The Mysterious Marisa Coulter Essay Example for Free

The Mysterious Marisa Coulter Essay Phillip Pullman’s â€Å"His Dark Materials† introduces a new twist on the old villainess character to the world of fiction. Mrs. Marisa Coulter is an almost purely evil character. Despite her charming and persuasive demeanor, Mrs. Coulter is the greediest, most power-hungry character in the trilogy. In Pullman’s world, every human has a daemon—a visible version of the soul that takes on an animal form. Mrs. Coulter’s daemon, a vicious little golden monkey, reflects its owner’s personality. Only a few seconds, and the monkey had overmastered him: with one fierce black paw around his throat and his black paws gripping the polecat’s lower limbs, he took one of Pantalaimon’s ears in his other paw and pulled as if he intended to tear it off. Not angrily, either, but with a cold curious force that was horrifying to see and even worse to feel. † (Pullman, 65) Just as the monkey, in book three, enjoys torturing and killing bats in the cave in which Mrs. Coulter keeps Lyra, Mrs. Coulter enjoys toying with people before she kills them. She shows no remorse after tearing people to pieces or torturing them to death. Mrs. Coulter, according to Lord Asriel, wanted to be involved in the religious hierarchy. However, being female, this was denied her. Mrs. Coulter is very intelligent and clever, but usually works for her own ends. She is manipulative and a very convincing liar. Every act of kindness or consideration is for her benefit only. Mrs. Coulter’s daemon attacks Lyra’s daemon in an attempt to subdue Lyra into doing her bidding. Immediately following this act Pullman writes, â€Å"‘What do you think of the flowers, dear? ’ said Mrs. Coulter as sweetly as if nothing had happened† (65). She has no sense of compassion and will do almost anything to reach her goals. She is not sympathetic or sentimental, and does not particularly care how her actions affect other people. She has tortured, killed, and torn children in half all for the sake of raising herself higher. From a young age she craved power, first attempting to obtain it through marrying a wealthy politician, Edward Coulter. When her husband was killed by her lover Lord Asriel she was left with almost nothing and decided to try to get power through the Church. She decided to experiment with Dust, a new kind of elementary particle that the Church knew about, but would not experiment with because it was a feared subject. Mrs. Coulter realized that daring to do what others will not, is an extremely useful tool for gaining power. After conducting several successful experiments in the North that severed children from their daemons, and stopped Dust from gathering around them, she became one of the Churchs most powerful agents. Of all the characters in Golden Compass, Mrs. Marisa Coulter is the most morally ambiguous. Marisa Coulter has one daughter. Lyra, the protagonist of the trilogy is the product of an affair between Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel while Mrs. Coulter was still married to Edward Coulter. When Mr. Coulter found out his wife was having an affair he chased the baby Lyra and her nurse into a cottage where Lord Asriel came in and killed him. â€Å"There is no Mr. Coulter, by the way: she is a widow. Her husband died very sadly in an accident some years ago; so you might bear that in mind before you ask. † (53) In the months that followed, when Lyras future life was being worked out Mrs. Coulter turned her back. She wanted to distance herself as far away from her daughter and the affair as she could because it would disgrace her and ruin her chances at becoming high in society. It is assumed that she has had many lovers since then, including Lord Boreal. Mrs. Coulter’s relationship with Lord Asriel, Lyra’s father, adds another dimension to her character. The struggle between Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel drives much of the trilogy’s narrative. Though Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel battle for control of their daughter, Lyra’s existence suggests that a powerful attraction once existed, and possibly still exists, between them. It becomes apparent that Mrs. Coulter is in cahoots with the General Oblation Board, who as the Gobblers has been kidnapping children to be sent off to Bolvangar. â€Å"’Really? Is she involved with the Oblation Board? ’ ‘My dear, she is the Oblation Board. It’s entirely her own project –‘† (67) There, the kidnapped children are separated by a process called Intercision from their daemons, something like being subjected to the Dementors kiss. Mrs. Coulter captures the children by manipulating them. She gives them food, tells them her exciting stories of adventures, and generally gives warm hospitality. The children feel comfortable with her, and so they are shipped to Bolvangar before they realize what has happened. The children describe her as angelic. But, despite her cruelty, Mrs. Coulter has a soft spot for Lyra. She rescues Lyra from intercision at Bolvanger, she looks after Lyra in the cave in the Himalayas, and she fights desperately with Father MacPhail to make sure that his bomb doesn’t kill Lyra. In the end, she gives her own life to drag Metatron into the abyss so that Lyra can accomplish her goal. Mrs. Coulter’s transformation is inspired by Lyra, who evokes extraordinary love from most people she encounters. So it could be stated that Lyra melted Mrs. Coulter’s cold icy heart, not only teaching her compassion, but maybe a smidge of humility as well.

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Trickster Tales: Not Just A Bedtime Story â€Å"Beep Beep†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦VRRROOOOMMMM†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦and the Roadrunner speeds away from the deceitful Coyote as Coyote falls over a Cliff with his â€Å"Acme† dynamite still in hand. The tale of the â€Å"trickster† is known and shared all around the world. It is an age old story that has many different versions and is culturally diverse. Almost every culture has some version of the trickster tale; from the early West African people and their tales of Eshu, to the modern day American versions like Wile E. Coyote that Warner Brothers has made so popular (Doty and Hynes 10.) Japanese culture has the story of Susa-No-O, and even the ancient Greeks had similar stories dealing with the character Hermes (Doty and Hynes 141, 46.) With so many different cultures involved, one would think that the tales and myths would be just as variegated. However this is not necessarily the case. It seems as though the trickster story hent this human characteristic in that when a character is tricked, he, in return, takes revenge on his rival. In fact, this is what constitutes the main purpose for the action in these folktales. If it were not for our desire to see the wronged character revenged, there would be no motivation for the reader, or the writer of these stories. Without this theme, there would be no justification for wrongdoing, no justice for the wronged. This element of human nature is what makes these stories timeless and appealing to many generations. It is bred somewhere deep within us that a wrong must be somehow righted and the trickster tale fills this human need. Hand in hand with retribution is the theme of punishment. Not only must one be revenged, but also, in order to feel fully justified, your rival must be punished. Sometimes we can be our own rivals. When we have done something wrong to someone else, we feel the need to be punished, and sometimes, consciously or not, we punish ourselves if we do not receive the punishment from an outside source. Therefore, this idea of punishment is also innate in us. The trickster tale feeds this necessity for punishment. Each time the character is gullible enough to fall for one of the vengeful tricks, he is punished in some way for his naivety, and in essence, for punishing the other character earlier at some point.

Water Billing System with Short Messaging Services Notification

WATER BILLING SYSTEM WITH SHORT MESSAGING SERVICES NOTIFICATION ——————————————————— A Special Problem Presented to the Faculty of The College of Information and Communication Technology LAGUNA COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ARTS City of Calamba ——————————————————— In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE ————————————— By MARPURI, MARK ANTHONY S. OCAMPO, JONATHAN M. October 2012 Chapter 1 THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND IntroductionThe Laguna Water Company, Incorporated (Laguna Water) is a subsidiary of Manila Water that provides potable water at affordable rates to urban poor communiti es. This company supplies water in Laguna, betting the acquisition will help it serve more customers in one of the Philippines highly-developed provinces. The Laguna Water currently serves around 120,000 customers (out of around 600,000 populations which it expects to increase to around 1 million within fifteen years). Currently, all of their customer’s information including the water consumption was stored in the customers’ database using spreadsheet.Since the Laguna Water Corporation is using a manual process, they are wasting a lot of time to store, manage, update and retrieve all the information of thousands of its customers. Also, there are possibilities of pending transactions for other work activities such as saving the important customer data, registering the new customer and retrieving the important files regarding to their previous water bills. The Laguna Water Company is one of the most helpful companies in Laguna province. In terms of billing process, the c ompany’s meter consumption analyst (MCA) goes to the house of all customers to read the water consumption.After five (5) days, the MCA delivers the water bills to the customers by riding through motorcycle. Sometimes, the home owner is out for work or sometimes is out of town. In that case, the MCA puts the notice somewhere in the parts of the house such as the door, window or gate. By then, the home owners don’t have any idea if their water bill for the current month is already given or not. Thus, the payment for their water bill will be delayed until it comes to its due date because the bill is misplaced. In addition, the company has many manual paper works in order to manage the important data of their customers.Some customer wants to follow-up some documents regarding to the water billing, so the employee needs to retrieve those documents manually. In line with this, the proponents came up with an idea to design and develop a Water Billing System with Short Messagi ng Service Notification, a more convenient and economical mobile communication technology which is the easiest and fastest way for the consumers to remind them and to inquire their water bills. Sending SMS text messages is very convenient. This is very suitable way for sending the notification to consumer reminders.It can also send the inquiry regarding to water billing consumption in a current month (Muhammad, 2007). Conceptual Framework According to Hunter et. al, (2009), the billing operations identify and calculate all the charges for a specific customer account, generate the actual bill and apply payments and credit against that bill. It is therefore needed to analyze and identify on what is the appropriate method to compute all of the customer’s charges the easiest way. The billing system gets whole information about the customer and the services. They get information about how and when the telecommunication provider delivers those services.Within the billing environmen t, billing systems process large quantities of time and location – specific usage data into customer – specific usage information. They figure out how much to charge for the usage, as well as for other non-usage based services. They generate a readable bill format and print or electrically distribute the bill. Billing systems also get information on payments and apply those payments to customer accounts. They track delinquencies and flag accounts for â€Å"treatment† – collection activities including service suspension. They may generate letters to effect collection or give notice of discontinuance of service.Figure 1 shows the conceptual paradigm of the proposed Water Billing System with Short Messaging Service Notification for the Laguna Water Corporation. The input includes consumer, water consumption reading and the bill inquiry syntax. The consumer is a person or group of people who avails the services and the primary users of water that supplied fro m Laguna Water Company. The residence in Cabuyao, Binan and Sta. Rosa is the first priority as consumers of Laguna Water Company. The water consumption reading is a meter that regards to water consumption in every period of time.It is a data that gathered by Meter Consumption Analyst (MCA). The bill inquiry syntax is the syntax that should be sent by the customers through cell phone whenever they are about to inquire for monthly billing. For example, the customer wants to inquire their monthly bill. They should send their account number followed by registered name and the month that they wish to inquire. The process includes read and validate the syntax and querying the results from the bill database. The consumer’s consumption is the data which can be found on the meter billing database.The amount of bill inquiry syntax is the data subjected to be read and validated. The outputs of this study are fast and effective response to bill inquiry, computerized record and keeping an d printing the billing statement of consumers. The consumers will have a convenient way of inquiring their bill and faster response on the part of the Laguna Water Company. The importance of feedback in this study is that whenever some outputs are not expected by users, in that case, the users can go back to input to find errors. Figure 1 Conceptual Paradigm Statement of the ProblemThe Laguna Water Company has many activities work, since the company has a thousand of customers, it is hard for employees to work easy and fast, particularly to computing the customer’s water consumption, deliver the notice in every end of month and the other is to retrieve some data regarding to customer’s water billing. The specific problems that encountered are the following; 1. What is the easy way to compute the amount of the customer’s bill? 2. What is the best way to inform or notify all customers regarding to their due date and also the amount of their bill? . What is the eas iest way for the employee to retrieve and verify historical billing information of the customer? Objectives of the Study The general objective of the study is to design and develop a Water Billing System with Short Messaging Service Notification for Laguna Water Company. The specific objectives of the project are the following: 1. To provide an easiest way of computing the amount of the customer’s bill. 2. To give the best way of informing or notifying all customers regarding to their due date and also the amount of their bill anytime and anywhere. . To help employees for minimizing the time for retrieving the previous data of consumers regarding to their bills. Significance of the Study The proposed SMS (Short Message Services) Computerized system will be of great help to the management and employees of Laguna Water Company. It will lessen their manual work, speed up processing and produce accurate reports that will minimize the problem of the management and the employees. I n addition, the study will be essential to the company for good decision-making. Good decision-making means high productivity.To Laguna Water Company, the study will be beneficial to the corporation most likely by automating their water billing transactions, speeding up data processing and providing new avenue of distributing notifications to their customers. The study will surely transform the corporation into a more knowledgeable organization and will help them establish good relationship with the customer. To the Administrator and Employees, they are the common users of the proposed system who are able to manage, update and retrieve the customer’s information regarding to billing in a more efficient and effective manner.This will lessen the inconsistency and redundancy of records and eliminate other human errors. Employees will be more productive and will surely help them to perform their work easily. To the Customers, through automation of water bill with integration of S MS application the customers will be updated with the status of their bills anytime and anywhere. To Future Researchers, the study will be able to contribute additional information when they want to conduct same study about the computerized water billing system with SMS notification.To the Proponents, it gives them a chance to apply the knowledge they acquire in their years of studying. It also gives them opportunity to enhance and practice their ability and creativity. They will obtain guts and confidence to pursue and believe that they can make this study possible. Scope and Limitations The study focuses on the bill inquiry from the consumers of Laguna Water Company of Cabuyao, Laguna. It can only provide a service for all registered costumers. In addition, this study does not cover the signals of network and cannot be used as a replacement for the computerized notice for it only views the customer’s bill.

Perfect Utopia For Me - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 630 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2019/08/16 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Utopia Essay Did you like this example? Earth is the placed that birthed us all, the place that we unintentionally killed. The way we are living now the earth will not last, life as we see it will cease to exist. The world is getting hotter, water is becoming undrinkable, food is depleting, oil/gas is becoming less and less with many things becoming more and more expensive. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Perfect Utopia For Me" essay for you Create order We humans are cutting down millions of trees that give us life, for scraps of paper that we will eventually throw away and barely recycle. The utopia I strive for, is one where no one is hungry, where there is equality for race, gender, hobbies, meat eaters, vegans. The things i want for us the people and the world, is for people to care for it more, plants trees and many other things to keep the eco system sustainable, but also that money will not be a problem for many people, and also the use of technology will lessen. The most important thing ever, is taking care of the environment. The environment is what we live on, how we eat, farm, or even uses for herbs and medicine. The environment is the main thing to a society. Without good soil or access to water we would not be able to prosper back in the 1800s or 1900s. The main thing I would want is for families or the government to care for the trash in the waters which both endanger wild life and pollute the water. Cleaning the world will make the world last longer; if we keep going down the road right now, we will all go extinct. In my utopia people will not be hungry. The government will first fix the problem in America and have a stable living for everyone, then after will start branching out to other countries to help and vice versa. We will have a branch in the government for the homeless and hungry, to be able to put them on the right track and back on their feet. In this utopia there will be equality, either it be about race, gender, meat eaters/vegans, or even people with certain hobbies. This action will unite the people, which would make the infighting in america gone and the people together even stronger. Peace will spread through the world, not only in america. Technology is a big thing not only in america, but everywhere else in the world. This   utopia will have a decrease of technology, specifically phones that are able to have social media and such. Phones are used to communicate with people, but these days they control peoples lives quite literally. There will be a rule where people could only use social media and such for limited hours in a day, then the next day it will reset, this will keep people from not using there phones all day and go outside and spend time with family. Technology did benefit the country, but now it is controlling the lives of the youth. The utopia I made, was one that was suppose to fix the worlds problems, the way the world with all its people have destroyed the world we live in now. people have created groups to clean and save the earth, but with only a bucket of people are trying to save it, while the ocean of other people dont care and are destroying the earth for profit. The greed of humans have been a problem ever since before jesus. Priest have given blessings in exchange of gold and money in the past, and even now we have monks who fly first class, with other priest taking the donations people offer to the church. Greed is the sin we were born with, and with greed we will make the world go extinct.