The Motivation of Lester in Child of God :: Child

The Motivation of Lester in Child of God  Ã‚   In the novel, Child of God. Lester Ballard committed heinous crimes against innocent victims. He murdered people in cold-blooded fashion and raped women when they were dead. What makes a human being do this may tell us a lot about criminals and humans themselves. In this paper I will try and analyze some of the core issues that lie at the heart of this story. Why did Ballard do what he did, to what extent is he responsible and what should have been his punishment. From birth, Lester Ballard seemed to have been cursed with misfortune. His mother had run away from home when he was an infant and his father hung himself when he was about nine or ten years old. Lester actually had to see his father hanging from the ceiling. That would leave a permanent scar on any child, including Ballard, as the author notes, "They say he never was right after his daddy killed hisself." (21) From then on, Ballard seems to have gone where life took him. What he suffered from was a total lack of awareness. Ballard was a well before he understood what that word meant and he never learned the concept in his entire life. He did not know what things meant, did not even know what happened. Every signal he got from the outside community was telling him that he did not belong there, that he was not accepted. Even when Ballard enters a church service, a setting where people are accepted and loved, he was rejected for who he was. People spoke about him in whispers, "A windy ruffle of whispers went among them." (31). His community, through rejection victimized Ballard. Rejection may well be the most potent form of victimization since it cuts off the air to out most cherished need of connection and love. Connecting Ballard's background and childhood to his crimes is a difficult task. Other than his parents, we are not told too much about what else he went through when he was a child. From the bizarre nature of his crimes, he seems to have to have been through intense suffering and agony. A lot of his crimes were committed against women. He raped women, but only after killing them. A living woman might have been too much for Ballard to handle; the risk of rejection would have been too great for him.

Case Vignettes in Acid-Base Balance Essay

A 14-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis has complained of an increased cough productive of green sputum over the last week. She also complained of being increasingly short of breath, and she is noticeably wheezing on physical examination. Arterial blood was drawn and sampled, revealing the following values: Questions: 1. How would you classify this girl’s acid-base status? 2. How does cystic fibrosis cause this acid-base imbalance? 3. How would the kidneys try to compensate for the girl’s acid-base imbalance? 4. List some other causes of this type of acid-base disturbance. Vignette #2: A 76-year-old man complained to his wife of severe sub-sternal chest pains that radiated down the inside of his left arm. Shortly afterward, he collapsed on the living room floor. Paramedics arriving at his house just minutes later found him unresponsive, not breathing, and without a pulse. CPR and electroconvulsive shock were required to start his heart beating again. Upon arrival at the Emergency Room, the man started to regain consciousness, complaining of severe shortness of breath (dyspnea) and continued chest pain. On physical examination, his vital signs were as follows: Systemic blood 85 mm Hg / 50 mm pressure Hg Heart rate 175 beats / minute Respiratory rate 32 breaths / minute Temperature 99.2o F His breathing was labored, his pulses were rapid and weak everywhere, and his skin was cold and clammy. An ECG was done, revealing significant â€Å"Q† waves in most of the leads. Blood testing revealed markedly elevated creatine phosphokinase (CPK) levels of cardiac muscle origin. Arterial blood was sampled and revealed the following: pH 7.22 pCO2 30 mm Hg pO2 70 mm Hg Hemoglobin – O2 saturation 88 % [HCO3-] 2 meq / liter Questions: 5. What is the diagnosis? What evidence supports your diagnosis? 6. How would you classify his acid-base status? What specifically caused this acidbase disturbance? 7. How has his body started to compensate for this acid-base disturbance? 8. List some other causes of this type of acid-base disturbance. Vignette #3: An elderly gentleman is in a coma after suffering a severe stroke. He is in the intensive care unit and has been placed on a ventilator. Arterial blood gas measurements from the patient reveal the following: pH 7.50 pCO2 30 mm Hg pO2 100 mm Hg Hemoglobin – O2 saturation 98% [HCO3-] 24 meq / liter Questions: 9. How would you classify this patient’s acid-base status? 10. How does this patient’s hyperventilation pattern raise the pH of the blood? 11. How might the kidneys respond to this acid-base disturbance? 12. List some other causes of this type of acid-base disturbance.

Impact Of The Industrial Revolution On The Society Of The...

The industrial revolution in the 1800s enhanced the lives of the American citizens. No longer were cultivation and farming a chief concern; instead, manufacturing and machinery were the major improvements of that time. Still today, big corporations are looking for the next big thing that could aid citizens in their everyday lives. What is often ignored, however, are the environmental factors that are being affected by the decisions made by these industries. Harmful acid rain, smog, and buried nuclear wastes diseased the Northern continent where some places were deemed uninhabitable to the public because of the threatening health risks. Environmental laws and agencies were then created in the 1970s to shift the impact that corporations have on the environment. The unchecked power that big corporations have exhausted has enhanced the decline of environmental stability and initiated many territorial restrictions due to the careless actions of the company. 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