Animals of Wonderland

TITLE: | The Animals of Wonderland: Tenniel as Carroll's Reader| SOURCE: | Criticism 45 no4 383-415 Fall 2003| The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://wsupress. wayne. edu/ ROSE LOVELL-SMITH WHEN JOHN TENNIEL was providing 42 illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1864 he was in his mid-forties, an established illustrator and a Punch cartoonist.At that time C. L. Dodgson and Lewis Carroll were equally unknown as authors, for adults or children. Tenniel, on the other hand, already had a professional understanding of the visual codes and illustrative techniques of his day, and already had an audience–an adult rather than a child audience–who would expect from him a certain level of technical proficiency, humor, and social nous.Tenniel's illustrations should therefore interest us today not just for their remarkable and continuing success as a felicitous adjunct to Carroll's text, but also as the first–arguably, the best–Victorian reading or interpretation of Carroll's text. After all, as a reader Tenniel enjoyed considerable advantages, including his personal position and experience, his access to the author's own illustrations to the manuscript version of the story, and access to the author himself.In his study of illustration in children's literature, Words about Pictures, Perry Nodelman has argued that â€Å"the pictures in a sequence act as schemata for each other†Ã¢â‚¬â€œthat is, all the expectations, understanding, and information we bring to reading an illustrated book, and all the information we accumulate as our reading proceeds, â€Å"becomes a schema for each new page of words and each new picture as we continue throughout a book. (FN1) If this is so, all Tenniel's choices relating to subject matter, size, position, and style of i llustration must come to operate, as we proceed through Alice in Wonderland, as a kind of guide to reading Carroll's text. An examination of Tenniel's opening sequence of illustrations as they appeared on the page in the 1866 edition of Alice in Wonderland(FN2) will therefore begin to reveal Tenniel's preoccupations, the kind of interpretation of Carroll's text he is nterested in making. As William Empson pointed out in 1935, two aspects of Alice are traditional in children's stories: the idea of characters of unusual size (miniatures and giants) and the idea of the talking beast. (FN3) Tenniel's opening drawing, the White Rabbit at the head of chapter 1, draws on both these traditions. The rabbit occupies a point between animal and human, simultaneously both these things and neither of them, an implication hardly made so firmly by Carroll's text.The rabbitness of the rabbit is emphasized by the meadow setting, the absence of trousers, and the careful attention paid to anatomy and p roportion. But the rabbit is slightly distorted towards the human by his upright posture, his clothing and accessories, his pose, and his human eye and hand. Less obviously, Tenniel also extends Carroll's text by offering information about the size of the rabbit. From the grass and dandelion clock (a visual joke) in the background the reader grasps the rabbit as rather larger than normal bunny size: about the size of a toddler or small child, perhaps.As this illustration was invented by Tenniel (Carroll's headpiece illustration shows Alice, her sister, and the book), the contrast is clear between Carroll, whose picture draws attention to the frame of the story, to the affectionate relationship of sisters, and thereby to Alice's membership of the human family, and Tenniel, who selects a traditional story idea that shifts the focus another way, toward a mediation between different kinds familiar from those many forms of art in which animal behavior is used to represent human behavior. In further illustrations, Tenniel offers more images suggestive of unusual relative size. The second picture, page 8, shows Alice too large to go through the little door. On page 10 she holds the bottle labeled â€Å"DRINK ME† which will shrink her; on page 15 she is growing taller, with the text elongated to match. Then comes page 18, where the frame and larger size suggest that here is an important picture. In it the human/animal rabbit and the idea of Alice's unusual size occur together.Alice looks gigantic in relation to the hallway, and the White Rabbit, normal size for the hallway (it appears) but perhaps (in that case) outsize for a rabbit, is much reduced from the importance he assumed in the first illustration and is shown fleeing from her terrifying figure. The pool of tears illustration on page 26 also relates to these themes. Here a fully clad human, Alice, is depicted much the same size as the unclothed mouse with which she swims.Note, too, that in the text, Alic e frightens the mouse away as she had previously frightened the rabbit, although this time it is by talking about her pet, her cat Dinah. The reader who ponders this opening sequence of illustrations might reflect that Alice would also be frightened of Dinah if she met her while still mouse-sized. The schemata, then, direct the reader towards a cluster of ideas in which animal fears and anxieties about survival are connected with images of lesser or greater relative size. FN4) Tenniel appears to have arrived at this interpretation independently: while he does frequently follow Carroll's designs closely in the subject and overall approach to an illustration (Michael Hancher provides some useful opportunities to make comparisons),(FN5) of the pictures just discussed only the one of Alice growing taller at the head of chapter 2 very much resembles a parallel drawing in Carroll's manuscript.Moreover, when Tenniel does follow Carroll in choice of subject he usually makes significant chan ges in treatment: Tenniel's Alice, for instance, having slipped into the pool of tears, is very much more alarmed than Carroll's Alice. (FN6) Edward Hodnett, who reviewed Tenniel's work for the Alice books picture by picture, makes rather slighting remarks about several of the designs in this opening sequence: those on pages 8 and 10 are â€Å"too matter-of-fact to be necessary,† the â€Å"elongated Alice stands merely looking round-eyed,† and the second vignette of Alice swimming with the mouse â€Å"makes the first superfluous. (FN7) Hodnett seems to me to have missed the point. These designs are in my view extremely consistent in seeking and developing a particular nexus of ideas. Despite the evident connection between many Tenniel illustrations and Carroll's own illustrations, then, this is clearly Tenniel's own interpretation. But if this is so, what is to be made of it?My thesis in this paper is that through his animal drawings, Tenniel offers a visual angle on the text of Alice in Wonderland that evokes the life sciences, natural history, and Darwinian ideas about evolution, ideas closely related by Tenniel to Alice's size changes, and to how these affect the animals she meets. (FN8) As I will show, this is partly a matter of Tenniel's â€Å"drawing out† an underlying field of reference in Carroll's text. I will also argue, however, that when Tenniel's approach to his animal subjects is compared to that in earlier and contemporary illustrated natural istory books, the viewer is conscious of resemblances which indicate that Tenniel's pictures are best situated and read in that context. The effect of the initial sequence described above, for instance, is that as chapter 3 unfolds Alice's encounters with various different creatures, the illustrations begin to re-create Alice itself as a kind of zany natural history for children. Our post-Freudian view of Alice in Wonderland tends to be of a private, heavily encoded, inward exploration or adventure.But Tenniel's reading, I would argue, offers us an outward-looking text, a public adventure, a jocular reflection on the natural history craze, on reading about natural history, and on Darwin's controversial new theory of natural selection. I will return to Tenniel as reader later, but in order to establish that this interpretation is no mere add-on but a genuine response to the text, I must first deal with science, natural history, and evolutionary ideas as themes that Carroll himself originates.Interest in contemporary ideas about the animal kingdom is signaled early on in Alice in Wonderland, in chapter 2, when Alice finds that the well-known children's recitation piece â€Å"How doth the little busy bee† has been mysteriously ousted from her mind by new verses that celebrate a predator, the crocodile. Carroll's parody of Isaac Watts's pious poem for children(FN9) thereby establishes his book's reference to a newer, more scientific view of nature–appro aching a controversially Darwinist view.It does this by mocking and displacing the worldview often called natural theology. According to natural theology, a set of convictions much touted in children's reading, God's existence can be deduced from the wondrous design of his creation. The universe is benign and meaningful, a book of signs (like the industrious bee) of God's benevolent and educative intentions just waiting to be read by humans. Carroll's crocodile, all tooth and claw, signifies other things: amorality, the struggle for existence, predation of the weaker by the stronger.Readers of Alice in Wonderland are also likely to notice that the animal characters do not behave or talk much like animals in traditional fairy tales or fables. They are neither helpers nor donors nor monsters nor prophetic truth-tellers, the main narrative functions of animals in traditional fairy tales,(FN10) but nor are they the exemplary figures illustrative of human fallibilities and moralities fam iliar from fables. They do not teach lessons about kindness to animals, as animals in children's stories often did, and they do not much resemble the creatures in nursery rhymes or jingles or Edward Lear's nonsensical poems either.Instead, they talk, chopping logic, competing with Alice and each other, and often mentioning things â€Å"natural† animals might be imagined to talk about, like fear, death, and being eaten. I think Denis Crutch is also roughly right when he points out that there is in Alice a hierarchy of animals equivalent to the Victorian class system but also suggesting a competitive model of nature: the white rabbit, caterpillar, and March Hare seem to be gentlemen, frog and fish are footmen, Bill the lizard is bullied by everybody, hedgehogs and flamingos are made use of, and the dormouse and the guinea pigs are victimized by larger animals and by humans. FN11) William Empson's 1935 essay notes how Carroll's ideas and manuscript illustrations associate evolut ionary theories with Alice in Wonderland. (FN12) This is a crucial point and, I believe, the best explanation for the presence of so many animals in Wonderland. It was after all Carroll who put a dodo, best known for being extinct, into the text,(FN13) and Carroll who first included an ape, that key symbol of evolutionary debate, in his drawing of the motley crowd of beasts in the pool of tears.But Carroll's evolutionary reference is much more extensive than Empson found it, for a Darwinist view of life as competitive struggle is also promoted by Alice, who–apparently unconsciously, as if she really cannot help it–repeatedly reminds us that in life one must either eat or be eaten. Alice will keep talking about Dinah to the little creatures she meets who are the natural victims of cats (26-27), she has to admit to the pigeon that she herself has eaten eggs (73), and in the Mock Turtle scene she has to check herself rather than reveal that she has eaten lobster and whiti ng (148, 152).The Mock Turtle, of course, is a very creature of the table, while Dinah the predator, the aboveground cat, has a place maintained for her in Wonderland by the Cheshire Cat, a friendly but slightly sinister appearing and disappearing cat whose most significant body part is his grinning, tooth-filled mouth (he grins like the crocodile, as Nina Auerbach has noted). (FN14) The â€Å"little bright-eyed terrier† of which the aboveground Alice is so fond (27) also has other-selves in Wonderland, Fury in the Mouse's Tale, the puppy in chapter 4.Moreover, the Mouse's Tale–the next poem in the book after the crocodile poem–talks about predation as if it were a legal process. The reader should therefore take the hint and connect the animal â€Å"eat or be eaten† motif elsewhere in the story with the trial scene in the last stage of the book. Carroll has the White Rabbit make this association of ideas when he mutters â€Å"The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws!Oh my fur and whiskers! She'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets! † (41). This is one of those moments when Alice reveals its ferocious undercurrent. The White Rabbit here anticipates legal execution as simultaneous with the process of being prepared for table: that is, these â€Å"civilized† human behaviors are proffered by Carroll as analogous to predation by a â€Å"natural† enemy, ferrets.Alice herself, by kicking Bill the Lizard up the chimney (an incident memorably illustrated by Tenniel in a very funny picture) and by looking on approvingly while the guinea pigs are so unkindly treated in court, inverts the theme of kindness to animals established in more orthodox children's literature like Maria Edgeworth's tale of â€Å"Simple Susan,† where a girl's pet lamb is saved from the slaughterer's knife. FN15) In Alice in Wonderland there is humorous delight in the misappropriation of the creatures in the croquet scene, and the re are many other versions of a cruel carnival in the book: for instance, Alice imagines herself being set to watch a mousehole by her own cat. She also resents â€Å"being ordered about by mice and rabbits† (46)–a phrase that suggests the â€Å"world upside down† of carnival but which might also be taken as summing up the new evolutionary predicament of humanity.Fallen down the rabbit hole from her lordly position at the top of the Great Chain of Being, Alice instead finds herself, through a series of size changes, continually being repositioned in the food chain. The importance of the theme of predation, â€Å"the motif of eating and being eaten,† is such that it has attracted a number of commentaries. It is fully described by Margaret Boe Birns in â€Å"Solving the Mad Hatter's Riddle† and by Nina Auerbach in â€Å"Alice and Wonderland: A Curious Child. (FN16) Birns remarks in opening her essay that â€Å"Most of the creatures in Wonderland ar e relentless carnivores, and they eat creatures who, save for some outer physical differences, are very like themselves, united, in fact, by a common ‘humanity. ‘† Birns therefore even cites a crocodile-eating fish as a case of â€Å"cannibalism,†(FN17) quoting in support of this idea Alice's â€Å"Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena and you're a bone! (Looking-Glass, 8). She also remarks that Wonderland contains creatures whose only degree of self-definition is expressing a desire to be eaten or drunk, and offers other comments on scenes in Through the Looking-Glass where, as she puts it, â€Å"food can become human, human beings can become food. â€Å"(FN18) I do not always find â€Å"cannibal† readings supported by the parts of the text in question.Auerbach also makes claims about cannibalism, but a little differently, referring the idea of â€Å"eat or be eaten† back to Alice, her â€Å"subtly cannibalistic hunger,†(F N19) the â€Å"unconscious cannibalism involved in the very fact of eating and the desire to eat. â€Å"(FN20) Auerbach associates this interpretation with Dodgson's own attitude to food. But textual support for the quality Auerbach calls Alice's cannibalism seems lacking. Alice does not really eye the other animals in her pool of tears with â€Å"a strange hunger† as Auerbach suggests,(FN21) nor do the Hatter and the Duchess â€Å"sing savage songs about eating† as Auerbach claims. FN22) To describe a panther eating an owl as cannibalism, Auerbach(FN23) must assume (like Birns) that the creatures in Alice are definitely to be read as humans in fur and feathers. My argument is that they need not be so read: the point might be their and Alice's animal nature. Nor does the food at Queen Alice's dinner party at the end of Through the Looking-Glass â€Å"begin to eat the guests†(FN24) as Auerbach claims, although food does misbehave in Looking-Glass and the Puddin g might have this in mind (Looking-Glass, 206).Overall, however, in my view the preoccupation of Alice in Wonderland with creatures eating other creatures is much better accounted for by the â€Å"more sinister and Darwinian aspects of nature†(FN25) which Auerbach and Birns(FN26) also recognize as a part of the Alice books. I now return to my main argument, that Tenniel's illustrations pick up on but also extend this Darwinist and natural history field of reference in Carroll's text.As already noted, Tenniel's drawings of animals do not stylistically suggest a â€Å"children's fairy tale†(FN27) but rather produce Alice as a kind of natural history by resembling those in the plentiful and lavishly illustrated popular natural histories of the day (see figs. 1 and 2). My argument therefore differs from Michael Hancher's, which emphasizes social and satirical contexts by comparing pictures of various Wonderland and Looking-Glass creatures to those in Tenniel's and others' Punch cartoons. FN28) While Hancher establishes the relationship with Punch as an important one, however, the most convincing animal resemblances he reproduces from Alice in Wonderland (I am not here concerned with Through the Looking-Glass) amount to only two pictures, the Cheshire Cat in a tree resembling the â€Å"Up a Tree† cartoon of a raccoon,(FN29) and the ape on page 35 of Alice resembling the ape in â€Å"Bomba's Big Brother,†(FN30) Tenniel's frog footman and fish footman are Grandvillian figures with animal heads but human bodies, and also evidently suggest social commentary.But they stand apart from the argument I am presenting here because no effort is made by Tenniel to present them as animals. The satiric side of Tenniel's animal illustrations in Alice, hinted at by echoes of Punch, is never very dominant, then, and should not be seen as precluding another field of reference in natural history reading.The scope, persistence, eccentricity, and variety of t he natural history craze–or rather, series of crazes–that swept Britain between 1820 and 1870 are described for the general reader by Lynn Barber in The Heyday of Natural History and by others in more specialized publications, and need not be redescribed here. (FN31) The importance of illustration in contemporary natural history publishing, however, is central to my argument and must be touched on briefly.Even in the midcentury climate of Victorian self-improvement and self-education, the volume of this well-established branch of publishing is impressive: the standard of illustration in popular periodicals and books was high, and sales were also impressively high in Victorian terms. Rev. John George Wood, according to his son and biographer Theodore Wood, a pioneer in writing natural history in nontechnical language, had reasonable sales for his one-volume The Illustrated Natural History in 1851 and very good sales for Common Objects of the Sea Shore in 1857.But when R outledge brought out his lavishly illustrated Common Objects of the Country in 1858 it sold 100,000 copies within a week of publication, and the first edition was followed by many others, a figure worth comparing with Darwin's more modest first-edition sell-out of 1,250 copies–or, indeed, with Dickens's sales of Bleak House (1852), which were 35,000 in the first two years.The result of Wood's success was a much grander publishing venture by Routledge, Wain and Routledge, a three-volume The Illustrated Natural History with new drawings including some by Joseph Wolf: volume 1 (1859) was on mammals, volume 2 (1862) on birds–the frontispiece is reproduced in figure 2–and volume 3 (1863) on reptiles, fish, and mollusks. FN32) Wood's astonishingly prolific career as a popularizer, however, of which I have described only a tiny fraction (he was dashing off such productions as Anecdotes of Animal Life, Every Boy's Book, and Feathered Friends in this decade as well), is in line with much other more or less theologically inclined and intellectually respectable natural history publishing in the 1850s and 1860s, often by clergymen.Children were important consumers of such books and periodicals and sometimes are obviously their main market, and a number of fictional works, such as Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1863) and Margaret Gatty's Parables from Nature, of which the first four series appeared between 1855 and 1864 (that is, in the decade prior to Carroll's publication of Alice in Wonderland), capitalize on the contemporary conviction that natural history was a subject especially appropriate for children. (FN33)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Tenniel connects his Alice and natural history illustration by a number of stylistic allusions.He borrows the conventional techniques of realism, such as the cross-hatching and fine lines used to suggest light, shade, and solidity of form in the Mock Turtle's shell and flippers, or the crabs' and lobster's claws. Accu racy in proportion and a high level of anatomical detail are equally important. As can be seen by comparing figures 1 and 2, too, the grouping of subjects may also be suggestive–a point first noted by Narda Schwartz, who also drew attention to the resemblance between the etching of the dodo in Wood's three-volume natural history and Tenniel's dodo. FN34) Also significant is the way Tenniel's design showing the creatures recently emerged from the pool of tears includes a rather furry-haired Alice among, and on a level with, the beasts and birds. Carroll's own pictures for the pool of tears sequence have the quite different effect of separating Alice from the animal world, a point 1 will return to. Another Tenniel habit that suggests natural history illustration is his provision of sketchy but realistic and appropriate backgrounds.Here Tenniel's viewpoint sometimes miniaturizes the reader, setting the viewpoint low and thus letting us in on the ground level of a woodland world magnified for our information (compare figs. 3 and 4). When Alice stands on tiptoe to peep over the edge of a mushroom, when she carries the pig baby in the woods or talks to the Cheshire Cat, Tenniel uses a typical natural history technique, placing a familiar woodland flower–a foxglove–in the background in such away as to remind the reader of Alice's size at that time.Similarly, Tenniel makes use of the difference between vignettes for simple or single subjects, and framed illustrations, including full-page illustrations, for larger-scale and more important and complex subjects, in a way that very closely resembles a similar distinction in natural history illustration–popular natural histories like Wood's tend to use large, framed illustrations to make generalized statements, showing, for instance, a group of different kinds of rodent, while vignettes present an individual of one species.And above all, although Tenniel certainly endows his creatures with perso nality and facial expressions, his animals, unlike his humans, are never grotesques. In fact, nineteenth-century natural history illustration also delights in endowing the most solidly â€Å"realistic† creatures with near-human personality or expressiveness, a quality that Tenniel builds on to good effect, for instance, in his depiction of the lawyer-parrots, which remind one of Edward Lear's magnificent macaws (see figs. 5, 6, and 7).Thus while Tenniel's animal portraits reflect the Victorians' pleasure in their expanding knowledge of the variety of creatures in the world, they also faithfully reproduce the contemporary assimilation of this variety to familiar human social types, a sleight of hand of which Audubon, for example, is a master: his Great Blue Heron manages also to subtly suggest a sly old gentleman, probably shortsighted, and with side-whiskers. In the visual world inhabited by Tenniel, then, the differing works of Audubon and Grandville (the latter could depict a heron as a priest merely by giving the bird spectacles) slide together.Where few of Tenniel's successors have been able to resist the temptation to turn the animals in Alice in Wonderland into cartoon or humorous creations, though, it is Tenniel's triumph that he drew his creatures straight, or almost straight: the Times review of Alice in Wonderland (December 26, 1865) particularly noted for praise Tenniel's â€Å"truthfulness †¦ in the delineation of animal forms. â€Å"(FN35) It was, indeed, his skill in drawing animals that first established his reputation as an illustrator, when he provided illustrations for Rev. Thomas James's Aesop's Fables in 1848. FN36)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Can sources for Tenniel's remarkable animal drawings be more precisely identified? An early biographer of Tenniel records his acknowledgment that he liked to spend time observing the animals at the Zoo. (FN37) However, comparisons between pictures reveal that in addition Tenniel almost certainly con sulted scientific illustrations or recalled them for his Alice in Wonderland drawings. For example, in the mid-eighteenth century George Edwards produced a hand-colored engraving of a dodo which, he wrote, he had copied from a painting of a live dodo brought from Mauritius to Holland.The original painting was acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, passed on to Edwards, and given by him to the British Museum. (FN38) In 1847 C. A. Marlborough painted a picture of a dodo, which is now in the Ashmolean Museum (it was reproduced on the cover of the magazine Oxford Today in 1999). And in 1862 the second volume of J. G. Wood's The Illustrated Natural History includes a picture of a dodo. (FN39) Compare all these with Tenniel's dodo (figs. 8, 9, 10, and 11): they surely either have a common ancestor or are copies one from the other. The dodo is a special case in that Tenniel could hardly have studied one at the London zoo.But I wish to put forward a claim that Wood's 1851 one-volume and, later, expan ded three-volume Illustrated Natural History were very probably familiar to Carroll and the small Liddells and also to Tenniel, not only because Wood's dodo illustration is a possible source for Tenniel's but because these volumes also display smiling crocodiles, baby eagles in their nest, and the lory,(FN40) as well as illustrations of numerous more familiar animals that appear in the words and/or pictures of Alice, including the edible crab, the lobster, the frog, the dormouse, guinea pigs, flamingos, varieties of fancy pigeon, and so forth.Given the compendious nature of Wood's works, this is hardly surprising, of course. But Wood must be favored as the source of animal drawings most probably known to Tenniel for the further reason that Wood illustrations often quite strongly resemble Tenniel illustrations, as readers may judge by comparing figures 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, to the toucan, eagle, and crab from Alice (see fig. 1) and the lobster and dormouse (see Alice in Wonderland, 157 and 97). (FN41)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  No matter how good Tenniel's famous visual memory, he is unlikely to have drawn such a menagerie without some research.Hancher noted the strong resemblance between a Bewick hedgehog (from the General History of Quadrupeds, 1790, often reprinted) and the evasive croquet-ball hedgehog at Alice's feet on page 121. (FN42) Bewick's hedgehog, however, had already been recycled by William Harvey for Wood's one-volume Illustrated Natural History where Tenniel is equally likely to have seen and remembered it: all three hedgehogs have the same dragging rear foot (see figs. 17, 18, and 19). This is another case, like that of the dodo, where scientific natural history illustrations have been copied, recopied, or reworked for reprinting.A similar argument could be presented about the large number of depictions of sinuous flamingos that Tenniel might have consulted. The volume of contemporary natural history publishing for children and adults, the evident cont emporary interest in illustrations of animals, and the resemblance between Tenniel's and contemporary natural history drawings have important implications: the resemblance indicates that Tenniel is here creating the context within which he wants his pictures to be read.He shows us that he saw (and wanted the viewer to be able to see) Carroll's animals as â€Å"real† animals, like those that were the objects of current scientific study and theories, at least as much as he saw them as Grandville or Punch-type instruments of social satire, or fairy-tale or fable talking beasts. (FN43)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In line with his scientific interpretation, then, Tenniel in illustrating Alice in Wonderland intensifies Carroll's reference to Darwin's theory of evolution by carrying out his own visual editing of the Carroll illustrations in the manuscript.Tenniel makes the ape appear in two consecutive illustrations: in the second, it stares thoughtfully into the eyes of the reader–appea ring to claim kinship. Tenniel includes among the creatures in these illustrations on pages 29 and 35 a fancy pigeon, perhaps a fantail or a pouter, which should in my view be taken as a direct reference to Darwin's argument from the selective breeding of fancy pigeon varieties in chapter 1 of The Origin of Species. FN44) A visual detail that Tenniel introduced into the book, the glass dome in the background to the royal garden scene on page 117, looks like the dome at the old Surrey Zoological Gardens(FN45) and therefore constitutes another reference to the study of animals. And as already noted, Tenniel does not reproduce Carroll's rather lonely image of Alice abandoned by the animals, which would have had the effect of separating her human figure from the animal ones and thus emphasizing Alice's difference from them.Instead, Tenniel provides two images of Alice among, and almost of, the animal world, developing a radical implication of Carroll's text of which Carroll himself was possibly unaware. On the other hand, Carroll's interest in predation, in the motif of â€Å"eat or be eaten,† is not one on which Tenniel expands. No doubt it would have been thought too frightening for children: one must recall the care taken by Carroll over the positioning of the Jabberwocky illustration in Through the Looking-Glass. FN46) But while Carroll's text here develops emphatically–albeit peripherally–some ideas that Tenniel could only leave aside, Tenniel's recognition of the importance of such themes is strongly demonstrated by the puppy picture. This illustration is a particularly large one, dominating the page (55) on which it appears. It is framed, and therefore gives an impression of completion and independent significance, very different from that given by the more common vignette with its intimate and fluid relationship to the text.These things make it probable that the puppy scene and its illustration were especially important in Tenniel's re ading of Alice in Wonderland. Yet commentaries on Alice in Wonderland tend to ignore the puppy scene, perhaps because critics are often most interested by Carroll's verbal nonsense, and the puppy is speechless. Indeed, Denis Crutch disapproves of the puppy as â€Å"an intruder from the ‘real' world† and Goldthwaite takes up this point, commenting that the puppy was Carroll's â€Å"most glaring aesthetic mistake in †¦Alice†Ã¢â‚¬â€œneither seems to have noticed that the hedgehogs and flamingos are also not talking beasts. (FN47) Another reader of Tenniel's illustrations, Isabelle Nieres, takes a similar line, remarking that â€Å"the full-page illustration is perhaps placing too much emphasis on Alice's encounter with the puppy. â€Å"(FN48) But what Tenniel's puppy illustration encapsulates, in my view, is the theme of the importance of relative size. Here is Alice's fearful moment of uncertainty about whether she is meeting a predator or a pet. As reader a nd Alice will discover, the puppy only wants to play.But Alice is â€Å"terribly frightened all the time at the thought it might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her coaxing† (54), and Tenniel's illustration with the thistle in the foreground towering over the tiny Alice, like many of his memorable illustrations, primarily signifies her anxiety. Later, too, Tenniel's choice of the lobster as the subject of a drawing is a visual reminder of the transformation of animals into meat: it brings the viewer uncomfortably close to recognition of kinship with the devoured, so human is the lobster and so warily is his eye fixed on the viewer's.The lobster is another illustration that Hodnett found an inexplicable presence in the text: the song in the text â€Å"provides insufficient excuse for an illustration,† he remarks. (FN49) My analysis of Tenniel's composite verbal/visual Alice in Wonderland is very different. Possibly going we ll beyond Carroll's conscious intentions, Tenniel offers a Wonderland that concurs with the evolutionist view of creation by showing animals and humans as a continuum within which the stronger or larger prey upon the smaller or weaker.The implication–one many readers of Darwin were most reluctant to accept–is that if animals are semihuman, humans may conversely be nothing but evolved animals. Alice's extraordinary size changes–in which Tenniel is so interested–therefore play a significant role in this new world, for as I already pointed out, it is through her series of size changes that Alice finds herself continually being repositioned in the food chain.Wonderland is truly the place of reversals: its theme of a world upside down is traditional, as Ronald Reichertz has reminded us in an illuminating study that positions Alice in Wonderland in relation to earlier children's reading. (FN50) Size changes can represent the topsy-turvy, of course. But while Al ice has some recognizably Jack-in-Giant-land experiences–like struggling to climb up the leg of a table–and some Tom Thumb experiences–like hiding behind a thistle–what is so weird or Wonderlandish about her story is not her sudden growth spurts but that she transforms rapidly from the small to the large and vice versa. FN51) Alice's body changes at times suggest being outsize and aggressive–for example, when she is trapped in the White Rabbit's house and terrifies the little creatures outside, or when she is accused of being an egg-stealing serpent or predator by the pigeon. But she is undersized and therefore vulnerable when she slips into the pool of tears or when she meets the puppy. (FN52) The size changes connect back to â€Å"eat or be eaten† where the dangers of large and small size, a theme especially horrifying to children, is a traditional one, found in tales of giants and ogres, Hop-o' my Thumb or Mally Whuppie. FN53) But as we h ave seen, the Tenniel/Carroll Alice in Wonderland links forward to ideas of predator and prey, eat or be eaten, and the â€Å"animal† nature of humanity, all recently given new urgency by Darwin. A contemporary illustration worth pondering that deals with these important ideas (it appeared at almost exactly the time of the publication of Alice in Wonderland) is the cover of Hardwicke's Science-Gossip: A Monthly Medium of Interchange & Gossip for Students and Lovers of Nature (January 1866).This cover represents (see fig. 20) the scientific technology that interested Carroll, as well as, more sentimentally, the small creatures and plants of woodland and seashore that are a part of the â€Å"natural history† background. These subjects, however, make a mere frame to the central illustration, both grisly and amusing, which is a depiction of the chain of predation, eat or be eaten, in action. One could hardly ask for a more succinct visual summary of this important element in the contemporary contexts of Alice.Recognition of this theme will, as well as accounting for lobster and puppy illustrations, also account for the otherwise somewhat puzzling centrality of Dinah and the Cheshire Cat in Carroll's text. Nina Auerbach quotes Florence Becker Lennon's insight that the Cheshire Cat is â€Å"Dinah's dream-self,† and certainly one or the other is more or less ever-where in Wonderland. (FN54) I think the reason for this must be that this familiar household pet best emphasizes the paradoxical difference between being large, in which state the cat is a delightful little furry companion, and being small, in which state the cat might kill you and eat you.In the Darwinian world, size can be the key to survival. And yet, Carroll selected a smiling crocodile to stand for the new view of creation. The cruelty of the Darwinian world is, in his view, somehow inseparable from delight. To suggest a context for this unexpected but quintessentially nineteenth-ce ntury state of mind,(FN55) a comparison may be made here between Carroll's poetic vision of his particular predator and Henry de la Beche's 1830 cartoon of life in A More Ancient Dorset; or, Durior Antiquior (see fig. 1). De la Beche was English despite his name, and was the first director of the British Geological Survey. According to Stephen Jay Gould, who includes it in his preface to The Book of Life, de la Beche's spirited cartoon, simultaneously grim and humorous, was â€Å"reproduced endlessly (in both legitimate and pirated editions)† and is an important model, becoming â€Å"the canonical figure of ancient life at the inception of this genre. â€Å"(FN56) In short, this is the first dinosaur picture.Victorian paintings of nature (showing a similar pleasure to Carroll's in his crocodile) do tend to center on hunting and predation–see The Stag at Bay–and de la Beche's influential image, Gould explains, became a thoroughly conventional depiction of prehi story, first, in showing a pond unnaturally crowded with wildlife (rather like Carroll's pool of tears), and second, in depicting virtually every creature in it as â€Å"either a feaster or a meal†(FN57)–something one may also feel about Carroll's characters.Particularly striking is the gusto, the pleasurably half-horrified enjoyment of bloody prehistory, in de la Beche's cartoon, which in my view is very comparable to the enjoyment of the image of the devouring crocodile in Lewis's brilliant little parody. A slightly unpleasant gusto also animates Alice in Wonderland, a book that fairly crackles with energy although the energy has always been rather hard to account for.While on the official levels of his consciousness Carroll â€Å"stood apart from the theological storms of the time,†(FN58) is it possible that the news of evolution through natural selection was, on another level of his mind, good news to him as to many other Victorians, coming as a kind of ment al liberation? Humanity might well have found crushing, at times, the requirements of moral responsibility and constant self-improvement imposed by mid-Victorian ideals of Christian duty.Alice, for one, young as she is, has already thoroughly internalized many rules of conduct, and Alice's creator, equipped as he was with what Donald Rackin has called a â€Å"rage for standards and order,†(FN59) revels in the oversetting of order (as well as disowning this oversetting thoroughly when Alice awakens from her dream). The exhilaration of an amoral anti-society in Alice in Wonderland may be, therefore, in part the exhilaration of a Darwinist dream, of selfishness without restraint.As we all know, Alice's route out of Wonderland is to grow out of it. In closing this essay a final suggestion may be made about Carroll and his self-depiction in Wonderland. If the book is full of expressions of anxiety about relative size–and the dangers of largeness and smallness–this ma y not merely be because a new theory of evolution by natural selection had enlivened this ancient theme. Possibly Carroll had adapted this theory as a private way of symbolizing for himself the anxieties and dangers of his relationship withAlice and the other Liddell children. In Morton N. Cohen's biography Lewis Carroll, a table numbers the occurrences of guilty self-reproach and resolves to amend in Carroll's diaries and shows how these peaked at the time of his deepest involvement with the Liddell family. (FN60) Is it possible that Carroll, far from suffering a repressed interest in little girls, consciously acknowledged and wrestled in private prayer with his own impossible desires?It seems to become ever more difficult, rather than easier, to read this aspect of Carroll's life. In a recent Times Literary Supplement (February 8, 2002), Karoline Leach argues that Carroll's friendships with children were emphasized in his nephew Stuart Collingwood's biography to distract attention from the potentially more scandalous fact of the older Carroll's friendships with mature women.A letter in response by Jenny Woolf, on February 15, points out that Carroll's sisters continued to recognize Carroll's women friends, so obviously perceived these friendships as chaste, but reminds us of the possibility that Dodgson may have cultivated girl children as friends because of their innocence, because they were sexually â€Å"safe† to him, rather than because they were dangerously enticing.A response to this position, of course, would be that the assiduity with which Carroll cultivated friendships with small girls seems out of proportion to such a purpose. Whatever the truth of these matters, it appears to me that Carroll, distressed by the emotional battles documented in his diary, might well have developd a set of imaginative scenarios in which a little girl's growing up or down is reversible according to her own desire: this offers one kind of explanation of some of the more mysterious events of Wonderland.The dangerous but exhilarating aspects of Carroll's relationship with his little friends seems to fit neatly into a â€Å"tooth and claw† model of society, too, for each party to such a friendship, although acting in innocence and affection, has a kind of reserve capacity to destroy, to switch from pet to predator. Carroll might even have dramatized himself as a beast in a Darwinian world in relation to these little girls who are never the right size for him.At times he is only the pet–a romping, anxious-to-please, but oversized puppy. But there are other times when he might fear becoming the predator, a crocodile whose welcoming smile masks the potential to devour. And conversely, of course, Carroll's beloved little friends had the monstrous capacity to destroy him, morally and socially, if he should ever overstep the boundaries of decency and trust.Tenniel, presumably unaware of any secret underside to Carroll's life, was anyw ay debarred by Victorian regard for children as viewers from depicting the savage underside of Alice. But by referring the reader outward to current controversies and current interests in the natural sciences, he has succeeded wonderfully in rendering in art both Carroll's, and his own, grasp of the importance of a new worldview, and of the explosive anxiety and exhilaration to which it gave birth. ADDED MATERIAL ROSE LOVELL-SMITH

Competition in video game consoles Essay

Competition in Video Game Consoles: The State of the Battle for Supremacy in 2008 1. What are the strategy-shaping business and economic characteristics of the console segment of the video game industry? What is the industry like? 1-1 Segmentation: The industry was segmented into console hardware, console software (both sales and rentals), handheld hardware, handheld software (both sales and rentals), PC software (both sales and rentals), broadband, interactive TV, and mobile phones. 1-2 Market Size: Table 1: Size of the Global Video Games Markets, by Sector, 2000, 2003, and 2005, with Projections for 2010 ($ in millions) | 2000| 2003| 2005| 2010| Console hardware| $ 4,791| $6,047| $3,894| $5,771| Console Software (both sales and rentals)| 9,451| 16,449| 13,055| 17,164| Handheld hardware| 1,945| 1,501| 3,855| 1,715| Handheld software(both sales and rentals)| 2,872| 2,238| 4,829| 3,113| PC software (both sales and rentals)| 5,077| 3,806| 4,313| 2,955| Broadband| 70| 497| 1,944| 6,352| Interactive TV| 81| 249| 786| 3,037| Mobile phones| 65| 587| 2,572| 11,186| | 24,352| 31,370| 35,248| 51,292|. Source: Informa Telecoms & Media, â€Å"Games Market to Score Big in 2007,† press release, October 24, 2005, and â€Å"Games Industry Boom Continues,† press release July 24, 2003, both at www. informamedia. com (accessed September 8, 2006). As we can see the table above, the market size has grown from $24. 352 billion in 2000 to $51. 292 billion in 2010. In other words, the video game market becomes bigger and bigger. 1-3 Market growth rate Table 2 Compounded Annual Growth Rates For the Video Game Industry 2000 – 2005 and 2005 – 2010 (projected) | CAGR (2000-2005)| CAGR (2005-2010)| Console Hardware| -4. 1%| 8. 2%|. Console Software (both sales & rentals)| 6. 7%| 5. 6%| Handheld hardware| 14. 7%| -14. 96%| Handheld software (both sales & rentals)| 10. 95%| -8. 4%| PC software (both sales & rentals)| -3. 2%| -7. 3%| Broadband| 94. 4%| 26. 7%| Interactive TV| 57. 5%| 31. 04%| Mobile Phone| 108. 7%| 34. 2%| Total| 7. 7%| 7. 8%| CAGR is compound annual growth rate. The formula is(VtnVt0)1tn-t0-1. V (t0): start value, V (tn): finish value, tn ? t0: number of years. The numbers above are calculated from table 1. 1-4 Entry/Exit barriers The three existing companies are one of the entry barriers of other potential companies that would like to enter this market. Video game industry needs huge capital to invest on research and development department. Also, the entrants need to recruit skillful engineers and other talent staff to develop the products and make efficient marketing strategies. Combinations of all the entry elements, the entry barriers level is high for the perspective entrants. However, the software development is easier to enter this market than the hardware part. Potential entrants only need to focus on the software for the existing companies’ hardware products. This will have less cost than develop entire hardware and software. 1-5 Scope of rivalry. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are the three main companies in the video game industry. Before 2001, there was one more competitor, Sega, in the market. It tried to compete with Nintendo and Sony but it finally was out of the industry in 2001. After 2001, video game industry has entered new war. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft compete with each other by gaining sales and increasing installed base. Play Station 2 from Sony has significant unit sold in $299 each; however, its newest generation, Play Station 3 has not successful result in the market. Play Station 3 was beaten by Xbox and Wii which are from Microsoft and Nintendo respectively. As the result, Nintendo and Microsoft were substitute Sony to compete the leadership position in recent year. In addition, the retails which those three main companies sold their products in are in the price competition. Furthermore, console technology, online gaming, and mobile gaming has gradually changed the competitive situation. The impressive technologies become important for the competitive companies to develop new generation console. Also, game software enter new world which the internet is common, so the online game is on the trend that is expected to continue to increase in market. According to the mobile phone using population increasing, the games are installed in the mobile phone are in the increasing trend also. In short, the video game industry rivalry has become fierce. 1-6 Scale economies According to produce the entire console hardware, a company cannot manufacture all components by itself. Therefore, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would like to produce large amount of console hardware to reduce the costs. They choose to ally with IBM, maker of GPUs or Intel to get components to assemble their console. Because those ally companies need to offer not only one buyer, they can produce large volume for the buyers. Thus, the price would be reduced by huge amount of production. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can through this way to reduce the production cost and reach the economy scale. 1-7 Consumer characteristic. There are 300 million population played video games which include console system, handheld devices, and mobile phone all over the world in 2008. Most of them are preteens, teenagers, and young adult who are between 20 and 40 year-old. In 2005, the average age of players is 33 in US and there are 25% of gamers who were over 50. In addition, there are 31% of all gamers are under 18 and there are 44% of players were 1 to 49 year-old in 2005. Moreover, there is 62% of players are males. 2. What is competition like in the video game system industry? Which of the five competitive forces is strongest? Which is weakest? What competitive forces seem to have the greatest effect on industry attractiveness and the potential profitability of new entrants? 2-1 * The bargaining power and leverage of buyers—a __weak_______ competitive force First of all, retailers almost do not have bargain power because they only can buy the products in those three companies. A retailer cannot buy the product from other companies and they may need to sell more than one brand to attract different customers taste. Therefore, they only have low bargain power. * The bargaining power and leverage of suppliers—a ____moderate_____ competitive force Although it is easy for video game companies, such as Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, to switch the suppliers, the large suppler still contain bargain power. The bargain powers come from special technology, unique parts, and risk of quality control. The small suppliers cannot guarantee the quality of products. Moreover, if those video game companies require unique components, then the suppliers may have bigger power to bargain. In short, the hardware component suppliers have bargain power but the video game companies have ability to change suppliers also although it is not very easy. In addition, video game software suppliers are in the different situation which compares with hardware suppliers. Software suppliers may have bargain power if they make a very wonderful game or they can bargain for the sales of hardware volume. If the sales of hardware console are not good, the software companies may not be willing to produce the software games. However, those video game companies have abilities to produce the software. They can publish their own game software. Therefore, software suppliers may not have bargain power as strong as hardware suppliers. In short, integrate hardware and software suppliers’ competitive forces. Suppliers have moderate bargaining power. * Competition from substitutes—a __weak to moderate______ competitive force Video game is for people to spend their leisure time. Except video games, people can do outdoor activities, board games, watching TV, seeing movies†¦etc. for their free time. Those activities may not instead of the feeling of playing video games but this depends on how video game players like to play video game. According to the data, video game enthusiasts can spend 6 hours per week to play video games. Therefore, those people usually do not do other activities in their free time. In short, there is no activities totally the same with video game but there are still other things that players can do to instead video game. Thus, the substitute force is low to moderate. * Threat of entry—a __weak_______ competitive force. Due to the entry barriers, it is not easy to enter this industry. The requirements of entry are high. In order to enter video game industry, entrants need to invest large capital and possess enough technologic skills to compete with the existing companies. Furthermore, the existing companies have higher ability to stay in the industry and have strong competitive products to threaten new entrants. Consequently, the threat of new entry has weak competitive force. * Rivalry among competing video game console producers—a __Strong_______ competitive force There is strong rivalry within the industry. As we can see, Sega was forced to withdraw from the industry in 2001. The existing three companies have started competing with each other keenly. They continue to develop their products, to compete sales volumes and price. As long as one of them does not pay attention to each other action, they may lose a lot. Therefore, the competing within video game console producers is strong. 2-2 The strongest competitive force is rivalry among competing video game console producers. The weakest competitive force is threat of entry. The competition from substitute is the greatest effect on industry. Because there are no substitutes which can provide totally the same experience for consumers, this is the greatest attractiveness and the potential profitability of new entrants. 3. How is the video game system industry changing? What are the underlying drivers of change and how might those driving forces individually or collectively change competition in the industry? Driving forces will include: * Product innovation The development of software and hardware of console is an important driver to push the industry to change. New technologies can attract individual buyers to purchase. The enthusiastic consumers may want to obtain newest games, so they may be easy to change their favorites. Also, new development can force other producers to improve their products. A new innovation product can be success in the industry. Then, it may give pressure to other competitors to improve their products. Therefore, product innovation is a driver of change. * Emergence of new video game devices The new video game devices are a driver to let the producers to change their products because new devices may improve the products and may be a trigger of consumers’ willing to buy. When a new device comes out, a producer does not catch up the trend and then it may be kicked out the market. Moreover, a new device may become a trend in the industry and may trigger a new competition war. * Emergence of internet-based video games Internet-based video games allow multiplayers at the same time. Also, the players may change their purchasing pattern. Internet is convenience for the consumers to purchase new games and has accompanies to play games device so it will enhance the products become more vivid and convenience to possess. Therefore, internet-bas video games become a trend in the industry. The major players of industry have started to develop their products to allow users to player through wireless networking. Therefore, the producers are making change to fit the consumers’ new using and purchasing pattern. * The buyer characteristics The players characteristics are gradually change. There are more young adults and female to become players. This trend attracts the producers to consider the buyers age and gender. They have started to design the console and games to match those buyer segment needs. For example, the goal of Wii is even mom can know how to play it. Therefore, the consumers’ segment change can impact the industry trend and push the major industry players to change the design to feed the different segment of players. * The aspect of society The aspect of society is change in this decade. Parents are willing to accompany their kids to play video games. They think some video games can let people to use their brains to think and some video games can help people to do exercises. For example, some games may use particular barriers that push players to figure out what element they need for enter the other stages. Moreover, many sport games of Wii are required users to move their body. Thus, many people think that video games do not only require users to stick in front of the screens and just move the fingers but also require users to operate their brains and move their bodies. Therefore, many video game console producers have started to change their design to fit more potential customers’ needs. 4. What does your strategic group map of the video game industry (all segments) look like? Which strategic groups do you think are in the best positions? The worst positions? Types of Video Game Suppliers/Distribution Channels. Strategic Group Map of the Video Game Industry Arcades Machine Arcade operators Home PC game suppliers Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo Home PCs Video Game Consoles Several online game site: MSN game zone†¦etc. Online Video Game Sites Low Medium High Cost to Players of Video Games Arcade operators can distribute for the arcade machine and little part for home PC use. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo produce games that can be use on home PC, video game consoles and online games. The online video game supplier may distribute the games to online use and may have little part for video game console use. Arcade game costs players very little. Sometimes it just cost few coins to play and players do not need to buy the machine back to homes. Home PC game players have to buy PC and they just can play the games or they may need to go to some Internet bars. Therefore, the cost is highest. Video game console cost players around $100 to $400 to purchase a hardware console. For the online video game sites, they may just cost few dollars from players to download the games. 5. What key factors determine the success for video game console producers? Factors that are necessary for competitive success in the console segment of the video game industry include: * Large installed base While the installed base is getting more and more, the producer company could be profit from the increasing installed base if the producer develops its internal game capabilities. Nintendo and Microsoft have this strategy. Nintendo has published many popular games and those software operating profit margins contribute around 35% to 40 % of Nintendo’s profitability. Also, independent game publishers also benefit from the large installed base because they can have increasing continuous sales. * Technological capabilities According to the improvement of technologies, every industry players are eager to develop the new products that the new technologies ameliorate them. This is because consumers have required more and more functions and quality of the products. They want high definition, easy to use†¦ etc from the products; therefore, every producer is entering the technological capabilities war. The technological abilities can help producers offer better products to attract customers to purchase. * Partnerships with independent software developers. Those software developers are important for the hardware game console producers because there is no fun without game software. Many players have â€Å"must have list. † This is just like the fashion world. People who pay attention on fashion trend know what should be had. Thus, â€Å"must have list† is the fashion trend in the video game industry. Therefore, partnerships with independent software developers are one of key factor that can push the video game console producer to succeed. Those partners can develop the popular software to urge the sales of video game console producers. * Acceptable development and production costs The price of the console should be reasonable for consumers. If the price is too high, the product may be like PS3 to fail in the market. Because Sony spent a lot on developing the better technologic component for PS3, it priced PS3 in $499 and $599 each to charge customers. However, the new design of PS3 did not completion yet at the launched time because PS3 had only 24 PS3 game title can backward compatible with PlayStation and PS2. The development of PS3 is not acceptable and blue-ray technology was too expensive. Therefore, the incompletion development and high production costs are transferred to consumers. The result is PS3 fail. In short, acceptable development and production costs are one of the factors can determine video game console producer will succeed or not. * Access to distribution Retailer distribution: this is the common distribution channel of hardware and software console. Those retail stores, such as Wal-Mart, Target, Best-Buy, Flyer’s and Amazon, have high consumers’ density. Due to the development of internet use, online retailers become popular and contain powerful sales. Online download: Because of internet-base becomes a trend, many console producers have developed the online gaming. Hence, internet becomes a potential way to distribute the online game products. Product variety: Some video game producers have variety products. For example: Nintendo produces hardware console and software console game. The software console game cannot only use in Wii but also can use in PC, PS2, or other hardware console. Thus, as a software game publisher, Nintendo access to more than one distribution for its software game. In short, how to access to more distribution is also one successful factor of video game console producers. 6. Which console makers seem to be best able to perform the industry’s key success factors and other measures of competitive strength? What ratings do Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo merit in a competitive strength assessment? | ImportanceWeight| SonyStrengthRating| SonyStrengthScore| MicrosoftStrength Rating| Microsoft StrengthScore| NintendoStrengthRating| NintendoStrengthScore| Large installed base| 0. 25| 7| 1. 75| 6| 1. 50| 9| 2. 25|. Technologicalcapabilities| 0 . 15| 9| 1. 35| 9| 1. 35| 7| 1.05| Partnership with independent software developer| 0. 15| 8| 1. 20| 8| 1. 20| 8| 1. 20| Acceptable development and production costs| 0. 25| 6| 1. 50| 7| 1. 75| 8| 2. 00| Access to distribution| 0. 20| 8| 1. 60| 8| 1. 60| 9| 1. 80| Sum| 1. 00| | 7. 4| | 7. 4| | 8. 3| (Rating Scale: 1=very weak; 10=very strong) General speaking, Sony with PS2 has performance very well in the industry. However, Xbox had beaten Sony’s PS3. Then Nintendo’s Wii has very strong performance to become industry leader. Thus, Nintendo seems to have best performance in the industry. The table above shows the ratings and scores of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft have the same score, 7. 4 and Nintendo has higher score, 8. 3. Although Nintendo do not have strong technological capabilities, it has powerful marketing strategic and variety products to access more distribution. Its product can reach more population to use and weaker technological capabilities become its strength to increase the sales volume. Therefore, I gave rating 8 for the acceptable development and production costs which is higher than Sony and Microsoft. Therefore, the overall rating of Nintendo shows that it has best performance in the industry. 7. What recommendations would you make to Microsoft to win the next generation battle in the video game console industry? to Sony? to Nintendo? Microsoft According to the revenue data, we can see Microsoft has less revenue than Sony and Nintendo. Also the sale unit of Microsoft products are not as mane as Sony and Nintendo. Therefore, I recommend that Microsoft should increase sale volume of its products. Xbox may be popular in America but how about Asia? Asia is a potential place to increase the sale. Therefore, Microsoft may need to create the new generation product can fit more population taste. Sony Sony should remember the lesson of launching PS3. Although it had pressure to launch PS3 earlier, the product was not ready yet to public. This situation can drag more profit down than launching PS3 later. Therefore, I recommend that Sony should make the marketing plan well and prepare more than one back up plan to face the rivals’ new products. Sony should have ability to predict or estimate actions of competitors. Nintendo Nintendo has strong performance of its Wii. Wii is design to reach more population so the key features of Wii are not as strong as Sony Play Station and Microsoft Xbox. Now, Wii has been successful to reach more population, and then I will recommend that Nintendo should figure out how to improve its technological abilities. The consumers cannot be always satisfied with the simple designs. Moreover, Nintendo has famous software game such as Mario Brothers. The game is many people childhood memories. Nintendo could make serial products for the special anniversary of Mario Brothers. Many people would like to collect the serial products, such as the first generation Mario Brother game. This is Nintendo’s strength and Nintendo should use it.

Mexican American War Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Mexican American War - Essay Example D. Eisenhower, Frederick Merk, and David M. Pletcher in three important works on the Mexican American war. These works are, respectively: So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, and The Diplomacy of Annexation. The paper begins by discussing each author's thesis, arguments and evidence provided to support the thesis one at a time. It then discusses the works in a comparative fashion. While this author agrees most strongly with Merk's argument that U.S. expansionism-Manifest Destiny was not some unique strategy that was only pursued by Americans, there are merits to the arguments presented in the two other works. The paper ends with a conclusion summarizing the major points covered. John S. D. Eisenhower's book, So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico is a narrative history of the Mexican American war. Eisenhower has a distinctly "top down" militaristic, traditional historgraphy approach. It is one that emphasizes the VIPs of the war such as presidents and generals - essentially a "great men" view of history. The book is peppered with military details such as battle actions and tactics. One of Eisenhower's contentions is that the great military man, Santa Anna y Perez de Lebron (Santa Anna), who fought for Mexican independence from Spain was just an indiscreet popular figure. Eisenhower argues that these indiscretions in his pleasures and private life of Santa Anna's effectively barred him from belonging to the elite of Mexican society.2 However, Eisenhower doesn't discuss the possibility of a person being able to be both a populist and a member of this elite at the same time. Eisenhower used primarily books as his sources, though some of the books contain collections of primary resources such as letters and official government documents of the day.3 He also used newspapers and periodicals, though again, the majority of these are not primary or contemporary sources4. This is perhaps a reflection of his preference for traditional, "great men" history, in respecting the opinions of other already published historic works. First hand anecdotes are frequently used when Eisenhower discusses the details of events from the battlefields. There are maps included both assist the reader in following and understanding the text, as well as serve to emphasize the author's "headquarter's history" approach.5 The full title of the book So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico 1846-1848 suggests that the book is from the U.S. Side of the war. Substantial sections are written based on earlier writing by North American historians. The breath of research is limited to English sources and, with the exception of three sources, all of non-Mexican origin.6 One of the 'non-Mexican sources is of Fanny Caldern de la Barca's memoirs and de la Barca was born in Scotland7. Eisenhower attempts to be unbiased towards Mexico and Mexicans. This is especially evident in his references to Mexican soldiers who, he concludes, had to fight an unbalanced war just to maintain their national pride. Eisenhower frequently draws attention to their courage as well, especially in reference to the poor, rough leadership they were under. It is rare that a work is completely unbiased, however, and that is the case for So Far From God. Eisenhower's biasis is revealed through the language he uses to refer

Peoples Services Inc. by Muhammad Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Peoples Services Inc. by Muhammad - Case Study Example Her supervisor Haleema realizes the changing attitude and decides to intervene. Â  According to Muhammad (2012), Qureshi starts taking longer lunch breaks meaning she was late to come back to the office for 15-20 minutes. Haleema noticed that after the lunch break, Qureshi was less productive, and spent some time dosing on the desk. She became too unproductive and sensitive to her colleagues who had to repeat her poor work. Later, Qureshi developed a habit of calling in sick with stomach flu. At one time, her daughter calls to say Qureshi is sick in bed. One afternoon, Haleema realized that Qureshi's breath smelt of strong mint and suspected she was drunk. Having given Qureshi many warnings, Haleema felt she needed to act because her attitude and performance affected everyone around her. Muhammad (2012) notes that Qureshi even asked for a departmental transfer arguing that she needed a less busy office. Haleema felt she needed to fire Qureshi because she never opened up her problems, and she seemed to deteriorate in her performance. However, they had to contact Employee Assistant Program (EAP) before firing her. Â  Haleema would land into legal problems for firing Qureshi without consulting EAP. Richard et al. (2009) argue that the EAP requires some alcohol or drug testing was done on any employee before terminating her from office. An alcoholic worker faces protection from Acts protecting people with disabilities and medical problems. Haleema should help Qureshi in seeking professional help before firing her. The law does not encourage alcohol abuse at a workplace. However, it encourages the employer to help the victim obtain treatment. Therefore, the Qureshi may sue Haleema first for not doing the alcohol test, and secondly for not intervening for a professional help. Although it may be expensive, the employer should seek legal help before taking action against Qureshi.

Asian-American Experience Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Asian-American Experience - Essay Example The two stories I had selected are Adrian Tomine's â€Å"Shortcomings† and the â€Å"Flower Drum Song† by Rodgers and Hammerstein. In the case of â€Å"Shortcomings†, the main part is played by Ben Tanaka (a Japanese-American) who is living in Berkeley, California and works at a movie theater. He considers himself more American than Japanese in his ways and he is always confounded and confused by his Japanese girlfriend named Miko Hayashi. He claims he could hardly understand Miko anymore by this statement: â€Å"Her name's Miko and, uh, she's Japanese, so you know ....† to hide his own feelings of sexual insecurity and misanthropy. Ben can be considered to be no better than an adolescent wrestling with his own internal demons about conflicts regarding his real identity (although he is now 30 years old). He soon fell into disgrace and disrepute when Miko leaves him temporarily ostensibly to take up an internship in New York and showed his preference for bl onds by becoming entangled with two women.This preference is not actually sexually related but a manifestation of his cultural brainwashing or an unexpressed desire to assimilate and belong to the larger community instead of his own racial minority. Ben, perhaps due to some cultural innocence, was very much surprised upon learning that Miko had gone to New York, not for the internship but to hook up with someone else - a photographer. This naivetà © is indicative of the sometimes confusing world faced by all Americans of mixed ancestries. Ben Tanaka had staked his cultural.

Concept analysis on pain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Concept analysis on pain - Essay Example This concept is called pain. Pain is an abstract idea that is relative in nature. Different people define pain differently since there are diverse aspects of pain. However, the most universally accepted definition is that pain is a strong unpleasant bodily feeling or sensation such as caused by illness or injury. According to this definition, anything that causes the unpleasant feeling is an agent of pain and does so by damaging the body cells of an individual. Further, this definition indicates that pain occurs in two stages: the first stage is the sensitivity by nerve endings that a chemical change has occurred in the tissues and secondly the interpretation that the change is harmful. Another applicable definition of pain is that it is a mental suffering or distress. This is the most experienced pain. It has agents and its causes are as diverse as the complications of human lifestyle can ever get. For instance, the news about a loved one’s demise is painful and so is head in jury in a road crash. The two give the ideas defined above; while one infers to a mental distress, the other refers to a bodily harm. Both inflict pain of different nature (Castle & Buckley, 2008). A more generalized definition of pain is â€Å"An unpleasant sensation and emotional response to that sensation† (American Academy of Pain Medicine, 2007). ... Doctors treat their patients who are coincidentally compelled to go to hospitals due to intense pain. To doctors, pain is the uncomfortable feeling caused by bodily harm. The main role that doctors perform, therefore, is the reduction of the pain and the initiation of the healing and recovery process. This they do by the administration of pain killers and the antibiotics. Furthermore, doctors diagnose the disease thereby determining the cause of the pain and treating it. In so doing, they offer a permanent solution to the pain. There are different types of pain related to bodily harm in the practice of medicine. The most common being the occurrence of an infection. This refers to an inversion of the body by a disease causing organism. Until the organism is established and its effects eliminated, the victims experience intense pain. Additionally, pain results from accidents. This refers to the unintentional bodily harm which causes direct destruction of body tissues. It results in ope ned skins otherwise referred to as wounds. Theses hurt and cause intense pain. Doctors therefore stitch up the injuries and administer painkillers thereby reducing the pain while instigating the healing process. The cardinal rule that doctors follow when handling the issue of pain is that the patient is always right. This is based on the fact that it is the bearer of pain who knows where it hurts. Therefore, if a patient says that he or she feels pain on the lips, the doctor has to believe it is so even if there may be no physical signs to indicate the presence of pain. Notably, pain is always a subjective concept (McCaffrey, 1977). This means that pain is what the person experiencing it says it is. For example, a person can be subjected

Encouraging Teachers to Use Rubrics Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Encouraging Teachers to Use Rubrics - Assignment Example m setting teachers already know beforehand what will make a given task average or excellent, this places the learners at a disadvantage from the start. Rubrics enables the teacher to provide a guideline that the students follow and in so doing they are able to increase the quality of their work and the knowledge they acquire from any given assignment. The use of rubrics by teachers is beneficial to all the parties involved in the education process such as the teachers, students and parents. It makes the assessment process more accurate and fair since each student is graded individually and not based on a general overall task given to them. Teachers also get to give instructions on how a task ought to be handled and the delivery process and so the students can streamline their work so as to achieve the desired outcome. Such instructions can be used by the students for self assessment (Hafner&Hafner, 2004). According to research, when done by peers, this type of critism helps learners to improve. Use of rubrics also makes the students aware of the learning targets, this way they can work in a manner that increases their chances of hitting them and so getting better

The 1848 Revolution, the Second Reich, and the First World War Essay

The 1848 Revolution, the Second Reich, and the First World War - Essay Example In 1848 Europe saw a series of revolution starting from France and which later drew Germany in. Numerous groups were involved in the revolution that demanded the restoration of the old forms of administration, liberal constitution, economic freedom, and the nationalist demands for the consolidation of Germany. The pressure was being exerted by various different forces and each had a different objective. By 1849 all revolutionary endeavors had halted and during the 1850s the German economy grew as production of coal, iron and textile started. During the Wilhelmine period Germany saw a brisk industrialization. A series of changes occurring between 1871 and 1914, Germany transformed its role. Industrialization took place throughout as the population grew and economic instability rose. The working class people of Germany faced a transition from living in the countryside to dwelling in cities. During the â€Å"restoration† period, the German territories grew in regional power due t o improved power, enhancement in government, and centralization of state power. In particular Prussia grew stronger not only population wise but also territorially and economically. In terms of demographics it was now equivalent to Austria even though both had conservative regimes (Fulbrook, 105). With only slight variations, the social, economical and legal reforms still remained the same as they were in Napoleonic period. In the years following 1815 a number of student bodies were formed and after the reaction by conservatives on the murder of an anti-liberal playwright these bodies were disbanded (Fulbrook, 7). Liberals grew in power who wanted to limit the powers held by the rulers and wanted to establish a new establishment. Reforms in education resulted in an educational growth and hence a more educated workforce (Fulbrook, 109). Economic production, changes in the political groundwork, and socio-economic changes spurred political turbulence (Fulbrook, 114). Following a revolu tion in France various groups within Germany also revolted each having a different aim. The demands included restoration of the old estates, a liberal constitution, economic freedom, and unification of Germany. The liberals took advantage of the political upheaval to demand changes nationwide and the unification of Germany (Fulbrook, 117). In Austria the conservative government was replaced by liberals. In Prussia due to a misunderstanding of the king’s orders by the soldiers resulted in a fight. In order to avoid a civil war, the king himself wore revolutionary clothes and rode throughout Berlin. It was easy to demand for a unified Germany however it was difficult to define a border. By May 1849 the revolution had ended. The implications of the revolution were various including dissolution of a feudal system on lands and economical advancement. After the decline of the revolution, a conservative constitution was regained. Despite this a rapid economical progress took place i n Germany. With the start of production in coal, iron, and textile, more and more people started being employed into the workforce (Fulbrook, 122). Cultural unity was being promoted through festivals, contests, and other events. The spread of cultural and educational institutions encouraged cultural and educational progress particularly in science (Fulbrook, 123). In the 1871 â€Å"unification† of Germany was a result of the Prussian expansion and colonialism of non-Prussian lands. Bismarck organized the

The Atomists Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Atomists - Essay Example Pure atomism is known as mechanism, dating back to Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, promoting the idea that the universe has been derived from one primitive, homogenous substance. Atomism gives rise to materialistic reductionism, which explains how larger phenomena can be divided into smaller ones, in charge of many events happening in the universe. (3) Another significant phenomenon is determinism, which explains that every event that occurs in the universe is a result of a previous serious of events. However, atomist determinism has many explanatory weaknesses, like the order of the cosmos is not being controlled by an external force, but controls itself. Hence, natural laws have been outlawed. Determinism is against free will because it bounds the occurring of an event to a prior series of events, and thus, lacks originality. The elimination of an extra outside force controlling the events of the universe, and an inability to define any alternative form of controll ing force, led Aristotle to reject

Feminism and Art Essay Example for Free

Feminism and Art Essay Feminist activity had been a rising concern in the late 1900’s which is based merely off of the emotional significance of personal and psychological reasoning. Rather than reacting on this issue based on historical evidence, the issue is based on immediate needs on the feminist attack. Linda Nochlin, and other important scholars and philosophers explain the psychology, philosophy, sociology, and history of art and the feminist movement pertaining to art. Linda Nochlin was the author of this piece, and used both her own knowledge to write this piece, as well as other scholars and philosophers arguments, injected them into her writing, and elaborated on their ideas and arguments. When pertaining to psychology, the issues mentioned and elaborated on were how women were rejected, which led to their thoughts, feelings, and emotions being affected. Because of this, this changed their way of interpreting things, and their views of things were different from men. From a philosophical stand point, Nochlin refers to John Stuart Mill who says that he suggests that we tend to accept things that come natural to us, or that are natural, like male domination; this means that males dominate over women, and women having no say in anything, accept what is natural because back in the day, male domination was a normal thing to women and was a natural behavior. Thinking about sociology, in society, men had to work and had to be educated. Women on the other hand were not allowed and treated as objects, and stayed home to have children and to continue on the male name. â€Å"In general, women’s experience and situation in society, and hence as artists, is different from men’s, and certainly the art produced by a group of consciously united and purposefully articulate women intent on bodying forth a group of consciousness of feminine experience might indeed be stylistically identifiable as feminists, if not feminine art. † Historically, women weren’t allowed to be educated unless they were wealthy, or had and greater importance over other women. This is why women didn’t know how to paint because they weren’t allowed to learn how, this is also why there were not so many women artists back then, and if there were, they were not well known. An important question that has been posed multiple times within this piece was, â€Å"Why have there been no great women artists? † 3 3 â€Å"Why have there been no great women artists† is what Linda is arguing. Her argument is that there are no great women artists that compare to all of these great and well-known artists that art historians study. These famous artists studied today are, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, etc. Linda also states that it is in human nature that men dominate women. It is an instinct that has been created ever since humans walked this earth, and is something that is still being battled today. By answering the question, â€Å"Why have there been no great women artists†, which has been questioned by many, Linda proves her arguments by referring to many who have either answered, or attempted to answer this question. Those who have either done it or attempted it are: John Stuart Mill, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Mary Ellmann. All of these theorists/writers attempted to answer the same exact question by simply reinforcing the negative implications, or by saying that there is a different kind of greatness that exists for women, and also how experiences that women go through in society affects their art, which may mean that they were not accepted by the great viewers, which were men. Men and women have different values and interpretation of art, and to men, women’s art was nothing. When structure of this essay is concerned, it is in fact structured in a number of 4 4 ways which include, historical events, arguments, theories, and facts. The argument is pronounced using different methods, which explains subjects using points from the other scholars and their explanations. Initially, the argument made was intangible, later it becomes clear when Nochlin first talks about the battle against feminism, and how it has been around for years, even decades. Later, she begins to say how feminism caused such emotional, and psychological damage and pain to women for a long period of time. Many reasons why feminism had occurred was explored by Nochlin, and answered the question by John Stuart Mill’s response to male dominancy. Her reasoning for why there were no famous female artists was because of men, and how they overruled women in society; her argument was supported with many arguments written from other writers in the past. At the end of each of her arguments, she ends with the famous question, â€Å"Why have there been no great women artists†, and leaves it to be answered by another writer. Many say it is in male nature to dominate, or maybe women just can’t achieve as much greatness as men. Maybe women paint from their psychological views of things, and this was frowned upon by men; women were not allowed to think, let alone paint about what they were thinking. When comparing known women artists to well known male artists, no woman artist compares to the master of art, Michelangelo. The next division of this essay was â€Å"The Question of the Nudes. † â€Å" We can now approach our question from a more reasonable standpoint, since it seems probable that the answer to why there have been no great women artists lies not in the nature of individual genius or lack of it, but in the nature of given institutions and what they forbid or encouraged in various classes or group of individuals†, p. 158. Since the 1800’s, nude models were females, and would go to school to help the new and sprouting artists to learn and practice art. Females who wanted to participate and learn to paint the human body were rejected because society did not allow women to look at another female or male nude. Men were allowed to study the female nude because to them, they were objects. However, male nudes (models) were never classified as objects. â€Å"As late as 1893, â€Å"lady† students were not admitted to life drawing at the Royal Academy in London, and even when they were, after that date, the model had to be â€Å"partially draped. † P. 158. Women had very little knowledge in painting and therefore were quite timid because of all the pressure that was placed on them by the society, and most commonly, men. Many of those who studied nude models and produced nude figure drawings later became doctors, and professional artists; once again women were not permitted to become either of those. In order to become a professional artist, however, you needed to be good in literature, and had to have knowledge of many techniques. It was uncommon for women to be educated because school’s had high expectations. There were consequences if a woman wanted to be a painter. If you were a woman painter, and were substantially committed to painting, you were expected to forget about having a future. This included a husband, family, career, etc. This was the case in the 19th century because women â€Å"couldn’t focus† on more than one thing at a time according to men and society, therefore our only options were to become a painter and have no outside life, or forget about being a painter and have a family. Women had come a long way by this time, and women were allowed to play music, sculpt, and draw, but were considered weak, and couldn’t pursue any labor work. One of the great women artists, Maurice Bompard, suffered greatly with her paintings because society classified them as being too sexual, and not serious enough; she struggled greatly to achieve the greatness she deserved. Rosa Bonheur was another well known woman artist, and her success changed the view of society on women artists, but still struggled because of her gender. Her father was a drawing master, so she loved to draw and paint at an early age. Rosa created a new style of painting in the 19th century, and this was to paint in smaller scale. She has the ability to capture naturalism, soul, and individuality, and was well known for her â€Å"Barbizon† landscapes. 6 , 6 The rhetorical method in this piece would be repeating the question, â€Å"Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists†, and this depicts the importance of this issue which has been raised by all of the philosophers, writers, and art historians that have been attempting to answer this question for decades. The tone of voice used in the essay is persuasion, frustration, and even determination, and this makes it easier for the reader to understand and illustrate what exactly the issue is and how important it is. In Nochlin’s â€Å"Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists†, she states the importance of women’s history, and makes women aware of how grateful they should be with everything women are allowed to do today. Because of those many strong women who stood up for what they believed in, women today have equal rights to men, and can pursue any path they so wish to take.

Relationship Between Museums And The Community Cultural Studies Essay

Relationship Between Museums And The Community Cultural Studies Essay The relationship between museums and the communities they serve is a popular topic of discussion. A quick look-through of most writers pieces reveals that the present day museums have to open up the walls that lock out the surrounding societies. They have to synchronize with the representative communities if the museums have to remain relevant in todays world. The political and cultural set up of different communities across the globe is rapidly changing and if the museums mission is to respond properly to these dynamic forces, then it is their task to open arms and break hierarchical structures within their set ups in order to accommodate accurate representation of the communities. The main purpose of this paper therefore is to examine the relationship between museums and communities and to investigate how the two parties interact. In her book, Elizabeth Crooke sheds light on the intimate relationship between Museums and their publics. She asserts that community engagement is a paramount responsibility of the museum and heritage sector if the museum has to achieve its missions. Further, she says that the museum is the point of interface where the public is encouraged to learn about their histories and to understand that of others (2007). Thomas also voiced that the museum sector and communities hold a dual relationship of interdependence, although its not easy to tell which one needs the other more (2000). The public needs information and they need to be educated about their histories based on the artifacts preserved in the museum display halls. On the other hand, the museum needs the represented communities in order to justify their exhibitions. It is crystal clear. The community has a molding hand on the museum initiatives and is a great determinant of how successful the institution can be. Likewise, the muse um is a means to express the communities identity. Crooke, in her book brings out the thought-provoking aspect worth debating, Who is speaking for the community, and why (Crooke, 2007, p10), what adds even more curiosity is if their demands with regards to heritage are met. The museums intuitive role is to form identity for the communities which are also led by pursuit for heritage. Conversantly, these demands are faced by challenging, social, political and economic influences which shows that the people are getting more aware, thus the museums may need to change their approach towards serving the society by becoming accessible to a wider range of communities. This is meant to satisfy the growing need to research by the publics and is hopefully met by the intergovernmental push on the museums towards this goal. Whats a community? In effect, this is a social group that lives within a particular locality and shares a common culture, historical heritage and a common government (Hoodwink, 2005). Its very important to understand this outline therefore, especially to zoom in the activities of the museum and how they directly relate to the represented communities. However, the government has a massive impact on developments in the museum sector. Governments issue policies and guidelines to museums and heritage sector which stipulate and emphasize the roles of the museum in achievement of social inclusion and community participation. Also, the authorities push for cohesion and restoration of the society, enhanced by museum activities. These nudging policies by the government have fastened the engagement and commitment of the institutions indulgences towards improving the social order. A museum scholar, Alpha Oumar said that it is in the leaders of our village, of our cultural tradition that we work with to find a lasting solution (2002). True as he implied, that the museums can change their perceptions and develop even better models to meet on-coming challenges, and this can only be done by community involvement. In partnering with the community therefore, the museums get a guide on how to tackle issues faced by the communities. Also, just like any other community, a museum community is made up of the people who visit it, the workers and those who live around it, and also the stakeholders and those who donated part of the exhibition collections. The community involvement policy is imperative because the society shares common characteristics and attributes as well. However, the museum being a custodian of community heritage, has a responsibility to give back to the community by putting up enough effort to craft solutions for some of the problems experienced by the civic society. The strength and relevance of a museum is moreover shown in its ability to respond to community needs and how forceful it pushes for solutions beyond its faculty. Very important also as a result of community involvement, is the feedback and response from audience, ideas, views and contributions or recommendations from the people on how to serve the society better. These are invaluable proponents that the museum can only get from a motivated and fulfilled community. Museums should involve the community by conserving their heritage and through custom management, but more involvement can be achieved not only by moving closer to the people, but also by engaging in a partnership with them in the heritage programs. Also this can be more achieved for the benefit of both of them by urging the communities to display their heritage through donation of artifact collections, engaging in community projects, performing art, and exhibitions in the museum halls. The community is the mine from which the museum seeks to get information and supporting evidence and must therefore be soothed with concern and developmental initiatives. You may wonder what advantages there are in community involvement by museums. Well, there is so much to mention but this paper examines just a few. Seeking the communitys participation is an awesome approach because the public feels directly involved in decision making process especially on the use of resources. Secondly is sustainability. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to sustain museum programs without community involvement. Also harmony and a sense of ownership is a credit to the community. When they are involved, they have a direct feel of possession of whats in custody of the museum which assures them that nothing has been stripped off their hands. It also grants them pride over their cultural heritage. Very important amongst many, is the creation of awareness. The communities involvement brings them to a focal point of appreciation of diverse cultures, some of which may be unheard of. The components contributed by different communities in a society are availed f or viewing and education of other members of the public, therefore creating an understanding amongst divergent traditions. Its explicit today that most museums are trending towards bridging the gap between them and the local communities. The prickly spot though, is how to engage these communities and to maintain the relationship. Most scholars have had their debatable suggestions, Nicholas Macho, adding that museums should positively contribute in community development by eradicating poverty and empowering them economically (2005). With that, most museums have had authority by statute to protect sites and monuments of both national and international heritage which has landed them into conflict with the local communities. Nevertheless, their mission to eradicate poverty has been perceived in activities of community involvement like employments in regional museums, involvement in community projects, and archaeological excavation activities (Abungu, 1998). Additionally, in the past, most museums would invite members of the public to participate in museum activities but its all taken a reverse turn today. Th e museums are visiting the locals and putting up programs that reach out even more to most members of the community. Education programs are also in place to reach out to the public and learning institutions which are meant to develop pride in the diverse historical, cultural and natural heritage and are designed for the suitability of all levels of learning. The cost of running a museum is relatively high in some regions and this has to be recovered through sale of entry tickets. However, today the tickets are highly subsidized by governments to encourage locals to access the facilities and educate themselves on historical and cultural legacy. Low income groups found this to be relatively high still and thought they are locked out by their inability to pay for the charges, but authorities had taken note of that. Most museums now allow locals to access the facilities at very low charges especially if they can identify themselves as groups of members with a research or learning mission. Those out of this category are also given a chance to visit the facilities free of charge on particular dates, given equal chance to learn about the historical and cultural heritage. No one is left out for that matter and the museum and heritage sector are moving on even closer each day towards a more synchronized relationship between the institutions and t he civic society. Communities play an important role in preservation of cultural and natural heritage through practice and observation of traditional practices inspired by indigenous knowledge. Since the indigenous knowledge is developed by the community and it represents and important aspect of their style of living, the museums, though some have taken the step already, should create resources that aid in research for indigenous knowledge. These should aim at collecting and preserving the knowledge of the practices by local communities. The people in the most remote areas of the society must be involved in this in order to get the most accurate documentations to be preserved in the housed of artifact. Most recently, a dispute erupted in Kenya when two communities got into dispute because of a supposedly sacred forest. Its a forest very important to the local people, the Kikuyu clan, but totally had no meaning to the neighbors who threatened to make it bald (Opondo, 2011). Its arguable, but the nation al heritage preservation authorities had clearly not educated the rest of the community about the importance of the forest to the Kikuyu clan. This forest is a place held very sacred by the community and is a site for appeasing the spirits in events of calamity, sacrificing for rain, peacemaking, and conduction certain rituals (Opondo, 2011). In effect, it is therefore important that conservation of the cultural landscapes be upheld and secured by authorities. In collaboration with the communities, most of the landscapes have been protected for their cultural and even biological value but some have still been left out. This is either because they are undiscovered or a greater wall still exists between the community and the heritage preservation institutions. In occasion, much needs to be done to pull them on board. Museums promote both cultural diversity and multiculturalism by merging different ethnic practices to suit a wide variety of members of a society. The institutions reflects an awareness of multiple cultural practices, some which are easily adopted by other societies, therefore it has to do this carefully to avoid malpractice. The art center is a point where communities come together to share ideas within the social, political and cultural context which adds great value to the mode of inter-relation between communities. Indeed, museums improve intercultural understanding and harness the community appreciation and celebration of their differences thus making the institutions a great equipment of social change. Finally, its important to note that the communities and museums have a symbiotic relationship.. Involvement of the community by the museum in its activities demonstrates the institutions invaluable role in cultural preservation and development. Traditionally, the institution would be confined to the walls of its exhibition halls, but today it goes deeper into the society to help solve issue of poverty, conflict resolution, heritage conservation, and more even about tourism. The community and the museum are two parties with equal shares of need for each other. Therefore, the community would be if involved in all the major aspects of their unitary development. First, both parties should be involved in the planning process that requires input from both of them rather than let the community come in as a substitute. This is the best way to create trust amongst them. The museum should also welcome new ideas and contributions from the public and with a sense of vision, should implement as m any of them as is possible. On the other hand, the community would be better off by letting go of the past and availing as much accurate information as possible for education of the general public. Much benefit would also be accrued if cultural artifacts are collected and displayed for viewing and education of other communities to share in the appreciation of socio-cultural and historical heritage. This can only be done if members of the community are willing to give what is required. Indeed all these activities are funneled towards a better and happier society. A community in which all the divergent members understand the lifestyles of each other without undue judgment, yet this is only possible if the people are taught about its importance, and they, together with the museums corporate to achieve a common goal. For a better community therefore, both the museum and the public have to work in cohesion because they both seek a common goal, an informed and peaceful civilization.