American History X :: essays research papers

In many ways, the media must be involved in ethnic and racial issues. The media is to provide the public with information useful to them. The media is on the public’s side. Racial stereotyping is a problem that is out in the public. Drugs, teen pregnancy, child abuse and rape are also problems that affect the people of the world everyday. The media has a job to make these issues aware to the people and possibly put together a form of solutions. Some ways of addressing issues are blunt and harsh but so are the problems. I don’t think the media can address the issue of racism without stepping into a stereotype somewhere but I also believe the media is obligated to address the obvious false stereotypes and offer ways to terminate them as well. American History X is a movie that directly addresses the issue of race and deals with some very serious issues in a small town. There are a group of white kids that have been influenced by Adolf Hitler’s beliefs and they are very hateful toward blacks, Jews, and any other race that is different than theirs. They all have Nazi signs tattooed on their bodies and their heads are completely shaved. There are very negative viewpoints in the first half of the movie toward blacks and Jews. The â€Å"N† word is used very freely and many of the actions of each group is quite accurate. Although this movie is very harsh and straight forward, their is a great amount of truth in all of the actions of each cultural group. One of the young white men witness a black man breaking into his truck and the black man ends up murdered in a very cruel manner. The movie is a lesson. A lesson about reality but also about how wrong reality can be. After spending years in prison, the attitude of this man is different toward black people and he has a hard time relaying this new attitude to his little brother back home and to the friends he had before going to prison.

Variable Cost and Contribution Margin

CHAPTER 12 PRICING DECISIONS AND COST MANAGEMENT 12-1The three major influences on pricing decisions are 1. Customers 2. Competitors 3. Costs 12-2Not necessarily. For a one-time-only special order, the relevant costs are only those costs that will change as a result of accepting the order. In this case, full product costs will rarely be relevant. It is more likely that full product costs will be relevant costs for long-run pricing decisions. 12-3Two examples of pricing decisions with a short-run focus: 1. Pricing for a one-time-only special order with no long-term implications. . Adjusting product mix and volume in a competitive market. 12-4Activity-based costing helps managers in pricing decisions in two ways. 1. It gives managers more accurate product-cost information for making pricing decisions. 2. It helps managers to manage costs during value engineering by identifying the cost impact of eliminating, reducing, or changing various activities. 12-5Two alternative starting points for long-run pricing decisions are 1. Market-based pricing, an important form of which is target pricing.The market-based approach asks, â€Å"Given what our customers want and how our competitors will react to what we do, what price should we charge? † 2. Cost-based pricing which asks, â€Å"What does it cost us to make this product and, hence, what price should we charge that will recoup our costs and achieve a target return on investment? † 12-6A target cost per unit is the estimated long-run cost per unit of a product (or service) that, when sold at the target price, enables the company to achieve the targeted operating income per unit. 2-7Value engineering is a systematic evaluation of all aspects of the value-chain business functions, with the objective of reducing costs while satisfying customer needs. Value engineering via improvement in product and process designs is a principal technique that companies use to achieve target cost per unit. 12-8A value-added co st is a cost that customers perceive as adding value, or utility, to a product or service. Examples are costs of materials, direct labor, tools, and machinery.A nonvalue-added cost is a cost that customers do not perceive as adding value, or utility, to a product or service. Examples of nonvalue-added costs are costs of rework, scrap, expediting, and breakdown maintenance. 12-9No. It is important to distinguish between when costs are locked in and when costs are incurred, because it is difficult to alter or reduce costs that have already been locked in. 12-10Cost-plus pricing is a pricing approach in which managers add a markup to cost in order to determine price. 2-11Cost-plus pricing methods vary depending on the bases used to calculate prices. Examples are (a) variable manufacturing costs; (b) manufacturing function costs; (c) variable product costs; and (d) full product costs. 12-12Two examples where the difference in the costs of two products or services is much smaller than th e differences in their prices follow: 1. The difference in prices charged for a telephone call, hotel room, or car rental during busy versus slack periods is often much greater than the difference in costs to provide these services. 2.The difference in costs for an airplane seat sold to a passenger traveling on business or a passenger traveling for pleasure is roughly the same. However, airline companies price discriminate. They routinely charge business travelers––those who are likely to start and complete their travel during the same week excluding the weekend––a much higher price than pleasure travelers who generally stay at their destinations over at least one weekend. 12-13Life-cycle budgeting is an estimate of the revenues and costs attributable to each product from its initial R&D to its final customer servicing and support. 2-14Three benefits of using a product life-cycle reporting format are: 1. The full set of revenues and costs associated with each product becomes more visible. 2. Differences among products in the percentage of total costs committed at early stages in the life cycle are highlighted. 3. Interrelationships among business function cost categories are highlighted. 12-15Predatory pricing occurs when a business deliberately prices below its costs in an effort to drive competitors out of the market and restrict supply, and then raises prices rather than enlarge demand.Under U. S. laws, dumping occurs when a non-U. S. company sells a product in the United States at a price below the market value in the country where it is produced, and this lower price materially injures or threatens to materially injure an industry in the United States. Collusive pricing occurs when companies in an industry conspire in their pricing and production decisions to achieve a price above the competitive price and so restrain trade. 12-16(20–30 min. ) Relevant-cost approach to pricing decisions, special order. . Relevant revenue s, $4. 00 ( 1,000$4,000 Relevant costs Direct materials, $1. 60 ( 1,000$1,600 Direct manufacturing labor, $0. 90 ( 1,000900 Variable manufacturing overhead, $0. 70 ( 1,000700 Variable selling costs, 0. 05 ( $4,000 200 Total relevant costs 3,400 Increase in operating income$ 600 This calculation assumes that: a. The monthly fixed manufacturing overhead of $150,000 and $65,000 of monthly fixed marketing costs will be unchanged by acceptance of the 1,000 unit order. b.The price charged and the volumes sold to other customers are not affected by the special order. Chapter 12 uses the phrase â€Å"one-time-only special order† to describe this special case. 2. The president’s reasoning is defective on at least two counts: a. The inclusion of irrelevant costs––assuming the monthly fixed manufacturing overhead of $150,000 will be unchanged; it is irrelevant to the decision. b. The exclusion of relevant costs––variable selling costs (5% of the sellin g price) are excluded. 3. Key issues are: . Will the existing customer base demand price reductions? If this 1,000-tape order is not independent of other sales, cutting the price from $5. 00 to $4. 00 can have a large negative effect on total revenues. b. Is the 1,000-tape order a one-time-only order, or is there the possibility of sales in subsequent months? The fact that the customer is not in Dill Company’s â€Å"normal marketing channels† does not necessarily mean it is a one-time-only order. Indeed, the sale could well open a new marketing channel.Dill Company should be reluctant to consider only short-run variable costs for pricing long-run business. 12-17(20–30 min. )Relevant-cost approach to short-run pricing decisions. 1. Analysis of special order: Sales, 3,000 units ( $75$225,000 Variable costs: Direct materials, 3,000 units ( $35$105,000 Direct manufacturing labor, 3,000 units ( $1030,000 Variable manufacturing overhead, 3,000 units ( $618,000 Other v ariable costs, 3,000 units ( $515,000 Sales commission 8,000 Total variable costs 176,000 Contribution margin$ 49,000Note that the variable costs, except for commissions, are affected by production volume, not sales dollars. If the special order is accepted, operating income would be $1,000,000 + $49,000 = $1,049,000. 2. Whether McMahon’s decision to quote full price is correct depends on many factors. He is incorrect if the capacity would otherwise be idle and if his objective is to increase operating income in the short run. If the offer is rejected, San Carlos, in effect, is willing to invest $49,000 in immediate gains forgone (an opportunity cost) to preserve the long-run selling-price structure.McMahon is correct if he thinks future competition or future price concessions to customers will hurt San Carlos’s operating income by more than $49,000. There is also the possibility that Abrams could become a long-term customer. In this case, is a price that covers only s hort-run variable costs adequate? Would Holtz be willing to accept a $8,000 sales commission (as distinguished from her regular $33,750 = 15% ( $225,000) for every Abrams order of this size if Abrams becomes a long-term customer? 12-18(15-20 min. Short-run pricing, capacity constraints. 1. Per kilogram of hard cheese: |Milk (8 liters [pic] $2. 00 per liter) |$16 | |Direct manufacturing labor |5 | |Variable manufacturing overhead |4 | |Fixed manufacturing cost allocated | 6 | |Total manufacturing cost |$31 | | | |If Colorado Mountains Dairy can get all the Holstein milk it needs, and has sufficient production capacity, then the minimum price per kilo it should charge for the hard cheese is the variable cost per kilo = $16 + $5 + $4 = $25 per kilo. 2. If milk is in short supply, then each kilo of hard cheese displaces 2 kilos of soft cheese (8  liters of milk per kilo of hard cheese versus 4 liters of milk per kilo of soft cheese). Then, for the hard cheese, the minimum price Colora do Mountains should charge is the variable cost per kilo of hard cheese plus the contribution margin from 2 kilos of soft cheese, or, 25 + (2 [pic] $10 per kilo) = $45 per kilo That is, if milk is in short supply, Colorado Mountains should not agree to produce any hard cheese unless the buyer is willing to pay at least $45 per kilo. 12-19 (25–30 min. ) Value-added, nonvalue-added costs. 1. |Category |Examples | | |Value-added costs |a. Materials and labor for regular repairs |$800,000 | |Nonvalue-added costs |b.Rework costs |$ 75,000 | | |c. Expediting costs caused by work delays |60,000 | | |g. Breakdown maintenance of equipment |55,000 | | |Total |$190,000 | |Gray area |d.Materials handling costs |$ 50,000 | | |e. Materials procurement and inspection costs |35,000 | | |f. Preventive maintenance of equipment |15,000 | | |Total |$100,000 |Classifications of value-added, nonvalue-added, and gray area costs are often not clear-cut. Other classifications of some of the cost cat egories are also plausible. For example, some students may include materials handling, materials procurement, and inspection costs and preventive maintenance as value-added costs (costs that customers perceive as adding value and as being necessary for good repair service) rather than as in the gray area.Preventive maintenance, for instance, might be regarded as value-added because it helps prevent nonvalue-adding breakdown maintenance. 2. Total costs in the gray area are $100,000. Of this, we assume 65%, or $65,000, are value-added and 35%, or $35,000, are nonvalue-added. Total value-added costs: $800,000 + $65,000 $ 865,000 Total nonvalue-added costs: $190,000 + $35,000 225,000 Total costs$1,090,000 Nonvalue-added costs are $225,000 ? $1,090,000 = 20. 64% of total costs.Value-added costs are $865,000 ? $1,090,000 = 79. 36% of total costs. |3. |Effect on Costs Classified as | | |Value-Added |Nonvalue-Added |Gray | |Program | | |Area | |(a) Quality improvement programs to | | | | |à ¢â‚¬ ¢ reduce rework costs by 75% (0. 5 ( $75,000) | |–$ 56,250 | | |†¢ reduce expediting costs by 75% | | | | |(0. 75 ( $60,000) | |– 45,000 | | |†¢ reduce materials and labor costs by 5% | | | | |(0. 5 ( $800,000) |–$ 40,000 |  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   | | |Total effect |–$ 40,000 |–$101,250 | | | | | | | |(b) Working with suppliers to | | | | |†¢ reduce materials procurement and inspection costs by 20% (0. 0 ( $35,000) | | | | |†¢ reduce materials handling costs by 25% | | |–$ 7,000 | |(0. 25 ( $50,000) | | | | |Total effect | | |– 12,500 | |Transferring 65% of gray area costs (0. 5 ( | | |– 19,500 | |$19,500 = $12,675) as value-added and 35% | | | | |(0. 5 ( $19,500 = $6,825) as nonvalue-added | | | | |Effect on value-added and nonvalue-added costs |–$ 12,675 |–$ 6,825 |+ 19,500 | | |–$ 12,675 |–$ 6,825 |$ 0 | |(c) Maintenance programs to | | | | |†¢ increase preventive maintenance costs by 50% | | | | |(0. 0 ( $15,000) | | |+$ 7,500 | |†¢ decrease breakdown maintenance costs by 40% | | | | |(0. 40 ( $55,000) | |–$ 22,000 |  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   | |Total effect | |– 22,000 |+ 7,500 | |Transferring 65% of gray area costs (0. 65 ( $7,500 = $4,875) as value-added and 35%| | | | |(0. 5 ( $7,500 = $2,625) as nonvalue-added | | | | |Effect on value-added and nonvalue-added costs |+$ 4,875 |+ 2,625 |– 7,500 | | |+$ 4,875 |–$  Ã‚  19,375 |$ 0 | |Total effect of all programs |–$ 47,800 |–$127,450 | | |Value-added and nonvalue-added costs calculated in requirement 2 | | | | |Expected value-added and nonvalue-added costs as a result of implementing these |865,000 |225,000 | | |programs | | | | | |$817,200 |$ 97,550 | | If these programs had been implemented, total costs would have decreased from $1,090,000 (requirement 2) to $817,200 + $97,550 = $914,750, and the percentage of nonvalue-added costs would decrease from 20. 64% (requirement 2) to $97,550 ? 914,750 = 10. 66%. These are significant improvements in Marino’s performance. 12-20(25(30 min. ) Target operating income, value-added costs, service company. 1. The classification of total costs in 2012 into value-added, nonvalue-added, or in the gray area in between follows: ValueGrayNonvalue-Total AddedAreaadded(4) = (1) (2) (3) (1)+(2)+(3)Doing calculations and preparing drawings 77% ? $390,000$300,300$300,300 Checking calculations and drawings 3% ? $390,000$11,70011,700 Correcting errors found in drawings 8% ? $390,000$31,20031,200 Making changes in response to client requests 5% ? $390,000 19,50019,500 Correcting errors to meet government building code, 7% ? $390,000 27,300 27,300 Total professional labor costs 319,800 11,700 58,500 390,000 Administrative and support costs at 44% ($171,600 ? $390,000) of professional labor costs 140,712 5,148 25,740 171,600 Travel 15,000   15,000 Total$475,512$16,848$84,240$576,600Doing calculations and responding to client requests for changes are value-added costs because customers perceive these costs as necessary for the service of preparing architectural drawings. Costs incurred on correcting errors in drawings and making changes because they were inconsistent with building codes are nonvalue-added costs. Customers do not perceive these costs as necessary and would be unwilling to pay for them. Calvert should seek to eliminate these costs by making sure that all associates are well-informed regarding building code requirements and by training associates to improve the quality of their drawings. Checking calculations and drawings is in the gray area (some, but not all, checking may be needed). There is room for disagreement on these classifications.For example, checking calculations may be regarded as value added. 2. Reduction in professional labor-hours by a. Correcting errors in drawings (8% ? 7,500)600 hours b. Correcting errors to conform to building code (7% ? 7,500) 525 hours Total 1,125 hours Cost savings in professional labor costs (1,125 hours ? $52)$ 58,500 Cost savings in variable administrative and support costs (44% ? $58,500) 25,740 Total cost savings$ 84,240 Current operating income in 2012$124,650 Add cost savings from eliminating errors 84,240 Operating income in 2012 if errors eliminated$208,890 3. Currently 85% ? 7,500 hours = 6,375 hours are billed to clients generating revenues of $701,250.The remaining 15% of professional labor-hours (15% ? 7,500 = 1,125 hours) is lost in making corrections. Calvert bills clients at the rate of $701,250 ? 6,375 = $110 per professional labor-hour. If the 1,125 professional labor-hours currently not being billed to clients were billed to clients, Calvert’s revenues would increase by 1,125 hours ? $110 = $123,750 from $701,250 to $825,000 ($701,250 + $123,750). Costs remain unchanged Professional labor costs$390,000 Administrative and support (44% ? $390,000) 171,600 Travel 15,000 Total costs$576,600 Calvert’s operating income would be Revenues$825,000 Total costs 576,600 Operating income$248,400 12-21(25–30 min. Target prices, target costs, activity-based costing. 1. Snappy’s operating income in 2011 is as follows: | |Total for | | | |250,000 Tiles |Per Unit | | |(1) |(2) = (1) ? 250,000 | |Revenues ($4 ( 250,000) |$1,000,000 |$4. 00 | |Purchase cost of tiles ($3 ( 250,000) |750,000 |3. 0 | |Ordering costs ($50 ( 500) |25,000 |0. 10 | |Receiving and storage ($30 ( 4,000) |120,000 |0. 48 | |Shipping ($40 ( 1,500) |60,000 |0. 24 | |Total costs |955,000 |3. 82 | |Operating income |$ 45,000 |$0. 18 | 2.Price to retailers in 2012 is 95% of 2011 price = 0. 95 ( $4 = $3. 80; cost per tile in 2012 is 96% of 2011 cost = 0. 96 ( $3 = $2. 88. Snappy’s operating income in 2012 is as follows: | |Total for | | | |250,000 Tiles |Per Unit | | |(1) |(2) = (1) ? 250,000 | |Revenues ($3. 80 ( 250,000) |$950,000 |$3. 0 | |Purchase cost of tiles ($2. 88 ( 250,000) |720,000 |2. 88 | |Ordering costs ($50 ( 500) |25,000 |0. 10 | |Receiving and storage ($30 ( 4,000) |120,000 |0. 48 | |Shipping ($40 ( 1,500) |60,000 |0. 24 | |Total costs |925,000 |3. 0 | |Operating income |$ 25,000 |$0. 10 | 3. Snappy’s operating income in 2012, if it makes changes in ordering and material handling, will be as follows: | |Total for | | | |250,000 Tiles |Per Unit | | |(1) |(2) = (1) ? 50,000 | |Revenues ($3. 80 ( 250,000) |$950,000 |$3. 80 | |Purchase cost of tiles ($2. 88 ( 250,000) |720,000 |2. 88 | |Ordering costs ($25 ( 200) |5,000 |0. 02 | |Receiving and storage ($28 ( 3,125) |87,500 |0. 35 | |Shipping ($40 ( 1,500) |60,000 |0. 4 | |Total costs |872,500 |3. 49 | |Operating income |$ 77,500 |$0. 31 | Through better cost management, Snappy will be able to achieve its target operating income of $0. 30 per tile despite the fact that its revenue per tile has decreased by $0. 20 ($4. 0 0 – $3. 80), while its purchase cost per tile has decreased by only $0. 12 ($3. 00 – $2. 88). 12-22 (20 min. ) Target costs, effect of product-design changes on product costs. 1. and 2.Manufacturing costs of HJ6 in 2010 and 2011 are as follows: 2010 2011 Per UnitPer Unit Total (2) = Total (4) = (1)(1) ? 3,500 (3)(3) ? 4,000 Direct materials, $1,200 ? 3,500; $1,100 ? 4,000$4,200,000$1,200$4,400,000$1,100 Batch-level costs, $8,000 ? 70; $7,500 ? 80 560,000 160 600,000 150 Manuf. operations costs, $55 ? 21,000; $50 ? 22,000 1,155,000 330 1,100,000 275 Engineering change costs, $12,000 ? 14; $10,000 ? 10 168,000 48 100,000 25 Total$6,083,000$1,738$6,200,000$1,550 3. [pic]= [pic] ? 90% = $1,738 ? 0. 90 = $1,564. 20 Actual manufacturing cost per unit of HJ6 in 2011 was $1,550.Hence, Medical Instruments did achieve its target manufacturing cost per unit of $1,564. 20 4. To reduce the manufacturing cost per unit in 2011, Medical Instruments reduced the cost per unit in each of the four cost categories—direct materials costs, batch-level costs, manufacturing operations costs, and engineering change costs. It also reduced machine-hours and number of engineering changes made—the quantities of the cost drivers. In 2010, Medical Instruments used 6 machine-hours per unit of HJ6 (21,000 machine-hours (3,500 units). In 2011, Medical Instruments used 5. 5 machine-hours per unit of HJ6 (22,000 machine-hours ( 4,000 units). Medical Instruments reduced engineering changes from 14 in 2010 to 10 in 2011.Medical Instruments achieved these gains through value engineering activities that retained only those product features that customers wanted while eliminating nonvalue-added activities and costs. 12-23(20 min. )Cost-plus target return on investment pricing. 1. Target operating income = target return on investment ( invested capital Target operating income (25% of $900,000)$225,000 Total fixed costs 375,000 Target contribution margin$600,000 Target contri bution per room-night, ($600,000 ? 15,000) $40 Add variable costs per room-night 5 Price to be charged per room-night $45 Proof Total room revenues ($45 ( 15,000 room-nights)$675,000 Total costs: Variable costs ($5 ( 15,000)$ 75,000 Fixed costs 375,000Total costs 450,000 Operating income$225,000 The full cost of a room = variable cost per room + fixed cost per room The full cost of a room = $5 + ($375,000 ? 15,000) = $5 + $25 = $30 Markup per room = Rental price per room – Full cost of a room = $45 – $30 = $15 Markup percentage as a fraction of full cost = $15 ? $30 = 50% 2. If price is reduced by 10%, the number of rooms Beck could rent would increase by 10%. The new price per room would be 90% of $45 $ 40. 50 The number of rooms Beck expects to rent is 110% of 15,000 16,500 The contribution margin per room would be $40. 50 – $5$ 35. 50 Contribution margin ($35. 50 ( 16,500)$585,750Because the contribution margin of $585,750 at the reduced price of $40. 50 is l ess than the contribution margin of $600,000 at a price of $45, Blodgett should not reduce the price of the rooms. Note that the fixed costs of $375,000 will be the same under the $45 and the $40. 50 price alternatives and hence, are irrelevant to the analysis. 12-24(20(25 min. )Cost-plus, target pricing, working backwards. 1. Investment$8,400,000 Return on investment18% Operating income (18% ( $8,400,000)$1,512,000 Operating income per unit of XR500 ($1,512,000 ( 1,500)$1,008 Full cost per unit of XR500 (1,008 ? 0. 09)$11,200 Selling price (($11,200 + $1,008))$12,208 Markup percentage on variable cost ($1,008 ( $8,450)11. 93%Total fixed costs = (Full cost per unit – Variable cost per unit) ( Units sold = ($11,200 – $8,450) ( 1,500 units = $4,125,000 2. Contribution margin per unit = $12,208 – $8,450 = $3,758 Increase in sales = $10% ( 1,500 units = 150 units Increase in contribution margin = $3,758 ( 150 units =$563,700 Less: Advertising costs 500,000 Increase in operating income$ 63,700 Road Warrior should spend $500,000 in advertising because it increases operating income by $63,700. 3. |Revenues ($12,208 ? 1,400 units) |$17,091,200 | |Target full cost at 9% markup ($17,091,200 ? 1. 9) |$15,680,000 | |Less: Target total fixed costs ($4,125,000 – $125,000) | 4,000,000 | |Target total variable costs |$11,680,000 | |Divided by number of units | ? 1,400 units | |Target variable cost per unit |$ 8,342. 86 | 12-25(20 min. ) Life-cycle product costing. 1. [pic]Contribution margin per unit = Selling price – Variable cost per unit = $50 – $25 = $25 |Total fixed costs over |= |Design fixed costs |+ |Production fixed |+ |Marketing and distribution | |life of robot | | | |costs | |fixed costs | = $650,000 + $3,560,000 + $2,225,000 = $6,435,000 BEP in units = [pic] 2a. Option A: |Revenues ($50 [pic] 500,000 units) |$25,000,000 | |Variable costs ($25 [pic] 500,000 units) |12,500,000 | |Fixed costs | 6,435,000 | |Operating incom e |$ 6,065,000 | 2b. Option B: Revenues | | | Year 2 ($70 [pic] 100,000 units) |$ 7,000,000 | | Years 3 & 4 ($40[pic]600,000 units) | 24,000,000 | | Total revenues |31,000,000 | |Variable costs ($25 [pic] 700,000 units) |17,500,000 | |Fixed costs | 6,435,000 | |Operating income |$ 7,065,000 | Over the product’s life-cycle, Option B results in an overall higher operating income of $1,000,000 ($7,065,000 – $6,065,000). 12-26(30 min. )Relevant-cost approach to pricing decisions. |1. Revenues (1,000 crates at $117 per crate) | |$117,000 | | |Variable costs: | | | | | Manufacturing |$35,000 | | | | Marketing | 17,000 | | | | Total variable costs | | 52,000 | | |Contribution margin | |65,000 | | |Fixed costs: | | | | | Manufacturing |$30,000 | | | | Marketing | 13,000 | | | | Total fixed costs | | 43,000 | | |Operating income | |$ 22,000 | Normal markup percentage: $65,000 ? $52,000 = 125% of total variable costs. 2. Only the manufacturing-cost category is relevant to con sidering this special order; no additional marketing costs will be incurred. Variable manufacturing cost per crate = $35,000 ? 1,000 crates = $35 per crate.The relevant manufacturing costs for the 200-crate special order are: Variable manufacturing cost per unit $35 ( 200 crates$ 7,000 Special packaging 3,000 Relevant manufacturing costs$10,000 Any price above $50 per crate ($10,000 ? 200) will make a positive contribution to operating income. Therefore, based on financial considerations, Stardom should accept the 200-crate special order at $55 per crate that will generate revenues of $11,000 ($55 ( 200) and relevant (incremental) costs of $10,000. The reasoning based on a comparison of $55 per crate price with the $65 per crate absorption cost ignores monthly cost-volume-profit relationships.The $65 per crate absorption cost includes a $30 per crate cost component that is irrelevant to the special order. The relevant range for the fixed manufacturing costs is from 500 to 2,000 crat es per month; the special order will increase production from 1,000 to 1,200 crates per month. Furthermore, the special order requires no incremental marketing costs. 3. If the new customer is likely to remain in business, Burst should consider whether a strictly short-run focus is appropriate. For example, what is the likelihood of demand from other customers increasing over time? If Burst accepts the 200-crate special offer for more than one month, it may preclude accepting other customers at prices exceeding $55 per crate.Moreover, the existing customers may learn about Burst’s willingness to set a price based on variable cost plus a small contribution margin. The longer the time frame over which Burst keeps selling 200 crates of canned peaches at $55 a crate, the more likely it is that existing customers will approach Burst for their own special price reductions. If the new customer wants the contract to extend over a longer time period, Burst should negotiate a higher pr ice. 12-27(25–30 min. )Considerations other than cost in pricing decisions. 1. |Guest nights on weeknights: | | |18 weeknights ? 100 rooms ? 0% = 1,620 | | |Guest nights on weekend nights: | | |12 weekend nights ? 100 rooms ? 20% = 240 | | |Total guest nights in April = 1,620 + 240 = 1,860 | | |Breakfasts served: | | |1,620 weeknight guest nights ? 1. 0 = 1,620 | | | 240 weekend guest nights ? 2. = 600 | | |Total breakfasts served in April = 1,620 + 600 = 2,220 | | |Total costs for April: | | |Depreciation |$ 20,000 | |Administrative costs |35,000 | |Fixed housekeeping and supplies |12,000 | |Variable housekeeping and supplies (1,860 ? $25) |46,500 | |Fixed breakfast costs |5,000 | |Variable breakfast costs (2,220 ? 5) | 11,100 | |Total costs for April |$129,600 | |Cost per guest night ($129,600 ? 1,860) |$69. 68 | |Revenue for April ($68 ? 1,860) |$126,480 | |Total costs for April | 129,600 | |Operating income/(loss) |$ (3,120) | 2. |New weeknight guest nights | | |18 weeknights ? 100 rooms ? 5% = 1,530 | | |New weekend guest nights | | |12 weeknights ? 100 rooms ? 50% = 600 | | |Total guest nights in April = 1,530 + 600 = 2,130 | | |Breakfasts served: | | |1,530 weeknight guest nights ? 1. 0 = 1,530 | | | 600 weekend guest nights ? 2. = 1,500 | | |Total breakfasts served in April = 1,530 + 1,500 = 3,030 | | |Total costs for April: | | |Depreciation |$20,000 | |Administrative costs |35,000 | |Fixed housekeeping and supplies |12,000 | |Variable housekeeping and supplies (2,130 ? $25) |53,250 | |Fixed breakfast costs |5,000 | |Variable breakfast costs (3,030 ? $5) | 15,150 | |Total costs |$140,400 | |Revenue [(1,530 ? $80) + (600 ? 50)] |$152,400 | |Total costs for April | 140,400 | |Operating income |$ 12,000 | Yes, this pricing arrangement would increase operating income by $15,120 from an operating loss of $3,120 to an operating income of $12,000 ($12,000 + $3,120 = $15,120). 3. The weeknight guests are business travelers who have to stay at the hotel on weeknights to conduct business for their organizations. They are probably not paying personally for their hotel stays, and they are more interested in the hotel’s location in the business park than the price of the stay, as long as it is reasonable. The demand of business travelers is inelastic.In contrast, the weekend guests are families who are staying at the hotel for pleasure and are paying for the hotel from their personal incomes. They are willing to consider other hotel options or even not travel at all if the price is high and unaffordable. The demand of pleasure travelers is elastic. Because of the differences in preferences of the weeknight and weekend guests, Executive Suites can price discriminate between these guests by charging $30 more on weeknights than on weekends and still have weeknight travelers stay at the hotel. 4. Executive Suites would need to charge a minimum of $35 per night for the last-minute rooms, an amount equal to the variable cost per room. Variable cost per room night = $25 per room night + $5 ? breakfasts = $35. Any price above $35 would increase Executive Suites operating income. 12-28 (25 min. ) Cost-plus, target pricing, working backward. 1. In the following table, work backwards from operating income to calculate the selling price |Selling price |$ 10. 14 (plug) | |Less: Variable cost per unit | 3. 75 | |Unit contribution margin |$ 6. 39 | |Number of units produced and sold | ? 00,000 units | |Contribution margin |$3,195,000 | |Less: Fixed costs | 3,000,000 | |Operating income |$ 195,000 | a)Total sales revenue = $10. 14 [pic] 500,000 units = $5,070,000 b)Selling price = $10. 14 (from above) Alternatively, |Operating income |$ 195,000 | |Add fixed costs | 3,000,000 | |Contribution margin |3,195,000 | |Add variable costs ($3. 75 ? 500,000 units) | 1,875,000 | |Sales revenue |$5,070,000 | [pic] )Rate of return on investment = [pic] d)Markup % on full cost Total cost = ($3. 75 [pic] 500,000 units) + $3,000,000 = $4,875,000 Unit cost = [pic] Markup % = [pic] Or [pic] |2. |New fixed costs |=$3,000,000 – $200,000 = $2,800,000 | | |New variable costs |= $3. 75 – $0. 60 = $3. 15 | | |New total costs |= ($3. 15 ? 500,000 units) + $2,800,000 = $4,375,000 | | |New total sales (5% markup) |= $4,375,000 [pic] 1. 4 = $4,550,000 | | |New selling price |= $4,550,000 ? 500,000 units = $9. 10 | | |Alternatively, | | | |New unit cost |= $4,375,000 ? 500,000 units = $8. 75 | | |New selling price |= $8. 75 [pic] 1. 04 = $9. 10 | |3. |New units sold = 500,000 units ? 90% = $450,000 units | Budgeted Operating Income | |for the Year Ending December 31, 20xx | |Revenues ($9. 10 [pic] 450,000 units) |$4,095,000 | |Variable costs ($3. 15 [pic] 450,000 units) | 1,417,500 | |Contribution margin |2,677,500 | |Fixed costs | 2,800,000 | |Operating income (loss) |$ (122,500) | 12-29(40–45 min. ) Target prices, target costs, value engineering, cost incurrence, locked-in cost, activi ty-based costing. 1. |Old CE100 | |New CE100 | | | |Cost Change | | |Direct materials costs |$182,000 |$2. 20 [pic] 7,000 = $15,400 less |$166,600 | |Direct manufacturing labor costs |28,000 |$0. 50 [pic] 7,000 = $3,500 less |24,500 | |Machining costs |31,500 |Unchanged because capacity same |31,500 | |Testing costs |35,000 |(20% [pic] 2. 5 [pic] 7,000) ? 2 = $7,000 |28,000 | |Rework costs |14,000 |(See Note 1) |5,600 | |Ordering costs |3,360 |(See Note 2) |2,100 | |Engineering costs |21,140 |Unchanged because capacity same |21,140 | |Total manufacturing costs |$315,000 | |$279,440 | Note 1: 10% of old CE100s are reworked. That is, 700 (10% of 7,000) CE100s made are reworked. Rework costs = $20 per unit reworked ( 700 = $14,000. If rework falls to 4% of New CE100s manufactured, 280 (4% of 7,000) New CE100s manufactured will require rework. Rework costs = $20 per unit ( 280 = $5,600. Note 2 : Ordering costs for New CE100 = 2 orders/month ( 50 components ( $21/order = $2,100Unit manu facturing costs of New CE100 = $279,440 ? 7,000 = $39. 92 2. Total manufacturing cost reductions based on new design= $315,000 – $279,440 = $35,560 Reduction in unit manufacturing costs based on new design= $35,560 ? 7,000 = $5. 08 per unit. The reduction in unit manufacturing costs based on the new design can also be calculated as Unit cost of old design, $45 ($315,000 ? 7,000 units) – Unit cost of new design, $39. 92 = $5. 08 Therefore, the target cost reduction of $6 per unit is not achieved by the redesign. 3. Changes in design have a considerably larger impact on costs per unit relative to improvements in manufacturing efficiency ($5. 08 versus $1. 50).One explanation is that many costs are locked in once the design of the radio-cassette is completed. Improvements in manufacturing efficiency cannot reduce many of these costs. Design choices can influence many direct and overhead cost categories, for example, by reducing direct materials requirements, by reducing d efects requiring rework, and by designing in fewer components that translate into fewer orders placed and lower ordering costs. 12-30(25 min. )Cost-plus, target return on investment pricing. 1. Target operating income = Return on capital in dollars = $13,000,000[pic]10% = $1,300,000 2. |Revenues* |$6,000,000 | |Variable costs [($3. 50 + $1. 0)[pic]500,000 cases | 2,500,000 | |Contribution margin |3,500,000 | |Fixed costs ($1,000,000 + $700,000 + $500,000) | 2,200,000 | |Operating income (from requirement 1) |$1,300,000 | * solve backwards for revenues Selling price = [pic]$12 per case. Markup % on full cost Full cost = $2,500,000 + $2,200,000 = $4,700,000 Unit cost = $4,700,000 ? 500,000 cases = $9. 40 per case Markup % on full cost = [pic]27. 66% 3. Budgeted Operating Income | |For the year ending December 31, 20xx | |Revenues ($14 [pic] 475,000 cases*) |$6,650,000 | |Variable costs ($5 [pic] 475,000 cases) | 2,375,000 | |Contribution margin |4,275,000 | |Fixed costs | 2,200,000 | |Operating income |$2,075,000 | *New units = 500,000 cases[pic]95% = 475,000 casesReturn on investment = [pic]15. 96% Yes, increasing the selling price is a good idea because operating income increases without increasing invested capital, which results in a higher return on investment. The new return on investment exceeds the 10% target return on investment. 12-31(20 min. )Cost-plus, time and materials, ethics. 1. As shown in the table below, Garrison will tell Briggs that she will have to pay $460 to get the air conditioning system repaired and $440 to get it replaced. |COST |Labor |Materials |Total Cost | |Repair option (5 hrs. [pic] $30 per hr. $100) |$150 |$100 |$250 | |Replace option (2 hrs. [pic] $30 per hr. ; $200) | 60 | 200 | 260 | |   | | |   | |PRICE (100% markup on labor cost; 60% markup on materials) |Labor |Materials |Total Price | |Repair option ($150 [pic] 2; $100 [pic] 1. 6) |$300 |$160 |$460 | |Replace option ($60 [pic] 2; $200 [pic] 1. 6) | 120 | 320 | 440 | 2 .If the repair and replace options are equally effective, Briggs will choose to get the air conditioning system replaced for $440 (rather than spend $460 on repairing it). 3. R&C Mechanical will earn a greater contribution toward overhead in the repair option ($210 = $460 – $250) than in the replace option ($180 = $440 – $260). Therefore, Garrison will recommend the repair option to Briggs which is not the one she would prefer. Recognizing this conflict, Garrison may even present only the repair option to Ashley Briggs. Of course, he runs the risk of Briggs walking away and thinking of other options (at which point, he could present the replace option as a compromise). The problem is hat Garrison has superior information about the repairs needed but his incentives may cause him to not reveal his information and instead use it to his advantage. It is only the seller’s desire to build a reputation, to have a long-term relationship with the customer, and to have th e customer recommend the seller to other potential buyers of the service that encourages an honest discussion of the options. The ethical course of action would be to honestly present both options to Briggs and have her choose. To have their employees act ethically, organizations do not reward employees on the basis of the profits earned on various jobs. They also develop codes of conduct and core values and beliefs that specify appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. 12-32(25 min. )Cost-plus and market-based pricing. 1.California Temps’ full cost per hour of supplying contract labor is Variable costs$13 Fixed costs ($168,000 ? 84,000 hours) 2 Full cost per hour$15 Price per hour at full cost plus 20% = $15 ( 1. 20 = $18 per hour. 2. Contribution margins for different prices and demand realizations are as follows: | | |Contribution Margin per | | | | |Variable Cost per Hour |Hour |Demand in Hours |Total Contribution | |Price per Hour |(2) |(3) = (1) – (2) |(4) |(5) = (3) ? 4) | |(1) | | | | | |$16 |$13 |$3 |124,000 |$372,000 | |17 |13 |4 |104,000 |416,000 | |18 |13 |5 |84,000 |420,000 | |19 |13 |6 |74,000 |444,000 | |20 |13 |7 |61,000 |427,000 | Fixed costs will remain the same regardless of the demand realizations.Fixed costs are, therefore, irrelevant since they do not differ among the alternatives. The table above indicates that California Temps can maximize contribution margin ($444,000) and operating income by charging a price of $19 per hour. 3. The cost-plus approach to pricing in requirement 1 does not explicitly consider the effect of prices on demand. The approach in requirement 2 models the interaction between price and demand and determines the optimal level of profitability using concepts of relevant costs. The two different approaches lead to two different prices in requirements 1 and 2. As the chapter describes, pricing decisions should consider both demand or market considerations and supply or cost factors.The approach in requir ement 2 is the more balanced approach. In most cases, of course, managers use the cost-plus method of requirement 1 as only a starting point. They then modify the cost-plus price on the basis of market considerations—anticipated customer reaction to alternative price levels and the prices charged by competitors for similar products. 12-33Cost-plus and market-based pricing. 1. Single rate = [pic] $11. 91 per test-hour (TH) Hourly billing rate for HTT and ACT = $11. 91[pic]1. 45 = $17. 27 2. Labor and supervision = [pic]= $4. 64 per test-hour Setup and facility costs = [pic]= $503. 275 per setup-hour Utilities = [pic]= $36. 80 per machine-hour (MH) 3. |HTT |ACT |Total | |Labor and supervision |$295,104 |$196,736 |$ 491,840 | |($4. 64? 63, 600; 42,400 test-hours)1 | | | | |Setup and facility cost |100,655 |301,965 |402,620 | |($503. 275? 200; 600 setup-hours)2 | | | | |Utilities | 184,000 | | | |($36. 80? ,000; 5,000 machine-hours)3 | |184,000 |368,000 | |Total cost |$579,759 | $682,701 |$1,262,460 | |Number of testing hours (TH) |? 63,600 TH |? 42,400 TH | | |Cost per testing hour |$9. 12 per TH |$ 16. 10 per TH | | |Mark-up | ? 1. 45 | ? 1. 5 | | |Billing rate per testing hour |$ 13. 22 per TH |$ 23. 35 per TH | | | | | | | 1106,000 test-hours [pic] 60% = 63,600 test-hours; 106,000 test-hours[pic]40% = 42,400 test-hours 2800 setup-hours ? 25% = 200 setup-hours; 800 setup-hours ? 75% = 600 setup-hours 310,000 machine-hours ? 50% = 5,000 machine-hours; 10,000 machine-hours ? 50% = 5,000 machine-hours The billing rates based on the activity-based cost structure make more sense.These billing rates reflect the ways the testing procedures consume the firm’s resources. 4. To stay competitive, Best Test needs to be more efficient in arctic testing. Roughly 44% of arctic testing’s total cost [pic] occurs in setups and facility costs. Perhaps the setup activity can be redesigned to achieve cost savings. Best Test should also look for savings in the labor and supervision cost per test-hour and the total number of test-hours used in arctic testing, as well as the utility cost per machine-hour and the total number of machine hours used in arctic testing. This may require redesigning the test, redesigning processes, and achieving efficiency and productivity improvements. 12-34(25–30 min. )Life-cycle costing. 1. Total Project Life-Cycle Costs | |Variable costs: | | | Metal extraction and processing ($100 per ton ? 50,000 tons) |$5,000,000 | |Fixed costs: | | | Metal extraction and processing ($4,000 ? 24 months) |96,000 | | Rent on temporary buildings ($2,000 ? 7 months) |54,000 | | Administration ($5,000 ? 27 months) |135,000 | | Clean-up ($30,000 ? 3 months) |90,000 | | Land restoration |475,000 | | Selling land | 150,000 | |Total life-cycle cost |$6,000,000 | 2. Projected Life Cycle Income Statement | |Revenue ($150 per ton [pic] 50,000 tons) |$7,500,000 | |Sale of land (plug after inputting other numbers) |500,000 | |Total life-cycle cost | (6,000,000) | |Life-cycle operating income ($40 per ton ? 50,000 tons) |$2,000,000 | Mark-up percentage on project life-cycle cost = [pic] [pic] = 33? % 3. |Revenue ($140 per ton [pic] 50,000 tons) |$7,000,000 | |Sale of land | 400,000 | |Total revenue |$7,400,000 | |Total life-cycle cost at mark-up of 33? % |$5,550,000 | |($7,400,000 ? 1. 33333) | | |New Life would need to reduce total life-cycle costs by |$ 450,000 | |($6,000,000 – $5,550,000) | | |Check | | |Revenue |$7,000,000 | |Sale of land |400,000 | |Total life-cycle cost |(5,550,000) | |Life-cycle operating income |$1,850,000 | |Mark-up percentage = [pic]= 33? | | 12-35  (30 min. ) Airline pricing, considerations other than cost in pricing. 1. If the fare is $500, a. Air Eagle would expect to have 200 business and 100 pleasure travelers. b. Variable costs per passenger would be $65. c. Contribution margin per passenger = $500 – $65 = $435. If the fare is $2,100, a. Air Eagle w ould expect to have 180 business and 20 pleasure travelers. b. Variable costs per passenger would be $175. c. Contribution margin per passenger = $2,100 – $175 = $1,925. Contribution margin from business travelers at prices of $500 and $2,100, respectively, follow: At a price of $500: $435 ? 200 passengers = $ 87,000At a price of $2,100: $1,925 ? 180 passengers= $346,500 Air Eagle would maximize contribution margin and operating income by charging business travelers a fare of $2,100. Contribution margin from pleasure travelers at prices of $500 and $2,100, respectively, follow: At a price of $500: $435 ? 100 passengers= $43,500 At a price of $2,100: $1,925 ? 20 passengers= $38,500 Air Eagle would maximize contribution margin and operating income by charging pleasure travelers a fare of $500. Air Eagle would maximize contribution margin and operating income by a price differentiation strategy, where business travelers are charged $2,100 and pleasure travelers $500.In deciding between the alternative prices, all other costs such as fuel costs, allocated annual lease costs, allocated ground services costs, and allocated flight crew salaries are irrelevant. Why? Because these costs will not change whatever price Air Eagle chooses t

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The Glass Menagerie (Critical Article #1) Free Essays

string(55) " paint the picture during the act of recalling† \(p\." Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association http://apa. sagepub. com Tennessee Williams: The Uses of Declarative Memory in the Glass Menagerie Daniel Jacobs J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2001; 50; 1259 DOI: 10. We will write a custom essay sample on The Glass Menagerie (Critical Article #1) or any similar topic only for you Order Now 1177/00030651020500040901 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apa. sagepub. com/cgi/content/abstract/50/4/1259 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: American Psychoanalytic Association Additional services and information for Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association can be found at: Email Alerts: http://apa. agepub. com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://apa. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations http://apa. sagepub. com/cgi/content/refs/50/4/1259 Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 jap a Daniel Jacobs 50/4 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: THE USES OF DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE Tennessee Williams called his first great work, The Glass Menagerie, his â€Å"memory play. The situation in which Williams found himself when he began writing the play is explored , as are the ways in which he used the declarative memory of his protagonist, Tom Wingfield, to express and deal with his own painful conflicts. Williams’s use of stage directions, lighting, and music to evoke memory and render it three-dimensional is described. Through a close study of The Glass Menagerie, the many uses of memory for the purposes of wish fulfillment, conflict resolution, and resilience are examined. T he place: St. Louis, Missouri. The year: 1943. Thomas Lanier Williams, age thirty-two, known as Tennessee, has returned to his parents’ home. He has had a few minor successes. Several of his shorter plays have been produced by the Mummers in St. Louis. For another, staged by the Webster Grove Theater Guild, he was awarded an engraved silver cake plate. He has retained Audrey Wood as his literary agent and with her help had several years earlier won a Rockefeller fellowship to support his writing. But Williams’s Fallen Angels bombed in Boston the previous summer. Its sponsor, the Theater Guild, decided not to bring the play to New York. Since obtaining a B. A. from the University of Iowa in l938, Williams has been broke more often than not. He has no home of his own. He’s led an itinerant existence, living in New Orleans, New York, Provincetown, and Mexico, as well as Macon, Georgia, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; faculty, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Submitted for publication October 12, 2001. Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1260 Culver City, California. He has subsisted on menial jobs—waiting tables, operating an elevator, ushering at movie theaters—tasks for which he is not f itted and from which he is often f ired. His vision in one eye is compromised by a cataract that has already necessitated surgery. And just before moving back home from New York, he was beaten up by sailors he took to the Claridge Hotel for a sexual liaison. Arriving home in 1943, Tennessee f inds many things unchanged: his parents, Cornelius and Edwina, remain unhappily married and their bitter quarrels f ill the house. Williams must again deal with the father he despises. Tennessee is pressured by Cornelius, who opposed his return home, to f ind a job. If Tennessee will not return to work at the International Shoe Company, as Cornelius advises, then he must earn his keep by performing endless domestic chores. But it is the changes in the family that are even more troubling. Williams’s younger brother Dacon is in the army and may be sent into combat after basic training. His maternal grandparents have moved in because Grandma Rose, now conf ined to an upstairs bedroom, is slowly dying. Most important of all, Tennessee’s beloved sister, also named Rose and two years older than he, is no longer at home. She has in fact been at the State Asylum in Farmington since l937. Diagnosed schizophrenic, she has recently undergone a bilateral prefrontal lobotomy to control her aggressive behavior and overtly sexual preoccupations. During this stay at home, Williams visits Rose for the f irst time since her surgery. He f inds her behavior more ladylike, but she remains clearly delusional. The lobotomy, Williams realizes, was â€Å"a tragically mistaken procedure† that deprived her of any possibility of returning to â€Å"normal life† (Williams 1972, p. 251). â€Å"The poor children,† he will write of his St. Louis childhood, â€Å"used to run all over town, but my sister and I played in our own back yard. . . . We were so close to each other, we had no need of others† (Nelson 1961. p. 4). Now, for Tennessee, Rose is irretrievably lost except as a memory, alternately recalled in pain and shut out in self-defense. Williams cannot abide his situation, thrown amid his parents’ bitter quarrels, the slow death of his grandmother, and the terrible absence of his sister. His only escape: the hours of writing he does every day in the basement of the family home. Here, between washing garage windows and repairing the gutters on the back porch, he writes the â€Å"memory play† that he f irst calls The Gentlemen Caller and then Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE The Glass Menagerie. The play is a brilliant, profound, and intricate study of declarative memory and its psychological uses. DECLARATIVE MEMORY Declarative memory is the system that provides the basis for conscious recollection of facts and events. But this system, we know, is not just a warehouse of information, of veridical memories of actual happenings that can be retrieved at will. Rather, like an autobiographical play, declarative memory is a creative construction forged from past events and from the fears, wishes, and conf licts of the one who is remembering. As Schacter (1995) notes, â€Å"The way you remember depends on the purposes and goals at the time you attempt to recall it. You help paint the picture during the act of recalling† (p. You read "The Glass Menagerie (Critical Article #1)" in category "Papers" 23). It was just this complex and creative aspect of memory formation that led Freud (l899) to write that â€Å"our childhood memories show us our earliest years but as they appeared in later periods when memory was aroused† (p. 322). The stories we tell of our lives are as much about meanings as they are about facts. In the subjective and selective telling of the past, our histories are not just recalled, but reconstructed. History is not recounted, but remade. Williams understood this when he wrote, in the stage directions of The Glass Menagerie, that â€Å"memory takes a lot of license, it omits some details, others are exaggerated to the emotional value of the article it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart† (p. 21). Williams has Tom Wingf ield, the play’s protagonist, tell us this. In his opening speech, Tom is both creative artist and unreliable rememberer: â€Å"I have tricks in my pockets. I have things up my sleeve. . . . I give you truth in the pleasant guise of illusion† (p. 2). In this way, Williams warns us from the play’s beginning that memory is a tricky business—f ickle, changeable, susceptible to distortion and embellishment, but always true to the current emotional needs of the rememberer. This paper is an exploration of the emotional needs of the rememberer—of Tom Wingfield, the rememberer in the play, and Tom Williams, the rememberer as writer. Williams could have chosen any f irst name for his protagonist. He chose his own to emphasize the loosening of boundaries between fact and f iction. It is as though he is telling us that autobiography—which is, after all, organized declarative memory—is Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1261 Daniel Jacobs 1262 an elaborate f iction based on facts. And that f iction (the creative use of memory) is at its heart emotional autobiography. Both Tom Wingf ield and Tom Williams carry a burden of guilt for leaving the family, especially a disabled sister, and have a need to justify their behavior through the use of recollection. Both Toms live with deep sorrow alongside a wish to retaliate against loved ones who have disappointed them. Remembering is for both Toms, as for all of us, a coat of many colors, worn to set us apart from others as well as link us to them, to justify our choices, to take revenge on others, to compete with them, to kill them once again, or to resurrect them from the grave. The distortions and selective uses of memory are as manifold as the needs of the rememberer. Williams endows each character in his play with his or her own dynamic uses of memory. Amanda can escape the harshness of her current situation by evoking memories of a triumphant past. She is like a patient Kris (l956b) describes who â€Å"while the tensions of the present were threatening . . . was master of those conjured up in recollection† (p. 305). Amanda’s use of memories is aggressive as well, used as a weapon against her husband and children. In constantly contrasting the memories of a happy youth with the unhappiness of her marriage and the bleakness of her children’s lives, her anger and competitiveness take a brutal form. Unlike Amanda, her daughter Laura, who is crippled, has relatively few memories. But the memory of Jim, the gentleman caller, provides her a modicum of comfort. In a pale and pathetic imitation of her mother’s recollections of a house f illed with jonquils, she recalls that Jim gives her a single bouquet of sorts, the sobriquet â€Å"blue roses. † It is a nickname derived from his psychologically intuitive misunderstanding of the illness â€Å"pleurosis,† which had kept Laura out of school. She cannot compete with her mother in the fond memory department and retreats to the concrete but fragile satisfactions of her glass menagerie, where memory and imagination are safely stored—until Jim arrives. The gentleman caller is a man who lives in the present and seems to have little use for the past. It is the future to which he looks. In fact, one feels that memory of his high school greatness are both a satisfaction and a threat to him. For he, like John Updike’s Harry Angstrom (1960) will never experience the glory days of the past. He says as much to Laura: â€Å"But just look around you and you will see lots of people disappointed as you are. For instance, I had hoped when I was going to high school that I would be further along at this time, six years later, Downloaded from http://apa. agepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE than I am now. You remember that wonderful write-up I had in ‘The Torch’ † (p. 94). While Amanda revels in her triumphant past as a way of dealing with the present, Jim runs from his into the future. Seeing in the crippled Laura some aspect of his own feared limitati ons, he tries to help her overcome hers through encouragement and f inally a kiss. His inability to help her in the end may be a harbinger of his own failures. MEMORY AND LOSS Williams was aware also that declarative memory is paradoxical in that it resurrects and keeps alive in the present what is dead and gone forever. Referring to this paradoxical aspect of memory, he wrote that â€Å"when Wordsworth speaks of daffodils or Shelley of the skylark or Hart Crane of the delicate and inspiring structure of the Brooklyn Bridge, the screen imagism is not so opaque that one cannot surmise behind it the ineluctable form of Ophelia† (Leverich 1995, p. 536). The very presence of memory implies loss. Memory, if you will, is the exquisite lifelike corpse that both denies and acknowledges what has passed away. There is for all of us that double vision that memory imparts, one that at once has the capacity to help and to hurt. Declarative memory provides coherence and direction to our lives, but also reminds us that our path inevitably leads to disintegration and death. The daffodils recollected in tranquility are, at the same time, Ophelia’s garland. Amanda Wingf ield’s recollection of her past social triumphs only reminds us of how much time has passed and how many hopes have been dashed. Laura’s attachment to the happy memories of childhood innocence represented by her glass menagerie only makes harsher the realities of her adult life and the bleakness of her future. Laura and Amanda are represented as having a choice between the infantile omnipotence of their past or a feeling of victimization in the present. When Amanda stirs up old memories as a hedge against the painful present and uncertain future, they are only partially effective. For the contrast between past and present, and the knowledge that what is past will never come again, lead only to further depression and anxiety (Schneiderman 1986). Similarly, behind Tom the protagonist’s memory of Laura at home lies, for Tom the author, the real Rose in a current state of institutionalized madness. Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1263 Daniel Jacobs MEMORY AND RESILIENCE 1264 Davis (2001) points out the contribution declarative memory can make to resilience â€Å"through soothing af fects that are evoked in recalling a declarative memory of a loving relationship with a parent or other important person† (p. 459). Such memories can grow directly out of warm relationships or â€Å"they can be achieved through retrieving and modifying memory of more problematic attachments† (p. 466). Davis illustrates his point with the example of Mr. Byrne, a subject in a longitudinal study of adult development. Davis focuses on the fact that in interviews at different times in adult life, Mr. Byrne’s memories of his father changed. At age forty-six, surrounded by a supportive community and family, Mr. Byrne had no memories of his alcoholic and neglectful father and did not think his father’s being a f ireman had inf luenced his own decision to become one. At sixty-six, retired and with his children grown, Mr. Byrne â€Å"had succeeded in ‘f inding’ his father inside as a sustaining inner object in declarative memory (p. 465). He did so through creating or retrieving warm memories of their times together in the f irehouse and by ‘misremembering’ the humiliating events of his father’s death so as to have a more positive image of him. Mr. Byrne’s father had committed suicide, alone and away from the family. But late in life, Mr. Byrne spoke frequently of his father’s having taken him to the f ire station when he was a youngster. He was now sure these happy times with his father had inf luenced his decision to become a f ireman himself. He placed his father’s death in a family setting and claimed to have been the one who found him. Davis points out that we often create the memories we need in order to maintain psychological resilience and mental health. Whatever good experiences Mr. Byrne did have with a diff icult and neglectful father seem to have been magnif ied through the lens of memory aided by imagination in the service of wish fulf illment. It is an example of what Kris (1956a) meant by describing autobiographical memory as telescopic, dynamic, and lacking in autonomy: â€Å"our autobiographical memory is in a constant state of f lux, is constantly being reorganized, and is constantly being subject to the changes which the tensions of the present tend to impose† (p. 299). In a way, Williams does the same thing by creating a memory play. Lonely, guilty over his sister’s fate, f inding St. Louis and his family unbearable, Williams begins writing a play that both ref lects his current Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. om at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE suffering and at the same time assuages it. In writing The Glass Menagerie, he creates for himself one of those delicate glass animals— a small tender bit of illusion that relieves him of the austere pattern of life as it is lived in the present and makes it more bearable. He does so not by setting his play in the harsh realities of the present, too painful to write about, but in creatively altered memory. Sitting at his writing table, Williams reclaims his sister (Laura in the play) from the State Asylum and places her at home again. She is not frankly delusional and lobotomized. She is not even in Rose’s presurgical state of illness—a state of aggressiveness and talkativeness made worse by utter and unending vulgarity. Instead, she is portrayed as painfully shy, weak, and schizoid. And Cornelius, the real-life father he must face daily, is gone. Gone from the play for dramatic purposes to be sure: the play would lose a certain edge were there another breadwinner in the house. But in the play, Williams expresses his wish to reconstruct reality and, in this play of memory and desire, rid himself of the old man. Yet he is not entirely gone, for the father’s picture hangs on the wall, like Hamlet’s ghost, reminding us of a son’s ambivalent longing for a father. For in 1943 and throughout his life, Williams longed for some man to comfort and help him. In the play, his own wish for a supportive, loving father is transformed into the wish for the gentleman caller—someone who, unlike his father, will help Laura, satisfy Amanda, and, by his assuring presence, bless Tom’s own departure. He is not only the person Williams longs for, but also the one he longs to be, though he knows it is a role he can never play. It is no accident then that Jim, the gentleman caller, conveys an uncomfortable uncertainty about his future. He is, in a sense, the failed high school â€Å"hero,† with perhaps unrealizable dreams for the future. Jim already hints that the realities of life may not meet his expectations. He expresses resentment at having to work at two jobs: his work and his marriage, in which he has to â€Å"punch the clock† every night with Betty. He is f lirtatious with Laura, even going so far as to kiss her, showing a clear sympathy and attraction to women other than his f iancee. Tennessee’s father, a bitter man from a prominent Southern family, a heavy drinker and a womanizer, while banned from the play, haunts it through his portrait and is resurrected in the f lesh in Jim, who is likewise disappointing and cannot be counted on and who, in the future, may come to resemble Cornelius. In his own life, Williams found and lost gentlemen callers hundreds of times over. And when he was Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1265 Daniel Jacobs ot looking for the gentleman caller, he was being one, abandoning and disappointing those who loved him. The only one he was truly faithful to was Rose. Memories are like dreams or fantasies in that all the characters remembered at a particular moment may represent aspects of the rememberer’s own personality. Amanda’s steely will to survive is ref lected in Tom’s stubborn insistence on leaving. Laura’s fragility and submissiveness are wha t he must try to get away from in himself. Jim is the artist manque, the average joe Tom fears he will become if he doesn’t leave. THE STAGING OF MEMORY 1266 Through the very structure of his play and the physical placement of its characters, Williams shows us that we cannot have a past without a present or a present uninf luenced by the past. He takes us back and forth in time as Tom Wingf ield literally steps in and out of the railroad f lat of his memory. He both ref lects on his past and participates in it, as his memories come alive. All the play’s characters slip in and out of memory, from present to past and back again, as they interact with one another, forging their current identity and present relationship in the anvil of a past they selectively remember. The stage set that Williams proposed concretizes the alternating forward and backward movement of time that takes place in the characters’ and in all of our minds. Tom’s opening soliloquy is stage front in the present and is often played outside the apartment. The scene that follows is from the past, set in a dining room at the back of the stage, as if to emphasize the remoteness of memory. The f igures move backward and forward on stage, like memories themselves, coming into consciousness and then receding. Lighting is used in a similar way: to emphasize through spotlighting the highly selective and highly cathected aspects of memory. Lightness and darkness, dimness and clarity, play an important role in the ambience of the play, heightening the shifting play of memory. Williams is specif ic about the use of lighting in his production notes for The Glass Menagerie: â€Å"The lighting in the play is not realistic. In keeping with the atmosphere of memory, the stage is dim. Shafts of light are focused on selected areas or actors, sometimes in contradistinction to what is the apparent center. . . . A free and imaginative use Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. om at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE of light can be of enormous value in giving mobile, plastic quality to plays of more or less static nature† (Williams 1945, p. 10). By commissioning an original musical score, Williams makes a deliberate attempt to evoke memory in members of the audience— memories of their own youthful stirrings, with all the fears and pleasures that attend them. Schac ter (1996) notes that it is the memories of adolescence and early adulthood that are most often retained as we grow older. In asking Paul Bowles to write a new piece of music for his play, Williams, I think, is playing with the notion that memory is a new creation, similar to Bowles’s new music, Williams counts on the fact that while the score has never been heard before by the audience, it nevertheless feels familiar and seems a part of one’s previous experience. While the music may stimulate declarative memories of young adulthood in the audience, by its wordlessness it is designed to evoke nondeclarative memory experienced as a feeling state (Davis 2001). By using a new score rather than relying on familiar tunes, Williams insists that memory is an invention of the present rather than a reproduction of the past. CONCLUSION 1267 So we have Tom Williams in his basement room writing about Tom Wingf ield. His protagonist is thrust both forward and backward in time: Tom Wingf ield in 1945 is ref lecting on a time before World War II began. Tom Wingf ield is Tennessee and not him at the same time. The memories Williams calls forth from his own experiences are transformed in ways that are not only dramatically but psychologically necessary for the author. Rendering the truth through selective and transformed memory, Williams creates his own glass menagerie to which he could each day retreat from the harsh realities of his life in St. Louis in l943. He creates fragile f igures he can control, moving them around the imagined setting of creative memory. In creating the play, he can always be near Rose. On the page and on the stage, the two are bound forever, like f igures on a Grecian urn. At the same time, the play is a justif ication for Tennessee’s departure from the family, a plea for understanding as to why he must leave the altered Rose (his castrated self) behind and pursue his own path. Freud (1908) pointed out how both in creative writing and fantasy â€Å"past, present, and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1268 them† (p. 141). In the process of writing The Glass Menagerie, the infantile wish to reunite with Rose, to rid himself of a hateful father, and to overcome the threats of castration that Rose’s situation and his own imply, f inds a solution to his torments. He does what Tom Wingf ield does in the play. He leaves. By May of l943, Tennessee is on his way to Hollywood to become, for a short time, a screenwriter. But like Tom Wingf ield, Tennessee cannot leave his past behind. He will be as faithful to Rose as Tom Wingf ield is to Laura when at the play’s end he says, â€Å"I tried to leave you behind me, but I am much more faithful than I intended to be† (p. 115). Of their relationship, Rasky (l986) wrote, â€Å"Just as Siamese twins may be joined at the hip or breastbone, Tennessee was joined to his sister, Rose, by the heart. . . In the history of love, there has seldom been such devotion as that which Tennessee showed his lobotomized sister† (p. 51). Peter Altman, former director of Boston’s Huntington Theater, points out how with the writing of The Glass Menagerie Williams blows out the candles on an overtly autobiographical form of writing and moves on to create full-length plays less obviously reliant on t he concrete details of his own history (private communication, 1997). While he could never psychologically free himself from the traumatic events of his upbringing, artistically he was able to move ahead. By creating within and through the play his own glass menagerie, where the characters are f ixed and can live forever in troubled togetherness, he grants himself permission to leave St. Louis once again. Such a creation is akin to Kris’s description of the personal myth (1956a): â€Å"A coherent set of autobiographical memories, a picture of one’s course of life as part of the self-representation [that] has attracted a particular investment, it is defensive inasmuch as it prevents certain experiences and groups of impulses from reaching consciousness. At the same time, the autobiographical self-image has taken the place of a repressed fantasy . . † (p. 294). But in the patients Kris described, sections of personal history had been repressed and the autobiographical myth created to maintain that repression. In Williams’s case, he is quite conscious of the distortions in his â€Å"memory play,† but creativity serves a function for the artist similar t o that served by personal myth in Kris’s patients. Williams is able to separate further from his family by keeping himself, through his memory play, attached to them forever, selectively remembered and frozen in time in a way painful, yet acceptable, to him. By writing the play, a visual representation of memory and Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE wish, Williams creates a permanent wish-fulf illing hallucination providing gratif ication and psychic survival (see Freud 1908). Of his sister Rose’s collection of glass animals, which was transformed into Laura’s glass menagerie, Williams wrote that â€Å"they stood for all the small tender things (including, I think, happy memories) that relieve the austere pattern of life and make it endurable to the sensitive. The areaway [the alley behind his family’s f lat in St. Louis, where cats were torn to pieces by dogs] was one thing—my sister’s white curtains and tiny menagerie of glass were another. Somewhere between them was the world we lived in† (Nelson 1961, p. 8). What enables Williams to survive psychically and adds to his resilience in St. Louis in l943 is, I believe, his ability to create a space between the bitter realities of family life and his impulse to f lee and forget it all—to blow out the candles of memory. That space was his memory play, a space he inhabited daily through his writing, a space of some resilience where psychologically needed memories are created amid the pain and sorrow of the present. And in so doing, he reminds us all of the role memory plays in our survival. Our memories are like glass menageries, precious, delicate, and chameleonlike. We can become trapped by them like Laura and Amanda. Or, as in the case of Tennessee and Mr. Byrne, we can gain resilience from their plasticity that allows us to move forward psychologically. Williams wrote, in his essay â€Å"The Catastrophe of Success† (1975), that â€Å"the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition† (p. 17). Tennessee felt that for him the heart’s opposition could best be expressed through writing. He felt that the artist, his adventures, travels, loves, and humiliations are resolved in the creative product that becomes his indestructible life. (Leverich 1995, p. 268) I think he might have agreed that while creative work plays that role for the artist, memory and fantasy are its equivalent for all of us. Williams knew that it is through the creative transformation of experience, sometimes in verse, sometimes in memory, that we draw nearer to that â€Å"long delayed but always expected something we live for† (1945, p. 23). REFERENCES 1269 DAVIS, J. (2001). Gone but not forgotten: Declarative and non-declarative memory processes and their contribution to resilience. Bulletin of the Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1270 Menninger Clinic 65:451–470. FREUD, S. (1899). Screen memories. Standard Edition 3:301–322. ——— (1908). Creative writers and day-dreaming. Standard Edition 9:143–153. K RIS , E. (1956a). The personal myth. In The Selected Papers of Ernst Kris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 272–300. ——— (1956b). The recovery of childhood memories in psychoanalysis. In The Selected Papers of Ernst Kris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 301–340. LEVERICH, L. (1995). Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: Norton. NELSON, B. (1961). Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work. New York: Obolensky. RASKY, H. (1986). Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation. Niagara Falls: Mosaic Press. SCHACTER, D. (1995). In Search of Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. SCHNEIDERMAN, L. (1986). Tennessee Williams: The incest motif and f ictional love relationships. Psychoanalytic Review 73:97–110. UPDIKE, J. (l960). Rabbit, Run. New York: Knopf. WILLIAMS, T. (1945). The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Direc-tions, l975. ——— (l972). Memoirs. New York: Doubleday. ——— (l975). The catastrophe of success. In The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions, 1975, pp. 11–17. 64 Williston Road Brookline, MA 02146 E-mail: Danjacobs@rcn. com Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 How to cite The Glass Menagerie (Critical Article #1), Papers

Divorced, Beheaded, Survived free essay sample

Death is a peculiar thing. Everyone reacts to it in different ways. And no one seems to fully understand what to do, what to say and how to react when death occurs in the family or in the family in one’s circle of friends. It seems that man can’t really understand why it happens. At least not when it is someone one cares about. But it happens, and there is nothing else to do about it, than survive and move on with one’s life. This is the subject treated in Robin Blacks shortstory â€Å"†¦ Divorced, Beheaded, Survived† (2010). The shortstory is the story of a woman who loses her big brother, Terry, to sickness at a very young age. It is also a story about how her brother and she used to play with the other children who lived close by, and how they stopped playing after Terry died. The main character also describes how she tries to protect her children from this awful phenomenon that death is, but how she is unable to do so as her son’s friend dies in the end. We will write a custom essay sample on Divorced, Beheaded, Survived or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The main character who acts as a past tense narrator, does not tell much about herself. To be clear she does not describe many of the characters at all. The fact that there are very few adjectives and adverbs shows the reader that one must use ones imagination, the characters are not important for they could be anyone in such a neighborhood. The reader relates to the story in a different way than they normally would, because they have to use their own experiences to fill out the missing pieces of the personalities of the characters. The person the narrator tells about the most, is Terry or Terrance as he is actually called. The narrator describes how he plays Anne Boleyn with much character and liveliness. Page 2, line 6-9 â€Å"(†¦) was undoubtedly the most convincing. Once, he stole a dress from our mother’s closet – a red-and-white Diane von Furstenberg wraparound so he could use the beltlike part to hold the couch-pillow baby, the future Queen Elizabeth, in place. ‘Oh, Hal,’ he cooed. † He is a happy boy and has no worries, until he gets sick. This turns his life upside down and it changes him, which one could imagine is only natural for a child when it gets sick. Page 4, line 103-104 â€Å"He stopped being the boy who would throw himself into anything that seemed like fun. † The narrator loves seeing her brother play Anne Boleyn, she thinks he is very convincing in the role. Page 2, line 12 â€Å"It was worth giving up the role yourself just to watch Terry give it his all. † The fact that it is Terry that is often chosen to play Anne Boleyn, even though they all want to play her, could be a symbol of fate choosing him to get sick and die. It might as well have been one of the other kids, as well as it could have been one of the other kids who could have played the role. This is shown in the part of the story where Anne Boleyn dies, and Terry has to play the dying woman. Page 4, line 99-101 â€Å"And Terry would hold his face in both hands, his shoulders heaving in enormous, racking, make-believe sobs. But in real life, it was all silent hours. Vacant stares. † The game of playing Anne Boleyn could also be a symbol of the children losing something. Anne Boleyn loses her head and life, Terry loses his life and the narrator loses her brother, her friends and a part of her childhood. At this point it is only the first part of the rhyme that is used. Page 3, line 43 â€Å"Divorced, beheaded, died. † But as the children move on with their lives, learn to live with the loss of a friend and a brother, and some of them meet again even though they do not talk, the rest of the rhyme appears in their life. And this time it holds a whole new meaning. Page 6, line 174 â€Å"Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. † The structure of the text is a bit messy but it still manages to give the reader a good and continuous view of the narrator’s life. The fact that the first 1,5 pages focuses on her childhood with the games and her brother, gives the reader a strong sense that it is a chapter of her life that ended when her brother died. But as she continuously mentions her brother, one also understands that her brother is still with her, even though he belongs to an ended chapter. And as she moves on with her life, and survives, she keeps him with her in a more secure way and without getting scared of forgetting about him. Page 5, line 153-156 â€Å"the truth is sometimes even more than a day goes by before I remember to think of my brother (†¦) Maybe it’s a gift to be able to let go of remembering. Some times. Some things. † The narrator tells us about her family and how her son loses his friend in the end of the text, this is a way to tell the reader that it can happen to anyone, and that it is possible to move on. It is possible to survive the death of someone dear. But never to forget it, a person lost will always be remembered one way or another, intentionally or not.