English Commentary The following is a commentary o Essays

English Commentary The following is a commentary o Essays English Commentary The following is a commentary on paragraph in P.G 211 a 212 in the Sorrow of War.. The paragraph from page 211 to 212 has a very important significance to the story as a whole. It has a lot of metaphors and similes that add to the sorrowful mood of the story. In the beginning, the paragraph is very poetic, juxtaposing past images of life to future and present images of death and destruction. In specific it juxtaposes the "eternal" beauty of his girlfriend Phuong to the tragic finality of war. The paragraph is written in the simple past tense, the perfect past tense which means the past before the past and the hypothetical "would" in order to emphasize Kien's deep longings to relive the past. It also shows us how Kien lost his spirit of fighting, and gave up hope. This is spiritual loss, and it is what most soldiers were experiencing. There is basically no more hope, no more life, just death. Overall, the paragraph reflects images of the sorrows of war. The sorrows and effects of war are clearly shown when the narrator reverses traditional symbols. The first very evident example of reversing traditional symbols is the narrator's use of the concept of "miracle" and "dream" not to talk about a future goal but about the past. Thus returning to the past and finding it "unchanged" becomes a "miracle" and a "dream". We usually dream of the future and hope for a miracle that would "change" our lives. However the miracle that Kien awaits is to find that the past still exists "untouched" and "untainted". Of course that miracle is impossible and consequently the paragraph has a deep nostalgic sadness. Like Kien, we can feel the painful irony of the impossibility of this miracle to happen. Other images function in the same way to show Kien's despair and loss of hope. He saw "a river stretching before him. He saw himself floating towards his death". Here the narrator compares the river to a path that ends life. However, we usually associate rivers with freedom and ongoing life. The narrator also says "fate waited to take him from the terrible present to the happy days of the past". The narrator is showing us how much he longs to relive the past and how he dreads the present, and views his future as a horrible period of time. In the beginning of the paragraph, the narrator creates a beautiful world untouched by war through many poetic images. The narrator says "she would have been untainted by war". This shows us how war has ruined the girl Kien loved. The narrator creates images in our minds; about how his girlfriend would be if it wasnt for war. "She would be forever beautiful.", "Phong would remain young forever," and "No one would ever come close to her beauty". The narrator uses "forever" and "ever" and this evokes the image of a wonderful eternal life, that would have existed if it hadnt been for war. The narrator uses several similes that give a poetic feeling to the paragraph. The narrator says "As a green meadow" and "as fragrant flowers". These similes show us how much the narrator feels happy when he remembers or talks about the past, or about the pre-war period. In our minds this beautiful world of eternal and unchanged love is juxtaposed with the ugly reality of Kien alone in his room. The passage moves from describing Kien's longing for a miracle to a dream he has. This shift reflects a change in his outlook from an impossible hope to deep despair. "Would be a miracle", "would be untainted" and "would be untouched, unchanged". The repetition of the word "would" gives us an image of a hypothetical possibility. In contrast, Kien's dream is an experience he relives at night when he says "spreading before him were the past forty years". It is clear that Kien has changed from dreaming about a beautiful unchanged past to reliving it at night. The narrator clearly shows to us the sorrows of war through the images he creates in our minds. He uses the words "death", "destruction" and "war" while talking about

About the U.S. Department of Labor

About the U.S. Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor is a cabinet-level department in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government headed by the U.S. Secretary of Labor as appointed by the President of the United States with the consent of the U.S. Senate. The Department of Labor is responsible for workplace safety and health, wage and hour standards, racial diversity, unemployment insurance benefits, re-employment services, and maintenance of key labor-related economic statistics. As a regulatory department, the Department of Labor has the power to create federal regulations deemed necessary to implement and enforce labor-related laws and policies enacted by Congress. Department of Labor Fast Facts The United States Department of Labor is a cabinet-level, regulatory department in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government. The Department of Labor is headed by the U.S. Secretary of Labor as appointed by the President of the United States with the approval of the Senate.The Department of Labor is primarily responsible for the implementation and enforcement of laws and regulations relating to workplace safety and health, wage and hour standards, racial diversity, unemployment benefits, and re-employment services. The purpose of the Department of Labor is to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment. In carrying out this mission, the Department administers a variety of federal labor laws guaranteeing workers rights to safe and healthful working conditions, a minimum hourly wage and overtime pay, freedom from employment discrimination, unemployment insurance, and workers compensation. The Department also protects workers pension rights; provides for job training programs; helps workers find jobs; works to strengthen free collective bargaining; and keeps track of changes in employment, prices, and other national economic measurements. As the Department seeks to assist all Americans who need and want to work, special efforts are made to meet the unique job market problems of older workers, youths, minority group members, women, the handicapped, and other groups. In July 2013, then Secretary of Labor Tom Perez summarized the purpose of the Department of Labor in stating, â€Å"Boiled down to its essence, the Department of Labor is the department of opportunity.† Brief History of the Department of Labor First established by Congress as the Bureau of Labor under the Department of the Interior in 1884, the Department of Labor became an independent agency in 1888. In 1903, it was reassigned as a bureau of the newly-created cabinet-level Department of Commerce and Labor. Finally, in 1913, President William Howard Taft signed a law establishing the Department of Labor and the Department of Commerce as separate cabinet-level agencies as they remain today. On March 5, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed William B. Wilson as the first Secretary of Labor. In October 1919, the International Labour Organization chose Secretary Wilson to chair its first meeting, even though the United States had not yet become a member nation. On March 4, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins to be Secretary of Labor. As the first female cabinet member, Perkins served for 12 years, becoming the longest-serving Secretary of Labor. Following the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Department of Labor made the government’s first concerted effort to promote racial diversity in the hiring practices of labor unions. In 1969, Secretary of Labor George P. Shultz imposed the Philadelphia Plan requiring Pennsylvania construction unions, which had previously refused to accept black members, to admit a certain number of blacks by an enforced deadline. The move marked the first imposition of racial quotas by the U.S. federal government.