...Some people believe that the eyes are the window to the soul, and H.H.Holmes, the serial killer from The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, appeared to have a “clear and blue” gaze (The Devil in the White City 37). Looks from pretty girls “fell around him like wind-blown petals” because Holmes always “looked fresh and crisp” whenever he was in public (The Devil in the White City 35). Robin Williams was a popular, talented actor, but only those closest to him knew that he was struggling with some sort of illness. Many people in society were shocked when he all of a sudden killed himself. In her special editorial called “the Terrorist Inside My Husband’s Brain,” Susan Schneider Williams- Robin Williams wife- shares the story of her husbands fight with his mental illness. Williams was a trained actor, so his wife “will never know the true depth of his suffering” because he fought so hard to keep it hidden. Although Williams “was diagnosed with Parkinson Disease...
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...The Devil In The White City The Chicago fire of 1871 left the city desolate yet allowed Chicago to erupt in creation and construction. Architects built and expanded the city into the Chicago we see today. Chicago was known as a smaller, less sophisticated New York, until the World's Fair in 1893. In The Devil In The White City, Erik Larson follows the 1893 World's Fair from the stress of preparing the exhibits, its global effects. Larson uses imagery, personification, structure, and irony to display the fair as a sanctuary in contrast to the filth of Chicago. Larson inserts tragedies of the outside world within pages that describe the luxury of the fair to contrast the economy and work environment of the exposition with that of Chicago. When hiring architects to construct the midway, executives were not concerned with overspending. When hiring for the midway, Sol Bloom asked for an...
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...1893 was a very successful and influential time in United States history as it introduced the world's fair. In Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson, the Chicago world fair portrays the impact the fair had on how the United States was viewed, as well as how deeply affected american culture is by the gilded age at this time. The fair not only was a spectacle to propel America to the top spot in industry and entertainment through various new technologies, but it managed to show the advancement of America compared to the rest of the world. Coming into the construction of the fair, after the site in Chicago had been decided, Burnham and the other architects were concerned about whether they would be able to outshine...
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...Devil in the White City by Erik Larson intertwined two stories into one novel. One of the stories tells us about Daniel Burnham and his setbacks while trying to build and achieve the greatest fair in world history. The story of another man named H.H. Holmes occurs secretly as Burnham constructs the extravagant fair, and this novel captures his conniving plans and murders. The authors use of point of view, tone and diction to target the audience and develop the purpose: extravagant things overcast the evil that goes unnoticed. Larson wrote this novel to inform people about the factual happenings of the worlds fair construction and the lesser known murder of H.H. Holmes, but he also wrote to show the audience that extravagant things can cause people to overlook disturbing yet important truths. Larson’s use of third point of view and switches from Burnham's point of view in a chapter to Holmes...
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...The novel, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness in the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson. In the books there are two storylines: one about the life of H.H. Holmes, the serial killer, the other about how the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago came to be. By contrasting "white" city of the World Fair, and the dark essence of the serial killer. Erik Larson is able to combine fact and fiction and make a statement that beauty can be an illusion that is able to cover what is hidden under the surface. The World's Fair was built to bring all the best things to Chicago and also for the United States to show off its glory. The contraction of the Worlds fair was done poorly because the intention for the buildings was to only be in...
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...ocusing on the issue, Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City vividly describes the conditions of 1890s Chicago, Illinois. In the book, the city is depicted as dirty, polluted, and crime ridden. It was so bad that the main character, Daniel Burnham, moved his family out of the city because, as he wrote, “I could no longer bear to have my children in the streets of Chicago.” In this assignment, we will analyze how The Devil in the White City describes the nearly destitute conditions of Chicago, and how the city has changed in over a century. Throughout Devil, Larson describes the conditions of Chicago many times. One of the reader’s first introductions to the city is “It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in...
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...The mass amount of symbolism and meaning behind everyday events in a form of a grander picture surpasses any estimation; this can be seen in The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 according to The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson. The extravagant beauty and detail of the fair and the power it had on the world during its running time forms a large figure with ample space for the development of horror behind such grace. The grandeur of the fair poses the question if the fair itself is a symbol of arrogance due to its size and cost, as well if this elevated grandeur automatically enlists a darker parallel behind the beauty, and if the serial killer Doctor H. H. Holmes is the destructive parallel to the fair. Overall, the main critique that the...
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...The Devil in the White City Essay Erik Larson, the author of The Devil in the White City, uses juxtaposition by incorporating specific details about the fair's construction and Holmes's trial of murders to show the underlying evil taking place at such a revolutionary time in history. The author uses mysterious events to reveal his alternative message of the hidden darkness, even in the most joyous times in history. Such as, when Burnham was deciding to paint all the buildings white so that it correlates with the positive attitude of the Chicago World Fair. Meanwhile H. H. Holmes portrays the “dark” side of the city with his cloaked basement of various lingering smells of rancid chemicals that will cause hundreds to disappear without any suspicion....
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...The Gilded Age is generally thought as a time in American History in the 19th century were lots of workers (mainly immigrants) participate in the rapid growth in industrialization because the government believe that this was time for the rich to get richer and the poor to stay poor and do the dirty work. However, if we are looking at this book “the devil in the white city we see glimpse of the gilded age at the fair and throughout the entire reading with the development of technology. Ray baker quote from the devil in the white city suggest he was talking about the wealth and corruption, which pinpoint back to the era of the gilded age when everything was made to look good. Ray baker stated that “What a human downfall after the magnificence...
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...The Devil in the White City The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson is a 447 page long mystery. In the book psychopath Holmes is introduced periodically as a serial killer during the 1893 World's Fair. The book takes the reader through the construction of the World's Fair, and the murders Holmes committed during it. The 1889 French Exposition Universel drew the consideration of the Western world to Paris, where the Eiffel Tower, worked to be an impermanent point of interest, remained as a landmark to French excellence and advancement. The achievement of the piece prompted to a desire for a comparative occasion in the United States to exhibit American resourcefulness and culture. Chicago appeared a far-fetched area for the piece. It was grimy, poor, and stuffed. Its leaders were voracious, pleased, and every so often, corrupt. All things considered, Chicago was picked, and driving engineers Daniel Burnham and John Root were procured to regulate the plan and development of the fair. From the demise of Burnham's partner during the process to outlandishly tight due dates, work distress, a...
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...The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson gives readers an insightful look into what it was truly like living in Chicago in the 19th century, showing the power struggle over good and evil in these confusing times. The book follows two, at first, seemingly unrelated storylines. The first is the building of the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, the other about a serial killer known as H.H. Holmes. The book begins with a prologue of a Mr. Daniel H. Burnham aboard a ship, the Olympic, with his wife, Margaret in 1912. As Burnham looks back, remembering sad accounts of friends who helped him in the great accomplishment of building the fair, we as readers sense that something bad happened earlier on in his life, probably during the times of the fair. Burnham, of course, as the...
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...In the beginning of the novel “The devil in the white city” by Erik Larson, the author begins with “How easy it was to disappear.” (pg.11) This quote represent how there was “anonymous deaths happening very often.” Most of the deaths were young naive women. The women were ending up dead because they were released from their protection. The young naive women migrated to chicago from farm cities in order to find new jobs and to be on their own. The young women got jobs under “alien roofs,”(Pg.11) the jobs that were offered were typewriters, seamstress, and weavers. Young women traveled by trains and,were able to walk down the unsafe streets of the city. As the young naive women were traveling, the pullman strike was occurring at the same time....
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...3 Statistical Analysis 4 Conclusion 4 Dataset for the 2004 season 5 Regression Analysis taking LOG (Y) 6 Regression Analysis 8 Executive Summary This report is to determine whether total team payroll for major league baseball teams directly varies with each team’s home attendance. This is an important statistical analysis because if we can prove that there is a relationship between salary and attendance then we can see that more fans in the stands will give a team more buying power when it comes to signing players. Dataset The independent variable is team payroll and the dependent variable is team home attendance. Each team plays 81 home games. The dataset consists of 30 Major League Baseball teams from the 2004 season. Data Observations For the independent variable: The arithmetic mean for home attendance is: 30,453.67 The median for total home attendance is: 31,499.50 The standard deviation for total home attendance is: 8,132.28139 The minimum for total home attendance is: 14,052 The maximum for total home attendance is: 50,499 For the dependent variable: The arithmetic mean for total payroll is: $73,052,363.27 The median for total payroll is: $66,191,416.50 The standard deviation for total payroll is: $33,672,116.60 The minimum for total payroll is: $29,363,067 The maximum for total payroll is: $208,306,817 Statistical Analysis Team A has chosen...
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...Walker’s Appeal: Book Analysis Walker's Appeal was an desperate cry and plan to awaken others blacks in America to the evils of the so-called Christian whites that were mistreating them. The appeal was actually called Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. The appeal lifted the veil of injustice and tyranny covered so long by the blacks in America who had became servile and mentally dead. It was an emotionally centered, powerful antislavery pamphlet published by David Walker in September 1829 and sparsely allocated across the South. Although Walker himself was born free, taking the legal rank of his mother, he was deeply troubled by the slave status of his father. His father was born subjected, and enslaved by whites and died before Walker was born. His father’s experience as well as the oppressive hell-like conditions inflicted on by the "so called Christians" as he refers to whites throughout the book, enabled his ideology of blacks in America being the most degraded, wretched and abject set of beings since the world began. Throughout the book Mr. David walker desperately tries to "awaken" the black people of America from the deep emotional and mental sleep brought on by the great evils of the deviated Christians. Mr. Walker exclaims “Can our condition get any worst? can it be more mean and object?"(pg.14.) Within this book he opens my eyes to the suffrage of the people whom which I as a black woman in America share my blood and genetic make-up with. Within this...
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...novel throughout its whole text. In his dissertation “The Metaphor of Devil and Cross in Ngugi-Wa-Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross” under the researcher’s supervision, Nvunabandi Byamana (2010) tried to show that more than what everybody would be led to put at first sight of this title, that ‘Devil’ and ‘Cross’ are mere symbols, they can be constructed into metaphors after a careful reading of the novel. The findings show that the following metaphors would be correct if based on the novel’s analysis: Colonialism was a devil. Capitalism is a devil. Imperialism is a devil. Neocolonialism is a devil. Independence was a cross. Communism is a cross. Unity is a cross. But the title of Ngugi’s novel ‘Devil on the Cross’ draws attention to itself and raises some queries whether the devil he is talking about : is on the cross; was on the cross; has been put on the cross; or should be put on the cross. The opening of the book, however, unfolds this initial ambiguity by specifying that the devil should be put on the cross by the oppressed class: thus my interest in the topic because the title appears as an invitation to crucify the devil and this justifies the title of the paper, Devil on the Cross: Ngugi’s Marxist Invitation. Still, after agreeing that the title is an invitation, there is need to know who is/are invited to crucify the devil and how they should proceed to crucify him. The analysis in the whole paper seeks to give satisfactory answers to any of these...
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