RYANAIR CASE ANALYSIS NOTES Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

RYANAIR CASE ANALYSIS NOTES - Coursework Example Threat of new entrant into the industry is extremely low. This is because large capital is required for other aircrafts to enter the market. Additionally, the period for required for other firms to market themselves, is long (Creaton, 3). Finally Europe is extensively industrialized therefore getting space to build a new airport may be impossible. Ryanair face relatively stiff competition from substitutes. There exist alternative and affordable methods of transportation like high-speed electric trains and ferries. Furthermore, a bigger population of Europe residents own personal cars. This means that they can easily switch to driving. Buyers bargaining power is medium. As with many businesses, customers are always sensitive to prices. If Ryanair increases its prices, customer will shift to other planes whose prices are lower. In other words, Ryanair has not worn its customer’s loyalty. The power of suppliers to Ryanair is extremely high. All aircrafts owned by the company are Boeing. If the manufacture of Boeing denies Ryanair its services, Ryanair will undergo extensive loss. Jet engine fuel is controlled by few companies in Europe. As a result, Ryanair controls it through hedging (Creaton, 8). Finally, regional may decide to increase their charges on planes. In order to avoid this, Ryanair has come up with policies that make them avoid such regions. Finally, there is stiff competition in the market. Other flight companies like Easyjet and Aer Lingus have also adopted the tactic of offering low cost to passengers. Since this low cost model may become a trend, Full Service airline may also imitate the model posing more competition to Ryanair. Through PESTEL framework, the political, economic, social cultural, technological, ethical and legal environment impacting Ryanair will be discussed. Political environment affecting Ryanair

How Does The Media Influence Young Women?

How Does The Media Influence Young Women? There are many programs and magazines, such as Americas next top model and Seventeen magazine, that are watched and read by many teenage girls. These girls are insecure and want to be popular, handsome and well-liked. The young women are therefore easily influenced by the information they receive from the media. An average teenage girl hides herself using tons of make-up and beautiful clothes, because she is insecure about her outer appearance. Every morning she has to get herself prepared for the day. She decides to skip her breakfast, an extra hour of sleep, or even her first lesson. She takes a shower, puts on enough make-up and dresses herself well. These girls are influenced by the beautiful and perfect women, whose pictures are showed in advertisements and on TV. A variety of programs show us public images of how you should dress, look and act. The young girls wish that they are also perfect, with the perfect dress and with the perfect make-up; so that they are attractive to boys and that they look like the girls and women on TV. Well known make-up artists such as Rimmel London and Max Factor present their make-up with skinny girls, who have the perfect skin and the perfect look. So the question is, are they selling the product, the make-up, or are they selling the beautiful woman? The advertisements are indeed selling the product, but they are also selling the image of the ideal woman. They emphasize thinness as part of the females beauty. These women, who are on the covers of the magazines, serve as an example for the teenage girls. They also want to be thin, have big boobs, and a beautiful skin. These images affect the girls own self-image. Not only the models have a great influence on the girls, also the articles written in the popular teenage magazines have a great influence on the young women. The articles explain the girls about the ideal appearance. Articles like How to look attractive to boys and How to achieve the perfect look, hair and face are extremely normal. An article on the website of Seventeen magazine gives you the perfect example of such an article, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¾New Makeup Promise to Boost Your Mood! This article is about a new make-up that promises to make you happy. It explains about the ingredients, such as Euphoryl, Murumuru Seed Butter and Theobroma Grandiflorum, whatever they are, and I am sure that girls, who read this article, think about buying this make-up, without realising if these ingredients really work! Outer appearance has become very important throughout the years for everyone, because of the media. They emphasize the importance of the physical appearance and that is the way advertisers sell beauty products such as day and night creams and make-up. Women and teenage girls therefore strive to achieve the ideal outer appearance presented by the media. They are not satisfied with their own body and are doing anything to become beautiful. Do you recognize these young women? I bet that almost two third of the teenage girls could be compared to the average teenage girl who has been influenced by the media. These girls are boring and not outstanding. Thus, the media should stop offering false information to young women about the perfect body. The media encourages the girls to have a negative self-image. In fact, a person who is fat and walks like a duck has probably a more beautiful personality than the other girls. Although these girls are not to blame, the media is. By writing an opinion column, I wanted to express my opinion about how the media influences young women, because advertisements, commercials, TV programs and magazines are all influencing the teenage girls by giving them false information. An opinion column should not be written in a particular style. As a columnist you are free to write in your own style, although it still has to be worth reading. So my first objective was to write a convincing opinion column that would be easy to read for most people. Therefore I didnt use many difficult words and tried to be convincing by giving the reader important information about the influence of the media. My second objective was to inform the people about the influence of the media on teenage girls. I explained the average, insecure teenage girl who can be easily influenced by beautiful models printed on the cover of the popular teenage magazines. As an example I described a daily morning of an average teenage girl. Every morning she has to get herself prepared for the day (paragraph 2). The girls strive for having the perfect face; therefore they skip their breakfast to prepare for school. To support my opinion about the influence of media I used another example. On the website of Seventeen magazine, an American magazine for teenagers, I found an article that was called: New Makeup Promise to Boost Your Mood! (see stimulus material). This article is about a special make-up that would make the girls happier. Young teenage girls are easily influenced by this text and by the convincing title, because the title makes a certain promise to you. The Happy Booster Glow Mood Boosting Blush and Face Powder by Physicians Formula promises to lift your spirits. Its the first-ever makeup line developed to stimulate happy thoughts through mood-enhancing ingredients, color therapy, aroma therapy, and texture therapy. Basically, it copies the effect of endorphins, aka happy molecules, which produce a sense of well-being. (Your body releases endorphins during exercise, which is what makes you feel great afterward.) Other ingredients include Euphoryl, which is an anti-depressant packed with Omega-3, as well as Murumuru Seed Butter and Theobroma Grandiflorum Seed Butter, which make skin feel silky-smooth and appear luminous. Finally, its blend of floral scents refreshes your mood. And how cute is this packaging?! All this happiness is contained in a heart-shaped plastic compact with a pink metallic base. It comes in a face powder (see above), blush, and bronzer, and each is a variety of overlapping different-colored hearts. So, the big question: can you buy happiness? For $11.95-13.95 at select drugstores, you just might come close!

Dietary Guidelines For North Americans And Suggestions For Food Choice :: essays research papers fc

Dietary Guidelines for North Americans and Suggestions for Food Choices In today's society nearly everyone follows some kind of dietary guidelines. Whether it is in the goal of losing weight, gaining weight or just simply to maintain it, people are jumping onto the dietary band-wagon. A diet is basically to take food according to rule, a mode of living in reference to nourishment. There are various types of diets that one can follow; a high or low calorie diet, low fat diets, diets modified in protein, minerals, water, and carbohydrates, and so the list goes on. Many business enterprises base their entire corporations into the field of weight loss. Many of these diet programs are merely fads that lure desperate people in with their guarantees to lose so many pounds or inches in an " x " amount of time. There are also many pills that one can take, but they are not always safe and can be very damaging in the long run. It is not all people that are on weight loss programs though. Many athletes are on strict programs to gain weight. However this kind of desired weight is not measured in fat but in muscle mass. Many muscle and fitness magazines will feature advertisements and articles for such gains in body mass. Advertisements for diets can sometimes be very dangerous though. Pretty well all the people used in these particular ads are slim and beautiful and it can therefor be very misinterpreting to someone who is overweight. The pressure of being fit can lead to very damaging disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. These two very serious conditions affect a very large amount of women and men in North America these days and can be quite lethal if not cured. So it is important to be careful not to do any physical or psychological harm to one self when trying to lose weight. When embarking into any kind of diet it is extremely important that one gets the sufficient amount of nutrients from their food and/or supplements. A proper diet must consist of more than simply a glass of water and a piece of fruit per meal. One must have a certain daily intake of specific vitamins and minerals to stay in good health. If one were to follow the RDA's (recommended daily allowance) guidelines, one has to be sure that the food that is consumed contains the proper amount of nutrients that is so suggested. A lot of the foods that we consume today do not contain the amount of vitamins and minerals that the U.

A Game of Thrones Chapter Two

Catelyn Catelyn had never liked this godswood. She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers. The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshappen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names. But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man's life, afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood. Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him. Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the sept. For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the vanished children of the forest. At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. â€Å"The heart tree,† Ned called it. The weirwood's bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle's granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea. In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out a thousand years ago, except on the Isle of Faces where the green men kept their silent watch. Up here it was different. Here every castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree, and every heart tree its face. Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow her as she came. â€Å"Ned,† she called softly. He lifted his head to look at her. â€Å"Catelyn,† he said. His voice was distant and formal. â€Å"Where are the children?† He would always ask her that. â€Å"In the kitchen, arguing about names for the wolf pups.† She spread her cloak on the forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the weirwood. She could feel the eyes watching her, but she did her best to ignore them. â€Å"Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure.† â€Å"Is he afraid?† Ned asked. â€Å"A little,† she admitted. â€Å"He is only three.† Ned frowned. â€Å"He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever. And winter is coming.† â€Å"Yes,† Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words. Every noble house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these northerners were. â€Å"The man died well, I'll give him that,† Ned said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a dark glow. â€Å"I was glad for Bran's sake. You would have been proud of Bran.† â€Å"I am always proud of Bran,† Catelyn replied, watching the sword as he stroked it. She could see the rippling deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North. â€Å"He was the fourth this year,† Ned said grimly. â€Å"The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him.† He sighed. â€Å"Ben writes that the strength of the Night's Watch is down below a thousand. It's not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well.† â€Å"Is it the wildlings?† she asked. â€Å"Who else?† Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. â€Å"And it will only grow worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and all.† â€Å"Beyond the Wall?† The thought made Catelyn shudder. Ned saw the dread on her face. â€Å"Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear.† â€Å"There are darker things beyond the Wall.† She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts. His smile was gentle. â€Å"You listen to too many of Old Nan's stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.† â€Å"Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either,† Catelyn reminded him. â€Å"I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,† he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath. â€Å"You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how little you like this place. What is it, my lady?† Catelyn took her husband's hand. â€Å"There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself.† There was no way to soften the blow, so she told him straight. â€Å"I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead.† His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as she had known it would. In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had pledged to protect. And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully. â€Å"Jon . . . † he said. â€Å"Is this news certain?† â€Å"It was the king's seal, and the letter is in Robert's own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in pain.† â€Å"That is some small mercy, I suppose,† he said. She could see the grief on his face, but even then he thought first of her. â€Å"Your sister,† he said. â€Å"And Jon's boy. What word of them?† â€Å"The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie,† Catelyn said. â€Å"I wish they had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was ever her husband's place, not hers. Lord Jon's memory will haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of family and friends around her.† â€Å"Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him Knight of the Gate, I'd heard.† Catelyn nodded. â€Å"Brynden will do what he can for her, and for the boy. That is some comfort, but still . . . â€Å" â€Å"Go to her,† Ned urged. â€Å"Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of hers needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her grief.† â€Å"Would that I could,† Catelyn said. â€Å"The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek you out.† It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. â€Å"Robert is coming here?† When she nodded, a smile broke across his face. Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith in signs. â€Å"I knew that would please you,† she said. â€Å"We should send word to your brother on the Wall.† â€Å"Yes, of course,† he agreed. â€Å"Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest bird.† Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. â€Å"Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than this? How many in his party, did the message say?† â€Å"I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them.† â€Å"Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes,† he said. â€Å"It is just as well. That will give us more time to prepare.† â€Å"The queen's brothers are also in the party,† she told him. Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen's family, Catelyn knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert's cause, when victory was all but certain, and he had never forgiven them. â€Å"Well, if the price for Robert's company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his court.† â€Å"Where the king goes, the realm follows,† she said. â€Å"It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister woman's teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?† â€Å"Prince Tommen is seven,† she told him. â€Å"The same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every passing year.† Ned squeezed her hand. â€Å"There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them back. Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already, you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide.†

‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding and ‘The Withered’ Arm by Thomas Hardy Essay

Describe how evil is presented in ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding and ‘The Withered’ Arm by Thomas Hardy. Lord of the flies is a story that begins in the after a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean during an unnamed war in which a group of English schoolboys are isolated on what they assume to be an island, under no adult supervision they are left to ‘defend for themselves’ create their own friendships and fight their own battles. As the story unfolds the boys develop a miniature society in which they try to include rules and order, but, each with their own ideas of right and wrong and sometimes totally different priorities, difficulties inevitably arise, their little community collapses and the boys are thrown into a world of hurt and fear. There were three main characters in this story, which affected the entire group and how they behaved. Jack began as the arrogant and self – righteous leader of the tribe. There was Piggy, who in no doubt an intelligent, practical and a sensible thinker. He is the mouthpiece of science and reason on the island, and is a good planner who can think logically and prioritise things which was carefully ordained by Ralph who was an organised person, sensible and had a quite a bit of knowledge on survival. In the story we see the true evil that outcome from these boys. In the following paragraphs I am going to describe the horror that was used by William Golding in his novel â€Å"Lord of the Flies†. The first signs of evil emerging from the boys appeared when Jack and his hunters killed a pig and re-enacted the killing. In the process people were injured and the chanting that became a ritual began at this time. Although Jack’s ambition to kill a pig had been fulfilled, he now had a taste of the glory and sense of power. This meant that he was by no means satisfied to have killed one pig, but would instead continue to do so. It is significant that Jack felt it was necessary to kill pigs, seeing that there was a large number of people on the island. It is important to note how much the boys manage to achieve before their inner evil destroy their senses of responsibility and reason, that is, before the boys finally come to savagery and violence. They discover fire, they build shelters, they explore the island, they go on hunting trips, and they delegate social responsibilities. Initially, one would be inclined to think that Jack’s leadership is a poor one as he relies on brute strength. However, Jack is clever enough to know that the boys’ survival is as important as rescue. Food has to be hunted for nutritional needs (which Ralph tries to deny). â€Å"Are there ghosts, Piggy, or beasts?† Ralph seems to depend on Piggy quite a lot like an adult to guide him the way, but the mistake that Ralph does not see is that Piggy is not an adult. This is a clever technique used by Golding as he is building up the tension and the readers will be urged to read on. Another significant event took place during the killing of the pig, the hunters let the fire out, and there was open violence from Jack, when Jack was confronted by Piggy, Jack swung at Piggy and broke one of his lens off his glasses which was an important piece of equipment, as the glasses, meant they could have a fire which enables them to be rescued. This illustrates how Jack was being overcome by his evil inside him. The Lord of the Flies is represented in the form of a pig’s head on a stick, which appeared to speak to Simon in the forest, while he was experiencing one of his epileptic fits. Golding uses this to show that the evil on this island has come from within the boys themselves. Simon then climbed the mountain and discovered that the swaying beast was in fact a dead pilot. This is gone far enough. My poor misguided child. Do you think you know better then I do?'† Simon thinks of the pigs head (The Lord Of The Flies) as the symbol of their descent from civilized behaviour to animalistic savagery. It is because of the pigs head that Simon realizes that nature can be brutal and horrifying, an idea that clashes with his previous love of nature and the spirituality inbuilt in it. Simon frames nature in terms of its how like Eden it is, but the Lord of the Flies is a challenge of that view. Most importantly of all, Golding reveals that there is indeed a better side to man’s nature through his character, Simon. Throughout the novel, Simon is portrayed as a Christ-like figure and a saint. Unfortunately, it was at this point where the evil came out among all of the boys, as Simon was mistaken for the beast and the boys were all overcome by the evil inside them and the ritual begun once again as it did with the pig and Simon was brutally killed in disguise of the beast. In this part of the novel we see that evil has overcome the boys and there is no longer any structure at all left within the boys. Following Simon’s death it becomes clear that none of the tribe would accept that they had become evil and had just sabotaged a human being, but Ralph on the other hand could see what they had become and confronted Piggy saying â€Å"that was murder†, Piggy knew what had happened but tried to hide it by coming up with lame excuses like â€Å"it was dark†. Ralph had learned from this and controlled the evil inside him. When Piggy got his glasses stole by the other tribe Ralph and Piggy knew that they had lost all their power. So the only way to regain that power would be to get Piggy’s glasses back. Unfortunately this lead to more hatred when the two tribes started to argue and it was obvious that Jacks tribe had the most power and during this argument Roger decided to push a Rock onto Piggy leaving him dead, which shows that Jacks tribe was just pure evil and had no other thoughts than to kill. Towards the end of the novel Ralph was hunted down like a wild animal and the imagery Golding uses in this final chapter describes a world where insanity and evil rule. It is even possible that the boys now saw Ralph as the beast, which is why they hunted him down. Secondly, although all the boys were hunting Ralph to kill him, most of them probably did not realise what they were doing or why. This is because Jack had influenced their minds and half of them probably saw killing Ralph as a game. In view of the fact that Ralph was being hunted down by everyone on the island, we must accept that he would have been killed had it not been for the arrival of the Navy officer. It must be noted that Golding does not choose to allow Ralph to be killed. This could be because he does not wish to allow evil to win. The real message that Golding is trying to send out is if we have no rules or boundaries then we will behave like animals do so anything can be done, in this case killing has become a hobby. In â€Å"Lord of the Flies†, Golding suggests that once man is freed from social conditioning and obligation, the intrinsic sense of evil will be revealed in him. He destroys the optimistic view of human nature by showing how even the most innocent of all – children can deteriorate into primitive savages once freed from the trappings of society. The actual storyline was pretty lame because a bunch of children just happened to crash on an island stranded, they all have a big tribunal war, people die, then the Ralph is in trouble and some navy guy appears and saves Ralph. This story was a bit too predictable, but the descriptive text in this novel is fascinating and keeps you reading. The withered arm is a pre-20th Century, short story. It is full of supernatural elements and coincidences. The story involves the characters Rhoda, a jealous middle-aged woman who has a son by farmer Lodge. Farmer Lodge has just married a young, beautiful woman called Gertrude. Rhoda being a jealous woman unconsciously conjures up an evil incubus. This causes Gertrude’s arm to weather, she tries all the cures she knows off, but resorts to using the supernatural to heal it. This leads to a dramatic ending. Right at the beginning of the story we are in suspense because there is much speculation about the new bride. At the beginning of the story it is thought that Rhoda and Gertrude are rivals, as they have both had a relationship with farmer lodge. They occupy traditional roles in the story; Rhoda is the older neglected lover with her looks fading. Gertrude is the young, beautiful blooming new wife. Age, beauty, status and social class divide them. Rhoda is extremely jealous of Gertrude we know this because she sends her son to spy on the new wife: ‘see if she is dark’ Her jealousy is what leads to the first element of the supernatural, which is her nightmare. Stricken with jealousy, her subconscious thoughts surface in her sleep as she innocently dreams of grabbing Gertrude’s arm ‘in a last desperate effort, swung out her right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm.’ Rhoda’s first reaction to Gertrude is of horror and fear. In her dream, she sees Mrs. Lodge as a figure ‘with features shockingly distorted and wrinkled by old age.’ Hardy uses simple diction to convey the horror of the nightmare. He also uses emotive language like ‘maddened’ and ‘mockingly’. Rhoda’s nightmare can be explained as coincidence, as a physical manifestation of the girl’s unconscious awareness of the situation. Rhoda’s dream creates suspense and words such as phantom keep it going. The next morning we learn that the dream was real as her son asks: ‘what was that noise in your chimmer, mother last night. Did you fall out of bed around two o’clock?’ The developing relationship between the two women has elements of the macabre. Rhoda often asks to see the wound, and seems fascinated by the clear indication of the marks of four fingers. Gertrude relies on Rhoda for a sympathetic understanding of the growing estrangement between herself and her husband, who ‘knows the disfigurement is there’. The choice of the word ‘disfigurement’ reveals his attitude to appearances. As the arm is getting worst and she has visited a doctor who cannot help her, she becomes increasing desperate for a cure as her husband is starting to love her less. She turns to Rhoda to take her to see Trendle much to her dismay. Rhoda fears for the loss of a good friendship. Trendle is a witch doctor and has powers other people don’t, in the story many people believe in him, except Gertrude who says: ‘o, how could my people be so superstitious.’ She soon changes her mind and goes with Rhoda to visit him this is where it is revealed that Gertrude has an enemy: ‘medicine can’t cure it. Is the work of an enemy.’ Trendle then reveals the face of her ‘attacker’ to her. Gertrude reacts calmly when she finds out who it is as she says she does not ‘care to speak of it.’ When she is talking to Rhoda and does not tell her what she saw. After this Rhoda and her son disappeared quietly. Over the next six years, Gertrude’s arm continues to wither, and the fact that she had brought no children to her husband made her worry even more that Mr. Lodge would reject her. Mr. Lodge has superficial love for Gertrude which was based on her beauty: ‘the woman whom he had wooed for her beauty.’ But as her arm is getting worst we see that he starts to disregard her. She starts to age beyond her years: ‘she was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older’. She becomes desperate for a cure and tries all sorts of remedies. This makes us feel sympathetic towards her. As a last resort she visits Tremble and tries to take advantage of his ‘white magic’, this leads to fatal results and her superstition, combined with desperation, must be held accountable for this. He tells her she must ‘touch with the limb the neck of a man who’s been hanged.’ As time passed she considers this and wished: ‘o lord, hang some guilty or innocent person soon!’ This shows how desperate she was becoming. Gertrude’s meeting with the hangman reveals her obsession: she has in fact prayed each evening for some ‘guilty or innocent’ person to be hanged Rhoda and the hangman having a discussion in which she says: ‘o- a reprieve- I hope not!’ Here she is saying even if the person is innocent she hopes he will not be let off. Through out the story it is full of irony- you have farmer Lodge marrying to have a son, even though he has one which he does not recognise. Hardy chose not to give the illegitimate son a name; this may be because Lodge failed to recognise him, even though he wishes for a son: ‘I once thought of adopting a boy!’ Gertrude befriends the boy but unknowingly wishes for his death, in which when she finds out the identity of the hanged man she dies from shock. The denouement of the finial gruesome meeting between the two women brings all interaction to an end. The scene is highly dramatic and needs few words. This is where we learn that it is Rhoda’s son that has been hanged and due to this Gertrude’s ‘blood had been turned indeed- too far’. In conclusion of both stories I think that Lord of the Flies represents horror in a more sophisticated way than The Withered Arm, saying that Lo-rd of the Flies was written when there was no TV this virtually inserts images into your thoughts, the only thing with Lord of the Flies was the actual storyline as it was too unreal because if there was a plane crashes, normally there is hardly any survivors but in this case, the whole troop survived!! In conclusion the withered arm is an effective story of the supernatural from the point of view from the reader. When it was written as people heavily believed in the supernatural and witchcraft, this is another reason the story is effective. It differs from today’s horror stories, as it is not full of blood and guts.