revolutionaries. As the drama of the Declaration unfolds, the reader is increasingly solicited to identify with Congress and the good People of these Colonies, to share their sense of victimage, to participate vicariously in their struggle, and ultimately to act with them in their heroic quest for freedom. In this respect, as in others, the Declaration is a work of consummate artistry. From its eloquent introduction to its aphoristic maxims of government, to its relentless accumulation of charges against George III, to its elegiac denunciation of the British people, to its heroic closing sentence, it sustains an almost perfect synthesis of style, form, and content. Its solemn and dignified tone, its graceful and unhurried cadence, its symmetry, energy, and confidence, its combination of logical structure and dram atic appeal, its adroit use of nuance and implication all contribute to its rhetorical power. And all help to explain why the Declaration remains one of the handful of American political documents that, in addition to meeting the immediate needs of the moment, continues to enjoy a lustrous literary reputation. NOTESc 1989 by Stephen E. LucasStephen E. Lucas is professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. The present essay is derived from a more comprehensive study, Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document, in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism (1989). (1) Moses Coit Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution (1897), vol. 1, p. 520. The best known study of the style of the Declaration is Carl Beckers The Literary Qualities of the Declaration, in his The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922), pp. 194-223. Useful also are Robert Ginsberg, The Declaration as Rhetoric, in Robert Ginsberg, ed., A Casebook on the Declaration of Independence (1967), pp. 219-244; Edwin Gittleman, Jeffersons Slave Narrative: The Declaration of Independence as a Literary Text, Early American Literature 8 (1974): 239-256; and James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (1984), 231 240. Although most books on the Declaration contain a chapter on the style of the document, those chapters are typically historical accounts of the evolution of the text from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson through its approval by the Continental Congress or philosophical speculations about the meaning of its famous passages. (2) As Garry Wills demonstrates in Inventing America: Jeffersons Declaration of Independence (1978), there are two Declarations of Independence the version drafted by Thomas Jefferson and that revised and adopted on July 4, 1776, by the Continental Congress sitting as a committee of the whole. Altogether Congress deleted 630 words from Jeffersons draft and added 146, producing a final text of 1,322 words (excluding the title). Although Jefferson complained that Congress mangled his manuscript and altered it much for the worse, the judgment of posterity, stated well by Becker, is that Congress left the Declaration better than it found it (Declaration of Independence, p. 209). In any event, for better or worse, it was Congresss text that presented Americas case to the world, and it is that text with which we are concerned in this essay. (3) Nothing in this essay should be interpreted to mean that a firm line can be drawn between style and substance in the Declaration or in any other wo rk of political or literary discourse. As Peter Gay has noted, style is form and content woven into the texture of every art and craft. . . . Apart from a few mechanical tricks of rhetoric, manner is indissolubly linked to matter; style shapes and is in turn shaped by, substance (Style in History 1974, p. 3). (4) All quotations from the Declaration follow the text as presented in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950 ), vol. 1, pp. 429-432. (5) Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopedia: Or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728), vol. 2, p. 621; Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey (1957), p. 149. (6) Declaration of the Lords and Commons to Justify Their Taking Up Arms, August 1642, in John Rushworth, ed., Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, Weighty Matters in Law, Remarkable Proceedings in Five Parliaments (1680-1722), vol. 4, pp. 761-768; Declaration of the Continental Congress Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms, July 1775, in James H. Hutson, ed., A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: Congressional State Papers, 1774-1776 (1975), pp. 89-98. The importance of necessity as a justification for war among nations is evident in the many declarations of war issued by European monarchs throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is discussed in Tavers Twiss, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Political Communities (1863), pp. 54-55. (7) The first additional invocation of the doctrine of necessity in the Declaration comes immediately after the preamble, when Congress states, Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of Government. The second is at the end of the penultimate section, in which Congress ends its denunciation of the British people by announcing, We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.(8) Thomas Paine, Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America . . . (1776), pp. 41, 43. (9) Samuel Adams to Joseph Hawley, Apr. 15, 1776, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774 1789, ed. Paul H. Smith (1976 ), vol. 3, p. 528; Thomas Jefferson, Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, Jefferson Papers 1: 312. (10) Jonathan Mayhew, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Nonresistance to the Higher Powers . . . (1750), p. 45; John, Lord Somers, The Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations, Concerning the Rights, Power and Prerogative of Kings, and the Rights, Privileges and Properties of the People (1710), par. 186; Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1693), p. 181; John Hoadly, ed., The Works of Benjamin Hoadly (1773), vol. 2, p. 36; Pacificus, Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 14, 1774. (11) Becker, Declaration of Independence, p. 201. (12) Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), vol. 1, pp. 206-207, 259. (13) Thoughts on English Prosody was enclosed in an undated letter of ca. October 1786 to the Marquis de Chastellux. The letter is printed in Jefferson Papers 10: 498; the draft of Jeffersons essay, which has not been printed, is with the letter to Chastellux in the Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Julian P. Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 100 (1976): 455-462, discusses Thoughts on English Prosody and its relation to Jeffersons reading text of the Declaration. Given the changes made by Congress in some sections of the Declaration, it should be noted that the style of the preamble is distinctly Jeffersonian and was approved by Congress with only two minor changes in wording from Jeffersons fair copy as reported by the Committee of Five. (14) William Duncan, The Elements of Logick (1748), p. 242. See also Isaac Watts, Logick: or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth, 8th ed. (1745), p. 304; Henry Aldrich, A Compendium of Logic, 3d ed. (1790), p. 23. (15) Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 5, 1825, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (1892-1899), vol. 10, p. 343. (16) Wilbur Samuel Howell, The Declaration of Independence and Eighteenth-Century Logic, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser. 18 (1961): 463-484, claims Jefferson consciously structured the Declaration as a syllogism with a self-evident major premise to fit the standards for scientific proof advanced in William Duncans Elements of Logick, a leading logical treatise of the eighteenth century. As I argue in a forthcoming essay, however, there is no hard evidence to connect Duncans book with the Declaration. Jefferson may have read Elements of Logick while he was a student at the College of William and Mary, but we are not certain that he did. He owned a copy of it, but we cannot establish whether the edition he owned was purchased before or after 1776. We cannot even say with complete confidence that Jefferson inserted the words self-evident in the Declaration; if he did, it was only as an afterthought in the process of polishing his original draft. Moreover, upon close examination it b ecomes clear that the Declaration does not fit the method of scientific reasoning recommended in Duncans Logick. Its self- evident truths are not self-evident in the rigorous technical sense used by Duncan; it does not provide the definitions of terms that Duncan regards as the crucial first step in syllogistic demonstration; and it does not follow Duncans injunction that both the minor premise and the major premise must be self-evident if a conclusion is to be demonstrated in a single act of reasoning. The syllogism had been part of the intellectual baggage of Western civilization for two thousand years, and the notion of self-evident truth was central to eighteenth-century philosophy. Jefferson could readily have used both without turning to Duncans Logick for instruction. (17) Declaration in John Cowell, Nomothetes. The Interpreter, Concerning the Genuine Signification of Such Obscure Words and Terms Used Either in the Common or Statute Laws of This Realm . . . (1684). For the requirements of legal declarations in various kinds of civil suits during the eighteenth century, see William Selwyn, An Abridgement of the Law of Nisi Prius, 4th ed. (1817). (18) Fact in Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words are Deduced from Their Origins and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers (1755). (19) Oxford English Dictionary (1933), vol. 4, pp. 11-12; Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1771), vol. 4, p. 39; The Annual Register, Or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1772 (1773), p. 57. (20) John Lind, Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress . . . , 5th ed. (1776), p. 123. Because the grievances are not numbered in the Declaration, there has been disagreement over how many there are and how they should be numbered. I have followed Sidney George Fisher, The Twenty-Eight Charges against the King in the Declaration of Independence, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 31 (1907): 257-303. An alternative numbering system is used by Wills, Inventing America, pp. 68-75. (21) Samuel Adams to John Pitts, ca. July 9, 1776, Letters of Delegates 4: 417. The sole congressional paper before the Declaration of Independence to list grievances topically was the 1774 Bill of Rights (Hutson, Decent Respect, pp. 49-57). (22) Thomas Hutchinson, Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia . . . (1776), p. 16; Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), p. 601; Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1594 1596), vol. 5, sec. 67, p. 178. (23) Between 1764 and 1766 England added twenty-five comptrollers, four surveyors general, and one plantation clerk to its customs service in America. It added seventeen more officials in 1767 with the creation of a Board of Customs Commissioners to reside in Boston. These appointments may also have generated a mild ripple effect, resulting in the hiring of a few lesser employees to help with office chores and customs searches, but there is no way to know, since the records are now lost. See Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660 1775 (1967), pp. 186-187, 220-221. (24) Howard Mumford Jones, The Declaration of Independence: A Critique, in The Declaration of Independence: Two Essays (1976), p. 7; sentence against Richard III in Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et petitiones placita in Parliamento (1783 1832), vol. 6, p. 276. (25) Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, Oct. 12, 1786, Jefferson Papers 10: 451; John Adams to Benjamin Hichborn, May 29, 1776, Letters of Delegates 4: 96; Paine, Common Sense, pp. 40-42. (26) See note 20 for bibliographic information on Linds pamphlet. (27) Becker, Declaration of Independence, p. 197. (28) For the importance of fame and honor to the revolutionaries, see Douglass Adair, Fame and the Founding Fathers, in Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Trevor Colbourn (1974), pp. 3-26; Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (1984), pp. 109 148; Bruce Miroff, John Adams: Merit, Fame, and Political Leadership, Journal of Politics 48 (1986): 116-132. The quotation about Jeffersons happy talent for composition is from John Adams to Timothy Pickering, Aug. 6, 1822, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (1850), vol. 2, p. 511. The statement about peers of the realm is from Blackstone, Commentaries 1: 40 (29) Francis Bacon, The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall . . . (1625), pp. 313-314. See Adair, Fame and the Founding Fathers, pp. 114-115, for the importance of Bacons essay on honor among the revolutionaries. (30) Cf. Ginsberg, The Declaration as Rhetoric, p. 228. Declaration Page| Exhibit Hall National Archives and Records AdministrationURL: http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/decstyle.htmlemailprotectedLast updated: January 13, 1997