Importance of Enlightment Ideals in To Kill A Mockingbird essays

Importance of Enlightment Ideals in To Kill A Mockingbird essays The French Revolution was a time of immense refinement that lasted from 1789 to 1815. During this period, new ideas of natural laws based on reason influenced the minds of individuals and political affairs. The attempt to provide rational explanations was called the Enlightenment. These thinkers began to advocate changes and reforms. The reforms were referred to as the Enlightenment ideals and were used to perfect society. The Enlightenment ideals consist of equality towards all people, against cruel and unusual punishment, tolerance towards others, natural rights, will of the majority, and the idea people are basically good. Harper Lee created a novel which flashbacks to the Enlightenment ideals. Her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird was written in 1960 about Scout Finchs childhood and the struggle of Maycombs society in the 1930s. The key Enlightenment ideals and beliefs are highly palpable in Harper Lees novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The ideals of equality, toleration of others, and po sitive view of human nature are illustrated despite Maycombs propensity to degrade individuals. Throughout her novel, Lee conveys the importance of equality among all people and races. Due to Maycombs lack of equality, the differences in social classes of the society are both irrational and destructive. Lee uses the childrens confusion to evaluate the equality in Maycombs society, ultimately, the prejudice in human relations. Aunt Alexandra replies to Scout, Because he is trash, thats why you cant play with him. Ill not have you around him, picking up his habits and learning Lord-knows-what, when she asks to play with Walter Cunningham (Lee 225). Equality towards all people regardless of their background or color is vital and is the basis of the Enlightenment and of the novel. The implication of equal treatment among people is intertwined with having to ...

History of Myanmars 8888 Uprising

History of Myanmars 8888 Uprising Throughout the previous year, students, Buddhist monks, and pro-democracy advocates had been protesting against Myanmars military leader, Ne Win, and his erratic and repressive policies.  The demonstrations forced him out of office on July 23, 1988, but Ne Win appointed General Sein Lwin as his replacement. Sein Lwin was known as the Butcher of Rangoon for being in command of the army unit that massacred 130 Rangoon University students in July of 1962, as well as for other atrocities.   Tensions, already high, threatened to boil over.  The student leaders set the auspicious date of August 8, or 8/8/88, as the day for nationwide strikes and protests against the new regime. The 8/8/88 Protests In the week leading up to the protest day, all of Myanmar (Burma) seemed to rise up.  Human shields protected speakers at political rallies from retaliation by the army. Opposition newspapers printed and openly distributed anti-government papers.  Entire neighborhoods barricaded their streets and set up defenses, in case the army should try to move through.  Through the first week of August, it seemed that Burmas pro-democracy movement had unstoppable momentum on its side. The protests were peaceful at first, with demonstrators even encircling army officers in the street to shield them from any violence.  However, as the protests spread to even rural areas of Myanmar, Ne Win decided to call army units in the mountains back to the capital as reinforcements.  He ordered that the army disperses the massive protests and that their guns were not to shoot upward - an elliptical shoot to kill order.   Even in the face of live fire, the protesters remained in the streets through August 12. They threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the army and police and raided police stations for firearms. On August 10, soldiers chased protesters into Rangoon General Hospital and then began shooting down the doctors and nurses who were treating wounded civilians.   On August 12, after just 17 days in power, Sein Lwin resigned the presidency.  The protesters were ecstatic but unsure about their next move. They demanded that the sole civilian member of the upper political echelon, Dr. Maung Maung, be appointed to replace him. Maung Maung would remain president for just one month.  This limited success did not halt the demonstrations; on August 22, 100,000 people gathered in Mandalay for a protest.  On August 26, as many as 1 million people turned out for a rally at Shwedagon Pagoda in the center of Rangoon.   One of the most electrifying speakers at that rally was Aung San Suu Kyi, who would go on to win the presidential elections in 1990 but would be arrested and jailed before she could take power.  She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her support of peaceful resistance to military rule in Burma. Bloody clashes continued in the cities and towns of Myanmar for the rest of 1988.  Throughout early September, as the political leaders temporized and made plans for gradual political change, the protests grew ever more violent.  In some cases, the army provoked the demonstrators into open battle so that the soldiers would have an excuse to mow down their opponents. The End of the Protests On September 18, 1988, General Saw Maung led a military coup that seized power and declared the harsh martial law.  The army used extreme violence to break up demonstrations, killing 1,500 people in just the first week of military rule alone, including monks and schoolchildren.  Within two weeks, the 8888 Protest movement had collapsed. By the end of 1988, thousands of protesters and smaller numbers of police and army troops were dead.  Estimates of the casualties run from the implausible official figure of 350 to around 10,000.  Additional thousands of people disappeared or were imprisoned.  The ruling military junta kept universities shuttered through the year 2000 to prevent students from organizing further protests. The 8888 Uprising in Myanmar was eerily similar to the Tiananmen Square Protests that would break out the following year in Beijing, China.  Unfortunately for the protesters, both resulted in mass killings and little political reform - at least, in the short run.