From Conquerors To Conquered Essays - Fall Of Tenochtitlan

From Conquerors To Conquered From Conquerors to Conquered The Rise and fall of the Aztec Empire is possibly the most important area of study in the modern world. Of all of the nomadic tribes who migrated into Mexico, the Aztecs were one of the last. At first driven away by established tribes, the Aztecs slowly began to develop an empire of immense wealth and power by the late fifteenth century. Due in large part to the accomplishments of their ruler Itzcoatl, the empire expanded to include millions of people from a number of different tribes, including the Cempoala, who would later aid the Spanish in defeating the Aztecs. Because of the ?melting pot? within the empire, the Aztecs had a very diverse culture. However, this immense Aztec Empire would soon be brought to its knees by the doings of one man and his army. On November of 1519, the Aztec leader Montezuma, received reports of small mountains floating off of the Mexican coast. Was it Quetzalcoatl, the legendary figure who had one day promised to return from across the ocean? In his distress, Montezuma sent messengers bearing gifts to the Spanish ships, in order to greet these ?gods?. However, the Aztec leader was not alone in his attempt to gain acceptance with these strangers. Fearful of the Spanish, and hateful of the wealth and power of the Aztecs, some of the native tribes, particularly the Cempoala and others from the cities of Tlaxcala and Tezcoca, joined forces with Cortes. After the Spaniards annihilated the Cholultecas, the terrified people of the Aztec empire did their best to please them, as the Europeans made their way inland. By the time Cortes reached Tenochititlan, he had accumulated a large number of allies. Believing that Cortes was indeed Quetzalcoatl, Montezuma greeted the Spanish as if they were gods. Cortes responded, ?We have come to your house in Mexico as friends. There is nothing to fear.? Nevertheless, Cortes kept Montezuma under guard. Instead of resisting, Montezuma did everything he could to please the Spanish, ordering his servants to supply everything that Cortes requested. Montezuma's weakness to the Spanish angered many of his followers, who began to lose respect for their king. Cortes and his men were amazed by the splendor of the Aztec capital. The Spaniards greed would then lead them to carry out unprovoked attacks on Aztec temples and military leaders. Cortes then had Montezuma instruct his angry people not to retaliate, declaring that the Spanish were too powerful and could not be resisted. However, this angered the Aztecs even more, both at the Spanish and Montezuma. As advanced as the Aztecs were, they were no match for the Spanish forces. The Spanish weapons and training were much more advanced: their cannons, cavalry, crossbows, and iron weapons against the primitive spears and rocks of the Aztecs. Even though the Aztecs often outnumbered the Spanish, they could not overcome the superior weapons of the invaders. As Cortes explains: There was so great a number of them, that the artillery had no need to aim but only to point their guns at the Indian forces. It is known that Montezuma died during the siege of Tenochtitlan, but it is not known exactly how. Some say that a stone slung by one of his own people, while others say that the Spaniards stabbed him to death. Cortes claimed to be present when Montezuma received a fatal blow from a stone: He received a blow on his head from a stone; and the injury was so serious that he died three days later. It took Cortes little more than two years to conquer most of the Aztec empire. Some Aztec leaders fled the capital; others were imprisoned, or killed. Most of the buildings, schools, and homes lay in ruins. The victory provided gold and glory for Spain, while at the same time it increased the Spanish influence in the New World. Towns and missions spread throughout the newly conquered lands. Both the Spanish culture and their religion, Christianity, became etched on the American continent. Although so much of the Aztec culture was destroyed, the survivors continue to pass down stories of the mighty Aztecs, as well as those of their vicious defeat. Bibliography Works

Freedom From the Wall Professor Ramos Blog

Freedom From the Wall Jessica Hilder American Literature II 20 February 2019 â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and the Consequences of How Women Were Viewed â€Å"In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.† This is a quote by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a writer who was born during the height of the feminist movement; during a time where women writers were exploding in popularity. Many men thought of female writers as, â€Å"being brainy, selfish, unladylike, and unattractive† (â€Å"1862: The Explosion of Women Writers† by Christopher Hager). These women were criticized for simply being female, and their works were seen as inadequate (Hager, par. 3). Many female literary artists fought this view, Gilman included. In fact, as the quote suggests, she herself was a feminist. In 1891, she published a work in the New England Magazine. Her biggest reason for publishing the story was because she wanted to expose how being told to never work again is not a proper treatment for any illness, though she was prescribed exactly that by a physician and nearly went insane because of it. This is where her inspiration for â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† came from (The Norton Anthology: American Literature). The purpose of this essay is to go through â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and discuss the conflict in the story, and the consequences of that conflict for the characters involved. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is about an unnamed woman, and it seems to be in her point of view through journals. She mentions a few times that she’s writing in secret and doesn’t want her husband to know. The narrator also mentions how she is ill, and her husband, John, a physician, suggested that she do no work until she is well again. This is important to the story, because during this time, many physicians believed that women would get sick if they were reading or writing. This is evident in Gilman’s own experiences, as she wrote this story to be semiautobiographical. When talking about why she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, she said, â€Å"For many years, I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia†¦ I went†¦ to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure†¦ and sent me home with solemn advice to ‘live as domestic a life as far as possible,’ to, ‘have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,’ and ‘never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again as long as I lived’ (Gilman, 523-524). Gilman followed these instructions for three months before, as she put it, she came to, â€Å"the border line of utter mental ruin that I could see over† (Gilman, 524). She immediately started working once again and wrote â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper.† One can see how Gilman meant for this to reflect on what she went through, as John gives the narrator of the story the same treatment. However, despite her husband’s instructions, the narrator continues to write in secret. Her husband is gone most of the time though, because he is a physician, so she is able to get away with it. The conflict seems to start early here. Already, her husband is telling her the way to get better is to do absolutely nothing, and to stop writing because he believes it’s making her sick. The narrator mentions that she does feel more exhausted from writing, but only because she must hide it. She often talks about the room she is living in and goes into detail about the wallpaper. At one point, she talks about two â€Å"bulbous eyes [staring] at you upside down.† She talks about how it seems to crawl up, down, sideways. As the story continues, she mentions that she sees the shape of the woman. Yet, as her mental state is obviously deteriorating, John seems to continually brush her off when she attempts to talk to him about how she doesn’t feel like she’s getting any better. He constantly treats her like a child, carrying her upstairs and reading to her, scolding her when she doesn’t do what he wants her to do, or calling her things like, â€Å"little girl,† hinting towards the possibility of thinking less of his wife. Further, during the 19th century, mental illness was a relatively new medical field, therefore not many people knew much about it. John was a physician, but most likely knew nothing about mental illness and was not able to see the signs that his wife displayed. It could also be assumed that, had John been more present during this time, maybe he would have seen some signs of it; yet it is stated multiple times that he is gone for long hours because of work. Throughout the story, she seems to have worse hallucinations as time goes on. For example, at one point, she talks about how the â€Å"woman behind [the wallpaper]† as she calls her, escapes during the day and â€Å"creeps† (or crawls) outside of her windows. She says, â€Å"It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight†¦ and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!† (Gilman, 520) This seems to add to the consequences of the conflict, as the conflict so far seems to be that her husband seems to think little of her, perhaps because she is a woman. This is evidenced by his hesitancy to believe she is sick, or at the very least, that she is as sick as she thinks. Not only that, but it is evidenced from his treating her like a child, as pointed out above. Unfortunately, the story ends with the narrator seemingly going into complete madness. This is evidenced by her stating that she sees multiple women creeping outside her window, and she doesn’t like to look at them. She also seems to believe she is the woman behind the wallpaper as she says things such as, â€Å"I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did,† â€Å"I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!† and to John she says, â€Å"I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!† (Gilman, 523) The story even ends with her creeping back and forth in the room, even over her unconscious husband who passed out upon seeing her in her current state. This part is extremely important, because one could see this as coming from her feeling trapped in the house. Perhaps she was the woman behind the wallpaper the entire time. Her descent into madness could have been fought or treated, but one could say it’s safe to assume that, being a woman, many people in the story assumed she was exaggerating or making a problem when there was none. Unfortunately, this was not uncommon. As stated earlier, mental illness was a new medical field. Therefore, many physicians depended upon social norms such as heredity, environment, gender, class, or sinful behavior to determine whether someone had a mental illness (â€Å"The Language of Madness: Understanding Terminology†). The ultimate consequence of the conflict in this story is the narrator’s mental illness getting worse and worse until she had a nervous breakdown. As mentioned earlier, Gilman herself even stated that she nearly descended into madness because of a similar wellness plan by her own physician; that was the whole purpose of writing the story. Thankfully, there was a resolution to this conflict, though not in the story. Gilman said in the end that, â€Å"Many years later, I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’† (Gilman, 524) Gilman’s story had affected many different people besides just the original physician that attempted to treat her. She says that it’s, â€Å"valued by alienists,† and that, â€Å"it saved one woman from a similar fate- so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.† (Gilman, 524) In conclusion, the point of this essay was to discuss the conflict present in â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† as well as the consequences of said conflict. There seems to be a few different points of conflict; the view of women in that society through John’s view of his wife, and the view of mental illness during this time through the narrator’s treatment plan as well as how she is treated by those around her. The ultimate consequence was the worsening of her mental illness. The quote used at the beginning of this essay is very fitting for this discussion. As mentioned earlier, many believed that when women worked or did any reading or writing, they would get sick. However, through Gilman’s own experiences and the experience of the narrator in her short story, she was able to prove that the opposite is true; in fact, she got more sick when she stopped working altogether. During this time, it was uncommon for women to read and write, and was against social norms. She proved her own quote to be correct. She did not fit in during her time, yet she was definitely demonstrating a healthy and positive response by fighting the stereotypes present during that time. A lot of good seems to have come from this story, and hopefully there were many women who were saved by Gilman’s short story besides the one mentioned earlier. Thankfully, women’s rights have come a long way since then, as well as the study of mental illness. Despite this, it’s good to look at works such as these so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Works Cited Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper.† The Norton Anthology of American Literature, by Robert S. Levine, W. W. Norton Company, 2017, pp. 509–524. Hager, Christopher. â€Å"1862: The Explosion of Women Writers.† 1862: America Undeceived, 20 Dec. 2012, commons.trincoll.edu/1862/2012/12/20/1862-the-explosion-of-women-writers/#_ftn1. â€Å"The Language of Madness: Understanding Terminology.†Restoring Perspective: Life and Treatment at Londons Asylum, 2009, lib.uwo.ca/archives/virtualexhibits/londonasylum/terminology.html.

The Profession Of A Medical Assistant Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Profession Of A Medical Assistant - Essay Example Research shows that the virus kills approximately 20,000 people yearly and developing its vaccine to full functionality will be a milestone in the medical fraternity. 3. If you could practice medicine anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? I would like to work with underprivileged communities here in the states. It has become a burden for me to offer my service to people and families who have been sidelined by the society yet they equally need the healthcare services like anyone else does. It has become a concern to me, that an almost all medical practitioners want to practice in big towns and cities and in hospitals that are fully furnished with all medical equipment they require leaving out the option of marginalized areas with largely inadequate practitioners. For this reason, I am committed to giving service to the underserved communities at hospitals or doctor’s office where I will specialize in either primary care of cardiology work and be part of the solution towards addressing the health worker shortage in such underserved communities as well as provide affordable and accessible healthcare services. 4. Thinking of yourself, what is the best patient experience you’ve had and why? What is the worst patient experience you’ve had and why? The best patient experience that I have had is when as a medical assistant; I managed to attend to my client from vastly different social backgrounds from mine and was able to blend well with them despite the disparities in culture, values, and language.