Economic Indicators Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Economic Indicators - Essay Example The major pro cyclic economic indicators are GDP, Interest rates, Investment, Inflation, Labor etc. While the main counter cyclic economic indicators are Unemployment, International Trade, and Federal Finances etc. The Gross Domestic Product is one of the most significant direct indicators in the economy. It is vital to monitor the growth rate of the GDP. Any deviation from the range tends to have a significant impact on the economy. An increase in the growth rate above the general level may lead to high inflation and poor performance in the rate of growth leads to a recession. Interest Rate is a pro cyclic or direct economic indicator. They are used to manage the booms and slumps in the business cycle and finely tune it. The interest rates fall in recessions and they rise in inflationary periods. International trade is the swapping of goods and services between countries, which tends to have countercyclical nature. When an economy is prospering and experiencing an economic boom then people choose to spend a bigger part of their income on imported and local goods and services, however, exports donà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t have such alterations. This in turn upsets the balance of trade, as net exports are negative, which results in more being imported and less being exported. Whereas, when an economy is in a slump, people tend to spend less on imported goods and services and just focus on the basic necessities. This encourages more goods and services to be exported and has a favorable impact on the balance of trade as less is being imported.

How accurate are selection methods. How is accuracy measured Essay - 1

How accurate are selection methods. How is accuracy measured - Essay Example There are five determinants of accurate recruitment and selection process. They are reliability, validity, legality, generalization and utility. Recruitment involves a pool of candidates being attracted for vacant jobs while selection involves choosing the right candidate from a pool of candidates. It might either be external where recruitment is done or internal, which requires promotion. Employee selection is part of the staffing process of an organization, which also include human resource planning, recruitment and retention activities. In conducting human resource planning, an organization project its likely demand for personnel who posses particular knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs). Job analysis compares the present level of staffing to anticipated availability of the required personnel in the internal or external labor markets. Organizations carry out the recruitment processes when there is staff turnover or organizational expansion. This enables the organization to fill vacancies as required. Vacancies that are created by natural wastages should be filled as soon as possible. Natural waste is the process that oc curs when employees leave their jobs in order to retire or move to other jobs and not because their employer has made to them leave. When the organization, expands, vacancies are created and needs to be filled by the right personnel who will perform their duties towards achievement of organizational goals. When the organization wants to change direction from its initial business or when partners running organization decides to pull away from one another, the new organization will require new employees who have right abilities and knowledge, especially if most employees remains in one organization leaving the new with a few. When the organization conducts succession planning, vacancies are created. Succession planning is a process whereby internal personnel are identified and developed to fill key or critical organizational

Global Warming Annotated Bibliography

Global Warming Annotated Bibliography Our planet has been around for a very long time and has had several changes to its climate. Most of these changes have been caused by humans, and the effects have gotten worse and worse as the population on the planet has been increasing. This source is a scholarly source. It is a decent sized book that has many different charts and graphs about the Earths climate and weather and how it changes, and also how humans have changed it with greenhouse gas emissions. Another reason why I believe this source is scholarly is that it was writing by two people with doctorates. A third reason is that they list many sources they have used to help make their book about global warming. This book is relevant to my topic because it has a vast amount of information of Earths climate and global warming effects. I mainly used this source because it gives a very well detailed introduction to global warming. I also used this source to be a scholarly source for an intro to global warming, so I can have a popular source about global warming as well. Reasons for this source not being too well is that it is a very lengthy book with a lot of information that I dont need for an introduction to global warming, also the introduction itself is very long and makes it a little more difficult to summarize all the contents it had. Shah, Anup. Climate Change and Global Warming.ÂÂ  Global Issues, Updated: 10 Aug. 2010. Accessed: 15 Sep. 2010. Every year the population is constantly increasing at a very high rate. Leaving more and more people that would be using electricity, driving cars, flying in planes, and littering. Also creating a larger chance for other species to be endangered if we dont make smarter choices. This source is a popular source because they dont have any other sources to back up their information. Also the person who wrote the article isnt credited for any degrees or PhDs. This source is relevant because it explains details about our global warming problem. I used this source to get another view on an introduction to global warming, but by using a popular source this time instead of a scholarly source. One thing that wasnt very great about this source is that it was kind of brief. It wasnt loaded with a lot of content to explain more about the global warming problems. Another reason is that it doesnt focus much on any topics of global warming, it seems as though the author tried to cram in everything a bout global warming in a few paragraphs. Simmons, . 5 Deadliest Effects of Global Warming.Environmental GraffitiÂÂ  n. pag. Web. 15 Sep 2010. . There are a large variety of effects global warming has to our climate and planet. One result of global warming is the spread of disease, it makes it much easier for diseases and viruss to spread due to the warmer climate. Another effect is longer and more drastic heat waves and droughts, which could increase the number of wild fires and can cause some areas of wild life to die out from lack of water. There are many other effects such as the polar ice caps melting, warmer water causing more hurricanes, and many others. This source is a popular source because it isnt very lengthy and it has a lot of things off the side. It also has an area where the users can make comments and put feedback on the content. I feel that this source is essential because it has various effects of global warming. I used this source because the information it contained is useful to my research on global warming. One reason this source wasnt perfect is it didnt go in a lot of detail with all the effects. It l isted many of them and had a sentence or two about the effects. Nordhaus, William, and Joseph Boyer.ÂÂ  Warming the World. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000. Print. The United States produces the most carbon dioxide gas emissions than any other country in the world. Since we cause the most pollution our country is going to be vastly more effected than some other smaller countries that dont release many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If we dont do anything to stop this, the global warming effects will hit our country hard with disasters from nature such as hurricanes and wild fires, which will also cause us to be in a worse economic state for paying the repairs needed after the effects of the natural disasters take place. This is a scholarly source because it is just text, has a lot of pages, and many charts and graphs about the changes in our climate and how each country is effecting our climate. One thing about this source that wasnt needed was the fact that they had almost every single country listed on their charts. In my opinion I think it is only necessary to have data on all of the major countries. What Can We Do To Stop Global Warming?.ÂÂ  Global Warming News BlogÂÂ  n. pag. Web. 15 Sep 2010. . The main cause of global warming is the emissions of Carbon Dioxide gases. Doing stuff like car pooling, making less trips to stores, and riding a bike or walking to a near by place instead of driving there can greatly decrease the amount of Carbon Dioxide emissions if everybody contributes. There are also other methods of stopping global warming by using alternate energy sources, such as sun, wind, and water. This source is a popular source because there arent any charts or graphs anywhere and there is no author mentioned with a PhD. This article is relevant because it lists many options we have to stop global warming. Im using this source to find out about those ways to stop it, or at least slow the process down until we can figure out better and more efficient ways of stopping global warming. This source isnt perfect because there wasnt any graphs that could help show how cars have effected the environment. Also there isnt any other sources that could back up their statements. Krupp, Fred, and Miriam Horn.ÂÂ  Earth, The Sequel. New York : Environmental Defense Fund, 2008. Print. Most likely the best possible way to end the process of global warming would be to find very efficient and effective alternate energy sources. We already have many alternate energy sources such as using wind, using the sun, and using water. There is also another energy source that is very efficient, which is nuclear power. The problem with this is many people are afraid that there will be a meltdown causing many problems. This source is scholarly because it uses other sources for citations throughout the book. It also is very detailed and doesnt use simple words. This source is really good because it has pages and pages with information about ways to solve global warming, it has positives and negatives on the choices we can make. I used this source to figure out more about our options to end our global crisis. This source isnt perfect because there werent any charts in it, there was only numerical data within the sentences that were backed up by other sources in some cases.

A Dream of Equality :: Free Essay Writer

A Dream of Equality   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. King was born in a nice community that had a low amount of crime with many of his neighbors being very religious. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s father was a well respected clergyman in the community. His father did his best to protect his family from the harsh realities of racism and segregation and was the person most responsible for King becoming a man of faith. Throughout his early childhood, King and his brother Alfred Martin were subject to strict corporal punishment from their father. But all his life King still had nothing but love and respect for his father. When he was twelve years old, King began doubting his faith. When he left to Morehouse College he thought about entering the fields of medicine or law. After graduating from Morehouse with a degree in sociology, King attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania and earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the first stands against discrimination that King was a part of dealt with public transportation. In Montgomery, Alabama, the first ten seats in a public bus were reserved for whites only and the last ten seats were reserved for blacks. But if there were empty white seats towards the front of the bus and the rest of the seats were full, blacks were forced to stand. After years of being mistreated by racist bus drivers, the African American community had had enough and decided to boycott the bus system in Montgomery. On December 5, 1955, a group of black ministers asked Martin Luther King Jr. to be the spokesman for the protest. King accepted the job and inspired the black community to boycott the bus system. In his speeches, King emphasized basic Christian values and American democracy. He maintained a balance of militancy and moderation. King inspired people to be angry about what was going on and at the same time inspired them to maintain their composure and be responsible. The goal of the bus boycott in Montgomery was to get the city to hire black bus drivers. Blacks all over Montgomery stopped using the public buses. In order to help the people that were boycotting to get to work, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) organized a car pool. However, soon after the car pool started police began stopping the drivers, questioning, and arresting them.

Wall Street

How far will you go to be successful? How far will you go to win? Nothing can illustrate the lengths that a person is willing to take just to profit than in the cutthroat world of stocks. And no place in the world is more ruthless than Wall Street. Wall Street (Stone, 1987) takes its viewers to a behind-the-scenes look at this place in the world where people live and feed on stocks. The entirety of the film tackles a lot of moral conflicts that are involved in the business dealings done within the movie. This is Oliver Stone’s criticism of the mentality of the people who utilized illegal means just to get the biggest profit in the quickest time. Stone criticism not only targeted the corporate raiders whose practices were being exposed in the insider trading scandal in the 1980s, but it was a critique on the quick-buck culture that was prevalent then and even at this time. THE PLOT The plot is traditional and formulaic. A young hotshot, wanting to be successful, gets the opportunity when his persistence pays off as he is hired by a famous veteran. The rookie takes on the job albeit the discovery of the illegalities of the methods. He gets the perks and the movie shows its audience the grandiose rewards he gets. When a conflict of interest arises, he goes against the veteran. He loses everything yet he gets his payback. This has been a formula for a number of movies, and Wall Street is no exception. The young, idealistic hotshot here is Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen. He is a stockbroker for a lesser-known Wall Street firm. The hotshot is a dreamer. In one scene in the movie where he just lost a lot of money because of a client, he utters that he dreams of being on the other side of the call sometimes. In subsequent scenes too, it can be observed that Bud does not dream of being a stockbroker forever. To achieve that dream, he constantly calls the office of his hero for a chance of getting an audience and ultimately, impressing him to gain employment under his hero’s wing. The veteran, excessively rich and wealthy, and the movie protagonist’s hero is Gordon Gekko. This role led Michael Douglas to garnering an Academy Award of Lead Performance by an Actor. He is indeed truly worthy of the award as he portrayed the cold and vicious yet in some way appealing Gekko to the hilt. Gekko represents the ultimate corporate raider, the Wall Street shark who buys and closes down companies under their noses for his profit. Yet his methods, though disagreeable, are effective and masterfully justified as evidenced by his Greed is good speech in the movie (to be discussed later). On Gekko’s birthday, Bud shows up in Gekko’s office with a box of Davidoff cigars as a present and a bribe to finally get the opportunity he has been waiting for. Desperate to impress Gekko, Bud blurts out insider information that his father Carl (played by Martin Sheen, Charlie’s real-life father) revealed to him about BlueStar airlines. Carl works for BlueStar and also serves as a union leader there. When Gekko profits out of Bud’s tip, he saw something in the kid that he liked. He saw the killer instinct, the will and determination to do whatever it takes to succeed. He saw a bit of himself in Bud, as he revealed later on in the movie. He then employs Bud to work for him but not as an ordinary broker. He asks Bud to spy on his competition and other illegal acts. At first, Bud hesitates but he eventually agrees. He is rewarded with his works, and not without extravagance. Bud enjoys the luxurious life that his work with Gekko provided for him. The main conflict of the film arises when Bud decides to make BlueStar competitive. Bud enthusiastically pushes forward his proposals to Gekko. Gekko, on the other hand, agrees with the proposals armed with contrasting intentions compared to that of Bud’s. When Gekko and Bud present their plan to BlueStar representatives, including Carl, Carl voices out his opposition as he sees behind the guise that Gekko puts on. Yet, Bud remains to be sold by Gekko’s deception. It did not take much time before Bud realizes what Gekko’s plan really is. When Bud learns that Gekko plans to sell the hangars and planes, he confronts Gekko. When asked why he was wrecking BlueStar, Gekko answers, â€Å"Because it’s wreckable.† From there, Bud sets off a plan to save BlueStar. Eventually they do but not without consequences. Bud is arrested for illegal insider trading by the SEC. Still, he manages to get payback as he lures Gekko into a trap and thus managing to record Gekko’s confession of guilt on tape. The film ends with Bud walking on the steps of a courthouse on his way to his sentencing. ISSUES The Quick-Buck mentality vs. Hard Work and Fair Play Wall Street can be likened to a battle of two fathers over the moral consciousness of a son. This is not the only movie where Stone used this concept. His Vietnam War movie Platoon also shares this conflict (where Charlie Sheen also portrays the role of the â€Å"son† torn between two fathers, one good and another evil). In Wall Street, Carl Fox and Gordon Gekko represent the two opposing sides in the contest over the moral beliefs of Bud Fox, the â€Å"son†. Gekko represents the cutthroat businessman who resorts to all means to gain the biggest profit in the easiest way. He does so through illegal means but not without justification. The list of his reasons is not uncommon and yet is still popularly used even up to these times to justify wrongdoings. These include excuses like â€Å"Everybody does it†, â€Å"There’s something in this for everybody†, â€Å"Nobody gets hurt†, â€Å"As long as we don’t get caught†, etc. This promotes dishonesty in business dealings. But as shown by Gekko, it is this type of people who get to be on top of the hill. The ruthless, the cunning, or the relentless are the ones who succeed and eat up those who strive to compete in the merciless world of business. The implication of the justifications Gekko provides for his actions can be summed up in the common adage, saying that â€Å"if you can’t beat them, join them†. Surely, there are other people in the real world that are similar in nature to Gekko, people who become extremely successful using unethical methods. Competing with these people is one Herculean task to surmount. Thus, there are those who give up on competing with such sharks on ethical grounds and are consequently influenced to follow their lead. In today’s world, it is not surprising to find people like Gekko and the quick-buck mentality that they adhere to, where they prioritize profit over anything else including morals and services to their clients. On the other hand, Carl Fox represents the people who advocate hard work and honesty in business dealings. Carl Fox is not the only character in the film that adheres to such philosophy. One superior of Bud in the Wall Street firm stated, in one of the earlier scenes, that â€Å"good things sometimes take time.† He cites IBM and Hilton as examples. This is a direct contrast to Gekko’s impatient and short-term approach towards business. Success, via the ethical way, takes time. But eventually it will come to those who work hard and remain ethical in their ways. This kind of thinking seems to be overshadowed by the prevalent success of the Gekko-like businessmen. Despite that, there are those who remain stern to keeping their methods unstained by illegalities. They preach that hard work will reap its benefits but it takes time. Gekko scoffs at this conception citing his father as an example of a hardworking man who worked all his life and died of mediocrity. In the present day, there are those who steadfastly hold on to this principle despite all the satirical points made against their cause. Bud Fox in the movie represents the â€Å"son† torn between two fathers, namely Gekko and Carl. He is the student confused on which school of thought to pursue, the quick-buck or fair play. This is actually a mirror of today’s world. Stone intended this movie to reflect the rugged financial wheeling and dealing that is actually happening, especially at the time when the movie was made. The playing field is so dominated by players who have regard profit, wealth and winning above any other consideration. What Bud Fox represents is the individual player who is given a choice on which side to choose, the cunning majority or the blue-collar minority. Stone’s message is a dark warning for those who follow Gekko’s way. As one of Bud’s bosses says it, â€Å"Enjoy it while it lasts, because it never does.† The film ends with both Fox and Gekko getting prosecuted. They may enjoy the riches brought about by their illegal actions but time will come when their misdoings will collect their due. Meanwhile, those who do not heed the call of the â€Å"easy money† are bound to have no worries of retribution. Greed is good? The highlight of the film, what significantly won Michael Douglas his Oscar for Acting, is the scene where he delivers the Greed is Good speech. Such conception was the popular mindset (and alibi) for the profit-obsessed culture in the 1980s market that Stone was criticizing. By this scene, Stone shows his viewers the kind of eloquence and guts that people like Gekko have in defending the actions they do. This scene masterfully and powerfully provides that illustration. Gekko’s claims, amazingly delivered by Douglas, provide a chill to the spine of viewers as it shows just how ruthless and yet appealingly logical Gekko is. He delivers the speech with such composure and bravado that merits cheers and jubilation among his audience and silences his detractors despite the obvious disreputability of his catchphrase. The setting here is that Gekko is trying to take over a company, Teldar Paper. In a shareholders meeting of such company, company management oppose such planned take over by Gekko mainly because of Gekko’s reputation as a company raider. Gekko, on the other hand, rebuffs this voiced out opposition with this grand speech, provided here in part: The point is, ladies and gentlemen: Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right; greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words – will save not only Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. At first look, he may have a point. As evidenced by the acceptance of his audience, it seems as though Gekko has indeed made a very convincing statement. All development can be traced to man’s insatiable hunger for life, money, love, knowledge, etc. as noted by Gekko. It is seemingly logical to think that greed is the driving force behind every single successful venture of man. If that is so, then it is just right to teach people to be greedy. Right? If this was the case, then the movie should have ended with a decisive statement that Gekko never gets caught. But Stone had a different view. Stone included this speech in the movie to showcase up to what absurd lengths people like Gekko go to in order to twist the facts and values long-cherished by society just to justify their cause and actions. Greed is wanting in excess of something that is never meant to be one’s own. It is an excessive desire to possess more than one needs or deserves. Anything in excess is wrong and can never be good, as declared in Nicomachean ethics. This just proves how twisted Gekko and his kind are. They turn something innately bad to something good just to satisfy their inner selves that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. They are blinded by their greed on what is truly wrong and write. Greed overcomes them. The desire for winning the deal is more dominant than observing ethics. Even the rewards of money and luxurious living are never enough if one is overrun by greed. In the movie, Gekko and Bud are enjoying the luxurious life yet the audience never gets to examine the splendor of their riches as these are only shown in passing. Such is the life dedicated to greed. It doesn’t give room to gloat in the rewards because it constantly seeks more. The concept of enough eludes them. When Bud confronts Gekko of how much is enough, Gekko struggles to answer. Greed does that to a person. Greed corrupts. Too much of anything corrupts to a point where the boundaries between right and wrong are breached just to temporarily satisfy and insatiable appetite for winning the deal. Greed twists the morality of a person. It changes the priorities of a person involved, in a deal; greed is self-serving instead of serving what the deal embodies, which is the people that will benefit from it. It is this moral corruption that Stone exposes through this movie, the moral corruption brought about by wealth and greed. The legal corruption is only set as a backdrop amidst the crisis in morality that the protagonist of the film is going through. CONCLUSION Oliver Stone’s main message in this film is that the ways of the wicked will ultimately fail. He concludes the movie by Gekko getting caught on tape with a confession of his illegal acts after he falls for a trap set by Bud and the SEC. Bud is also indicted for the things he did while employed by Gekko. The last scene shows him walking towards his sentencing. This ending can be classified as a traditional one. It gives the viewers the old impression that â€Å"good† ultimately triumphs over â€Å"evil†. If the movie happened in reality though, there would have been a very different ending. There is one observable major flaw in the movie. One can only speculate on the reasons why such flaw can be bypassed by Stone (either corporate pressure to leave a good ending or it’s a pun to the romanticism of movies). If Gekko is such a cold, calculating and cunning man, it is highly doubtful whether he would let himself be trapped by such methods. It is more doubtful if he would allow himself to be seen with Bud after Bud was unceremoniously arrested. It is also unlikely that Gekko would not anticipate a wire on Bud when they met near the end of the movie. In summation, the ending is highly doubtful. The relevance of such obvious flaw is that it leaves its viewers (at least, those who recognized such flaw) with no hope of romanticist ideals that such a conflict can be resolved easily. In today’s world, there are a number of Gekko’s around. The flaw of the movie makes viewers realize that a number of Gekko’s out there do exist and are left unscathed and undetected (maybe even untouchable). It is then left to the viewer what to do with such fact of life. Surrounded by sharks and unethical financial players, the present financial manager is faced with a choice, the Gekko-way or the hard way. The movie ends with an easy resolution promoting an ideal situation where the â€Å"bad† guys fail. In the real world, that may not always be the case. It is up to the person whether to abide by ethics and laws in financial dealings or bend such laws and ethical rules because there are those who get away with it and they are the ones on top. The movie provides two ways towards success, the hard and long way or the easy way where rules are only part of the show. Reference: 1. Stone, O.   (1987). Wall Street. California: 20th Century Fox.   

Characteristics of Yeat’s Poetry

Yeats believed that art and politics were intrinsically linked and used his writing to express his attitudes toward Irish politics, as well as to educate his readers about Irish cultural history. From an early age, Yeats felt a deep connection to Ireland and his national identity, and he thought that British rule negatively impacted Irish politics and social life.His early compilation of folklore sought to teach a literary history that had been suppressed by British rule, and his early poems were odes to the beauty and mystery of the Irish countryside. This work frequently integrated references to myths and mythic figures, including Oisin and Cuchulain. As Yeats became more involved in Irish politics—through his relationships with the Irish National Theatre, the Irish Literary Society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and Maud Gonne—his poems increasingly resembled political manifestos.Yeats wrote numerous poems about Ireland’s involvement in World War I ( "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death† [1919], â€Å"A Meditation in Time of War† [1921]), Irish nationalists and political activists (â€Å"On a Political Prisoner† [1921], â€Å"In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz† [1933]), and the Easter Rebellion (â€Å"Easter 1916† [1916]). Yeats believed that art could serve a political function: poems could both critique and comment on political events, as well as educate and inform a population. The Impact of Fate and the Divine on HistoryYeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of a unique spiritual and philosophical system that emphasized the role of fate and historical determinism, or the belief that events have been preordained. Yeats had rejected Christianity early in his life, but his lifelong study of mythology, Theosophy, spiritualism, philosophy, and the occult demonstrate his profound interest in the divine and how it interacts with humanity. Over the course of his life, he created a complex system of spirituality, using the image of interlocking gyres (similar to spiral cones) to map out the development and reincarnation of the soul.Yeats believed that history was determined by fate and that fate revealed its plan in moments when the human and divine interact. A tone of historically determined inevitability permeates his poems, particularly in descriptions of situations of human and divine interaction. The divine takes on many forms in Yeats’s poetry, sometimes literally (â€Å"Leda and the Swan† [1923]), sometimes abstractly (â€Å"The Second Coming† [1919]). In other poems, the divine is only gestured to (as in the sense of the divine in the Byzantine mosaics in â€Å"Sailing to Byzantium† [1926]).No matter what shape it takes, the divine signals the role of fate in determining the course of history. The Transition from Romanticism to Modernism Yeats started his long literary career as a romantic poet and gradually ev olved into a modernist poet. When he began publishing poetry in the 1880s, his poems had a lyrical, romantic style, and they focused on love, longing and loss, and Irish myths. His early writing follows the conventions of romantic verse, utilizing familiar rhyme schemes, metric patterns, and poetic structures. Although it is lighter than his later writings, his early poetry is still sophisticated and accomplished.Several factors contributed to his poetic evolution: his interest in mysticism and the occult led him to explore spiritually and philosophically complex subjects. Yeats’s frustrated romantic relationship with Maud Gonne caused the starry-eyed romantic idealism of his early work to become more knowing and cynical. Additionally, his concern with Irish subjects evolved as he became more closely connected to nationalist political causes. As a result, Yeats shifted his focus from myth and folklore to contemporary politics, often linking the two to make potent statements t hat reflected political agitation and turbulence in Ireland and abroad.Finally, and most significantly, Yeats’s connection with the changing face of literary culture in the early twentieth century led him to pick up some of the styles and conventions of the modernist poets. The modernists experimented with verse forms, aggressively engaged with contemporary politics, challenged poetic conventions and the literary tradition at large, and rejected the notion that poetry should simply be lyrical and beautiful. These influences caused his poetry to become darker, edgier, and more concise.Although he never abandoned the verse forms that provided the sounds and rhythms of his earlier poetry, there is still a noticeable shift in style and tone over the course of his career. Motifs Irish Nationalism and Politics Throughout his literary career, Yeats incorporated distinctly Irish themes and issues into his work. He used his writing as a tool to comment on Irish politics and the home r ule movement and to educate and inform people about Irish history and culture. Yeats also used the backdrop of the Irish countryside to retell stories and legends from Irish folklore.As he became increasingly involved in nationalist politics, his poems took on a patriotic tone. Yeats addressed Irish politics in a variety of ways: sometimes his statements are explicit political commentary, as in â€Å"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,† in which he addresses the hypocrisy of the British use of Irish soldiers in World War I. Such poems as â€Å"Easter 1916† and â€Å"In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz† address individuals and events connected to Irish nationalist politics, while â€Å"The Second Coming† and â€Å"Leda and the Swan† subtly include the idea of Irish nationalism.In these poems, a sense of cultural crisis and conflict seeps through, even though the poems are not explicitly about Ireland. By using images of chaos, disorder, a nd war, Yeats engaged in an understated commentary on the political situations in Ireland and abroad. Yeats’s active participation in Irish politics informed his poetry, and he used his work to further comment on the nationalist issues of his day. Mysticism and the Occult Yeats had a deep fascination with mysticism and the occult, and his poetry is infused with a sense of the otherworldly, the spiritual, and the unknown.His interest in the occult began with his study of Theosophy as a young man and expanded and developed through his participation in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical secret society. Mysticism figures prominently in Yeats’s discussion of the reincarnation of the soul, as well as in his philosophical model of the conical gyres used to explain the journey of the soul, the passage of time, and the guiding hand of fate. Mysticism and the occult occur again and again in Yeats’s poetry, most explicitly in â€Å"The Second Coming† but also in poems such as â€Å"Sailing to Byzantium† and â€Å"The Magi† (1916).The rejection of Christian principles in favor of a more supernatural approach to spirituality creates a unique flavor in Yeats’s poetry that impacts his discussion of history, politics, and love. Irish Myth and Folklore Yeats’s participation in the Irish political system had origins in his interest in Irish myth and folklore. Irish myth and folklore had been suppressed by church doctrine and British control of the school system. Yeats used his poetry as a tool for re-educating the Irish population about their heritage and as a strategy for developing Irish nationalism.He retold entire folktales in epic poems and plays, such as The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939), and used fragments of stories in shorter poems, such as â€Å"The Stolen Child† (1886), which retells a parable of fairies luring a child away from his home, and â€Å"Cuchulainà ¢â‚¬â„¢s Fight with the Sea† (1925), which recounts part of an epic where the Irish folk hero Cuchulain battles his long-lost son by at the edge of the sea. Other poems deal with subjects, images, and themes culled from folklore.In â€Å"Who Goes with Fergus? † (1893) Yeats imagines a meeting with the exiled wandering king of Irish legend, while â€Å"The Song of Wandering Aengus† (1899) captures the experiences of the lovelorn god Aengus as he searches for the beautiful maiden seen in his dreams. Most important, Yeats infused his poetry with a rich sense of Irish culture. Even poems that do not deal explicitly with subjects from myth retain powerful tinges of indigenous Irish culture.Yeats often borrowed word selection, verse form, and patterns of imagery directly from traditional Irish myth and folklore. Symbols The Gyre The gyre, a circular or conical shape, appears frequently in Yeats’s poems and was developed as part of the philosophical system outlin ed in his book A Vision. At first, Yeats used the phases of the moon to articulate his belief that history was structured in terms of ages, but he later settled upon the gyre as a more useful model.He chose the image of interlocking gyres—visually represented as two intersecting conical spirals—to symbolize his philosophical belief that all things could be described in terms of cycles and patterns. The soul (or the civilization, the age, and so on) would move from the smallest point of the spiral to the largest before moving along to the other gyre. Although this is a difficult concept to grasp abstractly, the image makes sense when applied to the waxing and waning of a particular historical age or the evolution of a human life from youth to adulthood to old age.The symbol of the interlocking gyres reveals Yeats’s belief in fate and historical determinism as well as his spiritual attitudes toward the development of the soul, since creatures and events must evolv e according to the conical shape. With the image of the gyre, Yeats created a shorthand reference in his poetry that stood for his entire philosophy of history and spirituality. The Swan Swans are a common symbol in poetry, often used to depict idealized nature. Yeats employs this convention in â€Å"The Wild Swans at Coole† (1919), in which the regal birds represent an unchanging, flawless ideal.In â€Å"Leda and the Swan,† Yeats rewrites the Greek myth of Zeus and Leda to comment on fate and historical inevitability: Zeus disguises himself as a swan to rape the unsuspecting Leda. In this poem, the bird is fearsome and destructive, and it possesses a divine power that violates Leda and initiates the dire consequences of war and devastation depicted in the final lines. Even though Yeats clearly states that the swan is the god Zeus, he also emphasizes the physicality of the swan: the beating wings, the dark webbed feet, the long neck and beak.Through this description of its physical characteristics, the swan becomes a violent divine force. By rendering a well-known poetic symbol as violent and terrifying rather than idealized and beautiful, Yeats manipulates poetic conventions, an act of literary modernism, and adds to the power of the poem. The Great Beast Yeats employs the figure of a great beast—a horrific, violent animal—to embody difficult abstract concepts. The great beast as a symbol comes from Christian iconography, in which it represents evil and darkness.In â€Å"The Second Coming,† the great beast emerges from the Spiritus Mundi, or soul of the universe, to function as the primary image of destruction in the poem. Yeats describes the onset of apocalyptic events in which the â€Å"blood-dimmed tide is loosed† and the â€Å"ceremony of innocence is drowned† as the world enters a new age and falls apart as a result of the widening of the historical gyres. The speaker predicts the arrival of the Second Com ing, and this prediction summons a â€Å"vast image† of a frightening monster pulled from the collective consciousness of the world.Yeats modifies the well-known image of the sphinx to embody the poem’s vision of the climactic coming. By rendering the terrifying prospect of disruption and change into an easily imagined horrifying monster, Yeats makes an abstract fear become tangible and real. The great beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, where it will evolve into a second Christ (or anti-Christ) figure for the dark new age. In this way, Yeats uses distinct, concrete imagery to symbolize complex ideas about the state of the modern world.