Essay 1 Elephant

Not surprisingly, elephants are known for being more emotional and empathetic animals than the rest. According the three articles, “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk”, “Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk in a Cooperative Task”, and “Elephants Console Each Other” elephants understand when they need each other’s assistance. All two authors describe the studies of elephant behavior differently, but with a similar purpose.

Human beings have full control over their identities after they have received knowledge and have become shaped from external stimuli. These stimuli include the teaching process of humans which comes through tradition, schooling, and the actions of other humans and the influence of the organisms around them. Andrew Solomon, through “Son,” was able to use his experience of growing up and labeling himself as a gay dyslexic to show how his environment and knowledge had shaped his identity and how it was viewed by others with different identities. In “An Elephant Crackup,” Charles Siebert was able to explain how the other organisms or humans are able to form new identities for elephants over time by shaping them a new environment and having the elephants process it. In “Mind’s Eye,” Oliver Sacks had different case studies of blindness from different people and was able to show how each one experienced their blindness help shape and express their individual identities. The stimuli that becomes processed by a person in the situations, accounts, and studies of these works assist in the role of explaining the formulation of an identity.

Description: August is Marlena’s husband and the head animal trainer. He is alternately charming and brutal, both to the humans and animals aboard the Benzini Brothers train. Later in the book, it is explained that he is a paranoid schizophrenic.

The story “Shooting an Elephant” is told by an ongoing and first person narrator, who was committed to events he was faced with and obtained insight and wisdom from these adventures even though he struggled internally and externally.

George Orwell, author of, "Shooting an Elephant" reveals his inner conflicts to the audience by offering in depth description, using intensity, and symbolism through the act of shooting the elephant. His narration helps him do so by giving descriptive scenarios in the story. Orwell's narration can also be used to examine the role of India and Great Britain at the story's time in history. The narration then allows Orwell to use symbolism in place of description. Orwell uses narration to help explain his inner conflicts and to what is happening in each setting of the story.

If you’re not paying attention, the mind can be a tricky labyrinth. The less you know about it, the more inexplicable and frightening it becomes. For example, why do seemingly benign elephants wreak havoc upon villages? In “An Elephant Crackup,” Charles Siebert explores the aberrant nature of these elephants and correlates them to their traumatizing upbringing, deprived of community and kinship. The biochemistry of the human mind, analyzed in “Love2.0” by Barbara Frederickson, serves as a worthy addendum to Siebert’s conjecture. “Love2.0” explains that the brain, hormones, and nerves work in unison to build emotional fortitude, stimulate oneself, and express positivity resonance. Siebert’s ideas of elephant culture and trans-species psyche can put Frederickson’s theory of emotions into practice. The absence of certain hormones within elephants, provided their fragmented community, can explain their volatile outbreaks. Alternatively, the reinstitution of human parental roles into elephant culture can help reconstruct their broken emotional states of elephants and rebuild their resilience; this healing process can also extend to humans.

Elephants have been victims of not just the incessant poaching but also of the civil wars; ultimately making them to fight back. The killing case have gone over the roof, as the “singular perversity” (Siebert 353) of the attacks. In India, “nearly one thousand people have been killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004” (Siebert 353). Several frequent attacks were recorded in Africa and other villages where the denizens were forced to evacuate their houses. ‘nearly one thousand’ which accentuates the gravity of the situation in 4 years had gained a lot of attention from the elephants researchers. Seibert’s prime third perspective, Gay Bradshaw, Oregon State psychologist, claims that that “everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed” (Siebert 353). The choice of diction ‘dramatically’ indicates that elephants are not being violent towards human beings but they are also doing it intentionally. Dramatic behavior changes over the years are now being explained in the elephants. “Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma” (Siebert 354), due to “decades of poaching and habitat loss” (Siebert 354). Elephants are becoming more destructive and Bradshaw looked into combining “traditional research into elephant behavior with insights about trauma drawn from

Destiny; that is where our story begins. In the novels, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, and Cannery Row we see different destinies and dreams, but they all have the same goal, to reach them. It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error. Nature has not given to everyone a talent for the purpose; among those to whom such a talent is given, there is often a want of disposition or of courage to do it. The saying “you control your own destiny” applies to the everyday life of us all. The way you act will determine who you are as a person and what you chose to bring out of life. How you handle the lessons that life thrusts upon you will be completely up to you to decide. Equally important, the decisions

In life, you base a lot of your decisions on what others will think about you. Just like in the essay from George Orwell “Shooting an Elephant” he makes a decision off of what people will think about him. In the essay Orwell is faced with a decision, to kill an elephant after a rampage through his town, or to let him live. After being peer pressured by the Burman people Orwell shot and killed the elephant. Even though he really did not want too. I can think of three times peer pressure got the best of me, once when I got caught stealing at Walmart, another when I got suspended from middle school, and lastly when I lost my best friend. All of these events were from peer pressure, keep reading to see what happened.

Collectively, people are weak. Humans constantly follow what is considered to be a dominant force or trend. No individual can survive separate from the group; therefore, no one strays from what is considered popular. People are biologically programmed to have this stick-with-the-herd mindset. This attribute is encoded into all humans and aids them in survival, which is why people try not to deviate from the group.

One of life’s greatest mysteries is how much of it can be controlled. At times it may seem like there is a set path to follow and everyone is under the control of a mysterious being or force. It is very common to feel a calling towards a certain career path, lifestyle, or other option. Other occasions may seem more controlled. After all, humans have the capacity to think carefully and choose the next step wisely. In addition, the question of whether fate and destiny exist is also frequently asked. Fate is what a person will do, and they cannot change it. Regardless of any choices that may lead someone astray, they will always be under the control of fate. Destiny, although similar to fate, is much different. Destiny describes what a person

involving an elephant. The fate of the elephant lies in his hands. Only he can

The elephant, in this case, represent imperialism. Orwell, being in the middle of imperialism and the Burmese people, did not want to destroy imperialism in the first place even though he does not like the way it treated the innocent Burmese people. However, seeing the elephant destroying Burmese’s homes and lives, he finally realized what imperialism had done to the people of Burma. The Indian man who died represent the fact that Burmese people are weak against the British; they are poor and have neither strength nor “the gut to raise a riot” (1) against imperialism regardless of how much they hated it. Even though he did not kill imperialism like the way he did to the elephant, he believes that it will be destroy one day for the evil thing that they had done. As illustrated by Orwell,

To start with, the narrative in “The Elephant in the Village of the Blind” is very simple; the main

The world is gone all people have been wiped the animals not to be seen.In the darkness arrives , but being only one mammal left.In Awe it is the ELEPHANT.The ground rumbles and crashes the loudness of them Elephants.The mighty majestic of these beasts grazing in the sunlight of the morning so beautiful makes you want to cry with joy. They all huddle at the waterspout at the afternoon when the sun shines bright.The little baby’s frolicking everywhere causing great distress.All in all it is such a beautiful day.