James Lewis

There has been radical change in women’s lives in recent years, from having Hillary Clinton running for the presidency of the United States of America, to marital rape becoming a crime. Women’s lives have become more liberated, more open, more demanding and more productive. Today one can see women who are CEO’s of major companies, like Meg Whitman CEO of eBay, and women in powerful political position like Condolezza Rice, Secretary of State and first African-American women to serve that position. Unlike some time ago, where women were homemakers, some still are, and were kept inside the home raising children. Women were seen as the ones who are to remain in the home and maintain it, wearing dresses and having their hair done while they mop the floor or cook dinner.
Even with so much advancement in women’s rights, education, and overall lives some women’s lives do not change much. Margarita Sanchez from Telchatichi, Jalisco in Mexico was one of those women. Sanchez was born on October 18, 1939 and even at her age she states that her life is not much different from what it was in earlier years. She was not one to be involved in politics or even knowing much of what was going on in the world. This woman was a homemaker and worker that is all she did most of her life. When she remembers her childhood, her mother was a homemaker and her father a barsero, in her times that meant her father would come to the United States of America to work then go to Mexico after sometime. There were seven children, including her, it would have been fifteen but her mother had a few still born and some died in infancy.
She had a striking resemblance to what was called “family values”, as refereed by the women in the anti-feminist movement (DuBois and Dumenil, 649). Her life changed when at just seven years old her mother died, on the same anniversary of her mother’s death a year earlier, her father passes, and a year later on the same anniversary her grandmother died. This left all the children with no one to care for them, so one of her late mother’s sister took on the responsibility, which was difficult because at the time her aunt had eight children of her own. She being the youngest of all her cousins and siblings did not mean she did not have to work, at sixth grade she dropped out of school and began working. A decade later, her aunt brought her to the United States where one of her bothers was in San Jose.
When Margarita Sanchez saw the U.S. it was different from what she thought, it seemed so rushed to her and no one seemed to have time, women were wearing pants, which she had never in her life seen a women do and women wore as what she stated was exaggerated makeover.

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“For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.”
-A.M. Schlesinger, Jr.
The history of history books is always that of those in power. The few men and even fewer women who change political boundaries, make breakthroughs in science or introduce new ways of thinking. But the handful of people who make it into the history books pale in comparison to the millions who are affected by the actions of the powerful few. The personal histories of individuals are often forgotten. The actions and accomplishments of everyday people are forgotten, rendered unimportant by those who write the history books. Each and every person has their own history to tell, their own version of what happened and how it affected their life and the things they felt. It may seem that these individual histories are forgotten, rendered unimportant but through literature, the personal histories of individuals are remembered and recorded.
In history books World War II was a global military conflict between the nations that comprised the Allies and those that made up the opposing Axis. For over a decade, the war affected millions of people around the world, causing many to question their political allegiances and their identities as citizens of a nation. In literature the sentiments felt by millions during the decades that followed the war can be examined through the novels of many prominent writers. Four years after the end of the war, Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, a play that highlights the inability for many to realize the American Dream. Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov emigrated to America in the middle of the war, fleeing German troops and in 1955 wrote Lolita, his most famous novel. Lolita examines the corruption of the American Dream in the wake of the war. The Golden Notebook was written in 1962 by Doris Lessing and represents the shattered identities still felt by so many in the unstable political environment. The post-war decades led to novels which portrayed various themes on the deteriorating concept of the American Dream and the sentiment that individuals suffered from broken identities caused by political fractures stemming from war.
Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, a play that examines the falsity behind the American Dream and the inability for so many to bring that dream to realization. In the post-war period, many Americans felt fractured from reality and found themselves struggling to piece together their identities. The proposed national identity was that of prosperity, hope and success but in the years following the war and in the wake of losing so many citizens, many Americans did not see themselves in the same line. Instead they were experiencing hardship, hopelessness and constant struggle to rebuild their lives in a war-torn nation just as the Loman family in the play experience. This attitude is what prevailed in much of the post-war literature along with the various ways in which people sought to recompose themselves.
Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, Lolita, examines how one man copes with national detachment in the years during the greatest world war. In his exploitation of Dolores Haze, Humbert Humbert seeks a way to mend his failed attempt at consummating a teenage affair of years past. His obsession and sexual exploitation of Dolores can be seen as a corruption of the American Dream and her death at the end of the novel is equally paralleled to the death of the American spirit at the end of the war. Throughout the novel both Dolores and Humbert constantly seek to form their true identities. Dolores is a young teen who is in the stage of her life of forming her identity which Humbert is an obstacle to. On the other hand, Humbert is a disoriented man who is never able to let go of his sexual failure of his teenage days and who attempts to amend this by exploiting young girls. This exploration of identity and the corruption of the American Dream is explored throughout this novel, again emphasizing the attitude many felt in the post-war decades.
In 1965 Doris Lessing wrote The Golden Notebook, a novel which explores and critiques a woman who is struggling to keep herself together in the wake of World War II and the growing communism stemming from unstable political boundaries. The protagonist Anna Wulf keeps four separate notebooks which she hopes will help her organize her life and keep her from falling apart mentally and emotionally. The notebooks focus on four different aspect of her life: politics, work, emotional being and her past. They represent her already segregated identity which she works to piece together to form a more solid identity. The novel explores the fractured identity of Anna Wulf, only one of millions of women who no doubt also share her feelings during this era.
The post-war decades produced literature that reflected the sentiments that millions felt–an attitude of splintered identities, broken dreams, and corrupted perspectives. In America many questioned the possibility of the American Dream with many speculating that the dream was no longer an option, that the dream had died with the thousands of Americans who had died in a war that many saw as not their war to fight. Americans felt they could no longer attain the success promised by the American Dream and needed to find ways to compromise their identities with that portrayed by the government. This discombobulation was the result of a war that lasted for so long and affected all nations the world over and literature became the history of the masses that were affected by the war.
It is no wonder that literature speaks to each person differently, that a novel can touch a person and move. Literature is the story of the individual, the history that each person lived through. In novels the triumphs and struggles of the weakest and poorest among a society find their voice and discover that their story was also told.

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The Life and times of Flavius Vegetius
Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus was a notable historian and a writer who lived in the 5-th century. There are no primary sources recording his life. Yet, the information about Flavius Vegetius can be found his two books that serve as the representation of the author’s talent and contribution to the literature.
Flavius Vegetius shortly after 383 compiled a long handbook of traditional Roman military practices in hope that it would aid in restoring the strength of the army. His Military Institutions of the Romans is the most thorough description of the legions and their training and tactics, both as they had been at the time of Rome’s greatness and as they were in the fourth century (Watson 26). While not a great captain himself, Vegetius was a good historian, and drew intelligently from the histories of Rome’s wars to give a good picture of the old practices. Numerous histories of Roman wars and campaigns, such as Caesar Gallic Wars, survived into the Middle Ages, but Vegetius’ book was the only military manual that was available to medieval men. Manuscript copies circulated at the time of Charlemagne, and about 150 copies were made from the years 1000 to 1400. Vegetius was translated into French, German, English, and Italian during the late Middle Ages, and the first printed edition dates from 1473 (Barnes 255).
While it was the main textbook on military matters for 1,300 years after it was written, the Military Institutions had little impact in its own time and did little or nothing to halt the decline in the late Roman military. In particular the author did not fully project how the economic decline of the empire influenced the practice of hiring less costly barbarian mercenaries, which he rejected (Barnes 256). As the quality of Roman soldiers declined, the barbarians, mostly Germanic, were viewed as having the martial spirit and skills now lacking in the Roman population. With the disappearance of Roman discipline, the legionary’s style of fighting with the short sword, the essence of Roman military success, began to disappear as well. Even Roman recruits began to fight in the German style. The foreign troops were loyal to the empire and with strikingly few exceptions fought well and bravely for it. But the Roman army of which they now constituted the core was no longer clearly superior to those barbarian tribes that sought to invade the empire rather than serve it.
What is prominent is that the legacy of Greek and Roman warfare is known largely through Vegetius’ Military Institutions (Michael 45-48). The fourteenth-century poetess Christine de Pisan recommended that the wives of barons read Vegetius in order to be prepared to defend their properties in the absence of their husbands (Michael 48).

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The United States of America has never had a female president because of many reasons. The first and notable one is that they haven’t been as hardworking and persistent as men are. For a woman to be a president in America she must be very hard working for considerably a long period of time. Apart from being hard working she must be persistent in her actions. These are qualities that most American women are lacking, and that is why most men outshine them to become presidents.

Women are not open minded; a great president should be open minded and attentive to his or her emotions. These are very important virtues that most America women miss. Hence since a good president should attain these virtues, and most women in America lack them, it’s not easy for one of them to become a president. Women also lack the capability of questioning traditional values and designing new ways of doing things, hence this limits them from becoming presidents.

To become a good president one must be very imaginative and have great interests in art. Most American women leaders lack this key and important skill. Most men have out performed women candidates for the position of presidency because men are more imaginative and they also have a wider experience.

Women in America lack the exceptional ability to tolerate stress and adversity. A good president should have enough self-confidence, but most women are not well prepared for this. Hence it has not been easy for a woman to become a president in America.

Women lack the required competence in managing the government. Women previously have not succeeded at becoming presidents in America because most of them are not competent enough in controlling and directing the government. These are complex and complicated roles that need the intervention of men.

Women have not succeeded to win the position of a president because they are regarded as not being as intelligent a men. Most men undergo more and better trainings that equip them well at taking leadership. Therefore it is not easy for a woman to win as a president in America because most of the men who seek these positions are very competent and they have all the necessary skill that women candidates miss.

Men have better organizational skills than women. Since America is a supper power it’s the role of their president to rule the whole world. Therefore when selecting a president serious considerations are made before they make the final decision, they have to choose a candidate with the best organizational skills. Most of the men who seek for this position happen to be more qualified than their women competitors.

Men seeking for presidency in America have better diplomatic skills than women. Most men have been involved in matter of other countries across the world than women have been, this then gives men an upper hand of becoming winners as presidents.

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