Sunday, March 27, 2011

How does ethnnocentricity cause conflict?

The ethnocentric views of the British towards the First Australians caused conflict between the two because the British didn’t understand the aboriginie’s lifestyle. When the first few British people arrived, the colonizers didn’t have any knowledge about the culture and were very shocked about how they acted. When the two met for the first time, there wasn’t any conflict as they both met with positivity. The Aboriginals welcomed the British with open arms, but the British still thought that the Aboriginals were animals who can’t own land. But the British had to colonize Australia somehow, so they had to build a relationship with the Aboriginies. They brought a few Aborginies back to England but when they refused to stay, they travelled back to Australia to continue their lifestyle. One of the British government officials wrote in their obituary, constantly calling them savages and barbarians. After this, the conflict between the British and the Aboriginals started. The British grabbed as much farmland as they could, ruining all of the Aboriginal’s crops. The British tried to get rid of the Aboriginal population targeting the primary source - the women and their children. The aboriginals were considered as ‘uncivilised’ people that needed to be taken care of. Ethnocentricity drives you to not even try to understand other people’s culture. Because the British were so absorbed in their own country, they labelled the aboriginies as people that weren’t people just because they lived in different surroundings.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Julius Caesar




For our Julius Caesar unit,
we have to perform an act that we think is significant in the play. I have chose to do a duet with Shaz, and we will be doing Act 2 Scene 2, lines 58 - 105.

Lara: Decius
Shaz: Caesar

CONTEXT:

Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, just told Caesar about the horrific nightmare she just had about him going to the Capitol and she is begging him not to go to. When Caesar is persuaded not to go, Decius comes and changes Caesar's mind making Caesar feel like he needs to go to the capitol by turning Calpurnia's dream around.

This is a significant paragraph because it foreshadows Caesar's death. It shows that the conspirators are determined to have their plan go well and get him to the Senate House. By doing that it exposes two sides of Caesar; private and public. In public, he is portrayed as a hubris and arrogant person who isn't afraid of anything. But his private self is gullible and falls for flattery who is actually slightly afraid. This passage also brings out imagery of blood, symbolising Caesar's death.