Studying Cells With Super Resolution Microscopies Biology Essay

With a growing interest in biology and the composition of living biological entities as well as a good understanding about the fact that biological entities were composed of extremely small complexes, it was essential to come up with an instrument which would help in viewing objects that could not be seen with an unaided eye. The earliest development of the microscope can be traced back to the use of a magnifying glass even though it wasn’t until the 16th century when the earliest simple microscope was developed by inverting a telescope and this was further modified and improved in the 17th century. Ever since then, new techniques have been developed in order to gain a better understanding of biological entities and presently, the world has reached an era of ‘super-resolution microscopy’ which helps I surpassing ‘Abbe’s resolution limit’. These techniques have helped in imaging nanoscopic molecules that play an essential role in different biological processes and has improved the understanding of the structural and functional properties of subcellular components. Although these techniques have been developed to provide a wide range of properties like 3-dimensional imaging and live imaging, each of them still has its advantages and pitfalls and this essay discussed a few of these techniques in detail.

Introduction

The history of discoveries in cell biology and its related fields is mirrored with the advancements made with the microscope over the past five centuries. Although the simplest microscope was first known to be made and used by Robert Hooke, It was Antonie van Leeuwenhoek who earned the title of “Father of the Microscope” for building the first microscope  in 1674, and pioneering discoveries concerning bacterial cells and erythrocytes. The nineteenth century was marked with improvements in microscopes and staining methods, which further led to scientists establishing the cell theory and viewing the key cell components, understanding cell division and differentiation and the discovery of mitochondria. With the breakthrough of research in the biological field, Ernst Abbe, a mathematician formulated the “Abbe Sine Condition” which enabled calculations that allowed the maximum resolution in microscopes possible  . However, this also meant that that the resolution of optical microscopes was limited by diffraction, which would reach a peak and limit the ability of seeing molecules closely located to one another.

Cell biology revolutionised in the mid-twentieth century with the advances in fluorescent-labelling techniques, which proved to be important tools in biological research, and advances in microscope design and technology. Since then, more specifically in the past decade, there has been an outbreak in the practical implementation of microscopic techniques, with the emergence of super-resolution microscopy that can overcome Abbe’s limit of resolution  , hence converting fluorescence microscopy into an effective 3D visualization tool  . This enables scientists to view single nanoscopic molecules of 10-20nm, not only in all three dimensions, but also trace these molecules in cellular processes. These techniques, as seen in fig.1, follow one of the two approaches; the first is based on spatial patterning of excited light (illumination-based) and this is used in stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy and structured illumination microscopy (SIM). The other approach is based on the localization of single molecules (probe-based) and this is used in (fluorescence) photoactivation localization microscopy/Stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy [(f) PALM/STORM]  .

STED

SSIM

TIRFM

PALM/STORM

Best resolution (nm)

~20(lateral)

~50 (spatial)

~50 (lateral)

~90 (spatial)

~230(lateral) ~100 (spatial)

~ 20-30 (lateral)

~60-70 (spatial)

Principle approach

Patterning of excited light using two laser beams

multiple interfering light beams to form moiré patterns

Evanescent field produced by total internal reflection of light

single-molecule localization of photoswitchable fluorophores

Limitations

Photobleaching can occur due to limited light wavelengths

Technical faults

High-intensity pulsed lasers can cause damage to the sample

Photobleaching can occur

Very sensitive to even the smallest changes in sample position

For 3D SSIM, a large number of images need to be taken per wavelength; this takes a long time.

Only 1 plane can be imaged

3D imaging is not possible unless TIRFM is combines with another technique  

Require large number of raw images  

Data acquisition speed is very slow, bearing a direct effect on imaging live samples

Live imaging

TIRFM-SSIM

3D imaging

TIRFM-SSIM

Multicolour imaging

Table 1: Comparison of the distinct features of the different super-resolution techniques.

Two different approaches to breaking the diffraction limit. A. STED microscopy uses two different lasers- an excitation laser (left) and a doughnut-shaped STED laser (middle- this laser deactivates the fluorophores molecules). Using these 2 lasers, the effective excitation area is limited to a small central zone (right). B. Single molecule localization microscopy methods such as PALM and STORM use photoactivatable fluorophores which can switch between their excited state and ground state to successively image the localization of a small number of molecules at a time at high precision by finding the molecule’s centroid. The many ‘raw’ images are then reconstructed to generate the final super-resolution image.

The emergence of super-resolution microscopy has opened many doors in the field of modern biology and medicine, giving an insight on processes that were unable to be followed using conventional microscopy. It is important to understand that every protein found in living cells has a specific function and is a part of a much larger molecular network. In order to understand the functioning of these large networks, it is important to track the movement and interactions of these proteins within the cell  . Super-resolution microscopy, aids in visualising the 3D-structure and accurate location of single protein molecules  on distinct organelles and on structures like lysosomes and microtubules, helping in understanding protein interactions and providing a better understanding of the molecular-scale architecture of cells  .

Three dimensional STORM image of the mitochondria network in a mammalian BS-C-1 cell. The z-position is colour-coded according to the colour scale bar.

In the past decade, super-resolution microscopy has been used to map the 3D-organization of distinct components of the nuclear pore complex; the polygonal network that makes up the endoplasmic reticulum in cells was imaged, as seen in fig.3, in living PtK2-cells of the kidney; the movement of synaptic vesicles have been traced inside living neurons by tagging the vesicle protein synaptotagmin with antibodies  and these techniques have been used to study the co-localization of two mitochondrial proteins by labelling them with different fluorophores. These studies would not have been possible without nanoscale-resolution provided by these techniques since all these structures are extremely small in size  .

Super-resolution imaging of the endoplasmic reticulum in living PtK2-cells of the kidney cell. (A) Shows the confocal image and (B) shows the simultaneously recorded STED (x, y) images from the ER marked by the fluorescent protein Citrine targeted to the ER. The arrows point out rings formed by the tubular network of the ER, which are clearly visible only in the STED image (B). 

The emergence of super-resolution microscopy has put light on important details of cell biology, holding great importance for research in the future. This essay discussed the different techniques of super-resolution microscopy, its application in cell biology, and its limitations as an instrument.

The first super-resolution microscopy technique, STED microscopy’s concept was introduced a decade ago and has advanced within the past few years. It is based on patterning the excited light in such a way that the volume of light in the excited-state is extremely small, hence maintaining the amount of light that emits fluorescence to small volumes  .

This is achieved by using two pulsed laser beams of different wavelengths; the wavelength of light from the first laser beam excites the fluorescent marker and the second laser beam illuminates the sample with a doughnut-shaped beam (called the STED-beam)  as seen in fig.4. The wavelength of light from the STED-beam is such that it causes the excited fluorescent molecules to de-excite, bringing them back to the ground-state via stimulated emission. The doughnut-shaped beam from the second laser ensures that the molecules of the centre-most part of the labelled sample are in the excited state, and fluorescence is detectable  .

Schematic diagram showing the use of the excitation and deexcitation (STED) beams for 3D-STED imaging inside a living cell. (A) An objective lens focuses the excitation (blue) beam and deexcitation (orange) beam into the ER while also collecting the resulting beam from the fluorescence photons. (B) xy-axes imaging: excitation spot (blue) and doughnut-shaped focal spot (orange) for stimulated emission (C) xz-axes imaging: excitation spot (blue) and STED spot composition consisting of a spot featuring a maximum above and below the focal plane along the z- axis, referred to as STEDz, and an enlarged doughnut-shaped beam called STEDr.

The lateral resolution of STED microscopy has been pushed to below 20nm and has been successful in imaging the synaptic vesicle movement in live neurons after neurotransmitter release during an impulse. In the past, synaptic vesicle exocytosis was suggested and confirmed by using electron microscopy, where ‘pockets’ in the pre-synaptic membrane terminals of chemically-fixed nerve cells were seen, hinting on exocytosis as the process of neurotransmitter release  . Further, fluorescence microscopy was used to study the vesicular movement after neurotransmitter release by using FM-dyes  . Even though it was known that vesicles are recycled via endocytosis, the fate of its components after fusion with the membrane was still unclear since the vesicles were too small to be resolved by available microscopes.

To solve this problem, STED microscopy was used to determine the entire process of vesicle endocytosis. Monoclonal antibodies against the intravesicular membrane protein synaptotagmin was used for imaging purposes; these antibodies only bound to those protein molecules that were exposed during vesicle exocytosis and were internalised when the vesicle was endocytosed. Fluorescent-labelled secondary antibodies were attached after membrane fixation and permeabilization and were used for visualisation of these vesicles. Images showed synaptotagmin molecules clustered on the pre-synaptic membrane, suggesting that vesicle components remain together on the pre-synaptic membrane during recycling by endocytosis. Each synaptic vesicle is 40-50nm in size and they usually occur in groups of 100-300 vesicles. Therefore, fig.5 shows that using STED microscopy was essential for localising individual vesicles, and contrary to previous beliefs that vesicles hardly move, STED revolutionised the understanding of vesicle-recycling by showing that vesicles constantly move rapidly and randomly  .

Comparison of confocal (left) and STED (right) counterpart images of a small region of a neuron terminal labelled with an anti-synaptotagmin antibody, ?xed, permeabilized and visualized using Atto532-labelled secondary antibodies. The STED image reveals a marked increase in resolution and also shows the accurate location of individual vesicle components on the neuron membrane.

However, STED microscopy is limited by wavelength. The absence of sufficient tuneable pulsed light sources in the visible range of light which de-excite the already excited fluorescent-labelled molecules has limited STED microscopy to only a small fraction of fluorophores, which causes bleaching and phototoxicity  . STED also requires the use of high intensity pulsed lasers which can cause significant damage to the samples. Furthermore, there are technical limitations set by the laser power required  for this technique and the very often, mechanical drift of the optical instruments causes imperfection of the doughnut-shaped beam around the sample, limiting the spatial resolution.

Another example of an illumination-based technique, SSIM follows the approach of illuminating the sample with multiple interfering light beams in order to break the resolution barrier  . When multiple beams of mutually coherent light are allowed to interfere, they form a structured pattern, like that of Moiré fringes seen in fig.6. When focussed on the labelled sample, the illumination pattern further interacts with the fluorescent probes. The emitted light contains image details of higher resolution, including details that cannot be resolved using a normal microscope. The illumination patterns are modulated by changing the orientation of light on the sample and high-resolution images are captured within the illumination from different patterns.

The approach of resolution enhancement followed by structured illumination. (a) If two line patterns are superposed in each other, moiré fringes will be formed as a product (seen here as the apparent vertical stripes in the overlap region). (b) A conventional microscope is limited by diffraction to a circular ‘observable region’ of reciprocal space. (c) A sinusoidally striped illumination pattern-the possible positions of the two side components (light beams) are limited by the same circle that defines the observable region (dashed). If the sample is illuminated with structured light, moiré fringes which represent information that has changed position in reciprocal space will appear. The observable region will contain normal information and moved information that originates in two offset regions (d). From a series of images with different orientation and pattern phase, it is possible to recover information from a region that is twice the size of the normally observable region can be obtained, corresponding to twice the normal resolution (e).

The images are collected and reconstructed using computer software which extracts the details from the moiré images, reconstructing them into 3-dimensional images with doubled resolution. The original 2D-SIM involved using two beams of light which interacted with the sample probe to increase its resolution and form 2D images. However, this technology was extended by using 3 light beams, generating resolved images with finer details of the sample in the axial and lateral directions, resulting in a 3-dimensional image of the sample.

Using 3D-SIM in comparison with conventional wide-field epifluorescence-microscopy, experiments to better the understanding of higher order chromatin and to study the accurate localizations of other nuclear components like the nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) and nuclear lamina were performed. The chromatin of formaldehyde-preserved mouse C2C12-myoblast cells were stained with 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) and they were observed using 3D-SSIM. The Images obtained from this technique showed a large number of ‘holes’ within the area of the stained chromatin as in fig.7, a feature that could not be observed in the images obtained by wide-field epifluorescence-microscopy.

Comparison of 3D-images obtained from conventional wide-field microscopy (left) and 3D-SIM (right) used in order to resolve interphase chromatin structure of the same DAPI-stained C2C12 cell nucleus. Deconvolution was applied to the wide-field data set (middle). (A) Mid cross-section shows brightly stained clusters of centromeric heterochromatin. Inset shows higher-detail information of chromatin substructures when recorded with 3D-SIM. Arrow in 3D-SIM inset points to a less-bright chromatin structure that has been spuriously eroded by the deconvolution procedure. (B) Apical sections (corresponding to a thickness of 0.5 µm) taken from the surface of the nuclear envelope closest to the coverslip. The raw image shows diffuse DAPI-staining, the deconvolved image shows more pronounced variations in fluorescence intensities and the image obtained from 3D-SIM shows extended resolution and reveals a punctuated pattern of regions without DAPI-staining.

Further taking advantage of SSIM’s multicolour and 3D-imaging properties, the same cells were immunostained with antibodies specific to the nuclear pore complexes (NPC), which detect the NPC proteins; and antibodies against lamin-B, a major component of the nuclear lamina (intermediate filament protein). Hence, the 3D-SSIM images showed the chromatin on the nucleoplasmic side, followed by nuclear lamina and then the nuclear pore complexes on the cytoplasmic side forming a triple-layered organization as in fig.8. Not only was the heterochromatin distinguished from the euchromatin, but at every ‘hole’ where DAPI-labelled chromatin was absent, some amount of NPC-staining was present, suggesting that chromatin was absent within close proximity of the NPCs. Even though all three sub-nuclear structures were obtained using conventional fluorescence microscopy, the spatial organization of these structures was obtained only by using 3D-SSIM.

multicolour imaging of DNA, nuclear lamina, and NPC structures in C2C12 cells by 3D-SIM. The cells are immunostained with antibodies against lamin B (green) and antibodies that recognize different NPC epitopes (red). DNA is counterstained with DAPI (blue). The image on the top left shows the same sample imaged using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and the image on the top right shows the images obtained using 3D-SSIM which are better resolved and more clearer. The bottom picture clearly shows the triple layered organization of the three structures.

Therefore, 3D-SSIM has proved to be essential in understanding the spatial organization and interactions of sub-cellular structures that were unable to be studied before. Even though some of the initial limitations of SSIM like the time required to reconstruct and analyse the images have been overcome, SSIM is still restricted by the photostability of the fluorophores used since photobleaching leads to a less intensive image.

Even though total internal reflection fluorescent microscopy (TIRFM) was first used in 1981, it’s still a very important technique and has been used extensively since it allows selective excitation of labelled molecules in a cellular/aqueous environment which are near the surface only. This is not only beneficial because of its ability to view labelled molecules, but also because the region of interest is thin enough to obtain the highest frame-rates. TIRFM combined with structured illumination microscopy (SIM) has developed into a super-resolution technique which can break the resolution barrier and improve resolution of the region of interest.

The conventional-TIRFM is based on the diffraction properties of a light beam when incident onto a surface separating two media with different (high and low) refractive indexes. At a high incident angle (greater that the critical-angle), all the incident light is ‘totally reflected’ as long as it is coming from the medium with a high refractive index through the medium with a low refractive index  . At this surface, an ‘evanescent field’ is produced. This field is considered to be an electromagnetic field capable of exciting fluorophore molecules present on the surface. This field rises from the surface into the medium of lower refractive index  . The depth of fluorophore excitation is minimised in this phenomenon because as the evanescent field rises parallel to the surface and the distance between the field and surface increases, its strength decreases exponentially, limiting the fluorescent region. TIRFM not only provides a very thin, sectioned layer of excited fluorophores which helps in minimising the background noise caused by water molecules, it also omits unwanted fluorescence of molecules that are out of focus. However, the major drawback of this technique is that only one plane (z-plane) can be imaged, limiting its use to study cell surface events. Therefore, to obtain limit-breaking resolutions and to view multiple planes of the sample region, TIRFM is used in combination with SIM.

The TIRFM-based SIM was used to image EGFP-labelled a-tubulin of living S2-cells of Drosophila. a-tubulin is a protein present in microtubules. Comparing the images of the same sample region obtained by using conventional-TIRFM and TIRFM-SIM, the latter showed a significant improvement in the resolution of the image as seen in fig.9(a,b).

Comparison of conventional TIRF (a) and TIRF-SIM (b) images of the microtubule cytoskeleton in a single S2 cell. The image obtained after combining TIRF and SIM shows better resolution hence giving a clearer image.

Live imaging using TIRFM-SIM was applied to image polymerisation-depolymerisation of microtubules located near the centrosome of a Drosophila S2-cell which was in its mitotic state. Since the length of microtubules was constantly changing due to its polymerisation and depolymerisation, kymographs were used to process images and to determine the spatial-position of the microtubules over time by determining the difference in GFP-labelling density along the microtubule length at different times. Combing SIM with TIRFM helped in imaging the GFP-labelled a-tubulin with enhanced clarity and allowed accurate localization of the end of the microtubule, hence being able to follow it through the process. The images obtained from live-SSIM showed distinct transformation between the microtubule’s polymerisation state, depolymerisation state and its steady state, hence being able to track the dynamics of the microtubules (fig.10), a phenomenon which was not possible to understand properly using conventional-TIRFM.

TIRF-SIM images at different time frames of EGFP-a-tubulin in a S2 cell. (a) 95th image from a 180-frame sequence. Each frame was acquired in 270ms. (b) The green-boxed area of (a) shown at selected times as indicated on the individual images, using conventional TIRF (left) and TIRF-SIM (right). Green arrows follow the end of a single microtubule, which can be seen elongating until approximately the 100 s time point, and then rapidly shrinking. These changes are much easier to follow in the TIRFM-SIM images which are much clearer compared to the TIRFM images obtained.

In contrast to STED and SIM-microscopy (based on the spatial patterning of excited light), STORM and photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM) are probe-based methods principled on single-molecule localization and were developed recently in 2006. These techniques combine 3D and multicolour-imaging and obtain images with a spatial-resolution of 20-30nm and an axial and lateral-resolution of 60nm and 70nm respectively  . Keeping in mind that single molecule localization is made difficult in fluorescently-labelled biological samples because it contains millions of fluorophore molecules in a large density  , PALM/STORM use photoswitchable probes which can be switched between its visible (fluorescent, excited) and invisible (nonfluorescent, de-excited) state by using light of different wavelengths. Therefore, this approach consists of repeated cycles of sample imaging. In each cycle, different fluorophore-molecules within a diffraction-limited region are excited, such that each excited molecule can be individually imaged without overlapping (due to the images of closely located fluorophore molecules which are invisible in this cycle) and subsequently deactivated to the ground-state  as seen in fig.11. In following cycles, a stochastically different set of fluorophore-molecules are excited, determining the accurate coordinates of different molecules in each image. Using these individual images, an overall image is constructed and the position of each molecule in the sample is determined. The PALM/STORM techniques and based on the same concept of single-molecule localization, the only difference being the fluorescent probes that each of them uses. While PALM originally used photoactivable fluorescent proteins that are attached to sub-cellular structures, STORM used synthetic photoswitchable cyanin dyes that carried out the same function.

Schematic diagram showing the basic principle followed by STORM imaging. (a) Shows the microtubules within a cell. (b) shows a distinct set of fluorophore molecules in its excited state. (c), (d) and (e) show different set of fluorophore molecules that are excited while the other closely situated molecules are in the ground-state by their photoswitchable property. (f) shows the complete reconstructed image formed by compiling all the raw images into one image.

Further, STORM is developed to provide multi-coloured imaging by using combinatorial pairs of “reporter” dyes which cause the fluorescence and “activator” dyes which can reactivate the ‘switched-off’ reporter dyes when placed in close proximity to the reporter. Thus, each pair has a different colour of emitted light, determined by the reporter dye and a different colour light that activates the reporter, determined by the activator dye  . This technique, therefore, allows the study of molecular interactions between different sub-cellular structures by co-localizing them within a cell.

Comparison between images of microtubules in a mammalian cell obtained from conventional microscopy and 3D-STORM (A) Conventional immunofluorescence image of microtubules in an area of a BS-C-1 cell. (B) The 3D-STORM image of the same area with the z-position of the microtubules colour-coded according to the colored scale bar. (C-E) Show the x-y, x-z and y-z cross-sections of a small region of the BS-C-1cell outlined by the white box in (B), showing 5 microtubule filaments.

To understand the interaction and spatial relation between mitochondria and microtubules within a cell, a two-colour 3D-STORM was performed which proved to be fundamental towards the understanding of mitochondrial-microtubule interactions. It is certain that mitochondria are the “power houses” of a cell and hence, to maintain its dynamic morphology  , these organelles are constantly moving about a cell with help from motor-proteins which attach particularly to microtubules within a cell. For this experiment, fixed monkey kidney BSC-1-cells were used and two different sets of reporter-activator dyes were used to stain Tom20, part of the translocase outer mitochondrial membrane complex (used as an outer membrane marker for mitochondria) and ß-tubulin, a protein present in microtubules; the reporter dyes were attached to secondary antibodies.

Comparison of images of microtubule-mitochondrial interactions in mammalian cells as obtained from conventional and 3D-STORM microscopy. (a) A conventional fluorescence image of mitochondria (magenta) and microtubules (green). The image is slightly blurred and the distance between the mitochondria and microtubules, if any, is not visible since a single mitochondrion is seen to touch multiple microtubules. (b) STORM image of the same area with all localizations at different z positions stacked. The image is acquired in aqueous media and reconstructed from 500,000 localization points. This image, contrary to the conventional image (a), clearly shows a 150nm separation between the mitochondrion and one microtubule, whereas the same mitochondrion was in much closer proximity to another microtubule.

The STORM-image provided a clear picture of mitochondria and microtubules, allowing a better understanding of the spatial relation between them as compared in fig.13. STORM is not limited to imaging the interactions of only two sub-cellular structures and can be used to image multiple structures by differentially labelling them. STORM can be extended to imaging motor-proteins, the main complexes which facilitate the mitochondrial movement along microtubules, further illustrating their interactions and providing a better understanding of the regulation of morphology of these “power houses” within a cell, thereby having much potential for future nanoscale-research.

However, STORM requires large numbers of raw images of localised-molecules to be taken from different imaging-frames so that the entire super-resolution image can be constructed, and this limits the speed of this technique and the acquisition time required to construct the highest-resolution image requires a few minutes  .

Conclusion

It is safe to conclude by saying that microscopy has come a long way since its first discovery in the late 16th century and reached an era when the diffraction limit is being surpassed so that individual nanoscale molecules can be observed. In the past decade, super-resolution microscopy has taken a big jump and techniques like STED, SSIM, TIRF-SSIM and PALM/STORM have been developed. Even though each of these techniques accommodates features like greatly improved image-resolution, 3-dimensional imaging, live-sample imaging and multi-coloured imaging, each of these has its own limitations. In the ideal world, STED microscopy would be expected to work independent of light-wavelength and unaffected by the high-intensity lasers. Similarly, PALM/STORM would be expected to be faster techniques requiring lesser raw-images and SSIM would be expected to be unaffected by photobleaching and sample-positioning. SIM can be applied for live-imaging, 3D-imaging and multicolour-imaging; however, its resolution is still not as good as that provided by STED microscopy (live-imaging, 3D-imaging) and PALM/STORM (3D-imaging, multicolour-imaging). Therefore, at this point, it is hard to tell as to which of the above explained techniques is the best since each of them have their advantages and pitfalls and each has significant potential in different areas of biological research. As of now, considerable progress has been made in microscopy, hence opening many doors in cell biology and it is safe to say that in the future, technology will improve, and new imaging techniques will be developed

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Studying The Harlem Renaissance Period English Literature Essay

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(James) Langston Hughes began writing in high school, and even at this early age developing the voice that made him famous. Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, but lived with his Grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. Hughes grandmother Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston was prominent in the African American community in Lawrence. Hughes’s grandmother was unable to give Hughes the attention he needed, so he began to feel hurt by both his mother and father, and was unable to understand why he was not allowed to live with either of them. These feelings of rejection caused him to grow up very insecure and unsure of himself. When Langston Hughes’s was thirteen, his grandmother died and he moved with his mother and step-father in to Lincoln, Illinois. According to Hughes, he wrote his first verse and was named class poet of his eighth grade class. When his step-father found work in Cleveland, Ohio the rest of the family followed. Soon his step-father and mother moved on, but Hughes stayed in Cleveland in order to finish high school. His writing talent was recognized by his high school teachers and classmates; Hughes’s first verse was published in the Central High Monthly, a sophisticated school magazine regularly (http://www.asalh.org/bhb.html). Typically, a young man of mixed race is caught disastrously between the black and the white world, but especially between longing for acknowledgment by his biracial father and being disowned by him (Rampersad, Arnold, pg2). Langston Hughes died of prostate cancer on May 22, 1967 (http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html). Langston Hughes was a poet that was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance period.

In some respects he grew up a motherless and fatherless child, who never forgot the hurts of his childhood. In his life, as well as in his art, Langston Hughes laughed so often that the tragedy of his earliest years, which is the way he remembered them, was finally almost always hidden. Although many people relaxed before his boyish glamour, a perceptive few also glimpsed an original unhappiness behind his chronic chuckle and ready, remarkable laugh, or intuited in his many sentimental gestures, especially to the young the memory of early pain. Far from being spoiled with love and care, Hughes grew up with a wrenching sense of having been a passed-around child who craved affection but received it only in episodes. This unappeased hunger left him- in spite of his gift of laughter- a divided man. Hughes was caught in the cross fires of being black and white, especially because he was not acknowledged by his biracial father (Rampersad, Arnold, pg2). Hughes had taken up this theme so often that he was unconsciously drawn to it. In his autobiography “The Big Sea” Hughes smiled and smiled and gave only hints of his ambivalence toward his mother. “My grandmother raised me until I was twelve years old,” he wrote, “Sometimes I was with my mother not often.” From the start Langston saw little of his mother, but much of the road-on which he would spend a great part of the rest of his life (Rampersad, Arnold, pg3). Not long after, he left his grandmother in Lawrence; Hughes began a precocious discovery of loneliness (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 4).From the start Hughes saw little of his mother but much of the road on which he would spend a great part of the rest of his life. In mid-July he and Carrie Hughes, his mother, were in Buffalo, but he had begun to plan a move to Cuba, then a “protectorate” of the United States. By July, him and Carrie was pregnant again and probably unable or unwilling to travel overseas (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 10-11). At least once, by his own admission, he ran away from home, because he found life with his mother to be unpleasant. His mother’s failure to reconcile with Jim Hughes, his step-father, had left her bitter. Jim Hughes sent Langston money on several occasions, but it was barely enough for him to live on (Rampersad, Arnold, 12).

There were happier times. Even as a child, Langston was his mother’s son in his passion for the theater and the road. They took the train together to Kansas City to visit Dessalines Langston, who ran a barbershop on Charlotte Street in the city. Langston never forgot his first visit the rattle of the train wheels, the bellow of the brakemen, the clanging bells at the bustling station, and at the end of the journey wonderful food at his “uncle” Des’s and, at last, the music hall, where Hughes’s own lifelong love of the theater was born. In Topeka, Kansas his mother took him regularly to the public library, a small but impressive ivy-covered stone building on the grounds of the state capital, he was entranced by the bright silence of the reading room, the big chairs, the long smooth tables, the attentive librarians who fetched books at his command. He learned to read and write his first surviving letter concern’s a book. His most memorable early encounter with segregation came in the late summer of 1908 when he was ready to start school. When the principal, Elis Foster, refused to admit him, she appealed directly to the school board, argued her case, and won (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 12). In mid-April, 1909 before the end of first school year, his mother withdrew Langston from Harrison and returned him to Lawrence and his grandmother. His mother himself was off to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where on a visit that summer the boy saw unforgettable mountains.

At the end of the summer, however, he was back with his grandmother in Lawrence. By this time, his grandmother had taken him to Topeka to hear a speech by the greatest colored man in the world Booker T. Washington. On another trip, his grandmother and he went to Osawatomie, Kansas on August 31, 1910 for the dedication of the John Brown Memorial Battlefield. With the spirit of John Brown at hand, former President Theodore Roosevelt delivered his almost radical celebrated “New Nationalism primary of humanity over property rights, and called for a powerful central government (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 13). His grandmother stayed home and forbade him to go out afterschool, because of her hatred of segregation. Since blacks were not allowed to attend the church of their choice, they did not attend church at all.

When Hughes entered the second grade of the Pinckney school in the late summer of 1909, he joined the other black children of the first three grades in one classroom supervised by a black school teacher. By the middle of the school year Hughes often cried for his mother to come and take him to Kansas City, where she nom lived. When she could, Carrie Hughes came to Lawrence to fetch him, or meet him at the train station in the colored bottoms section of the city. Together they saw plays, not all of them for children: Under Two Flags, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and Buster Brown. They attended the opened afforded his ticket, Langston howled in disappointment; the theater was in his blood. (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 14)

Feeling his mother absence as rejection, Langston dropper deeper and deeper into fantasy. From his grandmother, too, came little warmth; he had out her tales of heroism. Accustomed to measuring her words, she now hoarded them; he would remember her, finally, as kind but: old, old. As Langston Hughes got older the university building at the top of the hill he discovered the morgue of the medical school. Admitted by mischievous students, he stared in fascination as they lightheartedly cup up and cavers. He returned again and again to watch them. (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 14)

All his life Hughes would be fascinated by death “Dear Lovely Death,” as he called one of his collections of verse, “that takes all things under wing”. Hughes would also so richly assert the joy and the social purposes of life that most of his reader s seldom notices. Once Langston mother came from Kansas City for a Sunday school concert, no prompting could make Langston start his memorized speech. He went further when Carrie presented a program of dramatics at St. Luke’s Church. As “The Mother of the Grace; “, Carrie wrapped “togas” around her son and another boy who were supposed to stand pitifully on stage while Cornelia, celebrated for her devotion to her sons, lamented their fate. Whether or not he saw Carrie’s choice of roles as ironic, he ruined his mother’s show. (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 15)

Hughes life with his grandmother was not much more pleasant. Mary Langston’s situation had become desperate. Langston never forgot his humiliation when another boy, passing the summer with in Lawrence, wrote home pleading to return because Mary Langston served mostly dandelion green. Mary Langston’s economizing led, however, to a friendship that would be of great important to the man that Langston would become to know. In 1909, 1913, and 1914, according to city directories, Mary Langston lived not at her home but at 731 New York Street in Lawrence, Kansas. About the age of twelve, he found he found his first job; he gathered maple seed and sold it most likely to the Barthelme’s seed company on Massachusetts Street. Then he started to deliver the Saturday Evening Post and a weekly new paper, almost certainly the Lawrence Democrat,(unlike the Daily Journal). (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 17)

Meanwhile, he had established himself as a student. Leaving the segregated classes at Pinckney, he entered the integrated New York school (on New York). In at least one monthly report, his fifth grade teacher marked him “excellent” in each of his eleven subjects. Entering the seventh grade at the Central School in 1914, Langston passed into the care of a white teacher who decided to institute segregated seating in her class. She either compelled or induced all the black children to move to a separate row. (Rampersad, Arnold, pg 17)

Hughes worked various odd jobs, before serving a brief tenure as a crewman aboard the SS. Malone in 1923, spending six months traveling to West Africa and Europe. In Europe, Hughes left the SS. Malone for a temporary stay in Paris. During his time in England in the early 1920s, Hughes became part of the black expatriate community. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U.S. to live with his mother in Washington D.C. Hughes again found work doing various odd jobs before gaining white-collar employment in 1925.hughes got in employment in 1925 as a personal assistant to the historian Carter G. Woodson at the Association for the study of Africa American life and history. Not satisfied with the demands of the work and its time constraints that limited his writing. (Desantis, Christopher C., pg 40)

Hughes quit to wok as a busboy in a hotel. It was while working as a busboy that Hughes would encounter the poet Rachel Lindsay. Impressed with the poems Hughes showed him, Lindsay publicized his discovery of a new black poet. By this time, Hughes’ earlier work had already been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first book of poetry. The following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln University, a historically black University in Chester Country, Pennsylvania. There he become a member of the black Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, a black Fraternal Organization founded at Howard University in Washington D.C. Thurgood Marshall who later became an associate justice of the supreme court of the United States, was an alumnus and classmate of Langston Hughes during his undergraduate studies at Lincoln University. Hughes earned a B.A. Degree from Lincoln University in 1929. He then moved to New York. Except from travels to areas that included parts of the Caribbean, Hughes lived in Harlem as his primary home for the remainder of his life. (Desantis, Christopher C., pg 41, 42, and 43)

Hughes First published in the Crisis in 1921, the verse that would become Hughes signature poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, appeared in his first book of poetry, “The Weary Blues” in 1926. Hughes’ life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas, who collectively created the short lived magazine “Fire”. Hughes and his contemporaries were often in conflict with the goals and aspirations of the black middle class, and of those considered to be the Midwives of the Harlem Renaissance, W.E.B Du Bois, Jessie Redmond Faucet, and Alain Leary Locke. The men of the Harlem Renaissance accused of being overly fulsome in accommodating and assimilating Eurocentric values and culture for social equality. A primary expression of this conflict was the former’s depiction of the “low –life”, that is the real lives of blacks in the lower social – economic. (Bernard, Emily)

The superficial divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community. Hughes wrote what would be considered the manifesto for him and his contemporaries published in the nation in 1926, “The Negro Artist and The Racial Mountain”. Hughes was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé, and he didn’t go much beyond the theme of black is beautiful as he explored the black human condition in a variety of depths. Thus, his poetry and fiction centered generally on insightful views of the working class lives of blacks in America, live throw his portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African American identity and its diverse culture. (Bernard, Emily)

Hughes was quoted saying “My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind”. Therefore, in his work he confronted racial stereotypes, protested social condition, and expanded African American’s image of itself. Moreover, Hughes stressed the importance of a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self – hated that united people of African descent and Africans across the globe and encouraged pride in their own diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic. Langston Hughes was one of the few black writers of any consequence to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. His African American race consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black writers, such as, Jacques Romani, Nicolas Gullies, Leopold Seder Sorghum, and Amie Creasier. (Bernard, Emily)

Hughes was, with the exception of Richard Wright, the black writer most identified with communist left during the 1930s, it was undeniable. Hughes’s frequent publication of “revolutionary” poetry in the journals and press of the CPUSA, his activity in communist – initiated campaigns. In fact what is formally most interesting about Hughes’s poetry in the 1930s in that the wide variety of voices, styles, and themes employed by Hughes in the 19202 and the early 1930s and addressed to equally disparate audiences becomes largely unified by the end of the decade. This process of unification results in Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) and, ultimately, Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), in which formerly distinct addresses and addresses are combined to imagine a single audience and a single subject. To draw on Bah tin’s discussion of the novel, if a diversity of speakers and auditions could be said to be retained by Hughes, this diversity is contained within a single volume in a dialogic relation rather than in different volume and journals speaking to different audiences. (Smethurt, James)

The range of addresses and addresses in Hughes’s poetry reached its zenith in early 1930s. During this period Hughes largely abandoned the types of poems that had made his 1927 “Fine Clothes to the Jew” so notorious in the black press. Poems formally rooted in the secular and sacred musical forms of the blues and gospel music, as well as in black rhetoric and representing as speaking subjects such “low life” character as prostitutes, gamblers, murderers, drunks and suicides. Instead Hughes’s published poems fell into three general categories aimed at three relatively discrete audiences; “up life” and comic poems aimed largely at an African American audience that was outside the cultural orbit of the CPUSA, and outside the groups of black intellectual’s associated. (Smethurt, James)

The same year Hughes established his theater troupe in Los Angeles, his ambition to writer for the movies materialized when he co-wrote the screenplay for “Way down South”. Further hopes by Hughes to write for the lucrative movie trade were thwarted because of racial discrimination within the industry. Through the black publication Chicago Defender, Hughes in 1943 gave creative birth to Jess B. Semple often referred to and spelled simple, the everyday black man in Harlem who offered musings on topical issues of the day. During the mid 1950s and 1960s Hughes’ popularity among the younger generation of black writers varied as his reputation increased worldwide. With the gradual advancement toward racial integration, many black writers considered his writings of black. Hughes wanted young black writers to be objective about their race but not Otto scorn it or flee it. He understood the main points of the Black Power movement of the 1960s, but believed that some of the younger black writers who supported it were too angry in their work. Hughes’s posthumously published Panther and the Lash in 1967 was intended to show solidarity and understanding with some skill and devoid of the most virile anger and terse racial chauvinism some showed toward whites. (Olson, Charles, pg 19 and 20)

Near the fourth of July, Hughes at last needed Noel Sullivan’s entreaties and travelled north for a short visit to Carmel-by- the-Sea. There he was very warmly received at “Ennesfree” by Sullivan himself, Marie Short, Robinson and Unna Jeffers, Ella Winter, Lincoln Steffens, Martin Flavin, Albert Rhys Williams, and others in the old circle. The political tension of the previous summer had faded away. The JOHN Reed Club itself was dead- killed, ironically, not by vigilantes or the American Legion but, across the nation by decree of the Communist Party, which suddenly had found the club no longer a suitable vehicle for its radical goal. Here he continued work on his stories with Arno Bontemps. Butt their board bandit; an editor called the story dull and prosaic, and said that with to authors it suffered from a shifting point of view. (Rampersad, Arnold, pg307 and 308)

Langston Hughes was, in his later years, deemed the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race," a title

he encouraged. Hughes meant to represent the race in his writing and he was, perhaps, the most

original of all African American poets. On May 22, 1967 Langston Hughes died after having

had abdominal surgery. Hughes' funeral, like his poetry, was all blues and jazz: the jazz pianist

Randy Weston was called and asked to play for Hughes's funeral. Very little was said by way of

eulogy, but the jazz and the blues were hot, and the final tribute to this writer so influenced by

African American musical forms were fitting. (www.kanasaheritage.org)

Work citied

Black History Bulletin. Association for study of African American Life and History.

D.C.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes Volume1: 1902-1941 I, Too, Sing America. New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986.

Desantis, Christopher C. Fight for Freedom and other writing on Civil Right (collected words of Langston Hughes, Volume 10). New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986.

Bernard, Emily (2001). Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carlvan Vechten. 1925-1964.

Smethurst, James. The new Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930- 1946. New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999.

Olson, Charles. Projective Verse. “The New American Poetry”. New York: Grave, 1960. Ed. Donald M. Allen.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes Volume 2: “I Dream A World”. New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988.

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Studying The Heart Of Mothers And Children English Literature Essay

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The mother is the heart of the family. The one person that children can turn to when life has taken them for a ride that they were not prepared to take. Even when she doesn’t agree with their decisions, she will help them up, dust off their knees, and tell them that she loves you. After she gives them a hug and a kiss on the cheek she will try to steer them in the right direction as they go back out and try to survive the game. This is a real mother. The power of the relationship between a mother and her children can make absolute effective differences. Mothers play big roles in the two short stories “Mother Tongue” written by Amy Tan and “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock” by Sherman Alexie. Mothers inspire their children in a way that it enriches their lives with the passion for learning and their devotion for life.

Amy faces couple of challenges that drives her toward her choice of education. In the beginning of her life she was ashamed and embarrassed because of her mother. And as an attempt to get away from this side of her heritage, Amy, once she becomes a writer, writes with great English and diction, and she uses a plethora of vocabulary. However she soon realizes that she is being someone she is not. She eventually fully realizes her true relationship with her mother, and subsequently allows that newfound knowledge to affect her writing. The first challenge Amy’s going through is the difficulty of being raised by a parent who speaks limited English. This can result in Amy and her mother being judged poorly by others. Being raised by her mother makes her perception of the world heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used. So, thinking differently than people is one advantage beside thinking of what her mother is trying to say. For example, when her mother says “until that man big like become a mafia” (28), others don’t completely comprehend the real meaning. However, what she really means is that the man becomes big, as in known like a mafia. She uses mafia to metaphorically describe the word “big”, but her accent makes a disapproving sound. In addition, Amy has to help her mother doing her daily essential communications. She says “she used to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she. In this guise, I was forced to ask for information or even to complain and yell at people who had been rude to her” (29). That means Amy learns a lot just because she has to do this. Amy has more knowledge about communication with people in a very early age. Amy builds that knowledge until she became able to write professionally. The second challenge is the absence of the father. Amy grew up with her mother, so that her broken language sounds complete for her. And even though, Amy is embarrassed of her mother’s broken language, she has to live with it which gives her the chance of developing ways to distinguish what her mother means. Amy has all of her concerns toward her mother and she starts building up her enthusiasm for learning more about the English language.

Amy Tan uses her mother’s language to satisfy her craving of education. She feels that she needs to fill that missing part, which is the language, by studying and going deep into it. The relationship between Amy and her mother is one of wonderful love and comfort, one where they can speak broken English and have it mean something special. Essentially, Amy becomes authentic and true to her roots. She is looking at her mother in an incredible way that she is ignoring the worse part of not being able to be understood by people, and she thinks more about how to develop that situation into something useful. She never looks at the dark side of the situation. She starts thinking in that and she starts answering some questions like “Why are there few Asian Americans enrolled in creative writing programs?” (30). And she estimates that “And that makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as “broken” or “limited”.” (30). This way she is developing her abilities of thinking using some available source, her mother’s broken language, to improve her own concepts of choosing her schooling. Amy thinks that words are more than just words; sometimes she has to look behind them and read in between to understand the true meaning. Amy thinks that points and ideas are more important than the structure of a sentence or the words used in that sentence. And since learning is not only by studying but it needs to have some kind of a view of the world real needs, she is able to improve her ideas especially after she made comparisons between what is precise and what is opinion-based answer. When she said that standard test can’t determine a person’s intelligence, she is trying to say how people have different ways of thinking and different types of intelligence. Yet these standard tests can only measure a certain type of intelligence, so it is kind of unfair for everybody. And this guides Amy toward writing as she feels that it can offset her mother’s broken language and the unjust of the different tests. Inspired by her mother, she begins to write so that the common man can understand her.

Furthermore, Alexie shows how good the mother is to illustrate that pattern. Good mothers are really sensitive for whatever happens to the family and they care more than any other member in the family for building a successful and harmonious family. Alexie declares that using the position of the mother when a horrible accident happened to her husband. First when the husband tells his son Victor “I remember your mother when she was the best traditional dancer in the world” (400), it gives a reasonable point inside the son’s mind to look at his mother. Alexie commands “After he began to recover, my mother stopped visiting as often. She helped him through the worst, though.” (400). Looking at his mother, Victor realizes that his mother usually gives him a different story than what he hears from his father. At one point, Victor’s father tells him that Victor’s generation does not know anything about music or romance. However, when his mother describes her husband’s failed attempts at playing the guitar, she demonstrates that he is also bad at music or romance. This becomes evident when Victor discusses the separation from his father. He describes the event from three different points of view which are his father’s memory, his own memory, and his mother’s memory. He is confused as to which version really happened, which makes him think more of why this happened to figure out the real event. Victor starts thinking differently as he starts asking questions like “Was it because of Jimi Hendrix?” (400) and he starts making up optimistic imaginations about his father’s return. Victor’s mother is patient and she really cares about helping him as when he goes outside and waits for his father to come back, his mother gives him a quilt to feel warm but she doesn’t force him to go inside. She wants him to dive in his dreams. Victor says “It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away” (401). All that is left over is the negative effect of assimilation, which is represented by the sound of a person drinking alone in the dark. That indicates how Victors gets rid of bad aspects and thoughts about the relationship between his mother and father and how he changes it while he and his mother were waiting for his father’s return. Victor’s mind expands to the wide world. His mother teaches him how he can search for an answer by himself using her own techniques of working out problems using patience. He learned how he can win by losing something he likes and he breaks down the difficulty of being more physical than fanciful when he left his dreams to drive him. He learned a lesson of how he should always rejoice even if the situation does not allow him to do that. All that happen because of the simple conversation he has with his mother and the way he looks at his mother while she is helping his father.

To conclude, the two authors propose great ideas of how mothers take control of the way their children think. Mothers think that those changes can make huge differences in their children’s future. A good mother should grant her own concepts and abilities and shares her knowledge and skills to help her children grow up mentally. Good children care about their mothers and listen and learn from them which build up their own concepts. And this is how people are different from one to another.

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Studying The Greek Goddess Aphrodite English Literature Essay

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In the time when everyone believed that there was no other way but worshiping the Greek gods and goddesses, there were the Olympians. They were Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Hermes, Artemis, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the most beautiful goddess of all Olympia, and the goddess of erotic and sexual love (also beauty and fertility). Her name in translation stands for “foam-risen”. She went by other names too, such as Venus, Dionaea (after her mom Dionne), and Cyprian after the island she emerged onto after being formed out of the sea foam.

There are two stories for the creation of Aphrodite. One makes more sense with the translation of her name. It is said that the Titan Uranus had a son named Cronus who cut off his (Uranus’) genitals and threw them into the sea. The immortal flesh in the sea caused foam and thus Aphrodite formed out of a shell among the foam. She then emerged onto the island of Cypress where the sea nymphs showered her with wonderful gifts. Then in other history she is known as the daughter of Zeus and Dionne.

Since Aphrodite is known to be related to Zeus then her siblings would be Zeus’ children. Some of the more important siblings are Ares, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, Hercules, Persephone, Dionysius, The Muses, and The Fates.

When Aphrodite was brought up to Mt. Olympus Zeus decided he should marry her, so he picked his son Hephaestus, the ugly and deformed god of fire. Hephaestus believed it was because he was very hard-working, but it’s said that Zeus thought it would be less chaotic if she was unattainable. (It’s also been said to put an end to his own temptations.) Aphrodite had no choice in this union, but it did not stop her from having her side adventures with other men, both gods and mortals. Hephaestus felt so lucky to have the most beautiful woman as his wife that he lavished her with the most beautiful jewelry and clothes that had ever been seen (which he made himself). One of which was her famous magic girdle that made her irresistible to gods and mortals. But the gifts were not enough for the irresistible Aphrodite, so she had many affairs that resulted in many children.

One of her most famous affairs was with Ares, the god of war. She had quite a few children with him. Some of which were Deimos, Phobos, Harmonia, Anteros, and Eros. When Hephaestus found out about Aphrodite and Ares’ affair, he decided to catch them in the act. So he had a net that was impenetrable set over the bed. Then he told his wife that he was going away on a trip and the two lovers fell for the trap. They were caught in bed together and Hephaestus showed the Olympians of their affair, Hephaestus was going to demand all of his gifts back, but Poseidon felt pity for Aphrodite and convinced Hephaestus to forgive her. Aphrodite at one point insisted on an open marriage. She later married Ares anyway.

Another one of her many love affairs were with the mortal Adonis, son of Myrrha and Cyprus. When he was born, Aphrodite gave him to Persephone to take care of until he was grown up. But Persephone fell in love with him and refused to give him up, so, the two stubborn goddesses had to go to Zeus to settle the problem. So Zeus ruled that Adonis would spend 1/3 of the year with Persephone, 1/3 of the year with Aphrodite, and the final 1/3 of the year with whomever he wanted (which he ended up spending it with Aphrodite). He especially loved to hunt so Aphrodite took up the hobby so as she could spend more time with him. But after a while she pleaded with Adonis to give up the game because it was dangerous and she couldn’t bear to lose him. But he refused, and one day on the hunt he was killed by a wild boar and when she fled to him, she turned his blood drops into wind flowers (Anemone Oregana) as a symbol of their love. It is also said that Ares had heard of Aphrodite and Adonis’ love affair and in a fit of jealousy, he turned himself into a bull and ran Adonis to death.

Adonis was not the only important mortal lover or Aphrodite. In Greek stories, Zeus decided to get revenge on Aphrodite. She caused so many gods to fall in love with her that he made her fall in love with the mortal Anchises. The two stories of their love was that she first disguised herself as a mortal and revealed herself to him after they had their son Aeneas (they also had a daughter, Beroe). Then another story is that she first pursued him as herself and he refused her, then she disguised herself as a mortal and did not reveal her deity to him until after she was pregnant. Then it was said that Zeus murdered him when he revealed the affair he had with Aphrodite to other mortals. A few more of her lovers were Dionysius, Hermes, and Poseidon.

Not only was this goddess famous for her various sexual activities, but also for starting the Trojan War. A wedding took place among the gods and goddesses for the union of King Peleus and Thetis. Eris the goddess of Chaos was not invited and in anger she tried to crash the wedding, when not let in she threw a golden apple in the middle of the floor for “the fairest”. Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all believed themselves to be the fairest and began fighting over the apple. Zeus could not decide who was, so he left his son Paris (Prince of Troy) to decide. In the end he chose Aphrodite because she had the best bribe for Paris, this was Helen of Troy who was abducted from the Greek King Menelaus. To get her back, the King declared war, and it was the Trojan War. During this war, her son Aeneas fought. Athena, who liked to meddle in lives just as Aphrodite did, gave Diomedes the power to see the immortals on the battlefield. She told him he should stay away from all the gods and goddesses but he could stab Aphrodite. When Aphrodite helped Aeneas by shielding him from all of Diomedes attacks, Diomede lunged at Aphrodite and cut her hand. She fled to Mt. Olympus where Zeus told her to stay away from warfare and only worry herself with matters or marriage and love and so on.

The goddess had many affairs, but she never felt guilty, she liked being able to get whoever and whatever she wanted, but she was always ready to help deities and mortals get the love that they wanted. She was even said to be very generous and always very friendly. Aphrodite was one of the very well-known out of all Greek gods and goddesses, and even though she slept around a lot, she gave everyone something to talk about and made lots of babies. Which I think many gods, goddesses, and mortals appreciated.

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