Living Organ Donation Inspired Explorations In Normative Ethics Philosophy Essay

Living Organ Donation Inspired Explorations In Normative Ethics Philosophy Essay Ever since the first living adult organ transplantation in 1954, organ donation continues to advance as a form of medical intervention (Pence, 2007). With its ongoing popularity, living adult organ donation inspires a variety of debates in normative ethics circles. In this essay, I am taking the opportunity to advocate for Virtue Ethics as the most ethically defensible approach to living adult organ donation. Virtue Ethics, unlike Utilitarianism or Deontology, promote the highest degree of personal enlightenment and, as such, ensure the highest calibre of our moral choice through maximized consistency, personal accountability, and overall highest harmony of our actions as they relate to key players in living adult organ donation (donor, recipient, doctors and society). To complete my perspective, I will reclaim the widely-accepted drawback of Virtue Ethics regarding its lack of systemized action rules (i.e. codifiability) by proposing realistic societal long-term transformations, as governed by Virtue Ethics, which would make codifiability achievable. Living adult organ donation is an act of providing of a vital organ to an organ recipient by an organ donor for organ transplantation for the immediate purposes of either improving the quality of life of a recipient, the quality of life of both donor and recipient or saving recipients life (Pence, 2007). Living adult organ donation differs from cadaveric organ donation because the donor is alive, while in cadaveric organ donation the donor is brain-dead (Pence, 2007). According to the provincial organ donation agency, Trillium Gift of Life Network, there are 1487 people on waiting list for organ donation this year (Trillium Gift of Life Network, 2010). Organs that can be transplanted are liver, heart, kidney, lung, pancreas and small bowels (Trillium Gift of Life Network, 2010). The reality of the situation is that some of these people will not find a suitable donor and their health will deteriorate or they may die. In order to truly explore the ethical journey of organ donation, I will put myself in the shoes of a potential organ donor and take a walk in the halls of Deontology, Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics schools. Why, when and to whom would I donate my organ so that my decision is morally right for me, for the recipient, for the doctors and for society? There is nobody that I know requiring an organ at this moment. Although I could enlist myself as a living organ donor and potentially save another human fellow, currently I choose not to. If my loved one or somebody I know and respect needed an organ right now, I would, however, donate it without hesitation. As I walk in an organ-donors shoes, I enter the Deontology school and I see a representative Deontological philosopher, Kant, sitting at his work desk, surrounded by piles and piles of paper. He greets me and at the same time approves of my present choice of not being enlisted in an organ donors list. According to Kant and Deontology theory, one should never treat oneself as an object or means only, but always as an end (Pence, 2007). He goes on to share his view that if we voluntarily choose to potentially endanger our bodies by taking out organs for organ donation purposes, we are not cultivating humanity in that case because to be human means protecting your bodys integrity (Pence, 2007). Kant considers my present choice of not being enlisted as an organ donor morally right because I am not physically harming myself for the benefit of another human being, i.e. I treat myself as an end, not as means. Deontologians believe that our decisions must come from a rational and autonomous perspective of a free will in order to be morally right (Pence, 2007). Furthermore, it is not rational to harm yourself and it is always wrong to potentially harm yourself for the benefit of another human being. The final view of wrongness of organ donation is universalizable for everyone and in every situation and it would be my duty to follow such set of rules (Pence, 1998). Thus, according to Kants rationale, it is always morally wrong to engage in organ donation. I disagree with Kant about what constitutes a free will and what is my moral duty. According to my upbringing, system of values and my life experiences, free will, for me, is not only consisting of a rational component, but also emotional component. If my brother needed an organ and I was a match, I would donate it. If I act according to Kant and not donate my organ to my loved one, my action would be morally wrong for me, the recipient, doctors and the society. Firstly, the motivation behind my organ donation is the unconditional love I feel for my brother. I consult the Virtue Ethics School and in their teachings I find that unconditional love is actually a trait in the character, and if made habitual, it would constitute a virtue because unconditional love promotes good actions (Pence, 2007). By giving my brother my organ, he would know even more about my unconditional love for him and we would both strengthen even further our individual emotional foundations. Second, my intellect is satisfied by my organ donation to my brother because I know that, if the operation goes well, his health will improve and I wouldnt suffer any major side-effects that require hospitalization. Because both my brother and I would be healthier and happier, I would not be anxious or depressed about his state. This wo uld mean that I would not be a burden to the healthcare system because I would have no need to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist, for I would be happy. As both my brother and I are healthy and happy, each of us could further contribute to society by being productively employed. Our positive attitude due to the happiness we feel could be positively reflected further in our other relationships, thus contributing to the overall harmonious developments stemming from an organ donation to a loved one. According to Virtue Ethicists, my action of organ donation would be morally right because I have displayed character virtues such as courage and sincerity of my motivation. Most importantly for Virtue Ethicists, my actions are in alignment with my system of values and my life experience, thus I have exercised my moral wisdom and reach a sought-after happiness state (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003). I continue my exploration of normative ethics by entering the hallways of Utilitarianism school. According to Utilitarianism, the action is morally right if its consequences produce the greatest amount of goodness or the smallest amount of negative consequences (Pence, 2007). Goodness can be measured in various ways and, depending on the reference parameters, goodness can be measured in emotional, psychological, monetary or any other means as goodness. Utilitarianism school has two divisions rule utilitarianism and act utilitarianism (Pence, 2007). According to rule utilitarianism, what makes an act right is following general moral rules that produce the greatest good for the greatest number. On the other hand, act utilitarianism wishes to reserve the right to judge each unique case and then decide which action creates the greatest good. Although act utilitarianists agree that general rules commonly should be followed, they reserve the right to break them. Rules are broken if extrao rdinary circumstances arise, where a greater good for a greater number of people would be created by doing so (Pence, 2007). In my hypothetical case of donating an organ to my beloved brother, act utilitarianism would approve of such an action because it would benefit me, my brother, the healthcare and the society, as previously stated. But does general utilitarianism produce consistent moral actions that are in harmony with our personal value system, irrespective of external benefits to the society? To illustrate that utilitarianism does not encompass the entire spectrum of human decision-making requirements, consider the scenario where I have an opportunity to save three people by donating three of my organs (liver, kidney and a lung lobe), versus saving my brother by donating only one organ my heart. If I choose to donate to these three people, I would, numerically speaking, increase the overall good consequences in the world by allowing three people to live at the cost of my emotional turmoil on my death bed, following the surgery, for not saving my brother. More people would be happy than not, if we take into account that families of three recipients outnumber my family. But, in my opinion and in the opinion of Virtue Ethicists, this action would not be morally justified as I would have betrayed my emotional v irtues framework when I decided not to save my brother. When deciding whether the action is morally right, Virtue Ethics do not hide under a cloak of incomplete moral rules, such as Deontological evasion of an emotional component during such an act. By calling upon the complete enlightenment of ones character (i.e. virtues) and in combination with moral wisdom attained through life and its conditions, Virtue Ethics holds every individual accountable for his/her actions (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003). When people are held personally responsible for their actions as they relate to their character, they truly have an opportunity to grow as a human being and reach the ultimate potential for happiness and thus, perform the most morally righteous action on any particular topic. The followers of the Virtue Ethics school embrace the intricacies of human experiences and aspire to understand a moral action within the cultural, emotional and intellectual conditions it has been performed in. While it can be a tedious and somewhat challenging to expect from every human to seek to act in accordance with Virtue Ethics, if exercised, it does ensure consistency of moral acts within a society which Utilitarianism and Deontology lack. Some argue that codifiability of Virtue Ethics is impossible to achieve, but I argue that it is possible. The societal transformation that would need to occur would require enormous good will from the majority of human population, mandatory excellence in parenting, and most importantly, ones utmost commitment to achieving happiness as defined by Virtue Ethics. Both Utilitarianism and Deontology schools offer noble, but incomplete foundations for evaluating whether adult organ donation is a morally right act. While each theory protects the principles of either ratio or overall goodness, neither of them account for the myriad of emotional and empirical factors that are present in our decision-making, whether we like it or not. Virtue Ethics seeks to understand moral actions in a true rainbow of colors that they arise from, which is why it is the only normative ethical theory that is realistic enough to salute our human complexity.

A Dirty Job Chapter 14

14 BARKING MAD Charlie opened the door and Lily breezed by. â€Å"Jane said you have two huge black dogs up here. I need to see.† â€Å"Lily, wait,† Charlie called, but she was across the living room and into Sophie's room before he could stop her. There was a low growl and she came backing out. â€Å"Oh my fucking God, dude,† she said around a huge grin. â€Å"They are so cool. Where did you get them?† â€Å"I didn't get them anywhere. They were just here.† Charlie joined Lily just outside the door to Sophie's room. She turned and grabbed his arm. â€Å"Are they, like, instruments of your death dealing or something?† â€Å"Lily, I thought we agreed that we wouldn't talk about that.† And they had. In fact, Lily had been great about it. Since she'd first found out about him being a Death Merchant, she'd hardly brought it up at all. She'd also gone on to graduate from high school without getting a major criminal record and enroll in the Culinary Institute, the upside of which was that she actually wore her white chef ‘s coat, checked pants, and rubber clogs to work, which tended to soften her makeup and hair, which remained severe, dark, and a little scary. Sophie giggled and rolled over against one of the hounds. They had been licking her and she was covered with hellish dog spit. Her hair was plastered into a dozen unlikely spikes, making her appear a little like a wide-eyed Anim character. Sophie saw Lily in the doorway and waved. â€Å"Goggie, ‘Ily. Goggie,† she said. â€Å"Hi, Sophie. Yes, those are nice doggies,† Lily said, then to Charlie: â€Å"What are you going to do?† â€Å"I don't know what to do. They won't let me near her.† â€Å"That's good, then. They're here to protect her.† Charlie nodded. â€Å"I think they are. Something happened last night. You know how the Great Big Book talks about the others? I think one of them came after her last night, and these guys showed up.† â€Å"I'm impressed. I'd think you'd be more freaked out.† Charlie didn't want to tell her that he was worn out from freaking out the day before about his little girl killing an old man with the word kitty. Lily already knew too much, and it was obvious now that whatever lay below was dangerous. â€Å"I guess I should be, but they aren't here to hurt her. I need to go check the library in Berkeley, see if there's anything about them there. I need to get Sophie away from them.† Lily laughed. â€Å"Yeah, that's going to happen. Look, I have work and school today, but I'll go do your research for you tomorrow. In the meantime you can try to make friends with them.† â€Å"I don't want to make friends with them.† Lily looked at the hounds, one of whom Sophie was pounding on with her little fists as she laughed gleefully, then looked back at Charlie. â€Å"Yes, you do.† â€Å"Yeah, I guess I do,† Charlie said. â€Å"Have you ever seen a dog that size before?† â€Å"There are no dogs that size.† â€Å"What do you call those, then?† â€Å"Those aren't dogs, Asher, those are hellhounds.† â€Å"How do you know that?† â€Å"I know that because before I started learning about herbs and reductions and stuff, I spent my free time reading about the dark side, and those guys come up from time to time.† â€Å"If we know that, then what are you going to do research on?† â€Å"I'm going to try to find out what sent them.† She patted his shoulder. â€Å"I have to go open the shop. You go make nice with the goggies.† â€Å"What do I feed them?† â€Å"Purina Hellhound Chow.† â€Å"They make that?† â€Å"What do you think?† â€Å"‘Kay,† Charlie said. It took a couple of hours, but after Sophie started smelling like diaper surprise, one of the giant dogs nosed her toward Charlie as if to say, Clean her up and bring her back. Charlie could feel them watching him as he changed his daughter, grateful that disposable diapers didn't require pins. If he'd accidentally poked Sophie with a pin, he was sure one of the hellhounds would have bitten his head off. They watched him carefully as he moved her to the breakfast bar, and sat on either side of her high chair as he gave her breakfast. As an experiment, he made an extra piece of toast and tossed it to one of the hounds. It snapped it out of the air and licked its chops once, eyes now locked on Charlie and the loaf of bread. So Charlie toasted four more slices and the hounds alternately snapped each out of the air so swiftly that Charlie wasn't sure he didn't see some sort of vapor from the pressure of their jaws clamping down. â€Å"So, you're hellish beasts from another dimension, and you like toast. Okay.† Then, as Charlie started to toast four more slices, he stopped, feeling stupid. â€Å"You don't really care if it's toasted, do you?† He flipped a slice of bread to the closest of the dogs, who snapped it out of the air. â€Å"Okay, that will speed things up.† Charlie fed them the remainder of the loaf of bread. He spread a few slices with a thick coat of peanut butter, which did nothing whatsoever, then a half dozen more he spread with lemon dishwasher gel, which appeared to have no ill effect except that it made them burp neat, aquamarine-colored bubbles. â€Å"Go walk, Daddy,† Sophie said. â€Å"No walk today, sweetie. I think we'll just stay right here in the apartment and try to figure out our new pals.† Charlie got Sophie out of her chair, wiped the jelly off her face and out of her hair, then sat down with her on the couch to read to her from the Chronicle's classified ads, which was where he plied a large part of his business, other than the Death stuff. But no sooner had he settled into a rhythm than one of the hellhounds came over, took his arm in its mouth, and dragged him into his bedroom, even as he protested, swore, and smacked it in the head with a brass table lamp. The big dog let him go, then stood staring at Charlie's date book like it had been sprayed with beef gravy. â€Å"What?† Charlie said, but then he saw. Somehow, in all the excitement, he hadn't noticed a new name in the book. â€Å"Look, the number is thirty. I have a whole month to find this one. Leave me alone.† Charlie also noticed in passing that engraved on the hellhound's great silver collar was the name ALVIN. â€Å"Alvin? That's the stupidest name I've ever heard.† Charlie went back to the couch, and the dog dragged him back into the bedroom, this time by the foot. As they went through the door Charlie reached for his sword-cane. When Alvin dropped him Charlie leapt to his feet and drew the blade. The big dog rolled over on his back and whimpered. His companion appeared at the door, panting. (Mohammed was the hound's name, according to the plate on the collar.) Charlie considered his options. He had always felt the sword-cane a pretty formidable weapon, had even been willing to take on the sewer harpies with it, but it occurred to him that these animals had obviously wiped the floor with one of those other creatures of darkness and had no problem sitting down and eating a loaf of soapy toast a couple of hours later. In short, he was out of his league. They wanted him to go retrieve the soul vessel, he would retrieve the soul vessel. But he wasn't leaving his darling daughter alone with them. â€Å"Alvin is still a stupid name,† he said, sheathing the sword. When Mrs. Korjev arrived, Charlie had put Sophie down for her nap, and a dark pile of hellhounds was napping by her crib – snoring great clouds of lemony-fresh dog breath into the air. It was probably part of Charlie's rising rascal nature, but he let Mrs. Korjev enter Sophie's room with only the warning that the little girl had a couple of new pets. He suppressed a snicker as the great Cossack grandmother backed out of the room swearing in Russian. â€Å"Is giant dogs in there.† â€Å"Yes, there are.† â€Å"But not like normal giant dog. They are like extra-giant, black animal, they are – â€Å" â€Å"Like bear?† Charlie suggested. â€Å"No, I wasn't going to say ‘bear,' Mr. Smart-Alec. Not like bear. Like volf, only bigger, stronger – â€Å" â€Å"Like bear?† Charlie ventured. â€Å"You make your mother ashamed when you are mean, Charlie Asher.† â€Å"Not like bear?† Charlie asked. â€Å"Is not important now. I am just surprised. Vladlena is old woman with weak heart, but you go have good laugh and I will sit with Sophie and huge dogs.† â€Å"Thank you, Mrs. Korjev, their names are Alvin and Mohammed. It's on their collars.† â€Å"You have food for them?† â€Å"There are some steaks in the freezer. Just give each one of them a couple and stand back.† â€Å"How they like steaks done?† â€Å"I think frozen will be fine, they eat like – â€Å" Mrs. Korjev raised a finger in warning; it lined it up with a large mole on the side of her nose and looked as if she was sighting down a weapon. † – like horses. They eat like horses,† Charlie said. Mrs. Ling did not take her introduction to Alvin and Mohammed with quite the composure of her Russian neighbor. â€Å"Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee! Giant shiksas shitting,† exclaimed Mrs. Ling as she ran down the hall after Charlie. â€Å"Come back! Shiksas shitting!† Indeed, Charlie returned to the apartment to find great steaming baguettes of poo strewn about the living room. Alvin and Mohammed were flanking the door to Sophie's room like massive Chinese foo dogs at the temple gates, looking not so fierce as shamefaced and contrite. â€Å"Bad dogs,† Charlie said. â€Å"Scaring Mrs. Ling. Bad dogs.† He considered for a moment trying to rub their noses in their offense, but short of bringing in a backhoe and chaining them to it, he wasn't sure that he could make that happen. â€Å"I mean it, you guys,† he added, in an especially stern voice. â€Å"I'm sorry, Mrs. Ling,† Charlie said to the diminutive matron. â€Å"These are Alvin and Mohammed. I should have been more specific when I said I'd gotten new pets for Sophie.† Actually, he had been vague on purpose, hoping for some sort of hysterical reaction. Not that he really wanted to frighten the old lady, it's just that Beta Males are seldom ever in a position to frighten anyone physically, so when they get the opportunity, they sometimes lose their sense of judgment. â€Å"Is okay,† said Mrs. Ling, staring at the hellhounds. She seemed distracted, mainly because she was. Having recovered from the initial shock, she was doing the math in her head – a rapid-fire abacus clicking off the weight and volume of each pony-sized canine, and dividing him into chops, steaks, ribs, and packages of stew meat. â€Å"You'll be all right, then?† Charlie asked. â€Å"You not be late, okay?† said Mrs. Ling. â€Å"I want to go to Sears and look at chest freezer today. You have power saw I can borrow.† â€Å"Power saw? Well, no, but I'm sure Ray has one he can lend you. I'll be back in a couple of hours,† Charlie said. â€Å"But let me clean this up first.† He headed to the basement in hopes of finding the coal shovel that his father had once kept there. As they parted ways that day, both Charlie and Mrs. Ling were counting on Sophie's history of high pet mortality to quickly solve their respective poop and soup problems. Such, however, was not to be the case. When several weeks passed with no ill effects on the hellhounds, Charlie accepted the possibility that these might, indeed, be the only pets that could survive Sophie's attention. He was tempted, many times, to call Minty Fresh and ask his advice, but since his last call might have caused the hellhounds to appear in the first place, he resisted the urge. Lily's research trips yielded little more: â€Å"They talk about them all through time,† Lily said, calling from the Berkeley library on her cell phone. â€Å"Mostly it's about how they like to chase blues singers, and evidently there's a German robot soccer team called the Hellhounds, but I don't think that's relevant. The thing that comes up again and again, in a dozen cultures, is that they guard the passage between the living and the dead.† â€Å"Well, that makes sense,† Charlie said. â€Å"I guess. It doesn't say where that passage is, does it? What BART station?† â€Å"No, Asher, it doesn't. But I found this book by a nun who had been excommunicated in the 1890s, isn't that cool? This library is amazing. They have like nine million books.† â€Å"Yes, that's great, Lily, what did the ex-nun say?† â€Å"She had found all the references for hellhounds, and the thing they all seemed to agree on was they serve directly the ruler of the Underworld.† â€Å"She was Catholic and she called it the Underworld?† â€Å"Well, they threw her out of the Church for writing this book, but yeah, that's what she said.† â€Å"She didn't have a number we could call in case they got lost.† â€Å"I'm over here on my day off, Asher, trying to do you a favor. Are you going to keep being a smart-ass about it?† â€Å"No, I'm sorry, Lily. Go on.† â€Å"That's it. It's not like there's a care-and-feeding guide. Mostly, the research implies that having hellhounds around is a bad thing.† â€Å"What's the title of this book, The Complete Guide to the Fucking Obvious?† â€Å"You're paying me for this, you know? Time and travel.† â€Å"Sorry. Yes. So I should try to get rid of them.† â€Å"They eat people, Asher. Who's riding the duh train now?† So, with that, Charlie decided that he needed to take an active role in ridding himself of the monstrous canines. Since the only thing about the hellhounds that he could be sure of was that they would go anywhere he took Sophie, he brought them along on their trip to the San Francisco Zoo, and left them locked in the van with the engine running and a shop-vac hose run from the exhaust pipe through the vent window. After what he considered to be an extraordinarily successful tour of the zoo, in which not a single animal shuffled off the mortal coil under the delighted eye of his daughter, Charlie returned to the van to find two very stoned, but otherwise unharmed hellhounds who were burping a burnt plastic vapor after having eaten his seat covers. Various experiments revealed that Alvin and Mohammed were not only immune to most poisons, but they rather liked the taste of bug spray and consequently licked all the paint off the baseboards in Charlie's apartment in the week following the exterminator's quarterly service. As time wore on, Charlie tried to measure the danger of having the giant canines around against the damage that would be done to Sophie's psyche from witnessing their demise, as she was obviously becoming attached to them, so he backed off the more direct attacks on them and stopped throwing Snausages in front of the number 90 crosstown express bus. (This decision was also made easy when the city of San Francisco threatened to sue Charlie if his dogs wrecked another bus.) Direct attacks, in fact, were difficult for Charlie (as the only true Beta Male martial art was based entirely on the kindness of strangers), so he turned on the hellhounds the awesome power of the Beta Male kung fu of passive aggression. He started conservatively, taking them for a ride over to the East Bay in the van, luring them onto the Oakland mudflats with a rack of beef ribs, then driving away quickly, only to find them waiting in the apartment when he returned, having covered the entire living room with a patina of drying mud. He then tried an even more indirect approach: crating up the hounds and air-freighting them to Korea in the hope they would find themselves in an entre, only to find that they actually made it back to the shop before he had time to sweep the dog hair out of his apartment. He thought that perhaps he might use their own natural instincts to chase them away, after he read on the Internet that the essence of cougar urine was sometimes sprinkled on shrubs and flowers to keep dogs from urinating on them. After a fairly exhaustive search through the phone book, he finally found the number of an outdoorsman's supply store in South San Francisco that was a certified mountain-lion whizz dealer. â€Å"Sure, we carry cougar urine,† the guy said. He sounded like he was wearing a buckskin jacket and had a big beard, but Charlie might have just been projecting. â€Å"And that's supposed to keep dogs away?† Charlie asked. â€Å"Works like a charm. Dogs, deer, and rabbits. How much do you need?† â€Å"I don't know, maybe ten gallons.† There was a pause, and Charlie was sure he could hear the guy picking flecks of elk meat out of his beard. â€Å"We sell it in one-, two-, and five-ounce bottles.† â€Å"Well, that's not going to do it,† Charlie said. â€Å"Can't you get me like a large economy size – preferably from a cougar that's been fed nothing but dog for a couple of months? I assume that this is domesticated cougar pee, right? I mean you don't go out in the wild and collect it yourself.† â€Å"No, sir, I believe they get it from zoos.† â€Å"The wild stuff is probably better, huh?† Charlie asked. â€Å"If you can get it, I mean? I don't mean you personally. I wasn't implying that you were out in the wild following a mountain lion around with a measuring cup. I meant a professional – hello?† The bearded buckskin-sounding guy had hung up. So Charlie sent Ray over to South San Francisco in the van to buy up all the cougar whizz they had, but in the end it achieved nothing other than making the whole second floor of Charlie's building smell like a cat box. When it appeared that even the most passive-aggressive attempts would not work, Charlie resorted to the ultimate Beta Male attack, which was to tolerate Alvin and Mohammed's presence, but to resent the hell out of them and drop snide remarks whenever he had the chance. Feeding the hellhounds was like shoveling coal into two ravenous steam engines – Charlie started having fifty pounds of dog food delivered every two days to keep up with them, which they, in turn, converted to massive torpedoes of poo that they dropped in the streets and alleys around Asher's Secondhand like they were staging their own doggie blitzkrieg on the neighborhood. The upside of their presence was that Charlie went for months on end without hearing a peep from the storm drains or seeing an ominous raven shadow on a wall when he was retrieving a soul vessel. And to that end, the death dealing, the hounds served their purpose as well, for whenever a new name appeared in his date book, the hounds would drag Charlie to the calendar every morning until he returned with the soul object, so he went two years without missing or being late for a retrieval. The big dogs, of course, accompanied Charlie and Sophie on their walks, which had resumed once Charlie was sure that Sophie had her â€Å"special† language skill under control. The hounds, while certainly the largest dogs that anyone had ever seen, were not so large as to be unbelievable, and everywhere they went, Charlie was asked what breed they were. Tired of trying to explain, he would simply say, â€Å"They're hellhounds,† and when asked where he got them, he would reply, â€Å"The y just showed up in my daughter's room one night and wouldn't go away,† after which people not only thought him a liar, but an ass as well. So he modified his response to â€Å"They're Irish hellhounds,† which for some reason, people accepted immediately (except for one Irish football fan in a North Beach restaurant who said, â€Å"I'm Irish and those things aren't bloody Irish.† To which Charlie replied, â€Å"Black Irish.† The football fan nodded as if he knew that all along and added to the waitress, â€Å"Can I get another fookin' pint o' here before I dry up and blow away, lass?†) In a way, Charlie started to enjoy the notoriety of being the guy with the cute little girl and the two giant dogs. When you have to maintain a secret identity, you can't help but relish a little public attention. And Charlie did, until the day he and Sophie were stopped on a side street on Russian Hill by a bearded man in a long cotton caftan and a woven hat. Sophie was old enough by then to do a lot of her own walking, although Charlie kept a piggyback kid sling with him so he could carry her when she got tired (but more often he would just balance her while she rode on the back of Alvin or Mohammed). The bearded man passed a little too closely to Sophie and Mohammed growled and imposed himself between the man and the child. â€Å"Mohammed, get back here,† Charlie said. It turned out the hellhounds could be trained, especially if you only told them to do things they were going to do anyway. (â€Å"Eat, Alvin. Good boy. Poop now. Excellent.†) â€Å"Why do you call this dog Mohammed?† asked the bearded man. â€Å"Because that's his name.† â€Å"You should not have called this dog Mohammed.† â€Å"I didn't call the dog Mohammed,† Charlie said. â€Å"His name was Mohammed when I got him. It was on his collar.† â€Å"It is blasphemy to call a dog Mohammed.† â€Å"I tried calling him something else, but he doesn't listen. Watch. Steve, bite this man's leg? See, nothing. Spot, bite off this man's leg. Nothing. I might as well be speaking Farsi. You see where I'm going with this?† â€Å"Well, I have named my dog Jesus. How do you feel about that?† â€Å"Well, then I'm sorry, I didn't realize you'd lost your dog.† â€Å"I have not lost my dog.† â€Å"Really? I saw these flyers all over town with ‘Have You Found Jesus?' on them. It must be another dog named Jesus. Was there a reward? A reward helps, you know.† Charlie noted that more and more lately, he had a hard time resisting the urge to fuck with people, especially when they insisted upon behaving like idiots. â€Å"I do not have a dog named Jesus and that doesn't bother you because you are a godless infidel.† â€Å"No, really, you can not name your dog anything you want and it won't bother me. But, yes, I am a godless infidel. At least that's how I voted in the last election.† Charlie grinned at him. â€Å"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!† said the bearded man in response to Charlie's irresistible charm. He danced around shaking his fist in the Death Merchant's face, which scared Sophie so that she covered her eyes and started to cry. â€Å"Stop that, you're scaring my daughter.† â€Å"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!† Mohammed and Alvin quickly got bored watching the dance and sat down to wait for someone to tell them to eat the guy in the nightshirt. â€Å"I mean it,† Charlie said. â€Å"You need to stop.† He looked around, feeling embarrassed, but there was no one else on the street. â€Å"Death to the infidel. Death to the infidel,† chanted the beard. â€Å"Have you seen the size of these dogs, Mohammed?† â€Å"Death to – hey, how did you know my name was Mohammed? Doesn't matter. Never mind. Death to the infidel. Death to the – â€Å" â€Å"Wow, you certainly are brave,† Charlie said, â€Å"but she's a little girl and you're scaring her and you really need to stop that now.† â€Å"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!† â€Å"Kitty!† Sophie said, uncovering her eyes and pointing at the man. â€Å"Oh, honey,† Charlie said. â€Å"I thought we weren't going to do that.† Charlie slung Sophie up on his shoulders and walked on, leading the hellhounds away from the bearded dead man who lay in a peaceful heap on the sidewalk. He had stuffed the man's little woven hat in his pocket. It was glowing a dull red. Strangely, the bearded man's name wouldn't appear in Charlie's date book until the next day. â€Å"See, a sense of humor is important,† Charlie said, making a goofy face over his shoulder at his daughter. â€Å"Silly Daddy,† Sophie said. Later, Charlie felt bad about his daughter using the â€Å"kitty† word as a weapon, and he felt that a decent father would try to give some sort of meaning to the experience – teach some sort of lesson, so he sat Sophie down with a pair of stuffed bears, some tiny cups of invisible tea, a plate of imaginary cookies, and two giant hounds from hell, and had his first, heart-to-heart, father-daughter talk. â€Å"Honey, you understand why Daddy told you not to ever do that again, right? Why people can't know that you can do that?† â€Å"We're different than other people?† Sophie said. â€Å"That's right, honey, because we're different than other people,† he said to the smartest, prettiest little girl in the world. â€Å"And you know why that is, right?† â€Å"Because we're Chinese and the White Devils can't be trusted?† â€Å"No, not because we're Chinese.† â€Å"Because we are Russian, and in our hearts are much sorrow?† â€Å"No, there is not much sorrow in our hearts.† â€Å"Because we are strong, like bear?† â€Å"Yes, sweetie, that's it. We're different because we're strong, like bear.† â€Å"I knew it. More tea, Daddy?† â€Å"Yes, I'd love some more tea, Sophie.† So,† said the Emperor, â€Å"I see you have experienced the multifarious ways in which a man's life is enriched by the company of a good brace of hounds.† Charlie was sitting on the back step of the shop, pulling whole frozen chickens from a crate and tossing them to Alvin and Mohammed one at a time. Each chicken was snapped out of the air with so much force that the Emperor, and Bummer and Lazarus, who were crouched across the alley suspiciously eyeing the hellhounds, flinched as if a pistol was being fired nearby. â€Å"Multifarious enrichment,† Charlie said, tossing another chicken. â€Å"That is exactly how I'd describe it.† â€Å"There is no better, nor more loyal, friend than a good hound,† said the Emperor. Charlie paused, having pulled not a chicken from the box, but a portable electric mixer. â€Å"A friend indeed,† he said, â€Å"a friend indeed.† Mohammed snapped down the mixer without even chewing – two feet of cord hung from the side of his mouth. â€Å"That doesn't hurt him?† said the Emperor. â€Å"Roughage,† Charlie explained, throwing a frozen chicken chaser to Mohammed, who gulped it down with the rest of the mixer cord. â€Å"They're not really my dogs. They belong to Sophie.† â€Å"A child needs a pet,† said the Emperor. â€Å"A companion to grow up with – although these fellows seem to have done most of their growing.† Charlie nodded, tossing the alternator from an eighty-three Buick into Alvin's eager jaws. There was a clanking and the dog belched, but his tail thumped against the Dumpster asking for more. â€Å"Well, they have been her constant companions,† Charlie said. â€Å"At least now we have them trained so they'll just guard whatever building she's in. For a while they wouldn't leave her side. Bath time was a challenge.† The Emperor said, â€Å"I believe it was the poet Billy Collins who wrote, ‘No one here likes a wet dog.'† â€Å"Yes, and he probably never had to get a squirming toddler and two four-hundred-pound dogs out of a bubble bath, either.† â€Å"But they've mellowed, you say?† â€Å"They had to. Sophie started school. The teacher frowned on giant dogs in class.† Charlie flipped an answering machine to Alvin, who crunched it up like a dog biscuit, shards of dog-spit-covered plastic raining down from his jaws. â€Å"So what did you do?† â€Å"It took us a few days, and a lot of explaining, but I trained them to just sit outside the front door of the school.† â€Å"And the faculty relented?† â€Å"Well, I spray-paint them with that granite-texture spray paint every morning, then tell them to sit absolutely still on either side of the door. No one seems to notice them.† â€Å"And they obey? All day?† â€Å"Well, it's just a half day right now, she's only in kindergarten. And you have to promise them a cookie.† â€Å"There's always a price to be paid.† The Emperor pulled a frozen chicken out of the box. â€Å"May I?† â€Å"Please.† Charlie waved him on. The Emperor tossed the chicken to Mohammed, who chomped it down in a single bite. â€Å"My, that is satisfying,† said the Emperor. â€Å"That's nothing,† Charlie said. â€Å"If you feed them mini – propane cylinders they burp fire.†

Analysis Of genres Essay

‘Genre’ is a French term meaning â€Å"type† or â€Å"kind†. Putting things into categories is useful in any form of study; it’s a way of establishing some kind of control over an amorphous mass of information. Each medium in the mass media has its own kinds of language, characteristic signs and sign systems. Genre is part of the Key Concept of Language, and can be applied to all kinds of media text. Putting media texts such as film, television programmes, print media, or music into categories is useful as a way of establishing some kind of control over an amorphous mass of information. Each genre follows its own kinds of conventions – language, characteristic signs and sign systems. However, genres are fluid and not fixed and under constant renegotiation between media industry and audience through the combination of the familiar and the unexpected. The standard approach to teaching genre in film and television is to focus on the common codes and conventions. Looking at film posters, trailers or short scene extracts will quickly enable students to identify similarities and differences in characters, location, stories and familiar objects (the iconography). Repeated narrative patterns can be observed and beyond this the recurring theme which leads to exploration of shared ideological messages. For the study of magazines the categorisation might be based on definitions of target audiences – age, gender, ethnicity, class etc. The History and Evolution of Genres Genre analysis also includes understanding the evolution of a genre over time. Genres change and develop because of changes in the culture or historical period in which the genre is being produced. The Western solo hero who was popular in the 1940s and 1950s evolved into the group of heroes in the 1960s and 1970s with Rawhide and Bonanza—shows that reflected a shift in the workplace to that of the group in the corporation or company during that time. And, with the increasing interest in urban crime and international espionage in the 1970s and 1980s, the Western was replaced by the police/detective and the spy/thriller genres. Genres also gain popularity with certain audiences who seek out these genres given the historical or cultural forces operating in a certain period. During the Great Depression, audiences flocked to movie houses to view Hollywood romantic comedies as a way of escaping the grim realities of everyday lives characterized by poverty and deprivation. The nature of the threat in science fiction movies also shifts to reflect changes in fears or threats facing societies. During the 1930s and 1940s, Americans expressed racial fears, as manifested in the rise of the Klu Klux Klan, and in the film, King Kong. During the 1990s, with the increased production of films and the control of media conglomerates over the types of films being made, an increasing number of formulaic genre films were produced. Film studios needed to attract large audiences in order to make a return profit on the millions they invested in high-production, special-effects films, so they turned to safe, familiar genres and sequels. As Wheeler Dixon (2000) argues: What audiences today desire more than ever before is â€Å"more of the same,† and studios, scared to death by rising production and distribution costs, are equally loathe to strike out in new generic directions. Keep audiences satisfied, strive to maintain narrative closure at all costs, and keep within the bounds of heterotopic romance, no matter what genre one is ostensibly working in. Yet, at the same time, the studios must present these old fables in seductive new clothing, with high budgets, major stars, lavish sets, and (if the genre demands it) unremitting action to disguise the second-hand nature of the contemporary genre film (p. 8). Film versus television genres. There are some important differences between film and television genres. Film genres (see list below) tend to be more general, for example, the western, action/adventure, comedy, horror, science fiction, etc., while television genres (see list below) are often specialized, for example, cooking shows, sports-talk shows, children’s animation, etc. A film that is representative of a certain film genre also tends to be selfenclosed—the conflicts are often resolved within the film, even with film sequels. In contrast, a television genre program tends to be part of a serial, in which a storyline may continue and develop or characters may evolve across different programs. There are a wide range of different types of film genres: detective, action/adventure, mystery,  science fiction, horror, gangster, romance, comedy, musical, comedy, animation, detective, spy thriller, as well as specific television genres: game show, prime-time drama, sports broadcast, soap opera, musical, medical drama, news, pro-wrestling, reality-television, talkshow. It is often difficult to identify a particular movie or television show as a primary example of a particular genre because a movie or show may contain elements reflecting different genres. 1. Soap operas: Soap-opera is the most popular form of television programming in the world. A large proportion of television viewers watch and enjoy soap-operas. Soap-operas dominate the national audience ratings over other programmes that are telecast. Soaps in general have a predominantly female audience, and in fact at least 30% of the audiences for this soap are male. The main interest for men was in business relations and problem and the power and wealth shown, whereas women were more often interested in the family issues and love affairs. Soaps appeal to those who value the personal and domestic world. There is no doubt that viewing and talking with family and friends about soap operas is experienced by many women as a pleasurable experience. Women are stereotyped in soap operas but the image of the modern women has changed. From being a submissive, quiet, obedient housewife, she has grown and evolved into a strong individual. She not excels in her profession but is also an able homemaker. Soaps create a world dominated by interpersonal relationship, where characters discuss marital, romantic and family problems. There is little physical violence or crime. The soap opera world seems emotionally hazardous-mainly because of the continual sorting and resorting of relationships. PORTRAYAL IN SOAP OPERAS Though not as strongly as in earlier years, the portrayal of both men and women on television is largely traditional and stereotypical. This serves to promote a polarization of gender roles. With femininity are associated traits such as emotionality, carefulness, cooperation, a shared sense, and obedience. Masculinity tends to be associated with such traits as wisdom,  efficiency, competition, individualism and ruthlessness. Most significantly though, soap opera’s concern with the everyday lives of everyday people and their problems, big and small, appears to be one of the main reasons why this genre is so popular. 2. The Talk Show: The television talk show consists of four different subgenres: 1) The morning talk shows 2) The day-time talk: some of which are characterized as â€Å"tabloid† or the â€Å"confessional† talk show, as well as â€Å"courtroom† shows. 3) prime-time/late-night talk show 4) Political talk shows 1. The morning and prime-time/late shows retain a consistent format established by early hosts in the 1950s through 1970s: for the morning shows identifies five characteristics of this subgenre: †¢ The centrality of the host. The program revolves around the host as the central figure of the program. The host often has control over the show’s content and guest selection. The host is often supported by others who laughed at his jokes and provided an immediate conversational audience. The hosts often serve as commodities for their networks—functioning to promote not only their shows, but also the network itself and other products. †¢ The present-tense flow. Even though the shows are pre-taped, they are highly structured in ways that create the illusion that they are occurring â€Å"live† in present time for the viewer audience. †¢ Varied modes of address. The host is simultaneously addressing a range of different audiences: the immediate audience on stage (guests, co-hosts), their studio audience, and the viewer audience, all in ways that serve to engage the viewer audience as the intimate â€Å"you. † †¢ The commodity function. The show serves not only as an advertising vehicle, but it also serves to promote the celebrities who appear on the show. Stars of television programs on the same network often appear as guests to promote those network programs. †¢ Structured impulsiveness. Despite the seemingly spontaneous nature of the program, a large cast of writers, producers, celebrating agents, and technical people construct a scripted, semi-rehearsed production that adheres to time constraints and certain publicity messages they wish to convey. Recently talk show hosts have functioned to provide their own versions of daily news events for their relatively younger audiences who may not be acquiring news from other sources. 2. The day-time â€Å"tabloid†/†confessional† shows are often organized around particularly themes or topics often related to interpersonal conflicts, health, beauty—and, on the tabloid shows. The increased popularity of â€Å"courtroom† shows dramatizes personal or family conflicts within a seemingly legal area. These shows attempt to actively promote conflicts between participants, often resulting in arguments, taunts, and physical fights. They also engage audience members as players in these conflicts, asking them to create alliances between the conflicting participants. These shows’ focus on dramatic conflict between participants serves to overlap with the conflicts portrayed in soap opera (see soap opera) and reality television. The â€Å"confessional† shows focus more on having participant’s articulate personal problems that are then addressed by an â€Å"expert† or by the host as a moral guide . The prevailing discourse of these shows is healing—the assumption that through â€Å"talking-out† issues and improving interpersonal relationships, problems can be solved, a discourse that masks the influence of institutional forces. 3. The political talk show often features competing political perspectives from what is described as the â€Å"liberal† and the â€Å"conservative† side, in which participants argue with each other in a highly dramatic, combative manner with little contextualization or development of ideas. Moreover, the â€Å"guests† who appear on Sunday morning talk shows generally represent status quo institutional perspectives and are largely white males. 3. Advertising: Media employ specific techniques to construct believable stories. They hook our attention through psychological devices and technical effects. The techniques are vast and many, but some common ones are easily recognizable and are identified here. Remember, advertisers will use many techniques not listed. Add to this list as needed. Technical effects: †¢ Camera angles enhance perspective, such as low angles that give the subject power. †¢ Close-ups provide emphasis. †¢ Sound effects animate products, giving them emotion. †¢ Mise-en-scene (set and setting inside camera frame) creates cultural and ideological context. Is the set a concert, a hall, a shopping mall? †¢ Accessories enhance the product. What’s being associated with the product, such as clothes, props, models? †¢ Lighting is used to draw your eye to certain details. †¢ Happy and attractive people are made-up and constructed to enhance the message. What kinds of people are in the ad? †¢ Music, popular songs and jingles create pneumonic devices to program or trigger your memory (some songs are used for nostalgic reasons, while others are used to cross promote products, i. e. cars and latest album). †¢ Products are sold using three main emotions: fear, sex and humour. Ads appeal to our emotions through emotional transfer and are rarely dependent on intellectual analysis. †¢ Special effects bring inanimate things to life and make them exciting. This is especially true with children-targeted ads. †¢ Editing is used to pace and generate excitement. Notice how military and video game ads have very fast cuts, usually a scene change every second. Common Attention-Getting Hooks: †¢ Emotional Transfer is the process of generating emotions in order to transfer them to a product. For example, a Coke ad shows happy, beautiful people but tells us nothing about the product. The point is to make you feel good and to transfer that feeling to the brand or product. This is the number one and most important process of media manipulation. †¢ Fear messages are directed at our insecurities, such as â€Å"no one will like you if you have dandruff,† or â€Å"bald people are losers. † This is a very common technique and extra attention is required to resist these messages. †¢ Symbols are easily recognized elements from our culture that generate powerful emotions, such as flags and crosses. †¢ Humour is often used because it makes us feel good and is more memorable. †¢ Hype, don’t believe it. Be skeptical of exaggerated claims. Statements like these are meaningless and vague, but sound good. †¢ Fitting In is a very common technique that tries to influence us by stating that if everyone else is buying the product, so should you. †¢ Cute. Children and animals always steal the show. †¢ Vague Promises like â€Å"might,† â€Å"maybe,† and â€Å"could† divert our attention. â€Å"Super Glue may heal cuts better than Band-Aids,† sounds absurd, but you will often hear claims as absurd as this and it would still be true (because it can’t be disproved). †¢ Testimonials are statements by people explaining why certain products are great. Famous or plain folk or actors can do them. This is more powerful when someone we really like or respect endorses a product. â€Å"Beautiful† people are usually used to glamorize merchandise, especially unhealthy products like alcohol, tobacco and junk food. Models and actors generally don’t represent average people, but idealized notions of beauty that are constantly changing. †¢ Famous People such as Michael Jordan make products appealing and attractive through association. †¢ Ordinary People are people that might be like you or me. This is common in ads that stress community or family. †¢ It’s Easy. Simple solutions are often used to convince us that a product will solve our problems. †¢ Macho is generally used to appeal to males, but not exclusively. It demonstrates masculinity and male stereotypes; these are common in military and tobacco ads. †¢ Femininity is another gender stereotype used in a variety of ads, from teen make-up commercials to alcohol ads. †¢ Repetition is done to reiterate a sales pitch over and over again, like the phone ads that repeatedly display and annunciate the phone number to access their service †¢ Big Lies are exaggerated promises that are impossible to deliver. †¢ Exotic. This is the appeal of the â€Å"other†; it could be a beach location, tribal person, something strange or unknown. This is often meant to hook you through presenting something that is out of the ordinary or beyond our everyday experience. †¢ Flattery is used to make you feel good about you as a consumer and that you are making the right choice when you chose a product. † †¢ Social Outcasts generally represents a put-down or demeaning comment about a competing product or cultural group. This is not limited to ads, but is common in propaganda as well (â€Å"they don’t believe in God,† etc. ). †¢ Free Lunch offers you something in addition to the product such as â€Å"buy one, get one free† or tax cuts. Freebies constantly hook us, but there are always hidden costs. Rarely is a thing truly free. †¢ Surrealism. Commercial media employ some of the brightest minds of the media world and often require cutting edge artists to keep their material fresh (e. g. MTV). Often, as a reflection of how unreal the fantasy world of media is, you will see juxtapositions and dreamlike imagery that make no sense because the advertiser is trying to get your attention by presenting something strange and different. †¢ The Good Old Days. Images, fashion, film effects and music depicting specific eras or subcultures are meant to appeal directly to the demographic represented in the ad. †¢ Culture. Niche marketing is more common as advertisers hone their messages for specific cultural groups. Latino-targeted ads, for instance, might have family scenes or specific uses of language. 4. Music: Form – most (not all) music involves some repetition, and we find some patterns recurring in many pieces. In other words, you will need to consider the elements below for EACH melody in your song (i.e. , the elements that characterize the A melody, again for the B melody, etc. ) Be aware that even if a melody (tune) is repeated, there may be changes – a chorus might sing what a soloist sang the first time, etc. , and a good analysis will account for those changes. †¢ Melody (Melodies) †¢ Tempo(s) – literally ‘speed. ‘ Using Italian terminology, how fast or slow is this tune? Are there changes in the tempo? Are they gradual or abrupt changes? Do you feel the tempo in this particular performance is appropriate for the lyrics or mood? If not, should it be faster or slower? Who seems responsible for establishing the tempo? †¢ Dynamic level(s) – literally ‘volume’—how loud (forte) or soft (piano) is this piece? Dynamics tend to fluctuate a lot in music, so how does this particularly piece progress? Are changes sudden or gradual? †¢ Mood – the â€Å"emotional† atmosphere of the song. This is a subjective assessment, but it should be supported by some of your other answers on this page. Sad songs, for example, usually aren’t very fast! †¢ Lyrics – how would you describe the poetry? Is it continually changing, or do you hear a lot of repetition of text? Do the words seem ‘important,’ or is the emphasis on the melody? How frequent are the rhymes? Is there patter singing? †¢ Medium – the performers needed for the piece (both vocal and instrumental! Don’t forget to notice any instruments or voices used in the accompaniment! ) †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ Text Setting Text Expression – has the composer crafted the music (tempo, dynamics, etc. ) to be appropriate to the meaning of the poetry? Does s/he use any devices such as wordpainting? Rhythm – Is the rhythm prominent? (Are your toes tapping? ) Can you tell what the meter is? What is the subdivision? Why might the composer have chosen this meter or subdivision? Do you notice other rhythmic devices, such as dotted rhythms or syncopation? Texture(s) – Does the texture change at any point in the piece? What’s the most prominent texture in the song? Mode – is the mode major or minor at the beginning of this piece? Does it change at any point? Is the mode appropriate for the poetry? Style – does the music seem to fall under a particular style label (i. e. jazz, swing, rap, ballad, rock, operatic, blues, gospel, etc. )? What other elements create this style? (Text setting, instrumentation, etc. ) Type – some songs can be classified as functioning in a typical way—such as soliloquies, charm songs, comedy songs, vision songs, challenge songs, â€Å"I want† songs, love songs, patriotic songs, etc. Does this song belong to a recognizable category? (Not all songs fit into these sorts of classifications. ) Action/Dance – does this song structured so that it contains some sort of staged action or dance? Is the action in the background, or does the singer(s) participate? Describe the setting as best you can.

Reconstruction The Misadventures Of Post Civil War

Timothy Perdoch CCNY USSO 101 Prof. Van Natter Reconstruction (The Misadventures of Post-Civil War America) America: â€Å"The land of the free, and the home of the brave† (Key 7-8). When our forefathers overcame the colonial reign of the British Empire, they formed the United States of America based on the premise of enlightened ideals promoting life, ownership of land, and liberty. But after the revolution, the country’s problems were far from solved. The country’s post-revolution issues sparked a Civil War, which was followed by a reconstruction. In some ways, the Civil War and Reconstruction helped the United States accomplish its original goals, but in many ways, that was not the case. Due to a handful of conflicts, a major one†¦show more content†¦The Union went on to win the Civil War, maintain the union and abolish slavery. Problem solved right? Well, not quite. In fact, America’s problems had only just begun.  After the Civil War, the country needed to be reconstructed for a few reasons. First of all, much of the Confederate land was now wrecked, with farms and plantations burned down and crops destroyed. People were using now illegitimate confederate money and local governments were in disarray. Former confederates needed to be effectively incorporated back into the Union. Most importantly, slaves were now freedmen and needed to be integrated back into society. The United States was a â€Å"new nation,† that, for the first time was â€Å"wholly free† (Foner 477). But with the abolishment of slavery, â€Å"What is the true definition of freedom?† became a central question in the nation. Black people in America after the war were facing intense scrutiny, racist ideologies and bigotry that was still very prevalent throughout the country. In 1865, Congressman James A. Garfield asked, â€Å"Is it the bare privilege of not being chained? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion† (Foner 477). Was freedom simpl y just the absence of slavery, or did it give other rights to former slaves? Five days after the Civil War ended, President Lincoln was shot. Vice President Andrew Johnson then assumed the presidency. Reuniting the nation was a task that now