Portrayal of Free Spirit in Adrienne Rich’s Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger and Alice Walker’s Meridian

The works of women writers of USA have become increasingly visible in the academy especially since 1970s because of their active involvement in contemporary women’s movement. Writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poets like Maya Angelou and Adrienne Rich and others have been strongly greeted for their ideologies. Undoubtedly, their works echo strong resistance against racism, patriarchism and militarism. The present paper highlights the remedy of the various maladies like male dominance, subordinated identity and submissive life. It is said that ‘every action has reaction’ and these writers believe that ‘”FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE”. So they have depicted the undaunted spirits among their female protagonists who fought bravely against the odds and eventually emerged victorious.

Harold and Maude, towards an Aesthetic Hedonism

Friedrich Nietzsche’s vision for humanity after he declares the death of God is both atheistic and aesthetic, the freedom to live life as it comes (amor fati). Therefore, we can call his existential vision aesthetic atheism. Maude, in the movie Harold and Maude, has a different take on living without God. Rather than take down Christianity, she tries to reform it. She lives freely but is not the intellectual free spirit that Nietzsche hoped would emerge after his proclamation. Rather, her way of existence we can call aesthetic hedonism. She understands that life is contingent, but she loves life for what it is and tries to free others, including animals, saints, and Harold, to experience the same. She does not urge the atheistic turn. I turn to Quentin Meillassoux’s notion of cosmological necessary contingency that, while he agrees with Nietzsche that God is at present inexistent, a necessary contingent cosmology cannot rule out the emergence of a divinity. He wonders just what kind of divinity might emerge. I argue that the divinity that might emerge, using Meillassoux’s term ‘divinology’, would depend upon the prevailing attitude, and consider this through both aesthetic atheism and aesthetic hedonism attitudes towards the world.

Transactional Analysis Shows Child Factor Would be Influential Egogram for Late Teenager

Background: Transactional Analysis (TA) and egogram have been in focus for medical and educational fields. There has been a reliable personality battery, Tokyo University Egogram (TEG). Recent topic includes TEG new version 3 for clinical introduction. Using TEG ver.3, university students were investigated for their egogram pattern. Subjects & Methods: Subjects were 99 late teenagers. They were given lectures of TEG and their data was analyzed three months after the admission of the university. Results: TEG ver3 presents 33 egogram types which are related to the personality of Japanese people. Among them, there were four higher prevalence of egogram types, which were Free Child (FC) dominant, Adapted Child (AC) dominant, Critical Parent (CP) inferior and Child (C) Dominant. The percentage datum of current study vs previous standard value in each type was 10 vs 6.8%, 26 vs 6.1%, 8 vs 2.1% 9 vs 1.1%, respectively. Discussion & Conclusion: These four types are estimated as free-spirit, dependent, loose and selfishness. Elevated FC and AC would be probably due to the influence of educational and social environment in Japan. Among them, high school students must study hard for entrance exams without meaningful social experiences. Further investigation will be required for TEG.

The relationship between user types and gamification designs

Gamification has been discussed as a standout approach to improve user experience, with different studies showing that users can have different preferences over game elements according to their user types. However, relatively less is known how different kinds of users may react to different types of gamification. Therefore, in this study ($$N=331$$ N = 331 ) we investigate how user orientation (Achiever, Disruptor, Free Spirit, Philanthropist, Player, and Socializer) is associated with the preference for and perceived sense of accomplishment from different gamification designs. Beyond singular associations between the user orientation and the gamification designs, the findings indicate no comprehensive and consistent patterns of associations. From the six user orientations, five presented significant associations: Socializer orientation was positively associated with Social, Fictional, and Personal designs, while negatively associated with Performance design; Player orientation was positively associated with Social (Accomplishment), Personal, and Ecological designs, while negatively associated with the Social design (Preference); Disruptor orientation was positively associated with Social design; Achiever orientation was positively associated with Performance and Social designs; and Free Spirit orientation was negatively associated with Social design. Based on the results, we provide recommendations on how to personalize gamified systems and set further research trajectories on personalized gamification.

Freedom as a concept and as a property of the subject

The other side of the alternative of “objectivism or subjectivism (anti-substantialism”), can appropriately resolve the problem of the essence of freedom. Hegel wrote: “No idea can be said with such full right that it is indefinite, ambiguous, accessible to the greatest misunderstandings and therefore is actually subject to them, as about the idea of freedom, and none of them is usually spoken of with such a small degree of understanding of it. Since the free spirit is a real spirit, to the extent that the misunderstandings associated with it have enormous practical consequences...” (Hegel, 1977: 471) Thus, even the idealist Hegel admits that the problem of freedom has theoretical and particular practical significance. One can agree with I. Kant, G. Hegel, and N. Berdyaev, and many other philosophers that freedom exists only in the world of human reality, that is, in culture and society. In nature, both living and nonliving, it is not freedom that occurs but a necessity dialectically associated with chance and possibility. As Hegel rightly pointed out, “Nature ... manifests in its present being not freedom, but necessity and chance” (Hegel, 1975: 695). This statement certainly needs to be concretized. Freedom cannot coincide with necessity, but it cannot entirely resist it. Freedom that is not based on any form of necessity, as Hegel also showed, is not freedom. It is arbitrariness. Naked arbitrariness, according to him, is will in the form of chance (Hegel, 1974). One should bear in mind that the differences between inanimate (physical and chemical reality) and living (biological reality) nature, and in the latter – between the levels of its organization – are qualitative and even essential.

RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS AND MORAL DILEMMAS: A FEMINISTIC PERSPECTIVE OF IBSEN’S PLAY A DOLL’S HOUSE

Purpose of the Study: This research paper attempts to examine the play A Doll’s House through the perspective of challenges faced by the protagonist against moral authority and censorship and her resilience in the face of difficulties. Methodology: The research paper proposes to make use of the secondary data including related articles and web sources. The data collected are words, phrases, clauses, and sentences related to women's problems and their struggles found in the play. Main Findings: Nora revolts against male-formulated social structure repressing women in the name of religion, conventions, and breaks the framework set up by men and she dashes for a liberated life. The finding of the study is that through the play, we learn how important the interplay of religion and free spirit is to Nora’s evolution. Applications: This paper can be used by literary scholars and students. Novelty/Originality of this study: This research paper has used the contrasting forces of moral obligation and the free spirit of Nora to see how they have helped Nora to come out from a rosy-colored view of her dream world. The present study demonstrates how the protagonist feels entrapped and suffocated in her home, forced to live a life of false hope due to the impositions placed on by her husband and the patriarchal society which resultantly creates a feeling of isolation.