Crimes Essay

Crime prevention is a major responsibility of law enforcement organizations. It is necessary to promote and maintain peace and order to the community by executing measures that lessens or diminishes crime rates as impacted by lawbreakers in society. Several solutions bring about the decrease in crime rates in the community. These solutions do not only depend on the roles and responsibilities expected to be carried out by law enforcement agencies, but also require cooperation from the people in communities and the government. Crime prevention should be a group effort because the will to prevent crime is everyone’s concern. With this in mind, one possible solution for crime prevention is motivating the community to be vigilant and cooperative in responding to criminal offenses. Law enforcement agencies cannot prevent crime without the help of other members of the community. In this case, the roles of victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers are magnified. When victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers experience criminal offenses of any gravity or kind, they should report it to the police. This catches the attention of law enforcement agencies allowing them to respond to the situation in a timely and apposite manner. Aside from experiencing criminal offenses, people should be able to inform the police of concerns regarding potential offenses observed in the community. Staying one step ahead is better, and by informing the police of concerns or observations, law enforcement agencies are able to plan ahead to prevent crimes from happening. Another way to prevent crime is by being cautious or vigilant about oneself and his surroundings. People should take safety measures in order to protect themselves, their property, and other people from the harmful nature of offenses. This includes following tips on safety precautions as advised by the state, law enforcement agencies, and concerned citizens or private organizations (HCSO, 2008). Engaging in a joint effort by the neighborhood, such as the establishment of neighborhood watch groups, is also one possible way to reduce or eliminate crime. Crime prevention does not only necessitate cooperating with the police, but also with other members of the community. Neighborhood watch groups are composed of people from a neighborhood who are concerned with the community’s safety and are willing to provide assistance to law enforcement agencies for crime prevention. Through collaboration and teamwork, people in the neighborhood are able to counter crime by evaluating their neighborhood and determining what steps to take in order to increase peace and order in their area. (Solutions for America, 2003) Technology and innovation also play a major part in reducing or eliminating crimes committed by offenders in the community. Law enforcement agencies use information technology in order to prevent crime and capture offenders. Crime rates, data sheets, and other background information about crimes, criminals, usual victims, and environments where crimes take place, etc. re stored electronically in a database managed and maintained by law enforcement agencies. Through this system or database, law enforcement agencies are able to share or view this information whenever needed for reference when it comes to predicting criminals patterns of potential risks that may cause the rise in crime rate in a particular situation. (SCRA, 2008) Continuous research and innovative techniques are being employed by private organizations in order to improve technologies that are being used by law enforcement agencies. For instance, the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center or NLECTC is active in research and experimentation in order to improve the quality, features, and functions of law enforcement technologies, making them more suited for crime prevention and criminal capture. Since technology demands high fees, it is the role of the state or federal government to allocate funds for this cause because technological advancement improves the performance of law enforcement agencies. Using technology automates law enforcement work, making it more efficient and timely in crime prevention. SCRA, 2008) Some of the gadgets that law enforcement use that assists in reducing or eliminating crimes committed by offenders include lightweight body armors, drug-recognition tools (through pupil scanning), cars (such as the Lotus Exige S which increases road safety for police officers especially when in pursuit), gunshot location technologies (computer that supervises specific areas to detect gun shots), video intelligence softwares for computers (may be used in houses, business companies, etc. or surveillance purposes), LED Incapacitator (it is a flashlight which emits LED light that restrains individuals when they look directly at it), and armed robots (apparently, some robots are utilized by law enforcement agencies by arming it with taser guns. (Gizmag, 2008) Focusing on rehabilitating crime offenders is also a plausible way in preventing criminal offenses. Restorative Jus tice is one way of rehabilitating criminals in order to reintegrate them back into society. It includes motivating jailed offenders to contribute to the community as a form of penalty. Restorative Justice also focuses on restoring damages to the victim and the community as a result of criminal actions taken by offenders. As a way to pay for crime offenses committed by offenders, they should be able to take necessary actions to patch up the relationship between the victim and the community to the offender. Through the penalties imposed to criminals, they are able to learn how to become responsible and cooperative citizens who area belt to make the right decisions. Moreover, restorative justice eliminates recidivism because it provides offenders the chance to correct their mistakes and become a valuable and accountable part of society.

The Tramp

NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN The Australian author Barbara Baynton had her first short story published under the title â€Å"The Tramp† in 1896 in the Christmas edition of the Bulletin. Founded in Sydney in 1880, the Bulletin was instrumental in developing the idea of Australian nationalism. It was originally a popular commercial weekly rather than a literary magazine but in the 1890s, with the literary critic A. G. Stephens as its editor, it was to become â€Å"something like a national literary club for a new generation of writers† (Carter 263).Stephens published work by many young Australian writers, including the short story writer Henry Lawson and the poet â€Å"Banjo† Paterson and in 1901 he celebrated Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career as the first Australian novel. 2 †¦ Stephens deemed her â€Å"too outspoken for an Australian audience† (Schaffer 154). She was unable to find a publisher in Sydney willing to print her stories as a collection a nd it was not until 1902 that six of her stories were published in London by Duckworth’s Greenback Library under the title Bush Studies. It was, on the whole, reviewed favorably.She subsequently published a novel, Human Toll, in 1907 and an expanded collection of stories in 1917. Yet, although individual stories were regularly included in anthologies of Australian literature, by the time of her death in 1929 she was better known as an antique collector and her collected stories were not reprinted until 1980. 3 Until the advent of feminist criticism in the 1980s, Baynton remained a largely forgotten figure, dismissed as a typical female writer who did not know how to control her emotions and who was unable to put her â€Å"natural talent† to good use.As late as 1983 Lucy Frost could talk of â€Å"her unusually low level of critical awareness† (65) and claim that she â€Å"relies †¦ on instinct †¦ In order to write well she needs to write honestly out o f intuitive understanding. †¦ As art it makes for failure† (65). For a long time reading the implicit in Baynton’s stories consisted in identifying the autobiographical elements and attempting to piece together her true life. She notoriously claimed, even to her own children, to be the daughter not of an Irish carpenter but of a Bengal Lancer and in later life tried to conceal he hardship of her childhood and early married life. The stories were read as â€Å"true† accounts of what it was like for a poor woman to live in the bush at the end of the nineteenth century. This paper argues that far from being a natural writer whose â€Å"talent does not extend to symbolism† (Frost 64), Baynton is a sophisticated writer who uses obliqueness simply because this was the only form of criticism open to a woman writer in Australia at this time. The apparent inability of readers to engage with the implicit in her stories stems from an unwillingness to accept her vision of life in the bush. In order to understand Baynton's technique and why earlier readers consistently failed to interpret it correctly, it is important to replace her stories in the context of the literary world in which she was working for, as Brown and Yule state, when it comes to reading the implicit: â€Å"Discourse is interpreted in the light of past experience of similar discourse by analogy with previous similar texts† (65). In 1901, the year of federation and the height of Australian nationalistic fervor, A. G.Stephens wrote: What country can offer to writers better material than Australia? We are not yet snug in cities and hamlets, molded by routine, regimented to a pattern. Every man who roams the Australian wilderness is a potential knight of Romance; every man who grapples with the Australian desert for a livelihood might sing a Homeric chant of history, or listen, baffled and beaten, to an Aeschylean dirge of defeat. The marvels of the adventurous are our d aily common-places.The drama of the conflict between Man and Destiny is played here in a scenic setting whose novelty is full of vital suggestion for the literary artist. (Ackland, 77) 5 Women are conspicuously absent in this description of Australian life as they are in the work of Henry Lawson whose stories have come to be seen as the ‘perfect’ example of nationalistic writing. In the titles of his stories women, if they exist at all, are seen as appendages of men: â€Å"The Drover’s Wife,† â€Å"The Selector’s Daughter. They are defined at best by their physical characteristics: â€Å"That Pretty Girl in the Army,† but more often than not are specifically excluded: â€Å"No Place for a Woman† or reduced to silence: â€Å"She Wouldn’t Speak. † In the texts themselves the narrators are either anonymous or male and male mate-ship is valued above marriage. In Lawson's most well-known stories the bush is a destructive forc e against which man must wage a constant battle. The landscape, perhaps predictably, is depicted in feminine terms either as a cruel mother who threatens to destroy her son or as a dangerous virgin who leads man into deadly temptation.Men survive by rallying together and are always ready to help a â€Å"mate† in distress. Women are left at home and are shown to be contented with their role as homemaker: â€Å"All days are much the same to her †¦ But this bush-woman is used to the loneliness of it †¦ She is glad when her husband returns, but she does not gush or make a fuss about it. She gets him something good to eat, and tidies up the children† (Lawson 6). Baynton's stories challenge this vision of life in the bush in a number of ways: the majority of her protagonists are female; the real danger comes not from the bush but from the men who inhabit it. From the very beginning, Baynton’s stories were subject to a form of male censorship since Stephens h eavily edited them in an attempt to render the implicit conventional and thereby make the stories conform to his vision of Australian life. Few manuscripts have survived but the changes made to two stories have been well documented. In 1984 Elizabeth Webby published an article comparing the published version of â€Å"Squeaker’s Mate† with a typescript/manuscript held in the Mitchell Library.She noted that in the published version the structure has been tightened and some ambiguity removed by replacing many of the pronouns by nouns. More importantly, the ending has been changed and, since endings play such a crucial role in the understanding of a short story, this has important repercussions on the whole text: The new, more conventionally moralistic ending demanded a more actively brutal Squeaker and a more passive, suffering Mary. So traditional male/female characteristics were superimposed on Baynton’s original characters, characters designed to question such s exual stereotypes.As well, the main emphasis was shifted from its ostensible object Squeaker’s mate, to her attacker and defender; instead of a study of a reversal of sex, we have a tale of true or false mateship. (459) 7 Despite these changes the text's conformity to the traditional Australian story of mate-ship which the Bulletin readers had come to expect remains superficial. The title itself is an ironic parody of Lawson's story titles. The woman is defined by her relationship to the man but the roles are reversed. The man has become the effeminate â€Å"Squeaker,† the woman the masculine â€Å"mate. As in Lawson's stories the male character's words are reported in passages of direct speech and the reader has access to his thoughts while the woman's words are reported only indirectly: â€Å"†¦ waiting for her to be up and about again. That would be soon, she told her complaining mate† (16). However, and this is an important difference with Lawson's sto ries, in Baynton's work the text deliberately draws attention to what is not said. For example when Squeaker leaves her without food and drink for two days: â€Å"Of them [the sheep] and the dog only she spoke when he returned† (16), or again: â€Å"No word of complaint passed her lips† (18).By the end of the story the woman has stopped speaking altogether and the reader is deliberately denied all access to her thoughts and feelings: â€Å"What the sick woman thought was not definite for she kept silent always† (20). The main character is thus marginalised both in the title and in the story itself. The story is constructed around her absence and it is precisely what is not said which draws attention to the hardships of the woman's life. 8 A similar technique is used in â€Å"Billy Skywonkie. The protagonist, who remains unnamed throughout the story, is not even mentioned until the fourth paragraph where she is described as â€Å"the listening woman passengerâ €  (46). She is thus from the start designated as external to the action. Although there is a lot of dialogue in direct speech in the story, the protagonist’s own words are always reported indirectly. The reader is never allowed direct access to her thoughts but must infer what is going on in her mind from expressions like â€Å"in nervous fear† (47) or â€Å"with the fascination of horror† (53).Despite the awfulness of the male characters, the decentering of the protagonist makes it possible for readers unwilling to accept Baynton’s views on life in the bush to accept the explicitly stated opinions of the male characters and to dismiss the woman as an unwelcome outsider. 9 The most significant changes to the original stories, and those about which Baynton apparently felt most strongly since she removed them from the text of Bush Studies, concern the story now known as â€Å"The Chosen Vessel. † This story, as many critics have remarked, is a ve rsion of â€Å"The Drover's Wife† in which the â€Å"gallows-faced swagman† (Lawson 6) does not leave.Lawson's text states repeatedly that the wife is â€Å"used to† the loneliness of her life, suggesting even that it is easier for her than for him: â€Å"They are used to being apart, or at least she is† (4). Baynton's character, on the other hand, dislikes being alone and the story shows the extreme vulnerability of women, not at the hands of Nature, but at the hands of men. 10 Baynton originally submitted the story under the title â€Å"When the Curlew Cried† but Stephens changed this to â€Å"The Tramp. † Once again his editorial changes deflect the reader’s attention away from the female character.By implicitly making the man rather than the woman the central figure, the rape and murder are reduced to one ‘episode’ in the tramp’s life. Kay Schaffer underlines (156) that this attempt to remove the woman from the story is also to be found in the work of the critic A. A. Phillips. For many years he was the only person to have written on Baynton and his article contains the preposterous sentence that her major theme is â€Å"the image of a lonely bush hut besieged by a terrifying figure who is also a terrified figure† (150).As Schaffer rightly points out, it is difficult to understand how any reader can possibly consider that the man who is contemplating rape and murder is a â€Å"terrified figure. † 11 As was then the convention, both the rape and murder are implicit: She knew that he was offering terms if she ceased to struggle and cry for help, though louder and louder did she cry for it, but it was only when the man’s hand gripped her throat that the cry of â€Å"Murder† came from her lips. And when she ceased, the startled curlews took up the awful sound, and flew wailing â€Å"Murder! Murder! over the horseman’s head (85). 12 Stephen’s delibera te suppression of two passages, however, means the reader can infer a very different meaning to events than that intended by Baynton. The Bulletin version omits the scene in which Peter Henessey explains how he mistakenly thought the figure of the woman shouting for help was a vision of the Virgin Mary. The only possible reading in this version is that the horseman was riding too fast and simply did not hear her calls: â€Å"She called to him in Christ’s Name, in her babe’s name †¦ But the distance grew greater and greater between them† (85).Baynton’s original version leads to a very different interpretation: ‘Mary! Mother of Christ! ’ He repeated the invocation half unconsciously, when suddenly to him, out of the stillness, came Christ’s Name – called loudly in despairing accents †¦ Gliding across a ghostly patch of pipe-clay, he saw a white-robed figure with a babe clasped to her bosom. †¦ The moonlight on the g leaming clay was a ‘heavenly light’ to him, and he knew the white figure not for flesh and blood, but for the Virgin and Child of his mother’s prayers.Then, good Catholic that once more he was, he put spurs to his horse’s sides and galloped madly away (86-7). 13 By clarifying what is going on in the horseman’s mind, Baynton is implying that patriarchal society as a whole is guilty. This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the woman does not exist as a person in her own right in the eyes of any of the male characters. Her husband denies her sexual identity: â€Å"Needn’t flatter yerself †¦ nobody ‘ud want ter run away with yew† (82); the swagman sees her as a sexual object, Peter Henessey as a religious one.Taken individually there is nothing original in these visions of woman but their accumulation is surprising and ought to lead the reader to consider what place is left for a woman as a person. 14 Stephen's second omission is a paragraph near the beginning of the story where the reader is told: â€Å"She was not afraid of horsemen, but swagmen† (81). This sentence is perhaps one of the best examples of the way the implicit works in Baynton's stories. The presupposition, at the time widely accepted, is that horsemen and swagmen are different.Explicitly asserting the contrary would have been immediately challenged and Baynton never takes this risk. Only with the story's denouement does the reader become aware that the presupposition is false, that both horsemen and swagmen are to be feared. 15 The other technique frequently used by Baynton is that of metaphor and metonymy. According to Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni: â€Å"le trope n'est qu'un cas particulier du fonctionnement de l'implicite. †¦ Tout trope est une deviance et se caracterise par un mecanisme de substitution – mais substitution de quoi a quoi, et deviance de quoi par rapport a quoi† (94;109).Readers of Bus h Studies have all too often identified only the substitution, not the deviance. 16 In her detailed analysis of â€Å"The Chosen Vessel† Kay Schaffer examines the significance of the last paragraph of the story in which the swagman tries to wash the sheep’s blood from his dog’s mouth and throat. She is particularly interested in the last sentence â€Å"But the dog also was guilty† (88). Most readers have seen this as a simple, almost superfluous statement, whose only aim is to underline the parallel between man and dog: the man killed a woman, the dog a sheep.Schaffer on the other hand sees here a reference to the first paragraph: â€Å"but the woman’s husband was angry and called her – the noun was cur† (Baynton 81). She analyses the metonymic association of woman and dog and argues that the woman’s dog-like loyalty to a husband who abuses her is open to criticism since as a human being she is capable of making decisions for h erself. According to Schaffer's reading: â€Å"Her massive acceptance of the situation makes her an accomplice in her fate† (165). 17Most readers do identify the woman’s metaphoric association with the cow as a symbol of the maternal instinct but Schaffer again goes one step further and argues that since the woman is afraid of the cow she is consequently afraid of the maternal in herself but in participating, albeit reluctantly, in control of the cow, her husband’s property, she also participates in maintaining patriarchal society and therefore: â€Å"Although never made explicit in the text, by metonymic links and metaphoric referents, the woman paradoxically is what she fears.She embodies ‘the maternal’ in the symbolic order. She belongs to the same economy which brings about her murder† (165). 18 The baby is rescued by a boundary rider, but this does not mean that motherhood emerges as a positive force in the story. Baynton’s title â€Å"The Chosen Vessel† implies that the abstract concept of the maternal can exist only at the cost of the woman by denying the mother the right to exist as a person: The Virgin Mary exists only to provide God with his Son, a wife is there to ensure the transmission of power and property from father to son.At the end of Baynton’s story even this reverenced position is denied women: â€Å"Once more the face of the Madonna and Child looked down on [Peter] †¦ ‘My Lord and my God! ’ was the exaltation ‘And hast Thou chosen me? ’ Ultimately Schaffer argues: If one reads through the contradictions, woman is not guilty at all – she is wholly absent. She takes no part in the actions of the story except to represent male desire as either Virgin or whore †¦ She has been named, captured, controlled, appropriated, violated, raped and murdered, and then reverenced through the signifying practices of the text.And these contradictory prac tices through which the ‘woman' is dispersed in the text are possible by her very absence from the symbolic order except by reference to her phallic repossession by Man. (168) 19 In a similar way Baynton's use of sheep as a metonym for women and passive suffering is often remarked upon but is seen as little more than a cliche.This view is justified by referring to â€Å"Squeaker’s Mate† where the woman is powerless to stop Squeaker selling her sheep, many of which she considers as pets, to the butcher and to â€Å"Billy Skywonkie† which ends with an apparently stereotypical image prefiguring the â€Å"meaningless sacrifice† (Krimmer and Lawson xxii) of the woman in â€Å"The Chosen Vessel†: â€Å"She noticed that the sheep lay passive, with its head back till its neck curved in a bow, and that the glitter of the knife was reflected in its eye† (Baynton 60).Hergenhan does go slightly further by arguing that this is also an example of Ba ynton’s denial of the redemptive power of the sacrificial animal (216) but when the collection as a whole is considered, and the different references are read in parallel, the metonym turns out to be far more ambiguous. 20 In â€Å"Scrammy ‘And† the knife is clearly not a dangerous instrument: â€Å"The only weapon that the old fellow had was the useless butcher’s knife† (41, my italics). Even more significantly in this story the reflection of the moonlight in the sheep’s eyes is sufficient to temporarily discourageScrammy: â€Å"The way those thousand eyes reflected the rising moon was disconcerting. The whole of the night seemed pregnant with eyes† (38). Far from being â€Å"innocent† creatures the sheep are associated with convicts: â€Å"The moonlight’s undulating white scales across their shorn backs brought out the fresh tar brand 8, setting him thinking of the links of that convict gang chain long ago† (42). Nor are sheep seen to be entirely passive: â€Å"She was wiser now, though sheep are slow to learn† (44). 21 In this respect the symbolism of the ewe and the poddy lamb is particularly interesting.The old man claims that this is the third lamb that he has had to poddy. He accuses the ewe of not being â€Å"nat’ral† (34), and having a â€Å"blarsted imperdence† (30). The narrator, on the other hand, describes her as â€Å"the unashamed silent mother† (30). What is being challenged is not her motherhood but her apparent lack of maternal instinct. Once the shepherd is dead, the ewe is capable of teaching her lamb to drink suggesting that it is in fact the man who prevents the maternal from developing. This would seem to be confirmed by the repeated remark that men insist on cows and calves being penned separately.Thus apparently hackneyed images are in fact used in a deviant way so as to undermine traditional bush values. 22 In much the same way, Bay nton’s cliches also deviate from expected usage. For example in â€Å"Scrammy ‘And† the old shepherd sums up his view of women as: â€Å"They can’t never do anythin’ right, an’ orlways, continerally they gets a man inter trouble (30). † By inverting the roles of men and women in the expression â€Å"getting into trouble† the text suggests that values in the Bush are radically different to elsewhere. Something which is confirmed in â€Å"Billy Skywonkie† where the narrator reflects: â€Å"She felt she had lost her mental balance.Little matters became distorted and the greater shrivelled† (55). 23 Similarly the apparently stereotypical descriptions of the landscape in fact undermine the Bulletin vision of Australia. In â€Å"Billy Skywonkie† the countryside is described as â€Å"barren shelterless plains† (47). Were the description to stop here it could be interpreted as a typical male image of the land as dangerous female but the text continues; the land is barren because of â€Å"the tireless greedy sun† (47). In the traditional dichotomy man/woman; active/passive the sun is always masculine and like the sun the men in Bush Studies are shown to be greedy.Although never explicitly stated, this seems to suggest that it is not the land itself which is hostile but the activities of men which make it so. Schaffer sees a confirmation of this (152) in the fact that it is the Konk’s nose which for the protagonist â€Å"blotted the landscape and dwarfed all perspective† (Baynton 50). In Baynton’s work women are associated with the land because both are victims of men. 24 The least understood story in the collection is undoubtedly â€Å"Bush Church†: Krimmer and Lawson talk of its â€Å"grim meaninglessness† (xxii) and Phillips complains that it is â€Å"almost without plot† (155).It is perhaps not surprising that this story should be the m ost complex in its use of language. Of all the stories in the collection â€Å"Bush Church† is the one which contains the most direct speech, written in an unfamiliar colloquial Australian English. These passages deliberately flout what Grice describes as the maxims of relevance and manner – they seem neither to advance the plot nor to add to the reader's understanding of the characters. 25 Most readers are thrown by this failure to respect conversational maxims and the co-operative principal. Consequently they pay insufficient attention to individual sentences.Moreover, the sentences are structured in such a way as to make it difficult for the reader to question their ‘truth’ or even to locate their subversive nature. As Jean Jacques Weber points out, the natural tendency is to challenge what the sentence asserts rather than what it presupposes (164). This is clearly illustrated by the opening sentence: â€Å"The hospitality of the bush never extends to the loan of a good horse to an inexperienced rider† (61). Readers may object that they know of occasions when a good horse was loaned to an inexperienced rider but few realise that the assertion in fact negates the presupposition.Baynton is not talking here about the loan of a horse but is challenging one of the fundamental myths of life in the bush – that there is such a thing as bush hospitality. 26 Once again a comparison with Lawson is illuminating. Lawson's anonymous narrator says of the Drover's wife: â€Å"She seems contented with her lot† (6). In â€Å"Bush Church† this becomes: â€Å"But for all this Liz thought she was fairly happy† (70). Although semantically their meaning is similar, pragmatically they could not be more different.It is not the anonymous narrator but Liz who is uncertain of her feelings and feels it necessary to qualify â€Å"happy† by â€Å"fairly. † More importantly the presupposition, â€Å"but for all t his,† deliberately leaves unsaid the extreme poverty and the beatings to which Liz is subject. 27 Susan Sheridan, talking of Baynton’s novel Human Toll, says: â€Å"the assumption that it is autobiographical deflects attention from the novel’s textuality as if the assertion that it was all ‘true’ and that writing was a necessary catharsis could account for its strangely wrought prose and obscure dynamics of desire† (67).The same is true of her short stories. By persisting in reading her as a â€Å"realist† writer many readers fail to notice her sophisticated use of language. Perhaps because none of the stories has a narrator to guide the reader in their interpretation or because the reader has little or no direct access to the protagonist’s thoughts, or because of the flouting of conversational maxims and the co-operative principal, sentences are taken at face value and all too often little attempt is made to decode the irony or to question what on the surface appears to be statements of fact.Hergenhan queries the success of a strategy of such extreme obliqueness: â€Å"It is difficult to understand why Baynton did not make it clearer as the ellipsis is carried so far that the clues have eluded most readers† (217), but it should be remembered that, given the circumstances in which she was trying to publish, direct criticism was never an option for Baynton. What is essential in decoding Baynton’s work is to accept that it is not about women but about the absence of women who are shown to be victims both of men in the bush and of language. The Tramp NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN The Australian author Barbara Baynton had her first short story published under the title â€Å"The Tramp† in 1896 in the Christmas edition of the Bulletin. Founded in Sydney in 1880, the Bulletin was instrumental in developing the idea of Australian nationalism. It was originally a popular commercial weekly rather than a literary magazine but in the 1890s, with the literary critic A. G. Stephens as its editor, it was to become â€Å"something like a national literary club for a new generation of writers† (Carter 263).Stephens published work by many young Australian writers, including the short story writer Henry Lawson and the poet â€Å"Banjo† Paterson and in 1901 he celebrated Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career as the first Australian novel. 2 †¦ Stephens deemed her â€Å"too outspoken for an Australian audience† (Schaffer 154). She was unable to find a publisher in Sydney willing to print her stories as a collection a nd it was not until 1902 that six of her stories were published in London by Duckworth’s Greenback Library under the title Bush Studies. It was, on the whole, reviewed favorably.She subsequently published a novel, Human Toll, in 1907 and an expanded collection of stories in 1917. Yet, although individual stories were regularly included in anthologies of Australian literature, by the time of her death in 1929 she was better known as an antique collector and her collected stories were not reprinted until 1980. 3 Until the advent of feminist criticism in the 1980s, Baynton remained a largely forgotten figure, dismissed as a typical female writer who did not know how to control her emotions and who was unable to put her â€Å"natural talent† to good use.As late as 1983 Lucy Frost could talk of â€Å"her unusually low level of critical awareness† (65) and claim that she â€Å"relies †¦ on instinct †¦ In order to write well she needs to write honestly out o f intuitive understanding. †¦ As art it makes for failure† (65). For a long time reading the implicit in Baynton’s stories consisted in identifying the autobiographical elements and attempting to piece together her true life. She notoriously claimed, even to her own children, to be the daughter not of an Irish carpenter but of a Bengal Lancer and in later life tried to conceal he hardship of her childhood and early married life. The stories were read as â€Å"true† accounts of what it was like for a poor woman to live in the bush at the end of the nineteenth century. This paper argues that far from being a natural writer whose â€Å"talent does not extend to symbolism† (Frost 64), Baynton is a sophisticated writer who uses obliqueness simply because this was the only form of criticism open to a woman writer in Australia at this time. The apparent inability of readers to engage with the implicit in her stories stems from an unwillingness to accept her vision of life in the bush. In order to understand Baynton's technique and why earlier readers consistently failed to interpret it correctly, it is important to replace her stories in the context of the literary world in which she was working for, as Brown and Yule state, when it comes to reading the implicit: â€Å"Discourse is interpreted in the light of past experience of similar discourse by analogy with previous similar texts† (65). In 1901, the year of federation and the height of Australian nationalistic fervor, A. G.Stephens wrote: What country can offer to writers better material than Australia? We are not yet snug in cities and hamlets, molded by routine, regimented to a pattern. Every man who roams the Australian wilderness is a potential knight of Romance; every man who grapples with the Australian desert for a livelihood might sing a Homeric chant of history, or listen, baffled and beaten, to an Aeschylean dirge of defeat. The marvels of the adventurous are our d aily common-places.The drama of the conflict between Man and Destiny is played here in a scenic setting whose novelty is full of vital suggestion for the literary artist. (Ackland, 77) 5 Women are conspicuously absent in this description of Australian life as they are in the work of Henry Lawson whose stories have come to be seen as the ‘perfect’ example of nationalistic writing. In the titles of his stories women, if they exist at all, are seen as appendages of men: â€Å"The Drover’s Wife,† â€Å"The Selector’s Daughter. They are defined at best by their physical characteristics: â€Å"That Pretty Girl in the Army,† but more often than not are specifically excluded: â€Å"No Place for a Woman† or reduced to silence: â€Å"She Wouldn’t Speak. † In the texts themselves the narrators are either anonymous or male and male mate-ship is valued above marriage. In Lawson's most well-known stories the bush is a destructive forc e against which man must wage a constant battle. The landscape, perhaps predictably, is depicted in feminine terms either as a cruel mother who threatens to destroy her son or as a dangerous virgin who leads man into deadly temptation.Men survive by rallying together and are always ready to help a â€Å"mate† in distress. Women are left at home and are shown to be contented with their role as homemaker: â€Å"All days are much the same to her †¦ But this bush-woman is used to the loneliness of it †¦ She is glad when her husband returns, but she does not gush or make a fuss about it. She gets him something good to eat, and tidies up the children† (Lawson 6). Baynton's stories challenge this vision of life in the bush in a number of ways: the majority of her protagonists are female; the real danger comes not from the bush but from the men who inhabit it. From the very beginning, Baynton’s stories were subject to a form of male censorship since Stephens h eavily edited them in an attempt to render the implicit conventional and thereby make the stories conform to his vision of Australian life. Few manuscripts have survived but the changes made to two stories have been well documented. In 1984 Elizabeth Webby published an article comparing the published version of â€Å"Squeaker’s Mate† with a typescript/manuscript held in the Mitchell Library.She noted that in the published version the structure has been tightened and some ambiguity removed by replacing many of the pronouns by nouns. More importantly, the ending has been changed and, since endings play such a crucial role in the understanding of a short story, this has important repercussions on the whole text: The new, more conventionally moralistic ending demanded a more actively brutal Squeaker and a more passive, suffering Mary. So traditional male/female characteristics were superimposed on Baynton’s original characters, characters designed to question such s exual stereotypes.As well, the main emphasis was shifted from its ostensible object Squeaker’s mate, to her attacker and defender; instead of a study of a reversal of sex, we have a tale of true or false mateship. (459) 7 Despite these changes the text's conformity to the traditional Australian story of mate-ship which the Bulletin readers had come to expect remains superficial. The title itself is an ironic parody of Lawson's story titles. The woman is defined by her relationship to the man but the roles are reversed. The man has become the effeminate â€Å"Squeaker,† the woman the masculine â€Å"mate. As in Lawson's stories the male character's words are reported in passages of direct speech and the reader has access to his thoughts while the woman's words are reported only indirectly: â€Å"†¦ waiting for her to be up and about again. That would be soon, she told her complaining mate† (16). However, and this is an important difference with Lawson's sto ries, in Baynton's work the text deliberately draws attention to what is not said. For example when Squeaker leaves her without food and drink for two days: â€Å"Of them [the sheep] and the dog only she spoke when he returned† (16), or again: â€Å"No word of complaint passed her lips† (18).By the end of the story the woman has stopped speaking altogether and the reader is deliberately denied all access to her thoughts and feelings: â€Å"What the sick woman thought was not definite for she kept silent always† (20). The main character is thus marginalised both in the title and in the story itself. The story is constructed around her absence and it is precisely what is not said which draws attention to the hardships of the woman's life. 8 A similar technique is used in â€Å"Billy Skywonkie. The protagonist, who remains unnamed throughout the story, is not even mentioned until the fourth paragraph where she is described as â€Å"the listening woman passengerâ €  (46). She is thus from the start designated as external to the action. Although there is a lot of dialogue in direct speech in the story, the protagonist’s own words are always reported indirectly. The reader is never allowed direct access to her thoughts but must infer what is going on in her mind from expressions like â€Å"in nervous fear† (47) or â€Å"with the fascination of horror† (53).Despite the awfulness of the male characters, the decentering of the protagonist makes it possible for readers unwilling to accept Baynton’s views on life in the bush to accept the explicitly stated opinions of the male characters and to dismiss the woman as an unwelcome outsider. 9 The most significant changes to the original stories, and those about which Baynton apparently felt most strongly since she removed them from the text of Bush Studies, concern the story now known as â€Å"The Chosen Vessel. † This story, as many critics have remarked, is a ve rsion of â€Å"The Drover's Wife† in which the â€Å"gallows-faced swagman† (Lawson 6) does not leave.Lawson's text states repeatedly that the wife is â€Å"used to† the loneliness of her life, suggesting even that it is easier for her than for him: â€Å"They are used to being apart, or at least she is† (4). Baynton's character, on the other hand, dislikes being alone and the story shows the extreme vulnerability of women, not at the hands of Nature, but at the hands of men. 10 Baynton originally submitted the story under the title â€Å"When the Curlew Cried† but Stephens changed this to â€Å"The Tramp. † Once again his editorial changes deflect the reader’s attention away from the female character.By implicitly making the man rather than the woman the central figure, the rape and murder are reduced to one ‘episode’ in the tramp’s life. Kay Schaffer underlines (156) that this attempt to remove the woman from the story is also to be found in the work of the critic A. A. Phillips. For many years he was the only person to have written on Baynton and his article contains the preposterous sentence that her major theme is â€Å"the image of a lonely bush hut besieged by a terrifying figure who is also a terrified figure† (150).As Schaffer rightly points out, it is difficult to understand how any reader can possibly consider that the man who is contemplating rape and murder is a â€Å"terrified figure. † 11 As was then the convention, both the rape and murder are implicit: She knew that he was offering terms if she ceased to struggle and cry for help, though louder and louder did she cry for it, but it was only when the man’s hand gripped her throat that the cry of â€Å"Murder† came from her lips. And when she ceased, the startled curlews took up the awful sound, and flew wailing â€Å"Murder! Murder! over the horseman’s head (85). 12 Stephen’s delibera te suppression of two passages, however, means the reader can infer a very different meaning to events than that intended by Baynton. The Bulletin version omits the scene in which Peter Henessey explains how he mistakenly thought the figure of the woman shouting for help was a vision of the Virgin Mary. The only possible reading in this version is that the horseman was riding too fast and simply did not hear her calls: â€Å"She called to him in Christ’s Name, in her babe’s name †¦ But the distance grew greater and greater between them† (85).Baynton’s original version leads to a very different interpretation: ‘Mary! Mother of Christ! ’ He repeated the invocation half unconsciously, when suddenly to him, out of the stillness, came Christ’s Name – called loudly in despairing accents †¦ Gliding across a ghostly patch of pipe-clay, he saw a white-robed figure with a babe clasped to her bosom. †¦ The moonlight on the g leaming clay was a ‘heavenly light’ to him, and he knew the white figure not for flesh and blood, but for the Virgin and Child of his mother’s prayers.Then, good Catholic that once more he was, he put spurs to his horse’s sides and galloped madly away (86-7). 13 By clarifying what is going on in the horseman’s mind, Baynton is implying that patriarchal society as a whole is guilty. This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the woman does not exist as a person in her own right in the eyes of any of the male characters. Her husband denies her sexual identity: â€Å"Needn’t flatter yerself †¦ nobody ‘ud want ter run away with yew† (82); the swagman sees her as a sexual object, Peter Henessey as a religious one.Taken individually there is nothing original in these visions of woman but their accumulation is surprising and ought to lead the reader to consider what place is left for a woman as a person. 14 Stephen's second omission is a paragraph near the beginning of the story where the reader is told: â€Å"She was not afraid of horsemen, but swagmen† (81). This sentence is perhaps one of the best examples of the way the implicit works in Baynton's stories. The presupposition, at the time widely accepted, is that horsemen and swagmen are different.Explicitly asserting the contrary would have been immediately challenged and Baynton never takes this risk. Only with the story's denouement does the reader become aware that the presupposition is false, that both horsemen and swagmen are to be feared. 15 The other technique frequently used by Baynton is that of metaphor and metonymy. According to Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni: â€Å"le trope n'est qu'un cas particulier du fonctionnement de l'implicite. †¦ Tout trope est une deviance et se caracterise par un mecanisme de substitution – mais substitution de quoi a quoi, et deviance de quoi par rapport a quoi† (94;109).Readers of Bus h Studies have all too often identified only the substitution, not the deviance. 16 In her detailed analysis of â€Å"The Chosen Vessel† Kay Schaffer examines the significance of the last paragraph of the story in which the swagman tries to wash the sheep’s blood from his dog’s mouth and throat. She is particularly interested in the last sentence â€Å"But the dog also was guilty† (88). Most readers have seen this as a simple, almost superfluous statement, whose only aim is to underline the parallel between man and dog: the man killed a woman, the dog a sheep.Schaffer on the other hand sees here a reference to the first paragraph: â€Å"but the woman’s husband was angry and called her – the noun was cur† (Baynton 81). She analyses the metonymic association of woman and dog and argues that the woman’s dog-like loyalty to a husband who abuses her is open to criticism since as a human being she is capable of making decisions for h erself. According to Schaffer's reading: â€Å"Her massive acceptance of the situation makes her an accomplice in her fate† (165). 17Most readers do identify the woman’s metaphoric association with the cow as a symbol of the maternal instinct but Schaffer again goes one step further and argues that since the woman is afraid of the cow she is consequently afraid of the maternal in herself but in participating, albeit reluctantly, in control of the cow, her husband’s property, she also participates in maintaining patriarchal society and therefore: â€Å"Although never made explicit in the text, by metonymic links and metaphoric referents, the woman paradoxically is what she fears.She embodies ‘the maternal’ in the symbolic order. She belongs to the same economy which brings about her murder† (165). 18 The baby is rescued by a boundary rider, but this does not mean that motherhood emerges as a positive force in the story. Baynton’s title â€Å"The Chosen Vessel† implies that the abstract concept of the maternal can exist only at the cost of the woman by denying the mother the right to exist as a person: The Virgin Mary exists only to provide God with his Son, a wife is there to ensure the transmission of power and property from father to son.At the end of Baynton’s story even this reverenced position is denied women: â€Å"Once more the face of the Madonna and Child looked down on [Peter] †¦ ‘My Lord and my God! ’ was the exaltation ‘And hast Thou chosen me? ’ Ultimately Schaffer argues: If one reads through the contradictions, woman is not guilty at all – she is wholly absent. She takes no part in the actions of the story except to represent male desire as either Virgin or whore †¦ She has been named, captured, controlled, appropriated, violated, raped and murdered, and then reverenced through the signifying practices of the text.And these contradictory prac tices through which the ‘woman' is dispersed in the text are possible by her very absence from the symbolic order except by reference to her phallic repossession by Man. (168) 19 In a similar way Baynton's use of sheep as a metonym for women and passive suffering is often remarked upon but is seen as little more than a cliche.This view is justified by referring to â€Å"Squeaker’s Mate† where the woman is powerless to stop Squeaker selling her sheep, many of which she considers as pets, to the butcher and to â€Å"Billy Skywonkie† which ends with an apparently stereotypical image prefiguring the â€Å"meaningless sacrifice† (Krimmer and Lawson xxii) of the woman in â€Å"The Chosen Vessel†: â€Å"She noticed that the sheep lay passive, with its head back till its neck curved in a bow, and that the glitter of the knife was reflected in its eye† (Baynton 60).Hergenhan does go slightly further by arguing that this is also an example of Ba ynton’s denial of the redemptive power of the sacrificial animal (216) but when the collection as a whole is considered, and the different references are read in parallel, the metonym turns out to be far more ambiguous. 20 In â€Å"Scrammy ‘And† the knife is clearly not a dangerous instrument: â€Å"The only weapon that the old fellow had was the useless butcher’s knife† (41, my italics). Even more significantly in this story the reflection of the moonlight in the sheep’s eyes is sufficient to temporarily discourageScrammy: â€Å"The way those thousand eyes reflected the rising moon was disconcerting. The whole of the night seemed pregnant with eyes† (38). Far from being â€Å"innocent† creatures the sheep are associated with convicts: â€Å"The moonlight’s undulating white scales across their shorn backs brought out the fresh tar brand 8, setting him thinking of the links of that convict gang chain long ago† (42). Nor are sheep seen to be entirely passive: â€Å"She was wiser now, though sheep are slow to learn† (44). 21 In this respect the symbolism of the ewe and the poddy lamb is particularly interesting.The old man claims that this is the third lamb that he has had to poddy. He accuses the ewe of not being â€Å"nat’ral† (34), and having a â€Å"blarsted imperdence† (30). The narrator, on the other hand, describes her as â€Å"the unashamed silent mother† (30). What is being challenged is not her motherhood but her apparent lack of maternal instinct. Once the shepherd is dead, the ewe is capable of teaching her lamb to drink suggesting that it is in fact the man who prevents the maternal from developing. This would seem to be confirmed by the repeated remark that men insist on cows and calves being penned separately.Thus apparently hackneyed images are in fact used in a deviant way so as to undermine traditional bush values. 22 In much the same way, Bay nton’s cliches also deviate from expected usage. For example in â€Å"Scrammy ‘And† the old shepherd sums up his view of women as: â€Å"They can’t never do anythin’ right, an’ orlways, continerally they gets a man inter trouble (30). † By inverting the roles of men and women in the expression â€Å"getting into trouble† the text suggests that values in the Bush are radically different to elsewhere. Something which is confirmed in â€Å"Billy Skywonkie† where the narrator reflects: â€Å"She felt she had lost her mental balance.Little matters became distorted and the greater shrivelled† (55). 23 Similarly the apparently stereotypical descriptions of the landscape in fact undermine the Bulletin vision of Australia. In â€Å"Billy Skywonkie† the countryside is described as â€Å"barren shelterless plains† (47). Were the description to stop here it could be interpreted as a typical male image of the land as dangerous female but the text continues; the land is barren because of â€Å"the tireless greedy sun† (47). In the traditional dichotomy man/woman; active/passive the sun is always masculine and like the sun the men in Bush Studies are shown to be greedy.Although never explicitly stated, this seems to suggest that it is not the land itself which is hostile but the activities of men which make it so. Schaffer sees a confirmation of this (152) in the fact that it is the Konk’s nose which for the protagonist â€Å"blotted the landscape and dwarfed all perspective† (Baynton 50). In Baynton’s work women are associated with the land because both are victims of men. 24 The least understood story in the collection is undoubtedly â€Å"Bush Church†: Krimmer and Lawson talk of its â€Å"grim meaninglessness† (xxii) and Phillips complains that it is â€Å"almost without plot† (155).It is perhaps not surprising that this story should be the m ost complex in its use of language. Of all the stories in the collection â€Å"Bush Church† is the one which contains the most direct speech, written in an unfamiliar colloquial Australian English. These passages deliberately flout what Grice describes as the maxims of relevance and manner – they seem neither to advance the plot nor to add to the reader's understanding of the characters. 25 Most readers are thrown by this failure to respect conversational maxims and the co-operative principal. Consequently they pay insufficient attention to individual sentences.Moreover, the sentences are structured in such a way as to make it difficult for the reader to question their ‘truth’ or even to locate their subversive nature. As Jean Jacques Weber points out, the natural tendency is to challenge what the sentence asserts rather than what it presupposes (164). This is clearly illustrated by the opening sentence: â€Å"The hospitality of the bush never extends to the loan of a good horse to an inexperienced rider† (61). Readers may object that they know of occasions when a good horse was loaned to an inexperienced rider but few realise that the assertion in fact negates the presupposition.Baynton is not talking here about the loan of a horse but is challenging one of the fundamental myths of life in the bush – that there is such a thing as bush hospitality. 26 Once again a comparison with Lawson is illuminating. Lawson's anonymous narrator says of the Drover's wife: â€Å"She seems contented with her lot† (6). In â€Å"Bush Church† this becomes: â€Å"But for all this Liz thought she was fairly happy† (70). Although semantically their meaning is similar, pragmatically they could not be more different.It is not the anonymous narrator but Liz who is uncertain of her feelings and feels it necessary to qualify â€Å"happy† by â€Å"fairly. † More importantly the presupposition, â€Å"but for all t his,† deliberately leaves unsaid the extreme poverty and the beatings to which Liz is subject. 27 Susan Sheridan, talking of Baynton’s novel Human Toll, says: â€Å"the assumption that it is autobiographical deflects attention from the novel’s textuality as if the assertion that it was all ‘true’ and that writing was a necessary catharsis could account for its strangely wrought prose and obscure dynamics of desire† (67).The same is true of her short stories. By persisting in reading her as a â€Å"realist† writer many readers fail to notice her sophisticated use of language. Perhaps because none of the stories has a narrator to guide the reader in their interpretation or because the reader has little or no direct access to the protagonist’s thoughts, or because of the flouting of conversational maxims and the co-operative principal, sentences are taken at face value and all too often little attempt is made to decode the irony or to question what on the surface appears to be statements of fact.Hergenhan queries the success of a strategy of such extreme obliqueness: â€Å"It is difficult to understand why Baynton did not make it clearer as the ellipsis is carried so far that the clues have eluded most readers† (217), but it should be remembered that, given the circumstances in which she was trying to publish, direct criticism was never an option for Baynton. What is essential in decoding Baynton’s work is to accept that it is not about women but about the absence of women who are shown to be victims both of men in the bush and of language.

Consumer Trust

Project report on: Consumer Trust – Flipkart Subject: Consumer Behaviour Submitted to: Prof. Neha Gupta Submitted by: Ami Vora Roll No: 58 Class: PGDM – Communications FLIPKART  is an Indian  e-commerce  company founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007, both alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Initially funded by the Bansals themselves with  Rs. 400,000, Flipkart has since then raised funding from venture capital funds  Accel India  in 2009  and Tiger Global (US$10 million in 2010 and  US$20 million in June 2011).Today, as per Alexa traffic rankings, Flipkart is among the top 20 Indian Web sites and has been credited with being India's largest online bookseller  with over 11 million titles on offer. The cash-on-delivery model adopted by Flipkart has proven to be of great significance since the credit card and net banking penetration is very low in India. Even its 30 days replacement offer is something which acts as its USP. FAC TORS THAT LEAD TO THE SUCCESS OF FLIPKART * Customer Service: Provide good customer support with quick turn around time for client queries.Provide replacement of product in case a customer receives a defective product. * User Interface: Easy to use, easy to browse through the products, add products to wishlist or to a cart, get product reviews and opinions, pre-order products, make payments using different methods. * Cash/Card On Delivery: Demonstrated more confidence in buying products. Flipkart sells 20 products/min and have with more than 60% of the Flipkart's customers use Cash on Delivery and card on delivery methods. This is because of two reasons, one is many people do not know how to make payments online.And secondly people do not have immense trust in e-commerce in India. * Customer Retention: Has around 15 lakh individual customers and more than 70% customers are repeat customers i. e. they shop various times each year. The company targets to have a customer base of 1 cror e by 2015. * Local Presence: Tie ups with local vendors and courier firms (thereby reducing transportation and storage costs. Owns warehouse in major cities. CONSUMER TRUST For ensuring success, securing trust in your company is essential. Trust is as important to a potential customer’s purchasing decision as the products you offer him.And an essential element of building that trust, with both customers and partners, is the assurance that your e-commerce operation meets the demanding security standards required of organizations handling sensitive financial information. Building a consumer Trust for Flipkart can take place in the following facets: * Setting up a Storefront which generates a sense of dependency among the consumer * Build a commerce friendly Web Host * Securing Information Using SSL * Processing Transactions * On time Delivery * Quality of the products * Efficient staff * Return PolicyFollowing are the various measures taken my Flipkart to build and ensure consu mer trust. 1. Merchandise site safety and security A safe and secure Web site is the most crucial element to building online trust. Flipkart convey that customers can trust them with their personal information and their purchases. Promote the basic security of your site and reinforce that message with a buying process that emphasizes safety and ease. Flipkart has a â€Å"Worry Free Shopping† environment. It clearly states shipping, return and privacy policies as well as security and product guarantees.Customers are most sensitive to trust and security issues as they move down the path to purchase. 2. A professional site speaks volumes’ Flipkart has invested wisely in professionalism of their site. This includes : user-friendly design and content updates that are accurate and regular, paying attention to load time, avoiding site down time at all costs, updating content often, avoiding typos and broken links. 3. Showcase the Trustworthiness of Your Brand The trustworthin ess is also defined by highlighting its distinctive qualities and physical presence.They do this by expliciting brand-value statement, reinforce that brand-value statement by creating a tag line that customers, over time, will easily associate, and provide easily accessible customer service phone numbers. 4. Outside Voices Boost Credibility There is often no better way to build trust in your brand than to allow others to endorse it. Flipkart has a section for reviews for the product and services from trusted sources which act invaluable. 5. Comprehensive Product Content Enhances Trust You will find comprehensive product content and details of a particular product once u chose any item.This gives an insight of the minute, technical, and other details of the product before purchase. 6. What You See Is What You Get Flipkart provides image zoom functionality; provide thumbnail images to the shopping cart, etc. to ensure that What You See Is What You Get. 7. Building Quality Service One of the most important aspect is also to create trust among the consumers about the quality of the product. Flipkart provides information such as sizes, product availability (in stock), e-mail confirmation, post purchase services, customer service, etc. . Secure Payment options Flipkart promptly provides various options for the payment of the desired products. This is done by Cash on delivery, Credit card and debit card purchase, Net banking, etc. One striking features is also their EMI option with a very minimal amount of overhead. This attracts the consumers and develops a string sense of trust among the consumers as payment is the most sensitive part of the entire consumer buying process. 9. Returns and Guarantee Flipkart’s USP is the 30 day returns guarantee process.Though conditions apply to these, but to almost all the products they refund the entire amount of the money paid if the consumer returns the purchased product due to any reason. Below is a graph denoting monthl y traffic to Flipkart and it shows an increasing trend for most of the years. Customer trust in a company can play a significant role in determining the customer’s actions regarding that company. Customer trust (a belief) influences customer intentions. Empirical Research has shown that trust increases customer intention to purchase a product from a company as well as customer intention to return to a company.The following image shows the flow on process for Flipkart online shopping. RESULTS OF BUILDING CONSUMER TRUST The most important parameter for measuring the results of the efforts for creating consumer trust is the revenue generated. In about 7 years, Flipkart generated 12  billion (US$220  million) (FY  2011–12). Flipkart even has a market share of 20-25% in the Indian online market. Last year, it even acquired Let’s Buy and thus increased their market share. The graph shown above also speaks for itself that the number of visitors have been increasi ng day by day thus ensuring better sales and profitability.ROLE OF ADVERTISING IN BUILDING CONSUMER TRUST Flipkart. com  is one such online portal that is synonymous with trust worthy online shopping. Flipkart used various innovative ads where they show kids playing the roles of an adult (with real adult dubbed voices) in a day to day situation to reach their audiences. This creates a sense of trust among the consumers as kids convey truthfulness. This particular advertisement where three generations are portrayed to present the customers’ skepticism in online shopping hits just the right chords to market  Flipkart. com  and assure customers of its excellent services.This advertisement focuses on the major concern of the customers i. e. guarantee and how can one make an assessment from an online image. With the witty use of our old custom of arranged marriages where brides got betrothed by simply looking at the photographs of their husbands, this advertisement mixes a p erfect marketing solution, wrapped up in good humour. By presenting three generations together in an ad,  Flipkart. com  once again makes it clear that online shopping is devoid of age barriers and  Flipkart. com  is targeted to everyone irrespective of age or gender. CONCLUSIONFlipkart is one of the leading players in the online shopping sector in India. It targets all the older generation’s trust towards  Flipkart. com  by making the high-tech younger generation doubtful, and boosting the older generation’s ego by making them make an online purchase in the tech-savvy world. The tag line â€Å"shopping ka naya address†, â€Å"the new address for shopping†, does open doors or rather browsers to online shopping. By various and continuous efforts Flipkart has, no doubt, succeeded at a great level to create consumer trust and its impact is visible and measurable through the results. THANK YOU !!

Manifest Destiny Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Manifest Destiny - Essay Example The originally-thought of as divine destiny to help other nations became an intense selfish purpose to divide and conquer other nations, not just northward, which justified the original term â€Å"continentalism† but also westward, or the whole world ultimately. This belief became a source of division among the American nation, particularly on the issue of â€Å"All Oregon or Nothing†. During the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 which discussed the joint occupation by the United States and Great Britain of the Oregon Country, the British government refused the idea of then President John Tyler to divide the Oregon Country along the 49th parallel. Instead, the British suggested that a boundary line along Columbia River be made. This was objected to by the advocates of Manifest Destiny. They wanted the whole Oregon Country instead of sharing it with the British. They demanded that annexation be made (otherwise known as 54degrees 40’N). Then Presidential candidate James Polk proposed to divide the Oregon Country along the 49th parallel. Again, the British refused the proposal. Advocates of Manifest Destiny cried out for â€Å"The Fifty-Four Forty or None!† When Polk became President, he insinuated to terminate the joint occupation agreement. Thus, the British had no option but to accede to the proposal of dividing Oregon Country along the 49th parallel. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 was born

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Global Business - Essay Example three countries have been considered from which Elecdyne can choose, along with a comparative analysis of the countries and Japan through a combined SWOT and PEST analysis. Some of the most important factors that Elecdyne should consider are cost minimization and profit maximization with respect to internationalization in a country leading to improvement in profits and sales revenue (Hurn, 2009). The other factors include access to technology and availability of technological expertise in a particular country. Elecdyne also must take into account the access to new markets through internationalization as well as evaluate size of target markets before selecting a country. Besides these, political and economic factors are also very important as Elecdyne should not be taking too many risks. The culture-fit factor, which is one of the most essential factors to be considered, estimates the amount of organizational conflict can arise due to difference in Japanese culture and that of the hos t nation. The target markets for Elecdyne are developed and developing markets, which have considerable demand for quality electronics goods. Since Elecdyne uses original licenses from MNCs, products offered are not too cheap. So, Elecdyne targets the middle and higher income group of people. The current shopping trends with improvement in economy of developing countries and rising demand for Japanese goods, which are known for their high quality standards, is an advantage for growth of Elecdyne in foreign markets. Since most of Elecdyne licenses are taken from MNCs, the technology employed is always high-end. The availability of research graduates in developing countries at lower wages rates than Japan is a major plus point, which will help Elecdyne to improve its technological capabilities. The general economic trends are not very encouraging as the world economy recovers from a recession; but, many governments are giving tax rebates and reducing duties in a bid to attract new

PEST Analysis of Pizza Hut Inc Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

PEST Analysis of Pizza Hut Inc - Essay Example A PEST analysis has been conducted to assess the international marketing environment of the firm. The next section covers the international promotional decisions the firm makes to be a global brand. Pizza Hut’s international market entry strategies are covered in the next portion which illustrates how it assesses the market before it enters it so that it can modify itself accordingly. The international segmentation strategies are then highlighted to show how the firm segments its international market. Lastly, the market research methods of the firm are discussed to show how the firm understands the market it enters and survives in. Pizza Hut and other fast-food chains like McDonald's have been accused of causing obesity due to their calorie contained products which are making nations fat and it seems like the issue will be a national issue and concern (BBC, 2007). Legal actions have been taken against competitors like McDonald's, however, Pizza Hut has been saved from the nega tive image building for now, however, it will have its trickle-down effect and soon legal actions would be taken against the brand too(Dev and Don, 2005). To avoid this, the firm is incorporating healthier meals in its menu which are less in calories but it has not been able to do it on a large scale. However, for now, governments have not been involved to put legal restrictions on fast-food chains but this is becoming increasingly likely and the firm should take action to protect itself. The strategy of introducing healthy meal options should be applied globally so that the firm can be proactive and be saved from government restrictions and legal involvements (BBC, 2007).

Laws and Regulation for The Protection of Chicken in the United States Research Paper

Laws and Regulation for The Protection of Chicken in the United States - Research Paper Example This research will begin with the statement that chicken has been a favorite food by man for a long time. Some of its significant uses are for food, egg production, and for research. An estimated nine billion chickens go to the marketplace and to the food table of every American yearly. Yet despite its many favorable uses, chicken welfare seems to be forgotten by the government. This animal is often subjected to wanton abuses and indiscriminate slaughters that is done to profit few companies. If proper care for this animal is not observed, the loss is unimaginable, and the spread of disease might contaminate people, like bird-flu. Animals have rights that should be protected. This is the contention of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ( ASPCA), two organizations that argued there is a need to safeguard animals for sustainability purposes and to protect people from contamination of disease caused by these anima ls. PETA believes animals have rights and that they should live free from suffering and exploitation. But because they are animals they cannot represent themselves in reacting against exploitation of humans; and that animals should be given due considerations too, and a change of traditional view that animals exist only for human use. ASPCA ‘s worry is on farm animals that are caged on the modern farming technology. Accordingly, 99% of farm animals are raised in factory farms whose main objective is for profit other than animal welfare.

Many young people today are too concerned about the way they look Essay - 1

Many young people today are too concerned about the way they look. What are the implications of this - Essay Example The 90s saw that problem slowly become a social issue as teenage boys and girls began to battle real illnesses such as anorexia, bulimia, self hate, etc., all of which had its roots in the way that the youth of the time were becoming consumed by the way they looked and were seen or perceived by the others in their age group. The 2000s have seen the problem of image issues coming to a head due to the undue influence of the internet, reality shows, Hollywood, and other unrealistic portrayals of youth in terms of social acceptance and coolness. Bullying, suicide, eating disorders, and the like are now seen in children as young as the age of 12. Mass media has forced the children of today to be more conscious of their looks like never before, and it comes with a great cost for the children. This paper will present some of the implications of the youth being too concerned with their looks these days and offer a few suggestions towards the end as to what to do about this youth problem that is spiraling out of control. To begin with, the proper term to use when discussing the fixation of the youth with their looks is â€Å"body image issues†. These are the thoughts and emotions that a teenager feels when he or she sees his appearance in the mirror. It described the way that he or she perceives the outside describing his or her body in relation to what is considered normal in our current society. When the teen concerned views the body in a negative manner, this is known as a â€Å"Negative Body Image† which is also sometimes called â€Å"body dissatisfaction†. Such kinds of unhappiness with ones body stems commonly from their dissatisfaction with their weight, size, shape, or height. These often result in negative feelings that affect the self esteem of the teen which often leads to negative moods and disturbances (Kids Helpline, 2013). Furlong (2009) believes that the young people of today have a poor

Consultant view of business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Consultant view of business - Essay Example While there are advantages to directly working with employees in their training, say, to achieve better customer service, the practicality and long-term benefits of working with the leadership team could certainly outweigh them. It is helpful to remember that training and development is aimed at improving employees’ skills and abilities. According to Pride, Hughes and Kapoor, training should be a continuing process. (p. 264) The constant employee training could be delegated and localized to their immediate managers because: 1) it is part of their responsibilities; 2) the manager would understand his staff better than Emma who must consider and understand the employees of all her stores; and, 3) managers should take increased responsibility if Emma wants them to be more committed to the company. Dealing with the managers is like involving them in the decision or policy-making process, which could address several factors including the managers’ resentment and frustration of being left out; the opportunity to become a stake holder in the organization, which allows for the cultivation of deeper commitment and loyalty to the organization; and so forth. All in all, Emma had to work hard in order to facilitate and motivate the managers’ commitment and their change and adoption of her vision. She must constantly create and sustain conditions for success of the change she wants or the vision that she wants her people to imbibe. I will definitely advise against the buyout by HIW company. Clearly, Emma likes what she does and she left her previous work in order to setup the business. Emma’s problem is that her company is growing fast and she must work hard to keep pace with it. Here, it is clear that the answer is definitely not HIW – selling her company to it and returning to work for it again. There are many options available to her besides this prospect. She could, for instance, improve and add on her human

Conflict styles profile paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Conflict styles profile paper - Essay Example And I am not unfamiliar with it†¦ Still fresh in my memory is one conflict that I have been through prior to my coming to college. When everybody was busy and frantic about what they were going to do right after their secondary education, I was already certain that I would be pursuing college. In fact, I was really resolute in pursuing a degree. Fortunately for me, my parents and I were basically in agreement regarding this matter. However, that was where we only meet. As I look into my future and try to imagine what I would someday become I have realize that what I want is to be in the field of sciences and to be more particular in the field of Physics. Or if not Physics then I would love to do Philosophy. Although, to be honest, I really do not know what I would be doing right after finishing Physics or Philosophy but still I have set my heart on it. Unfortunately, my mother has a different plan. She wants me to enter in Hotel and Restaurant Management or Nursing because that is the trend and those two fields are in demand. Deep in my heart I know that she is correct. And that what she is trying to do is that she is opening to me other possibilities or channels that I may not be seeing or taking notice of. But you see I cannot just throw away the things that really catches my fancy, the stuffs that I love to do, the things that I would like to learn. Besides, being young, I am still being idealistic. I have this notion that in college the rudime nts of textbooks should no longer burden one. But one rather should already see the beauty of knowledge itself. So, I often tell myself in college, I will be pursuing my interests. But you see reality checks. I found myself in a situation wherein my self-interests conflict with that of my mother. Though I see it as a kind of conflict that will lead to a positive solution but still I know at the same time that I

Ethical principles in end of life care - The liverpool care pathway Essay

Ethical principles in end of life care - The liverpool care pathway - Essay Example On the contrary, other sources including that of the Health Minister Jeremy Hunt who describes it as â€Å"a fantastic step forward† (Donnelly, 2013) still maintain their favour believing that the pathway is playing its intended role of ensuring that people are treated in dignity, compassion and comfort during their last days of life instead of enduring invasive and life prolonging treatments (Randall and Downie, 2010, p.91). As a result of these controversies, the government ordered an independent review in 2012 chaired by Baroness Neuberger. The review finding recommends the Liverpool Care Pathway to be phased out and be replaced by a personalised end of life care plan that takes good care of the life of a patient who is facing imminent death (Department of Health, 2013). The LCP has clearly set the stage for ethical and legal controversies about patients, family rights and the role of the medical professions (Glare and Christakis 2008, p. 429). Replacing the LCP to a person alised end of life care plan may not resolve the controversies if the same transgressions persist. In that context, this paper aims to objectively review the literature and explore the challenges that contributed to its failure in order to accurately consider the future development of the recently recommended personalised End of Life Care Plan. Overview The Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient was developed as an integrated care pathway by the specialist palliative care team at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust and the Marie Curie palliative care institute Liverpool in 1997 (Ellershaw and Wilkinson, 2003, p. 11). The LCP is a structured clinical record developed to transfer the hospice model of care into other care settings (Jack, Gamble, Murphy, and Ellershaw 2003, p. 371). It aims to support clinical judgements and assist multidisciplinary team in providing optimal treatment and care for patients who are dying(Boyd and Murry 2012), as well a s improve the experience of the relatives or carers during this period and into bereavement (Gambles, Roberts and Anita 2011). It focuses in providing evidence-based framework on different aspects of care required including comfort measures, discontinuation of inappropriate intervention among others (Ellershaw and Murphy 2011, p. 11). The Liverpool Care Pathway was advocated by the Department of Health (2012) as a model of good practice in End of Life care and quality makers and measures for promoting high quality care for all adults in the end of life (MCPCIL). Additionally, the General Medical Council (General Medical Council, 2010) supported it, over 20 organisations and charities as demonstrated in the consensus report for its support published by the NHS in 2012 and the National Institute for Health Care Excellence (NICE) Quality Standard for End of Life care for adults. Regardless of its high approvals and recommendations, the LCP has been blamed for delivering poor quality ca re to patient in their final days (Payne, Seymour, Ingleton 2008, p.392). The independent review findings identified a number of important issues that affected the ability to implement the LCP effectively in the provision of quality healthcare to persons who are almost dying or facing imminent death. Amongst which were lack of knowledge and

Critical thinking Essay Example for Free

Critical thinking Essay 1. How does critical thinking affect you as a reader and writer? How can thinking critically improve your writing? Critical thinking affects a person as a reader and writer in that it is essential to be able to absorb and assimilate knowledge from the environment as well as organize one’s own thoughts and express oneself in a clear and comprehensive manner. It is important to consider critical thinking as being a twofold process. As a reader, one is able to utilize critical thinking as a tool to analyze information being taken in from the outside. Not all information is useful or truthful to a person, and critical thinking is a method of filtering out what is incomprehensible or untruthful and absorbing what is meaningful and valid. As a writer, critical thinking is used in relation to one’s own personal creative thoughts, coming to subjective conclusions about what one believes about the world and expressing these beliefs through writing. Critical thinking is able to improve people’s writing in that the ideas one wants to express become central to the writing process, to develop the perfect way of stating what one desires to say. It is essential to utilize critical thinking in both reading and writing, so that one is able to take in and organize the information from the external environment and make personal judgments and assertions about what one believes. All situations and experiences are both objective and subjective, in that people experience events within the context of the external world. It is important to be able to digest and process information from the external world in an organized fashion, so that one is able to accurately describe and share one’s experiences with others. 2. Read the following Discussion Question response written by Owen, a fictional student. Identify areas of vagueness and ambiguity and discuss how you might clarify the e-mail message using the writing principles addressed in the text. In the response written by Owen, the writing style is such that the reader is not able to clearly understand what is being said. There are instances of vagueness and ambiguity in the writing, and Owen is left appearing as if he does not truly understand what he is supposed to be writing about. For instance, Owen states that critical thinking affects him in â€Å"all ways†. Although this may be true, there is not enough information describing in which ways he is affected. It is important to include enough detail in writing, so that the reader is able to fully comprehend what is being claimed. Owen goes on to say that clear writing is the â€Å"hardest thing in the world†. Although Owen may be having difficulty with his own writing, clear writing is not the hardest thing in the world for all people. Instead of generalizing and making blanket statements, Owen should be plain and honest in saying that clear writing is difficult for him personally. Further on, Owen claims that critical writing is like business writing in that they both need a certain amount of structure, yet then claims that â€Å"structure is harder†. These ideas are simply uncorrelated and do not logically proceed from one another. One cannot compare two styles of writing as being similar and then immediately state that they are dissimilar, at least not without a clear explanation and transition. Overall, Owen could improve his own writing style by paying attention to explaining himself in detail, by taking the necessary time to organize his own thoughts before writing them down. It is vital to express oneself in a clear and comprehensive manner, so that other people are able to easily understand what is being conveyed.

Relationship Between Clothing and Identity

Relationship Between Clothing and Identity Material culture refers to the corporal, physical object constructed by humans. Ferguson (1977) describes material culture as all of the things people leave behind . All of the things people make from the physical world farm tools, ceramics, houses, furniture, toys, buttons, roads and cities (Ferguson, 1977). Material culture refers to objects that are used, lived in, displayed and experienced. Human beings interact with material culture as a normal part of their daily lives. Because of this interaction, material culture and human living is strongly influenced by each other, and through studying material culture gives us important clues about the way humans live and have lived in the past. Schlereth (1982) outlines the importance of the study of material culture, arguing that through material culture we can learn about the belief systems the values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions of a particular community of Society, usually across time (Schlereth, 1982). Schlereth continues to state that a study is based upon the obvious idea that the existence of a man-made object is concrete evidence of the presence of a human mind operating at the time of production. The common statement underlying material culture research is that objects made or modified by humans, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, reflect the belief patters of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased, or used them, and, by extension, the belief patterns of the larger society of which they are a part (Schlereth, 1982). By studying culture as something created and lived through objects, we learn to understand the social structures, human action, emotion and meaning, and through this process we bond together the crucial link between social and economic factors with the individual actor. This is where we can introduce Marxism mode of production, if we consider material culture in terms of consumer societies we will be able to reproduce and challenge social structures. However, according to Marx and Engels (1965, p32) in The German Ideology: This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of physical existence of individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part (Sahlins, 1976). Marx mode of production worked in the following way; people produce commodities and sell them so that they can buy other commodities to satisfy their own needs and wants. For Marx, production is something more than practical logic of material effectiveness, it is a cultural intention. Take for example, if you look around your home, objects are everywhere cups/mugs, computers, clothing. You know what most of these are because they are part of you familiar environment, if you have grown up with these objects they have been a part of your life. Now if a person lived in a different part of the world and from a different century, they would have a difficult time trying to understand our material culture. Each object has a story to tell, a story which has been shaped by human used. If material objects are been analyzed, basic facts will be recorded, a verbal description which might include measurements, material, any distinguishing features, take note of everything which will determine a clearer picture about the object. This key information will provide material about the technology used, the economy, or social relations within the given society and how they have changed or progressed over time. Clothing and in particular designer outfits can mask a persons real persona. The clothing can be worn to impress and make the wearer feel more confident, however this can also be taken to the extreme in that if a persons self worth and morale is low clothes are used to state falsely about the importance of the person. wearing certain clothing may make a person feel empowered by altering their self perception, they can assist in forming or negating interpersonal and group attachments, mediating the formation of self-identity and esteem and integrating and differentiating social groups classes or tribes (Woodward, 2007, p4 ). Alison Lurie states that in her Language of Clothes that clothes introduce individuals subconsciously before they even say a word (Lurie A. , 1992). Clothes are expressions of identity, one of the permanent ways we signal to the social world who and what we are (Twigg, 2007). It is also an expression and fulfilment of human needs: needs of the body and mind. These expressions function within a cultural context with the purpose of passing on distinctive meanings to social forms. Clothes have been used to identify our links, such as what school we attend, what job we have or what group we are a part of. Schools use uniforms to identify their students, although uniforms can be a really useful if the students are out on day trips, the uniform will be easily recognisable to pick out students, these students then represent the school. Occupations have informed the public of their identity and job titles throught the use of clothing, for example: gardai, nurses, surgeon, security guards, fi re fighters the list is endless when you really think about it. In most cultures gender differentiation of clothing is considered appropriate for both men and women. There are many features that differentiate the gender of clothing. The masculine fabric is relatively caorse and stiff, usually heavier whereas feminine fabric is soft and fine. Masculine colours usually tend to be darker, and feminine coloured clothing is usually light or pastel. The cut in mens clothing is square with corners and angles, and womens dress lines emphasize the flow, the curve and the actual style of the dress. These elements convey social meaning (Sahlins, 1976). The sturctural lines in the cut or patterns of clothing make up analogous class of meaningful contrasts (Sahlins, 1976). The importance seems to be related with three characteristics of a line: direction, form and rhythm. Direction refers to direction in relation to the ground. Form refers to its properties as curved or straight. And rhythm refers to the periodicity of the curve or angle (Sahlins, 1976). In western societies, womens clothing usually consists of skirts, dresses and high heels, while a tie is usually seen as mens clothing. Trousers/jeans were seen as mens clothing but nowadays they are worn by both male and female. Female clothing usually tends to be more attractive in comparison to male clothing. Clothing also identifies religious groups. In some cultures, laws regulate what men and women are required to wear. A man wearing a headgear called yarmulke/kippah is most likely to be Jewish, and a woman wearing a hijab is most likely to be Muslim. The yarmulke is for a Jew to announce publicly that he respects God and that God is above human kind. According to the Talmud (Jewish Religious Commentary), wearing the kippah reminds Jews that there is a higher authority, and it reminds us that God is always watching (Silvestri, 2010). A Muslim woman who wears a hijab not only publicly announces her religious identity, but when her face is covered, men cannot judge her by her appearance, they are able to evaluate her by her personality, character, and morals (Hussein). If we look at the catholic culture in Ireland, a man wearing in a black robe or outfit and a roman collar is identified as a priest and is given the title father in the Roman Catholic churches. In Islamic culture, men prid e themselves in wearing turbans because of its significant spiritual symbolism of their cultural faith. Turbans are still worn today by Islamic men as a way of distinguishing themselves, strengthening social ties and giving a sense of group identity. They are considered important in prayer, where the rewards are said to be twenty-five times greater when the headdress is worn. However in saying all of this the turban also has a practical function, it protects the mens head from the heat and dust in Arab countries (Bennett, 2010). Again, we see clothing as the subconscious communicator that announces ones religious identity publicly. According to Sahlins (1976), American clothing amounts to a very complex scheme of cultural categories and the relations between them. The scheme operates a set of rules for declining and combining classes of the clothing which formulate the cultural categories. Each aspect consists of a range of meaningful variation, some will be present and others will be absent (Sahlins, 1976. p179). The outfit as a whole makes a statement, developed out of the particular arrangement of garment parts and by contrasting to other outfits (Sahlins, 1976. P 179). Strictly speaking, clothes is not a part of your body, however, since your body is largely covered in it, your clothing will affect the way you come across. Seeing as your clothing is such a large factor, on the message your giving off, your appearence is important and will effect the view others have on you. The clothes you are wearing make a statement about your identity and your social status, the colour and style of clothes worn tell oth ers about how you are feeling in the world. Clothes have the ability to inform publicly of ones identity, mood, generation, religion, and culture. It is a language that is constantly in communication with people introduced or not introduced. Although the language of clothes speaks, it may not be completely accurate, but it gives one an idea of an individuals identity and personality. The language of clothes is used daily and can be seen every day in the home, at church, out shopping and within the political world. It is a language that everyone uses as an ice-breaker to open up conversation or to have common ground and value. Clothing as a communicator can be seen worldwide and is used universally. Taking all of the above into consideration one can say that material culture can be compared to a language.

Shareholder Theory vs Stakeholder Theory

Shareholder Theory vs Stakeholder Theory

In The Heat Of The Night :: essays research papers

In the Heat of the Night Essay   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For my essay I have chosen to write about the topic about Tibbs and Gillespie understanding and respecting each other. In the beginning of this story Gillespie thought of Virgil as he would of thought of any other Negro, but soon he found out he was wrong, Virgil was a very gifted detective with lots of skills. When Tibbs was first taken in to see Gillespie, Gillespie was yelling and screaming at Tibbs for no reason but Virgil did not break down to the harassment and proved Gillespie wrong by showing him his ID card that proved he was a cop. I think that Virgil earned a little respect from Gillespie their by showing him that he was calm and mature. As the story unfolded Gillespie saw more and more of Virgil’s good qualities. Gillespie saw that Virgil was calm, educated, smart, payed attention to detail, and was qualified for his job. Every time that Gillespie would arrest some one Virgil proved them innocent, when Oberst was arrested Virgil proved Gillespie wrong by proving to him that Oberst was not the murderer. When Gillespie arrested Sam Wood Virgil also proved him innocent. Even though Gillespie didn’t like to be proven wrong by anyone (none less a Negro) he respected Virgil for his great detective work. At one point in the novel Gillespie and Tibbs shake hands and I think that was the high point of this mutual respect. Virgil didn’t respect Gillespie that much in the beginning and most of the middle of this story but in the end Virgil respected Gillespie. I think it was good that Virgil did not respect Gillespie because Gillespie was using Virgil for his scapegoat. At the end of this story Gillespie finally showed everyone that he respected Tibbs by telling every one the truth about the murder investigation, and giving most of the credit to Virgil.