How are Clausewitzian concepts (if any) illuminated by Napoleon's Essay

How are Clausewitzian concepts (if any) illuminated by Napoleon's experience - Essay Example Instead, he used his military victories over neighbouring countries to instill in them new institutions and codes of law. He introduced new forms of education and ways of doing politics. The introduction of various civil codes throughout Europe were perhaps his greatest achievement (McLynn, 255). He himself believed his Civil Code would long outlast any of his military glories (Wanniski, 184). But they could not have been introduced without the wars that preceded them. Napoleon was a genius when it came to warfare and operations, but he had a larger vision too (Archer, 380). Napoleon had a vision for Europe and for France. He felt that certain principles should be at the forefront of the Continental way of life. He was clearly an operational genius with respect to military affairs, but he also embodied, more than anyone, the Clausewitzian maxim that war is politics by other means. Work consulted Archer, Christon I.; John R. Ferris, Holger H. Herwig. World History of Warfare. Universi ty of Nebraska Press, 2002. McLynn, Frank. Napoleon. Pimlico, 1998. Wanniski, Jude. The Way the World Works. Regnery Gateway, 1998.

The challenges of the HR executive in 2013 Research Paper

The challenges of the HR executive in 2013 - Research Paper Example As Indian organizations realize the need for professional HRM, there is a high demand for HR professionals as well. Reports indicate that during 2008 the attrition of HR professional in the growing IT sector is the highest at 20%, while turnover rate for core IT professionals known for high attrition is 18%. Additionally, in many organizations, line professional adopt the role of the HR and that too with great success. The CEOs are concerned about the issues related to people placed by the top leadership in HRM organizations. However, the Accenture report identifies most CEOs, which doubt on the ability of a large section of HR functionaries to be strategic business partners. The reasons behind the failure of organizational leadership is to encourage HR to move to the front lines from their traditional roles as a back-room support and crisis-handler, and the inability of HR function to align with business. With the development of the knowledge industry and recruiting high demand for people, the HR functions started to take a strategic focus. The applicability of HR functions is not only confined to business establishments but also to non-business organizations. Supporters of HRM claimed that the HR manager is a change agent and a transformational leader, and his or her functions are panacea for all organizational ills and social events. Therefore, the term human resource implies to the availability of man power for supply, which can be drawn and used to accomplish a task. Resources appear as a cost in traditional accounting services (Grahamm, 2005, p.5). Present status of Human Resource Management in organizations. HR executive is usually the vice president of an organization. They carry the responsibility of linking the firm’s corporate policy and strategy with HRM. In a weak economy, it is difficult for the hr executives today to reward the employees for their performance. The present condition of the nation’s employment rate remains at 9.1% (Ru she & MacAskill, 2011). Therefore, to improve the nation’s economy HR executives are providing new opportunities to the top technical talent. According to the HR professionals, managing the company’s brand image became challenging role for them to exist in the competitive market. Therefore, the use of internet facilitates the HR executives today to attract and recruit the new talents for their organizations. It also enables the companies to search for talent cutting across time and distance constraints. Using social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedln help the HR executives to connect with the new talents. We can take the example of the LinkedIn, created a small team in their organization, which will focus on only providing opportunities to the prospective employees to work in companies like Mountain View and Calf. In August, Linkedln invited students from different colleges nearby to take active participation in computer programming event organized in their headq uarters. The main motive behind this participation in computer programming event was only to give them an exposure in their organization culture and to promote their company to attract the new talents. Now day’s companies are trying to create their presence in social media in order to connect with the new talents. Taking another example of one of the world’s leading professional service organization Ernst & Young

A Critical Evaluation Of The Balanced Scorecard Accounting Essay

A Critical Evaluation Of The Balanced Scorecard Accounting Essay In 1992, Kaplan and Norton first published a paper about the Balanced Scorecard ¼Ã‹â€ BSC ¼Ã¢â‚¬ °. It was a huge success and BSC soon became very popular all over the world. Before BSC emerged, organizations usually use traditional methods of performance evaluation focused mainly on financial measures such as ROCE, sales and profits. BSC translates an organizations mission and strategy into a comprehensive set of performance measures that provides the framework for a strategic measurement and management system. The scorecard measures organizational performance across four linked perspectives: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). In recent years, a number of multi-national organizations have introduced BSC as part of their management control systems. The purpose of this paper is to give a critical evaluation of the BSC as a performance management tool in multi-national organizations. The paper is structured as follows: the next part gives some reasons of multi-national organizations using BSC and the advantages of using it. The second is about some limitations of using BSC and the reason why it is not suitable for some organizations. One specific example is given for both parts. The last part is the conclusion of this paper. BSC has been widely used in multi-national organizations in the past 15 years. It obviously has some benefits to these organizations. Here are some of the advantages of BSC and they are also reasons that make so many organizations adopt BSC. Firstly, each perspective of BSC requires the identification of a number of goals, and suitable measures. This means that BSC can provide strong support to the decision making of the organization. In the world which is full of competition, its very important for an organization to identify what is most important. Each goal and each measure of the BSC is closely related to the strategic target of the organization. The organization can make strategic decisions based on the BSC. Multi-national organizations are often very large, they need simplified and concentrated target for the whole organization to keep themselves competitive. Otherwise, the connection between different departments will become weak and the organization will finally fall apart. Secondly, BSC guards against sub-optimisation, so that improvement in one area is not achieved at the expense of another. Teamwork is a very important part of corporate culture. BSC combines different elements of an organization and that enables managers to consider what different departments functions are. In traditional methods of performance evaluation, managers only focus on financial figures. This can lead to decisions that make one department improve its performance on the expense of another. This is quite important to multi-national organizations. A multi-national organization has many departments and one of the managers tasks is to coordinate these departments and make the most use of each department. If one department improve its performance on the expense of another, there will be serious problems for the organization. Thirdly, BSC brings together many of the different elements of a companys business and strategy into a single report. This can make decision making process more efficient. All of the four perspectives of BSC are key elements to the success of an organization. BSC provides a report of the combination of the four perspectives and it can save time for managers who are making decisions. It also enables managers to minimise information overload by limiting the number of measures used. Nowadays, organizations seldom get bothered because of lack of information, on the contrary, they often have to deal with more information than what they really need. This happens more often on multi-national organizations. Many multi-national organizations hire professionals as consultants and when these consultants provide suggestions, there will usually be an increase in the sources of information. This will thereby increase the pressure of dealing with information. BSC can help managers concentrate on on ly a few key factors, so that they can minimise information overload and make the right decision at the same time. Fourthly, BSC challenges managers to look at organizations in new ways and to talk to stakeholders about the issues which really matter. It can also inspire employees to work harder. Traditional methods of performance evaluation stress what managers want employees do and then evaluate the result. Theyre about the control of results. BSC, on the other hand, stresses target management. It encourages employees to reach the target creatively. Top managers dont know everything themselves. The BSC lets people who know the area best make the best decision and the task for top managers is to combine all these together and set a target for the organization as a whole. Managers dont have to look at the detailed information, they just need to set targets and make decisions for the organization as a whole. This can be quite important to multi-national organizations because they usually have departments all over the world, its impossible for top managers to look into every detail in every departm ent and shareholders need the most important information to make decisions. So BSC turns out to be a very good tool for multi-national organizations. However, BSC is not suitable for every organization in the world. It also has some limitations. Firstly, BSC is to complicated for some organizations. Organizations have to increase the number and breadth of performance measures when the adopt BSC. Many organizations find it complex for evaluating business units performance because BSC has large number of performance measures across several perspectives. (Kraus, K. and Lind, J., 2010) If an organization wants to adopt BSC, it has to establish clear and real cause-and-effect relationships between different measures. Its much easier than done in reality, even Kaplan and Norton admitted it (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). This process of establishing relationships may take years to complete. Therefore, many organizations find it hard to adopt BSC. And some organizations which do adopt BSC just simplify it by reducing measures and some even focus on financial measures only, just like what they do in traditional methods. Secondly, BSC may result in employees paying attention to the areas measured. Since BSC outlines what the organizations strategy and all the areas that will be measured, employees will start paying attention to these areas so that they can get high reward through good performance in these areas. Theyll ignore areas that wont be assessed because they wont get reward from these areas. And this can become a weak point of the organization. The use of BSC requires a change in the orientation of the employees. Managers have to think about customers, internal business process and learning and growth as well as financial perspective, which means managers have to know more than just financial figures. Other employees, at the same time, are also forced to look at the organizations goal instead of their own production or sales goals. This requires that all of the employees must have a higher education than they had in traditional methods. Thirdly, BSC may be too restrictive and also may not be able to cope with a fast changing business environment. The market is changing rapidly nowadays and it takes time to construct a BSC system in the organization. Important elements for an organization change everyday. And new elements arise everyday. Its quite possible that one element is very important when the organizations decides to adopt BSC and becomes not important at all when BSC is finally established. Fourthly, some organizations may face capital market pressure. Most organizations, especially multi-national organizations, raise fund from the capital market. Capital market influence managers decisions a lot. Managers know what they say and do may affect the stock price and they know that usually analysts are only interested in financial measures. This leads to organizations focus on income and revenues because this is what theyre measured on externally (Kraus, K. and Lind, J., 2010). Finally, BSC may have a high cost. BSC requires an organization to think from and set target in financial perspective, customer perspective, business process and learning and growth perspective. This require not only deep understanding of the overall strategy of the organization, but also the separation of the strategy into different departments. The organization needs to set proper goals and measures for each department. And employees need to learn about BSC to make sure the system will work. Information of each department and each perspective of the BSC needs to be collected. Establishing BSC consumes a lot of time and resources. Even established, BSC can cost a lot. It needs continuous collection of information. And there is a learning and growth perspective in BSC, which can be quite expensive. So many organizations may abandon BSC just because of the high cost. Lets take Coca-Cola, the famous multi-national company based in America, as an example. Coca-Cola Beverage Company in Sweden (CCBS) adopts BSC in the company. CCBS took the advice of Kaplan and Norton. It decided to measure its performance from financial perspective, customers, internal business process, and learning and growth. The top managers had a three-day meeting to discuss about it. They set a long-term target for the company (about 3 years). They also described the market conditions at that time. Then they decided an overall target for the company and set measures for different systems and programs. The top managers tried to keep each perspective of the BSC balanced. In order to do that, CCBS used a step-by-step way. First of all, the managers set some financial measures related to the overall strategy, set financial targets on these measures and then reached these targets in a proper way. The second step was to repeat the same process in the customers perspective. The question was how our customers will respond if we plan to reach our financial target. The third step was to identify the internal business process. The managers asked themselves some questions: do we have enough creativity? Are we willing to change ourselves in order to make the company change in a proper way? After this process, CCBS was able to make sure that each perspective was balanced and all the measures would lead the company to the same direction. But they did think that it was necessary to repeat these steps several times before they became totally balanced. CCBS didnt put emphasis on business plans or budgets. It didnt see BSC as something can be unchanged. On the contrary, it considered every problem in a changeable way and made modifications every year. This may be the main reason that made BSC adoption in CCBS such a success. Some other subsidiaries of Coca-Cola are also establishing BSC in recent years. However, Coca-Cola didnt ask all of its subsidiaries to adopt BSC as a tool of performance measurement. Different companies may have different conditions and different management. Since all the laws and economic environment in different countries are distinct and the adoption of BSC requires good management, BSC may not be suitable for some companies. Take companies in China as an example. The stock market in China is not as mature as it is in European countries. Many investors in the stock market dont have enough economic background and they usually rely on analysts. However, analysts only care about financial figures. This leads to some companies consider BSC as useless. And in some companies which do use BSC, managers often ignore the real core of BSC. They usually use BSC to measure performance of employees and decide their wages only and they dont realize that BSC is actually about the companys overall strategy. So BSC is not suitable for most companies in China right now. BSC adoption needs a more mature market and managers who really understand what BSC is. In conclusion, BSC has many benefits and it can help organizations become more competitive. But it also has some limitations and it doesnt work in some countries and in some businesses. It is not suitable for every organization.

Trip :: essays research papers

THE TRIP It all started when my friend and I were off-roading and one of us had a marvel idea†¦ â€Å"Wouldn’t this be fun to do in Colorado?† So it begins, I mention that I have a cousin that lives in Colorado, and that we could stay with him and his family. We planned the trip for August 10th. Turns out this will be the most liberating and most independent event in my life. Thursday, August 10th rolls around, we get and start loading the jeep, and hit the highway. Just knowing that we were on our own was such a big challenge for us, never in our lives have we gone on trip with out the financial support and guidance of our parents. As we approach the first big city Omaha, I have to guide him and tell him which exits to take and when we got out of there it was such an accomplishment. After Omaha we had to fill up the tank for the first time. Never in my life have I argued with my best friend about the stupidest thing. Who, is going to pay for the first gas fill-up? After about 10 minutes of arguing we finally decided to flip a coin to see who would pay. Turns out there are some rules about coin flipping that I didn’t know about. We just had a mutual agreement to alternate who pays for gas. That was only the first major delay in our trip. As we start on the long stretch of nothingness people refer to as the Nebraska highway, I realized that a box shaped automobile isn’t the most aerodynamic car in the world. Turn out this is going to be a 16-hour trip to Gunnison Colorado instead of a 14 hours. Just one more delay on our trip. Have you ever felt so overwhelmed, like the weight of the world is on your shoulders? That’s kind of how I felt, when trying to direct my friend through the city of Denver. It was one of the most challenging things to try and explain to someone else what I see on the map and how to get through the Mixmaster’s of Denver. We only ended up stopping and asking for directions about every other exit. Just one more small delay in our trip. As night falls the Rocky Mountains rise, right into our path and get to my cousin’s house we had to travel through Monarch Pass which is probably one of the hardest ones to drive due to the lack of lighting and curves.

Metaphysics is the main philosophy in Minority Report Essay

There are several branches of philosophy found in Minority Report –ethics, truth and metaphysics. Ethics is the study of morality; truth is the study of what is true; metaphysics questions reality. The most prominent philosophy in the film is metaphysics, due to it being the underlying philosophy that created the problem and causes the plot to occur in the first place. Ethics and truth are branches of philosophy evident in the film. In Minority Report, the pre-cogs are 3 children who live in half-awake conditions and have previsions of murder scenes simply for a utilitarian purpose, and also the personal gain of Burgess. It is not right to forego the freedom, innocence and happiness of 3 children just to prevent murders. Even though it is true that they are â€Å"suffering† for the greater good, however, they are still human beings and should have equal rights. It might be a â€Å"gift† to be able to predict murders and stop them from happening, and thus saving lives, and improving the security and safety of the people, however, if it is at an expense of the three pre-cog’s childhood and freedom, the ethical values of the government are definitely questioned. Truth is another branch of philosophy found in the film as the Pre-crime Department functions solely based on the previsions of the pre-cogs, which they deem to always be true. As said by Witwer, the Pre-crime Department is â€Å"arresting individuals who have broken no law†. It is impossible to prove that they were going to murder without physical evidence that it actually happened. Furthermore, the analogy brought up by Anderton to justify â€Å"the fact that you prevented it does not change the fact that it wasn’t going to happen† is simply a straw man fallacy. Due to the laws of physics, it is supposed to fall due to gravity. However, it is impossible to predict what a human being does since every individual is different. A vision is not sufficient to prove a crime as big as murder, and simply because there have been no failures does not prove that a failure will not happen. And in fact, in the movie, several murders took place due to corruption. This questions what is actually true in the movie. Even though the philosophies truth and ethics are found in the film, the story is not based on whether using the 3 pre-cogs is right, or if the visions they were providing are right and reliable, but instead on how John defies the path he is made to take, which arose from finding freewill in a deterministic world. The main philosophy branch found in the film is metaphysics, more specifically an argument between determinism and free will, which are branches of metaphysics. The concept of determinism is prominent in the film since the entire setting of the story is in a futuristic world (2054) where a government branch, Pre-crime Department, prevents crimes from happening based on psychic visions. The fact that pre-cogs are used due to their ability to foresee murders before they happen implies that there exists a â€Å"forth-dimension† where our futures (and essentially our lives) are being controlled and pre-made by an infinite being. This also means that we are simply playing out the roles already set out for us. The whole idea of determinism, which is a philosophy that humans have no control over their own actions and their actions are caused by an external power, is further emphasized by statements said by Anderton such as â€Å"The fact that you prevented it does not change the fact that it wasn’t going to happen. † This statement, as well as another said by Burgess â€Å"You do not choose the things you believe in, they choose you†, suggests that our futures are already predetermined.

Life of John Milton Essay

Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study: his Arcades and Comus were both commissioned for masques composed for noble patrons, connections of the Egerton family, and performed in 1632 and 1634 respectively. Comus argues for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity. He contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial collection for one of his Cambridge classmates. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton’s poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge. Family Milton and his first wife, Mary Powell (1625–1652) had four children: * Anne (born 7 July 1646) * Mary (born 25 October 1648) * John (16 March 1651 – June 1652) * Deborah (2 May 1652 – ?) Mary Powell died on 5 May 1652 from complications following Deborah’s birth. Milton’s daughters survived to adulthood, but he had always a strained relationship with them. On 12 November 1656, Milton was married again, to Katherine Woodcock. She died on 3 February 1658, less than four months after giving birth to a daughter, Katherine, who also died. Milton married for a third time on 24 February 1662, to Elizabeth Mynshull (1638–1728), the niece of Thomas Mynshull, a wealthy apothecary and philanthropist in Manchester. Despite a 31-year age gap, the marriage seemed happy, according to John Aubrey, and was to last more than 11 years until Milton’s death. (A plaque on the wall of Mynshull’s House in Manchester describes Elizabeth as Milton’s â€Å"3rd and Best wife†.) Two nephews, John Phillips and Edward Phillips, were well known as writers. They were sons of Milton’s sister Anne. John acted as a secretary, and Edward was Milton ’s first biographer. Blindness But in the course of his work for the government, his eyesight had begun to fail, and by 1651 (43) he was completely blind. Death He ended his days in a small house near Bunhill Fields, alone with his wife and a maid. He died in ++1674 (66) without pain or emotion, according to testimony at the time no one in the room noticing his passing. ————————————————- Published poetry Milton is the author of dramas such as Samson Agonistes (1671) as well as lyrical sonnets, of which the finest were in fact inspired the the death of his second wife. Altogether John Milton would write twenty- three sonnets. In a very real sense therefore these can be considered as exceptions. He uses such moments to express his thoughts and feelings on specific events, historical or personal. In his lifetime, moreover, he was mainly known for his political pamphlets. As a poet during the age of Shakespeare, he was born less than a decade after the death of this one. Milton might have been less appealing than such a master of the English language but he was nonetheless destined to become one of the best writers England would ever know. Having sided with the parliamentarians against the monarchists, Milton would begin a political career with responsibilities comparable to that today of an undersecretary of state for foreign affairs. However the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 will mean that he is both fined and imprisoned in the famous still standing today Tower of London. Eventually pardoned, Milton would from then on lead a rather retired life devoted entirely to writing until his death in 1674. Milton’s poetry was slow to see the light of day, at least under his name. His first published poem was On Shakespear (1630), anonymously included in the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare. In the midst of the excitement attending the possibility of establishing a new English government, Milton collected his work in 1645 Poems. The anonymous edition of Comus was published in 1637, and the publication of Lycidas in 1638 in Justa Edouardo King Naufrago was signed J. M. Otherwise the 1645 collection was the only poetry of his to see print, until Paradise Lost appeared in 1667. Paradise Lost Main article: Paradise Lost Milton’s magnum opus, the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost, was composed by the blind and impoverished Milton from 1658 to 1664 (first edition) with small but significant revisions published in 1674 (second edition). As a blind poet, Milton dictated his verse to a series of aides in his employ. It reflects his personal despair at the failure of the Revolution, yet affirms an ultimate optimism in human potential. Milton encoded many references to his unyielding support for the â€Å"Good Old Cause†.[31] Milton followed up Paradise Lost with its sequel, Paradise Regained, published alongside the tragedy Samson Agonistes, in 1671. Both these works also resonate with Milton’s post-Restoration political situation. Just before his death in 1674, Milton supervised a second edition of Paradise Lost, accompanied by an explanation of â€Å"why the poem rhymes not† and prefatory verses by Marvell. Milton republished his 1645 Poems in 1673, as well a collection of his letters and the Latin prolusions from his Cambridge days. A 1668 edition of Paradise Lost, reported to have been Milton’s personal copy, is now housed in the archives of theUniversity of Western Ontario. Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, changed into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil’s Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification.[1] The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eveby the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton’s purpose, stated in Book I, is to â€Å"justify the ways of God to men†.[2] Paradise Lost is widely considered one of the greatest literary works in the English language.[3] The poem begins strong as follows: Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe (with loss of Eden, till one greater Man restore us, and regain the blissful seat) Some of the famous verses from Paradise Lost include: The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n. The context of this passage is that of Satan not yet really considering revenge. At that point he is instead deciding to make the most of the situation. This is confirmed only a few lines later when he makes the very famous utterance: Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav’n. The following quote is from a point in the work when God is talking with his son and angels about the fact that since angels and man were given free will, it would have been meant changing their nature to have intervened and prevented their sin: The first sort by their own suggestions fell, Self-tempted, self-depraved: man falls deceived By the other first: man therefore shall find grace, The other none Finally, let us consider the following quote where Milton tells us about Eve having been deceived: Greedily she engorged without restraint, And knew not eating death; It interesting to note that even though Paradise Lost was to become considered as a major influential work, it did not meet immediate success when it was first published in 1667. It was not until 1688, a little over ten years after Milton’s death that the poem would start to be widely recognized. Perhaps such late recognition has partly to do with the fact that by the time of his death Milton was not only broke, but he had been alienated out of intellectual life in his own country. In 1670 he would publish his controversial The History of Britain, and in 1671 Paradise Regained, dealing with the temptation of Christ. Milton would die in London on November 8 1674. The same year would appear the second edition of Paradise Lost. ————————————————- Characters Satan Satan is the first major character introduced in the poem. Formerly the most beautiful of all angels in Heaven, he’s a tragic figure who describes himself with the now-famous quote â€Å"Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.† He is introduced to Hell after he leads a failed rebellion to wrestle control of Heaven from God. Satan’s desire to rebel against his creator stems from his unwillingness to be subjugated by God and his Son, claiming that angels are â€Å"self-begot, self-raised†,[4] thereby denying God’s authority over them as their creator. Adam Adam is the first human created by God. Though initially alone, Adam demands a mate from God. Considered God’s prized creation, Adam, along with his wife, rules over all the creatures of the world and reside in the Garden of Eden. He is more intelligent and curious about external ideas than Eve. He is completely infatuated with Eve, which while pure in and of itself, eventually contributes to his reasons for joining Eve in disobedience to God. Eve Eve is the second human created by God, taken from one of Adam’s ribs and shaped into a female form of Adam. In her innocence, she is the model of a good wife, graceful and submissive to Adam. Though happy, she longs for knowledge and, more specifically, self-knowledge. Her first act in existence is to turn away from Adam and look at and ponder her own reflection. Eve is extremely beautiful and thoroughly in love with Adam, though may feel suffocated by his constant presence. One day, she convinces Adam that it would be good for them to split up and work different parts of the Garden. In her solitude, she is tempted by Satan to sin against God. Adam shortly follows along with her. The Son of God The Son of God is the spirit that will become Jesus Christ, though he is never named explicitly, since he has not yet entered human form. The Son of God shares total union with God, and indeed is understood to be a person of the Godhead, along with the Father and the Spirit. He is the ultimate hero of the epic and infinitely powerful, singlehandedly defeating Satan and his followers when they violently rebel against God and driving them into Hell. The Son of God tells Adam and Eve about God’s judgment after their sin. However, he sacrificially volunteers to eventually journey to the World, become a man himself, and redeem the Fall of Man through his own death and resurrection. In the final scene, a vision of Salvation through the Son of God is revealed to Adam by Michael. Still, the name, Jesus of Nazareth, and the details of Jesus’ story are not depicted in the poem.[7] God the Father God the Father is the creator of Heaven, Hell, the World, and of everyone and everything there is. He desires glory and praise from all his creations. He is an all-powerful, all-knowing, infinitely good being who cannot be overthrown by even the great army of angels Satan incites against him. The poem begins with the purpose of justifying the ways of God to men, so God often converses with the Son of God concerning his plans and reveals his motives regarding his actions. The poem portrays God’s process of creation in the way that Milton believed it was done, that God created Heaven, Earth, Hell, and all the creatures that inhabit these separate planes from part of Himself, not out of nothing.[8] Thus, according to Milton, the ultimate authority of God derives from his being the â€Å"author† of creation. Satan tries to justify his rebellion by denying this aspect of God and claiming self-creation, but he admits to himself this is not the case, and that God â€Å"deserv ed no such return/ From me, whom He created what I was.†[9][10] Raphael Raphael is an angel who is sent by God to warn Adam about Satan’s infiltration of Eden and to warn him that Satan is going to try to curse Adam and Eve. He also has a lengthy discussion with the curious Adam regarding creation and events which transpired in Heaven. Michael Michael is a mighty archangel who fought for God in the Angelic War. In the first battle, he wounds Satan terribly with a powerful sword that God designed to even cut through the substance of angels. After Adam and Eve disobey God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, God sends the angel Michael to visit Adam and Eve. His duty is to escort Adam and Eve out of Paradise. But before this happens, Michael shows Adam visions of the future which cover an outline of the Bible, from the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis, up through the story of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Interpretation and criticism The Creation of Man, engraving from the 1688 edition, by John Baptist Medina The writer and critic Samuel Johnson wrote that Paradise Lost shows off â€Å"[Milton’s] peculiar power to astonish† and that â€Å"[Milton] seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that Nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others: the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful.†