Yeats' on Change and Stability, and How They Interconnect, Using When You Are Old, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild ...

     Some say that people never change. They may be right, but no one really knows. What people do know is that every living person has one thing in common, something that will never change. Everyone will die, there’s no way around it. Every “new” and “old” generation will succumb to the same ghastly fate. The differences in the “old” generation and “new” generation sometimes collide in life. The contrast between generations in James Joyce’s “The Dead” is similar to the contrast in the generations today. The “baby boomer” generation is the old fashioned generation preoccupied with hospitality and tradition, where as, “generation x” is the new generation, preoccupied with knowledge and intellect.

Edmund Burke once said “Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.” Unfortunately, it seems that many people who have impacted the world have had a bad history teacher, as history continues to repeat itself to this day. One of the most prime examples of this is seen in the Middle East; where the Palestinian people are fighting against the Israelis over territory in which they both believe belongs to them. It has been a dispute which has resulted in loss of homes, loss of life and loss of money. However, this is nothing new. Eugene O’Neill’s statement, “There is no present and no future, only the past happening over and over again, now” applies strongly to the situation of the past 70 years in the

The use of line breaks and symbolism in the two poems “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins and “Outdistanced” by Larry Rubin punctuate the shared theme that a willful lack of self-awareness can quickly lead to a greater societal ignorance of what should shape humanity.

It has been said that history is bound to repeat itself, some might say it is because the human mind thinks alike in more ways than one. This is proven in many ways including the properties and function processes of a variety of communities. Take a look at today’s society, people are ranked on social class based upon their source of income and how they are presented. They are continuously told the rule book for life by those who hold high authority and we feed off of money. We are willing to throw away our principles we vowed to stand by to earn another dime to our salary. 4,000 years ago these same problems arose in some of the earliest civilizations known to man. In Mesopotamia civilians had to deal

It has become blatantly obvious that history repeats itself similar events reoccur and have nearly identical outcomes. The rise and fall of civilization comes as the ocean, rising to its highest point and then falling down to its knees but only to find itself climbing back up again. The book Anthem shows the extent a government and its citizens are willing to go to preserve the idea of a perfect society. But with this great society come sacrifices and challenges the people must find ways to accept, examples are, having complete trust in authority figures, the idea that the group as a whole is more important, and they must accept that there is only one way to achieve this “perfect” society. Through fear and propaganda, the citizens begin to have a closed mind and only see what they are told to see and question nothing.

Subject: Reflects how these collapse of historical societies features manifest themselves in American society to gain better idea of what our future holds.

Have you ever heard the saying “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” and “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”? These quotes come from George Santayana and George Bernard Shaw, these men tell how it’s common for people to repeat past mistakes. However, if people learn to look back and understand history, it’s harder to replicate disastrous actions. History is full of wars and brutish words, yet the source of all these problems come from a single issue: power. Leaders seek power in every crevice they can find. In the book, “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, Napoleon is a cruel dictator who successfully takes over a farm after running off its competitors. Major, an old pig, told the farm of a new way of living. However, after he died, Napoleon steadily took over the farm. Therefore, taking the time to understand history’s past and mistakes can be an effective weapon against repeating the same mistakes. Failure to learn outcomes in a repetition of history, as Napoleon proves, as shown in today’s life, learning from history helps resolve futures issues, and only suffering comes from problematic actions of the past.

Not even memories alive save those that history books create” (Hughes) show that when a community is invaded and new customs become normal, the old traditions become unknown history. While in Things Fall Apart some people engaged in the new customs while others disregarded it and this resulted in a divide and eventually the downfall of the community. Although both texts portray individual viewpoints they both display how a community can maintain tradition for so long until conflict from the outside damages it from within.

William James, a famous American philosopher, once stated, “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives”. This quotation effectively illustrates how change in one’s attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs can alter the environment in which one lives. This concept is clearly demonstrated throughout the novel Things Fall Apart, authored by Chinua Achebe, by establishing a connection through the development of its characters and the change in traditional African tribal villages seen in the Nineteenth Century. It will be established how various characters demonstrated by the author throughout the novel exemplify how change

     When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.

Those nations have failed because they fall into a cycle that has been repeated over and over, yet man refused to take heed. In the book The Fourth Turning,William Strauss and Niel Howe discovered that nations go through four cycles the first one compromising of an era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, a second one of spiritual upheaval, the third era is one of strengthening

In all cultures it is easy to see the effects of change. Change can be a revolution, a new form of thought, or a new idea surfacing. No matter what these changes are, they often emerge from the minority. In several cases this results an uprising, turning the social system on end. Simple examples of this type of change can be seen in the French or American revolutions, and even in the hippie movement of the 1960's. These changes depict how an idea shared only by a select few can snowball into the mindset of thousands. Within A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People, Henrick Ibsen shows his standpoint on the benefits of social change, and

The Medieval Ages that descended upon the Europeans following the deconstruction and devolution of the formerly grand institutions of the Roman Empire left a world darkened to the eyes of history. The world lost touch with simple concepts to a modern history student of writing, economy, culture, and government—the mainstay of that which we cannot see ourselves without—civilization. What was left of Europe was a state of chaos. In all other periods of human history I have studied there were similarities among them from which I could draw conclusions upon the condition of the respective times. The Text helped to give order to the progression of European history from the ancient to the modern drawing

6) You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but the end is not yet.

At one time or another, every person has experienced the beauty of summer. In this time of the year, nature is full of life, the weather is at its finest, and the paramount joys of life can be experienced to their fullest. Then the fall comes, the trees turn lovely shades of red and yellow, and the wind offers a nice chill breeze for relief. Unfortunately, seasons change and the beauty that people once experienced vanishes. People focusing only on the material and petty aspects of life, rather than the beauty around them, will let life pass them, missing out on the true wonders of the world. In his poem “To Autumn,” John Keats utilizes imagery to express the importance of indulging in the beauties of nature, while alive, because humans are mortal beings bound by the limits of time.