MAILBOX
Release the roads from the power of unlicensed drivers and unfit vehicles
'We demand safe roads' should not be confused with any other kind of movement. Rather, it is a basic need of humans. An accident is an accident but making the road a stage for accidents to happen is akin to murder. How many lives will be lost on the roads before these get the attention of the authorities? To sustain daily life, everyone has to move outside. But nowadays, the roads of our country are a death trap. Everyday, so many lives are lost on the road. No one is concerned, no laws are being applied.
A main cause of such accidents are drivers competing with each other on the roads. There is no reasonable logic for such a heinous act by drivers. Not to be outmatched by the other, they drive without regard to traffic rules and regulations and have crushed other cars and people. Vehicles without fitness papers and registration and drivers without licenses reign on our roads. Pedestrians' lack of adherence to traffic rules is also a cause of road accidents.
These atrocious accidents have to be prevented. Laws and orders must be implemented. Offenders should be punished.
Naeem Ariyan
University of Chittagong
Literature by women––for women or for all?
From deconstruction's point of view, binary oppositions had played a very important role to form the western ideologies and most importantly the androcentric attitude had, and still has, its admirers. In a binary pair, the left one is always given priority over the right one, such as male/female––the left side of the slash is taken as a superior one because classic and androcentric thinkers had formed the binary theory on the basis of the 'presence and absence' technique. What they believed is that the reproductive organ of a man is visible and because of that man is superior and his writing as well, as they (very unfortunately) compared the pen with the organ. Anne Bradstreet, in her poems, portrays the attitudes of Puritan society and male writers toward women and their writings.
With time, the author has become less important for the readers, as 20th century thinkers have established new theories which are applied to read the text. As Barthes believes "the author is dead," thus a reader is alive. The problem is that readers usually become biased by the influences from outside; an outside influence is always harmful for both, the reader as well as for the text. A reader is not allowed to have any kind of identity except the identity of an honest reader. And I have found the write-up, "Literature by women––for women or for all?" very honest in dealing with the main viewpoint.
Kamruzzamann Asif
Via email
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