Jekyll and Hyde Image

I think the picture shows the transformation very clearly. The monstrous, and uglier evil image of Dr. Jekyll coming out of him as Mr. Hyde. There seems to be no resemblance in both images, even though, it’s just good and the evil side of one person. Comapring the image to the scene described in stevenson’s novella, I felt that he presented it more nicely along with the emotional feelings of Dr. Jekyll. In the novella, it has been described that Dr.Jekyll felt “younger, lighter, hsppier in body”(80). Although, he also knew that the personality of this new character is evil and wicked.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Movie Response

I liked the novella better than the movie. There are some major differences in the novella and the movie.  First of all, the dual personality of Dr.Jekyll is completely a secret till the end of the book. While in the movie, it has been shown at the beginning. The novella did not include any of the female characters in it. However, the movie portrays two female characters both in a different way but both of them connected to same person. In the movie, it is shown that Dr. Jekyll is depressed because of the procrastination of his wedding date. He regularly experiments with his potion. The main purpose of this potion is to make the evil side of the man eliminated. He wanted to experiment with it by himself by changing personalities and examining the good and the evil side of the man by himself. In the novella, Dr. Jekyll or one can say Mr.hyde tramples the little girl. While in the movie, it is shown that Dr.Jekyll actually helps him and the girl gets attracted to him. Somehow, Dr. Jekyll’s experiments gets a defect in it and he changes into Mr.hyde permanently. Mr. hyde  gets shot off by the police. I did not like the end of the movie. Both of the novella and the movie displays a very interesting issue and have shown this fact very carefully.

Response to World’s fair Movie

There are many items that I found interesting that have been shown in this documentary.

Manufactures and liberal Arts Building: It was the largest building at that time exhibiting million of exhibits from all over the world. It was like the entire under one roof. It was extremely beautiful in its interior architectural design and was able to fit a large mass of people.

Electricity buliding: street car generators, dynamos, and other large electrical exhibits were presented in this building by Westinghouse, Edison. The center of this buliding was Edison’s tower. He also built electrical fountains and he also spent a vast amount of money to make world’s fair successful.

The last but not the least, is ofcourse the Ferris wheel. I am thinking to respond to question number 1 in the guided research paper.

Master and Commander

The movie, Master and Commander, is an excellent movie displaying the ideas of warfare, friendship, importance of relationships, science in the military, and the different aspects of life. The movie is about the battle between the British and French. The British attacked on the French and their ships were completely destroyed. The captains of British and French ships were friends and had to take different positions during the battle breaking their friendship. The French goes back in search of British ships to attack them. But, the British again destroyed their ships and won the Battle. The movie was confusing at some points and I was lost. It was also too long but it did a good job of displaying the past battleships and their reactions to the world.

Industrial Revolution

The clips show the time during the Industrial revolution in Britain. The clips mainly focus on the conditions in Manchester. It was the worst conditions there in Manchester for the people who were poor and for the people who were even middle class. The inflation and unemployment was high. The government only used to support the riches and ignored the rights of poor. Many of the people used to work for their lords and they were not allowed to live their lives according to their own way. The education for the children was expensive. Many children used to work in the industries and had dangerous jobs. The whole economy was declining and the poors were suffering very badly. Finally, they decided to fight for their rights. It was interesting to know this about Manchester. I did not know that Manchester was in this condition before.

Book 7

Book Seven of the Years of Rice and Salt throws the light on the industrial revolution which took place in India. In the beginning of the story, the plot suggests that the new empire has come in India which is much better than the previous. This empire brought some major advanced technological changes, industrial progress and a lot of inventions took place at that time. India also had a most powerful army because of these technological changes. As the Indian empire became more powerful, the Ottoman Empire was not able to compete with them and got divided. The land of Konstantiniyye got attacked by the Indian empire and sultan was not able to rescue neither his palace nor his land.  Ismail, an expert in medical sciences went to India and shared his medical information with others. Robinson concludes this book with an overview of a World War. This book was interesting and easy to read. The knowledge of medical sciences and the development of Qing dynasty is specially noticeable.

Book 4

Book 4 is all about the scientific revolution. There are three main characters: Bahram, Iwang, and Khalid. Khalid is a neton-like character and Iwang is a galelio-like character. Khalid discovers a lot of calculus fundamentals, physics laws, and got involved in alchemy. In book 4, Samarkand is represented as a symbol for “Islamic Renaissance”.The city demonstrates the religious mosques and some of the muslim occasions have actually been shown by Robinson in his book.The city is shown as undeveloped and rural. In the story, Nadir tried to improve the conditions of this city and of Bokhara. “He went to Divanbeji with a proposal to build a complete system of drains underneath both Bokhara and Samarqand, to move the water of the scores of stagnant pools that dotted both cities.”(309) Khalid also discovered the poison gas. This book is very similar to the actual events during the scientific revolution.

Response to Newton’s Dark Secrets

The documentary is the wonderful interpretation of the Newton’s early life and how he achieved the Success. He was shown in the movie as a very reserved person, doing everything in the dark secret and keeping his inventions to himself. He actually wrote all the fundamental ideas of Calculus just before his death. Calculus was crucial to mathematics in order to compete with the new era and to analyze the problems of advanced technologies with theoretical and practical data. Newton also invented the law for gravity, the telescope, and also discovered alchemy. It was interesting to see that how the religious ideas influenced his inventions in science and technology. He invented the ideas of modern world. It has also been mentioned in the movie that he was a very secret person and used to sit in his room for hours and hours. The video definitely reveals some of the main ideas of the hero of science, Sir Issac Newton.  

The Hound of the Baskervilles Paper

 According to answers.com, the “Science” and “Superstition” has been described in this way:

Science is, “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena”. On the other hand, Superstition is, “An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.” It is true that every individual differs from each other in many aspects. The main aspect that gets examined by the materialistic people of today’s world is the point of view, perspective, beliefs, and the way of thinking of any individual. In many societies of the world, people are even divided based upon this criterion.  In the Doyle’s novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, the readers encounters the notion between science and superstition and the different groups and individuals who opposes one idea or another.

                In this Novel, the two main characters are Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Sherlock Holmes as a detective strongly favors Science and refuses to believe any kind of supernatural phenomenon or belief. It is common for the people of England at that time to keep superstitious kind of beliefs. The Story starts setting out the scene between Dr. Watson and Holmes discussing over the left over stick by one of the unknown visitor. Holmes as usual is giving Watson his theories and always proving to him his egoistic nature.  There is no doubt that Holmes is proud of his professional skills. One example could be seen when Dr. Mortimer addresses him as a “second highest expert in Europe”(9). Mr. Holmes in reply with a change in tone asks him “who has the honor to be the first?”(9).From the following lines, the reader can easily conclude that Holmes is being defined as deeply perceptive observant.

Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.

“How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.”

“I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,” said he. (3)

Holmes examines the visitor’s stick and concludes some facts about Dr. Mortimer and describes him as, “amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded” (7) person. Dr. Mortimer presents a very strange case to Holmes which Holmes definitely rejects to believe. Mortimer describes the problem in this way,

The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger Baskerville, the youngest of the three brothers of whom poor Sir Charles was the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad Henry. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of the old masterful Baskerville strain, and was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Hugo. He made England too hot to hold him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever. Henry is the last of the Baskervilles. (24)

He does not want to solve any case which do not have a scientific reasoning and of course, the cases which involves supernatural. Holmes stated to Mortimer, “There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless.”(22) At first, the issue did not interest him at all and he considers it to be like a fairy tale. When Mortimer explains the case further and the death of Sir Charles, Holmes starts to gets interested and takes the case over.

                Mr. Mortimer further explains Holmes that there is a greater need to solve this case in order to protect Sir Henry from Baskervilles curse. To investigate further about this case and to carefully examine the place of crime, he sends off Mr. Watson with Mortimer to Baskervilles Hall. Dr. Watson is responsible for sending all the facts and clues he can get out of the place. In this way, the reader also gets a sense to consider some issues from Watson’s perspective. Watson did an excellent job of practicing the same skills as of Sherlock Holmes and he tells each and everything to Holmes. However, later in the story, it has been revealed that actually Mr. Holmes was also investigating the case with them.

                The death of Sir Charles has been investigated and Holmes finds that it is actually the result of heart attack.  Holmes suspects Stapleton to be the culprit. The supernatural in the story is shown as the hound. One description of it in the story is as under:

The words were hardly out of my mouth when we both saw him. Over the rocks, in the crevice of which the candle burned, there was thrust out an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides. The light beneath him was reflected in his small, cunning eyes which peered fiercely to right and left through the darkness like a crafty and savage animal who has heard the steps of the hunters. (97)

Holmes carefully examines the character of Stapleton and proposes that he is one of the pathetic adversaries, and a black hearted person. He is seen as jealous in the story. He is the one who is trying to scare the Baskervilles by sending Notes to Henry through his wife and then plans to kills Henry in order to get his place.

                Watson and Holmes did a great job of examining this case and finding out the actual culprit. The reader of The Hound of Baskervilles can easily see that the Holmes’s method did not really change.  His way of approaching the problem has been modified by the people. Even though, he is so much convinced to believe that there is some supernatural power behind all the murders, he still investigates the truth by himself.

The Hound of the Baskervilles 2

The next part of the story is much interesting and more suspenseful. As we have seen in the previous stories of Doyle that Holmes always uses his techniques of deduction with the help of proofs and most importantly, the place of crime, but this time Holmes does not have any of these. It is exciting to see that how Holmes is solving this case with the help of Watson. Holmes is not able to go with Sir Henry so he sends off Watson with them to investigate and tell Holmes everything he sees and observes over there. Holmes wants Watson to follow all the procedures he uses in his investigation.  Watson also wants to hold this responsibility and wants to proof Holmes that he is also capable of investigating the truth. Watson observes each and everything and sends Holmes the letter explaining all the things. It is amazing to see the work of Holmes done by another person.