Literature Essays (1200 words) - Film, English-language Films

Literature Annonymous The character of Hester Prynne changed significantly throughout the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hester Prynne, through the eyes of the Puritans, is an extreme sinner; she has gone against the Puritan ways, committing adultery. For this irrevocably harsh sin, she must wear a symbol of shame for the rest of her life. However, the Romantic philosophies of Hawthorne put down the Puritanic beliefs. She is a beautiful, young woman who has sinned, but is forgiven. Hawthorne portrays Hester as divine maternity and she can do no wrong. Not only Hester, but the physical scarlet letter, a Puritanical sign of disownment, is shown through the author's tone and diction as a beautiful, gold and colorful piece. From the beginning, we see that Hester Prynne is a young and beautiful woman who has brought a child into the world with an unknown father. She is punished by Puritan society by wearing the scarlet letter A on the bosom of her dress and standing on the scaffold for three hours. Her hair is a glossy brown and her eyes deep-set, and black, her attire is rich, carefully caressing her slender figure. The scaffold is a painful task to bear; the townspeople gathered around to gossip and stare at Hester and her newborn child, whom she suitably named Pearl, named because of her extreme value to her mother. In the disorder of faces in the crowd, young Hester Prynne sees the face of a man she once was fiercely familiar with, whom we later learn is her true husband, Roger Chillingworth. Her subjection to the crowd of Puritan onlookers is excruciating to bear, and Hester holds the child to her heart, a symbolic comparison between the child and the scarlet letter, implying that they are truly both intertwined. Prynne is imprisoned with her child, both of whom are emotionally and physically exhausted from the punishment at the scaffold. The husband, Roger Chillingworth, passes by and is commissioned to be the physician to the two, and remedy them of their sicknesses. She is surprised he had come at such a time where she was at a point of such horrendous turmoil. He demands that she cannot reveal his identity, yet he also wishes to know the identity of her lover, the father of the child. She refuses to tell him. Later in the novel, we discover that Arthur Dimmesdale is the confidential lover. Hester is released from her cell, after which she resides for the next few years in a hut by the sea. Her child, Pearl, is a devilish, impish, terribly behaved child, that is indifferent to the strict Puritan society. Pearl is a pain to please, having her way all the time because of her mothers failure to subdue her to the proper Puritan etiquette. Hester knits and weaves for the townspeople, except for weddings, which people believe would cause misfortune and unrest in their marriage. They knew that the Seventh Commandment was thou shalt not commit adultery and they stuck by those rules. The Puritans were truly a people governed by God. The novel explains that the Governors repeatedly attempt to take the child away from Hester, as she has been deemed unfit to raise the child without the influence of genuine Puritan law and order. These attempts are failed, for Arthur Dimmesdale, the father and minister of Hester Prynne, insists that the child is a bond, a necessity of the young woman who has nothing if she does not have the child. Another influence upon Hester is Mistress Ann Hibbens, who is reputed to be a witch throughout the community. When Hibbens asks Hester to join her in the forest at night to sign the Black Mans book with her own blood, she insists that she cannot, but if her little Pearl would be taken away, she would gladly join the witch-lady in the forest that night, and sign the great book in her own blood! Pearl continuously mocks authority in the novel, a key characteristic of the imp-childs demeanor. She asks stupid questions that she already knows the answer to, like, Mother, did you ever sign the black mans book, and,Why does the minister Dimmesdale hold his hand over his heart? The mockery does not end there, however, and Pearl goes on about her retarded ways, throwing rocks at other children that look at her the wrong way and swearing at them. It pains Hester to watch her child go about the world as if possessed by an agent of Satan, and she both loves, and in

The Navy Commission Program

The Navy Commission Program The Navy Commission Program The navy commission program has core values that all navy officers are bound to abide.They include,honor,courage and commitment.In honor of state,I will conduct myself in high ethical manner to those I relate with both my peers and follow commands from my supervisors.i will be responsible for all my actions and I will always keep my word as I have been taught.i will be mindful in serving my fellow citizens. Courage is also another core value which i have always respected and believe its a value everyone fighting for his country should have.I will defend my country and support every mission that is in my line.I will take courage in carrying all my duties however demanding or hazardous they they may appear to be. Commitment is a virtue that is compulsory in achieving the set goal.Iwill do my best in in working as a team with my fellow officers since team work is the only way of excelling in daily activities.I will be commited to serve all people without any discrimination. My main reason for applying for this commission program is a great passion for serving my country in the force's capacity and especially navy. I believe I have all the qualifications that are required for the program. I did well in high school especially in math and sciences. I am a good swimmer; my height and weight is in the required range, and I have no health issues. I am the type of a person who believes in perfecting what I do; I am driven by the urge of achieving my set goals and objectives. In this case, I understand that the work of a naval officer is very involved and requires a lot of commitment. Sometimes, it may call for great sacrifice especially if another country tries to attack from the waters. Applying all the knowledge and skills I have learned in high school and as a scout, I believe, I will deliver the best services for this Country.

Economics for Business Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Economics for Business - Assignment Example This makes micro- economic environment more popular among industries which involves influencing of choice through interaction. Thus, micro- economic approach is usually adopted in educational institutions, hospitals and different charitable organizations. External market environment is much dependent on usage of resources. A supportive and adaptive micro- economic environment results in utility maximization as far as consumers are concerned, but most importantly it contributes in profit maximization of firms. By adopting micro- economic approach, business organizations could effectively manage their resource allocation among alternative possibilities. 1Since social trends and customs affect choices of people, organizations require using their resources in a much practical terms. In present times, market mechanisms are merged with state intervention. 1.2 Business objectives are important for numerous reasons. Profit making: Earning profit is the elementary objective of any business. P rofit is earned through a series of business activities. Profit making can further be categorized as ‘maximum profit’ and ‘sufficient profit’. While the former concept supports generation of artificial deficiency, excessive price hikes, adulteration, etc, the later one focuses more on sustenance, prestige and recognition, development and growth of business. In present times, most business organizations adopt the path of sustainable development merged with profit maximization objectives. Creation of customers: Irrespective of type or expansion, every business must expand their customer base. Creation of customer implies generation of potential customers. Amount of such creation is directly proportional to profit making of organization. Thus, customer base is a major determinant in framing of organizational profit- maximizing policies. Advertisements, pricing strategy, and superior quality of goods and services are popular approaches for generation of potenti al customer base. Ensuring customer satisfaction results in customer retention. Innovation: Innovation is the latest mantra in modern business scenario. Changing trends and mindsets have made people more cautious and aware about the goods and services they are purchasing. Thus, marked research, use of newer technologies, customized facilities, and varieties of products have become indispensible for modern customers. Presently, organizations are finding out ways to make use of old products in production of new ones. This contributes in satisfaction quotient of customers belonging to different age groups. Thus, from economic perspective, innovation is as important as marketing, promotion, finance and other business activities. Innovation definitely helps in expansion of business2 Scientific management is the cornerstone of business behavior of modern firms. Every organization maintains certain codes or behavioral principles. Business policy, policy implementation as well as overall be havior of a business depends on numerous aspects. Some of these are- business objective, hierarchy, span of control, labor division and specialization, managerial authority and responsibility, coherence and connection between

Strategic Management of Target Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Strategic Management of Target - Assignment Example Target stores are usually large and cover about 95000 to 135000 square feet. They carry a variety of goods that includes hard lines, soft lines (clothing) and a few groceries. The items found in the target stores specifically includes clothing, shoes, jewelry, beauty and health products, electronics, DVDs, pet supplies, hardware supplies, beddings, sporting goods and kitchen supplies. The stores also carry seasonal merchandise, which includes Christmas decorations during the months of November and December. Depending on the location, the stores might also contain target optical, target clinic, and a portrait studio. By offering a variety of items to the customers, target stores emerge as a business that can survive in a competitive market (Bouwens and Kroos, P. 171).To survive in a competitive environment, a business should be able to assess its internal and external environment. In the internal environment, the business should be able to know its strengths and weakness. The strength s being factors within the organization that makes it compete favorably with the other competitors while weakness is factored at the organization that makes the business not to compete favorably with the other competitors. In external environment, the business should assess its threats and opportunities to be able to adjust to the market changes. This will enable the business to thrive in such environment. The target stores have a number of strengths that make them survive in the today’s competitive retail business.

PlayStation Marketing Mix & Environment & Target Essay Example for Free

PlayStation Marketing Mix Environment Target Essay The PlayStation brand is a series of video game consoles created and developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. PlayStation was the idea of Ken Kutaragi, who known as â€Å"The father of the PlayStation, a Sony executive who had just come out of his hardware engineering division at that time. The consoles origins date back to 1986 where it was originally a joint project between Nintendo and Sony to create a CD-ROM for the Super Nintendo. The PlayStation made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991 when Sony revealed its console, a Super Famicom/SNES with a built-in CD-ROM drive. However, a day after the announcement, Nintendo announced that it would be breaking its partnership with Sony. The deal was broken by Nintendo after they were unable to come to an agreement on how revenue would be split between the two companies. The breaking of the partnership infuriated Sony President Norio Ohga, who responded by appointing Kutaragi with the responsibility of developing of the PlayStation project to rival Nintendo. The original PlayStation released in December 1994 was the first of the ubiquitous PlayStation series of console and hand-held game devices. Target Market They targeted at fans of video games and teenager or audience starting at 17+ and the focus is more on the male. Of course the games themselves have limits on who can play them, depending on the content rating on the games cover. Sony developed the PlayStation with the intention of hitting a wider, especially the older generation of gaming enthusiasts. Marketing Mix * Product: A successful marketing efforts result in product that become a part of everyday life, and that what Sony reached by offers games of all genres to match customers gaming preference. With its product PlayStation they have succeeded in satisfying the customers wishes by developing it among the time as requirements of the customers and their needs. * Distribution Decisions with respect to distribution focus on making the product available in adequate quantities at places where customers are normally expected to shop for them to satisfy their needs. Selecting the appropriate retailers or wholesalers is an important thing. PlayStation covered the market. Its distributes it in various channels, customer buy it from the retailers recognized by Sony, and these retailers buy the products directly from the company itself. * Promotion Promotion is a key element of marketing program and is concerned with effectively and efficiently communicating the decisions of marketing strategy. A company’s promotional efforts are the only controllable means to create awareness among publics about itself, the products and services it offers, their features and influence their attitudes favorably. Advertising campaign carried out by Sony to promote their product for PlayStation was big, they published video clips on the Internet, and they have advertisements in television screens, newspapers and magazines all over the world and other promotional media are very important in term of creation awareness about it. Some of the phrases in the ads are: Live In Your World. Play In Ours. Wherever, Whenever, Forever. The most notable of recent PlayStation commercials is the series of It Only Does Everything, these commercials garnered popularity among gamers. * Price Pricing decisions are almost always made in consultation with marketing management. Customers directly relate price to quality. PlayStation is with price range from moderately-high. Here in Saudi Arabia its price varies from SR 1300 to 1700 first raises the market, and then begins gradually decrease its. Marketing Environment * Competitive Biggest competitors to PlayStation are Wii of Nintendo and Xbox from Microsoft. The competition among them is very strong, PlayStation sales dropped against Wii at the beginning of 2008, and one of the reasons is its low price. *Numbers in thousands * Technological The current penetration of Internet creates the stimulus for the increase use of Internet as information. The introductions of new technologies have changed the nature of customers expectations, creating new zones of tolerance. Today, customers expect more flexibility, speed and dependability from retailers, than before the introduction of web-based technologies. * Sociocultural The price has become the key determinant of purchase choice. Various consumers are always looking for the best price opportunities. Also, research shows the large number of UK consumers choice of product strongly depends on the appeal of product mix and its congruence with their self-concept.

John Locke and Terrorism :: Philosophy of Terrorism Essays

In 1689, A Letter Concerning Toleration, written by John Locke during his self-imposed exile to his friend Philip von Limborch, was published without the author's knowledge. The Letter concerned religious intolerance. It essentially made the case for religious toleration on the basis of philosophical principles. Locke was concerned with the State's toleration of those not subscribing to the orthodox religion of the day and, by putting a high value on the preservation of negative liberty, he proposed the toleration of a wide range of religious beliefs. His view was at odds with the existing view of the State which, at that time tolerated one, and only one, orthodox belief. But Locke's Letter is not simply applicable to just the 17th Century. The strength and reasonableness of his arguments mean that, even today, they are convincing. I intend to show that The Letter can reasonably be interpreted to reveal how at least two of Locke's three arguments can apply to the religious fundamenta lists who attacked the Twin Towers on September 11th 2001. The perpetrators of that violent incident probably believed the Quran supported the view that, to die whilst killing 'infidels' would punish the wrongdoers and also ensure entry to paradise. But James Rachel in his essay, Ethics and the Bible, has a differing view: "Islamic fundamentalists quote the Quran to justify Holy War against the West, but what does the Quran really say? Mohammed Atta, who led the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre, left behind four pages of instructions to his men, which included 21 quotations from the Quran. Most of the quotations were exhortations to patience, promises of eternal life, and the like. As for justifying the attack itself, here are the three most belligerent passages: 'And the only thing they Lord, forgive our sins and excesses and make our feet steadfast and give us victory over the infidels.' 'Strike above the neck, and strike at all their extremities.' 'Oh Lord, pour your patience upon us and make our feet steadfast and give us victory over the infidels.'" He also added: "It is remarkable that this was the best the terrorist could do; a Christian would have no trouble producing much more warlike passages from the Old Testament" ThinkIssue One, p. 95 Radical Moslems would be well advised to pause and reflect upon their fundamentalist views which, besides being irrational, are reductio ad absurdum.

Aztec Human Sacrifice – a Detached View

In searching for a thesis for this paper, I was faced with a singular problem. With the ghastly subject of human sacrifice, what could possibly be argued and defended? During my reading and research, the stark and horrible reality of a butchered, battered, or burned human being slain in some grisly, weird ceremony for some equally weird gargoyle-like idol nearly caused me to choose another subject. Yet, years ago, when I read Gary Jennings' novel Aztec, I was fascinated with his description of the Aztec's sacrifice of prisoners during the dedication of the great pyramid in Tenochitlan: â€Å"The hearts of †¦ perhaps the first two hundred of them, were ceremoniously ladled into the mouths of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli until the statues' hollow insides could hold no more, and the stone lips of the two gods drooled and dribbled blood†¦ Those who have read Jennings' novel know that the foregoing is but a mild example of some of the graphic barbarism he describes. During my first reading of that novel, I would have never believed that I could come to the conclusion of my thesis. My thesis is this: There appears to be an intolerable paradox between the barbarous religious practices and the rather high state of civilization in the Central Valley of Mexico. This paradox undoubtedly led the early Spanish missionaries to regard the conquered Indians as devil worshipers. However, I believe that it is possible to regard the Aztecs as civilized people who also happened to perform human sacrifice. They performed human sacrifice in reaction to their view of the world and how they cope within it. Maintaining those two opposing viewpoints requires an understanding and a detached view which may have more to do with the study of history than the study of human sacrifice. The Aztecs, of course, had no monopoly on the practice of human sacrifice. Earlier cultures (the Maya, the Toltecs and others) provided the cultural base for human sacrifice upon which the Aztecs took to new heights. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, excavations in Egypt and elsewhere in the ancient Middle East have revealed that â€Å"numerous servants were at times interred with the rest of the funerary equipment of a member of the royal family in order to provide that person with a retinue in the next life. The burning of children seems to have occurred in Assyrian and Canaanite religions and at various times among the Israelites. Rites among the ancient Greeks and Romans that involved the killing of animals may have originally involved human victims. † The Aztecs, as previously stated, took the practice to new heights. In 1487 (five years before Columbus arrived to the East and two years after Henry VII began the Tudor dynasty in England) the greatest orgy of bloodletting of human sacrifice occurred during the fierce rule of Ahuizotl. I have already quoted Gary Jennings' description of the carnage, and I will quote one more passage to illustrate how the Aztecs in a ceremony lasting four days sacrificed at least 20,000 prisoners to their insatiable god Huitzilopochtli: â€Å"The prisoners endlessly ascended the right side of the pyramid's staircase, while the gashed bodies of their predecessors tumbled and rolled down the left side, kicked along by junior priests stationed at intervals, and while the gutter between the stairs carried a continuous stream of blood which puddled out among the feet of the crowd in the plaza†¦ Although Jennings' Aztec is, admittedly, a work of fiction, I have seen his descriptions corroborated elsewhere; for example, G. C. Vaillant's The Aztecs of Mexico describes the scene: â€Å"†¦ At the start of the dedication, the captives stood in two rows, and (they) began the grisly work of tearing out the victim's hearts†¦ † Returning to my thesis, how could the practice of human sacrifice be looked upon as anything less than barbaric, even to the point where Aztecs could be regarded as uncivilized? The answer, in my opinion, arises from their view of their creation, their position in the world, their relative importance therein, and how they were only holding on by a thread. If the Judeo-Christian God took only six days to create the heavens and earth (and rested on the seventh day), the Meso-American deity took awhile longer to get it right. The Aztecs believed that the sun and earth had been destroyed in a cataclysm and were regenerated four times. They believed that they were living in the fifth, and final, stage of creation, and (according to Meyer and Sherman's The Course of Mexican History) â€Å"that in their age of their fifth sun, final destruction was imminent. † Meyer and Sherman also point out another interesting (and revealing) aspect of how the Aztecs regarded themselves in the cycle of their cosmology. The accepted view of â€Å"a natural cycle† was that humans occupied a rather lowly position in the food chain of the gods. The cycle held that since the sun and rain nourished plant life and sustained man, man should give sustenance to the sun and rain gods. One might infer from the foregoing view that the Aztecs placed a low value on human life. To add to the paradox of sacrifice versus civilization, the evidence is that the Aztecs regarded the individual human as â€Å"a most significant locus of the meditation of the human and divine. † In Aztecs – An Interpretation by Inga Clendenin, the author focuses in on the actual meaning of the word â€Å"sacrifice. In her analysis of the Nahuatl linguistic iterations covering the separate meanings of death and sacrifice, she (gradually) comes to the conclusion that Aztecs regarded sacrifice as a payment of the debt incurred and only fully extinguished by death, â€Å"†¦ when the earth lords would feed upon the bodies of men, as men had perforce fed upon them. † What I liked most about Inga Clenninden's writings on the Aztec was her m ixture of sometimes excruciating detailed scholarship (I had to have a dictionary handy at all times) along with her eventual arrival at the exquisite truth of the matter. Concerning debt of humans to the gods she states the truth of the matter in two exquisitely perspicacious sentences: â€Å".. (T)he Mexica knew that all humans, unequal as they might be in human arrangements, participated in the same desperate plight: an involuntary debt to the earthly deities, contracted through the ingestion of the fruits of the earth†¦ It is that divine hunger which appears to underlay the gross feedings of undifferentiated mass killings. While everyone in Aztec society had the same debt, Aztec religion and its black-robed, blood-caked priests served to pay everyone's daily dues for continuation in humanity's last Tonatiuh yet a while longer. Through obeisance and observance of the needs of the pantheon of gods and with the complicity of the Aztec society at large (and often even with the active cooperation of the victims), the priests performed their killings, according to Clendinnen, openly and everywhere: â€Å"†¦ not only in the main temple precinc t, but in the neighborhood temples and on the streets. The Aztecs believed that without human sacrifice and the offering of the most precious and sacred thing the human possessed (blood), the sun might not rise to make its way across the sky. This rather strange and naive belief was supported by a mythology in which Huitzilopochitli, their fierce bloodthirsty god played a central part. But first, an explanation of the Aztecs' beliefs regarding the creation of their current age does shed some light on the role of sacrifice and Huitzilopochitli's cult, which later ran rampant and reached its zenith in the sacrifice of 20,000 at the dedication of the temple in 1487. A succinct description of Meso-American mythology appears in The Daily Life of the Aztecs by Jacques Soustelle. The ancient Mexicans believed that the two parent gods lived at the summit of the world. Their â€Å"unending fruitfulness† produced all the gods, and from it all mankind was born. The sun was born when â€Å"the gods gathered in the twilight at Teotihuacan and a little leprous god â€Å"covered with boils,† threw himself into a huge brazier as a sacrifice and â€Å"rose from the blazing coals changed into a sun†¦ † This sun was motionless and it needed blood to move. So the gods â€Å"immolated themselves, and the sun, drawing life from their death began its course across the sky. † To keep the sun moving on its course, â€Å"so that the darkness should not overwhelm the world forever, it was necessary to feed it every day with its food, ‘the precious water'†¦ human blood. † Every time a priest fed the gods at the top of a pyramid, or in the local temple, the disaster that always threatened to fall upon the world was postponed once more. About the time of the Crusades in Europe, the Aztecs migrated from the west into the Valley of Mexico. They brought with them their strange hummingbird god Huitzilopochitli, who, according to Victor W. Vonhagen in his The Aztec Man and Tribe gave the Aztecs some rather sound advice: â€Å"†¦ wander, look for lands, avoid any large-scale fighting, send pioneers ahead, have them plant maize, when the harvest is ready, move up to it; keep me,†¦ always with you, carrying me like a banner, feed me on human hearts torn from the recently sacrificed. † †¦ all of which the Aztecs did. The mythology surrounding Huitzilopochitli's origins was also revealing. The Aztecs believed themselves to be the â€Å"people of the sun. † This god's fierce preeminence is surpassed only by the Aztec view of his mother Coatlicue. Victor Von Hagen describes the Aztec sculpture of this powerful and awesome goddess: â€Å"†¦ her head of twin serpents, her necklace of human hands and hearts, her arms claw-handed, and her skirt a mass of writhing serpents†¦ † The Aztecs believed that Huitzilopochitli sprang alive and fierce from his mother to vanquish his brothers, the stars, and his sister, the moon who had conspired to kill his mother. Coatlique, an earth goddess, conceived him after having kept in her bosom a ball of hummingbird feathers (i. e. , the soul of a warrior) that fell from the sky. His brothers, the stars of the southern sky, and his sister, a moon goddess, decided to kill him, but he exterminated them with his weapon, the turquoise snake. The Aztecs followed the hummingbird's twittering and became the dominant culture of a civilization that by the time Cortes and his group of scruffy adventurers landed in 1517 numbered in the millions. It is difficult to imagine an ancient, complex civilization like the Aztecs with a daily life that centered around the grisly practice of human sacrifice. The average Aztec only had to look at the stone idol of household god to be reminded of what nourished that particular deity. Deities other than Huitzilopochitli had their own feast days in the Aztec calendar and, accordingly, demanded their own sustenance. Slave children were drowned as an offering to the rain god Tlaloc. The fire god's victims were given hashish and thrown into the blaze. Those who represented the god Xipe Totec were fastened to a frame, shot with arrows, and then had their corpse flayed (the priests dressed themselves in the skin representing the â€Å"new skin† of spring). Here we have the phenomenon of how the person being sacrificed was symbolically transfigured into the image of the god and his own temple. In most cases the victim was dressed up so as to represent the god who was being worshiped. Just as the gods of old had accepted death, the person reenacted and became that sacrifice. Moreover, according to Jaques Soustelle in The Daily Life of the Aztecs, â€Å"when ritual cannibalism was practiced on certain occasions, it was the god's own flesh that the faithful ate in their bloody communion. † As the Aztec cycle continued and a shortage of â€Å"god food† occurred, the Aztec â€Å"Flowery Wars† replenished that supply. Militarism, elevated to a virtue, became ever intertwined with Aztec society. In fact, a warrior's status was determined by the number of captives he delivered to the sacrificial altar. Whether as a battlefield casualty or ending up as a captive on the altar of an enemy tribe, this â€Å"flowery death† was desirable and noble, and a place in the clouds was reserved for that warrior. Returning one last time to Gary Jennings' graphic description of the prisoner sacrifice on that day in 1487, when long lines of captives shuffled along the avenues toward Tenochitlan up the pyramid staircase towards the twin temples of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochitli: â€Å"†¦ any prisoners, however complacently they came to their fate, involuntarily emptied their bladders or bowels at the moment lying down under the knife. The priests – who†¦ had been clad in their usual vulturine black of robes, lank hair, and unwashed skin – had become moving clots of red and brown, or coagulated blood, dried mucus, and a plaster of excrement†¦ † It is indeed difficult to read of such gore and barbarism without relegating the Aztecs to the level normally reserved for far less developed and organized societies. Although the Aztec period is considered by historians as not having reached the heights of civilizations of the classic period, it is clear that the Aztecs and the cultures of the Central Valley were sophisticated and well organized. There may have been as many as 30 million inhabitants of that area (although some scholars believe that count is somewhat exaggerated), and the breathtaking sight of Tenochtitlan must have impressed Cortes beyond words. The question remains: Does existence and abhorrent (to us) practice of human sacrifice disqualify the Aztecs from full membership in the â€Å"club† of civilizations? Apparently, the Spanish felt that the answer to the question was an unequivocal yes. The horror and disgust that newcomers must have felt may have helped the Spanish convince themselves that the native religion was another form of devil worship and provided subsequent justification for destroying their culture. Jaques Soustelle gets to the heart of the matter in The Daily Life of the Aztecs. He says that the Aztec practice of human sacrifice was a great factor in making the two religions which confronted one another totally irreconcilable. In the early battles, some conquistadores ended up as captives and sacrificial victims of the Aztecs themselves, and this practice lent a particularly remorseless attitude on each side of the struggle between the Aztecs and the Spanish invaders. If we can understand the motives and the religious and cultural perspective of the Spanish, who massacred, burnt, mutilated and tortured their conquered natives, it is likely that the definition of cruelty differs from culture to culture. It follows, therefore, that it is possible to use the same perspective towards human sacrifice on the part of the Aztecs. Works cited: Jennings, Gary, 1980, Aztec Von Hagen, Victor W. , 1958, The Aztec, Man and Tribe Vaillant, G. C. , 1944, The Aztecs of Mexico Clendinnen, Inga, 1991, Aztecs An Interpretation Meyer, Michael C. , and Sherman, William L. , 1995, The Course of Mexican History Pre-Columbian Civilizations: MESO-AMERICAN CIVILIZATION: Postclassic Period (900-1519): AZTEC CULTURE TO THE TIME OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST: Aztec religion. Britannica Online HUMAN SACRIFICE: Britannica Online XIPE TOTEC – Britannica Online â€Å"Tlaloc† Britannica Online.