10 Days in A Mad House by Nellie Bly

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

In her essay “On Going Home,” author Joan Didion speaks to new parents about how the experience of “going home” after starting a new family can trigger feelings of disconnection between families, old and new. Written from Didion’s own experience returning to her childhood home for her daughter’s first birthday, the essay describes her nostalgia for her previous home and how she regrets being unable to, as a mother, provide the same familial experiences she had as a child. Using relatable invention, imagery-inducing arrangement, and syntax that inspires more deliberate reading by the audience, Didion effectively convinces her readers of the familial fragmentation that occurs with the creation of a nuclear family.

What does the word home mean? In the essay “On Going Home” by Didion she recreates her feelings and thoughts about her meaning of home. Family is a big part of one’s life and important one at that and Didion uses it as the center of her work. The work itself is about re- defining what home truly is.

In the novel, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the theme of growing up is prevalent throughout the book. Throughout the novel, a young mexican girl named Esperanza goes through experiences as she matures that involve her friends, society, dangers that expose her to the outside world and help her to realize what the real world is like.

In Alison Bechdel 's Fun Home, there is a focus on a sculpted perception of gender roles produced by society and a great emphasis on how Bruce and Alison challenge these strict gender specific characteristics. Through Bruce’s femininity and Alison’s masculinity along with their homosexuality, they are able to go against the norms and the collection of rules set by society. It is also through their struggle with gender roles that one is able to understand their sexual orientation. Although Bruce and Alison seem fairly different from one another, there are elements that pull them closer together revealing their similarities.

Many Americans live with the idea that the days of racism are far behind us; however, the film The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki 's, and the book The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, state otherwise. Although the United States holds five percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for a fourth of the world’s prisoners. More than the majority of these prisoners are of color. (Jarecki 2012; Alexander 2012, 189) Therefore, the statistics contradict the U.S.’s long-held ideal of freedom and equality. This large prisoner population has been a consequence of the War on Drugs—a war that has not only locked up millions of African Americans but also given them a permanent second-class status. Both the video and the book

In Bly’s time, mental illnesses were not taken seriously. Bly described the asylum she was admitted to as overcrowded, cold, and dirty (ch. 7). It defeated the purpose of trying to give extra attention to those in need. It was easy to get admitted into an institution, but nearly impossible to make it out because the treatment was not treatment.

A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash definitely fits the category of “grit lit.” It is a novel about the Hall’s, a family who is wracked with grief, anxiety, and guilt after the ‘mysterious’ death of one of their sons, Christopher or Stump. The story encompasses more than just the story of the family though as it is told from the perspective of Adelaide Lyle, an old wise woman from the town, Jess Hall the youngest son of the family, and Clem Barefield, the sheriff of Marshall who also had heartache of his own that is intertwined with this families story in more ways than one. The novel incorporates most if not all of the features that is “grit lit” including: an element of crime, a focus on the bleakness of life, lyrical language, and a central character who wishes to escape their environment or get peace inside it.

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

America’s answer for dealing with crime prevention is locking up adult offenders in correctional facilities with little rehabilitation for reentry into society. American response for crime prevention for juvenile’s offenders is the same strategy used against adult offenders taken juvenile offenders miles away from their environment and placed in adult like prisons.

Growing up in today’s society can be traumatizing for any child. When it comes to growing up as a young girl, however, it can be downright devastating, but not only for the child but the parent as well. There are so many decisions to be made when choosing how to raise your child, assuring that you have instilled proper values to develop a healthy sense of self-worth and confidence.

Elizabeth Cochran, a.k.a. Nellie Bly was the first known female reporter. Bly's life spanned Reconstruction, the Victorian and Progressive Eras, the Great War, and its aftermath (Kroeger, 1996). And, even though there remains no fully organized collection of her life's personal or

In Cinderella Ate My Daughter Peggy Orenstein examines the triumphs and pitfalls navigating raising a daughter, in today’s mixed message world. From peer pressure and the need to fit in today’s society, young females have commercialism forced at them at every turn and in very clever ways. Doll creators have been pushing the boundaries of good taste with each new season launch. When the more “mature” actresses at the age of 17 feel the need to do something drastic to remove them from the wholesome image created for by company executives, mothers and consumers feel betrayed, and yet then we need to have a dialog with our kids as to why just last month Miley Cyrus was wonderful but now she is not okay for the viewing household.

Nellie Bly, the young reporter who went undercover to see the true predicament at New York's grandest mental institution on Blackwell Island. Everyone knew the circumstances at Blackwell were awfully revolting, but no one knew how truly horrendous it was. Eager to become a respected women investigative reporter, Bly masked her sanity so she could be sent to the horrid Blackwell. After reading Nellie Bly’s book Ten Days In A Madhouse readers can infer she is cunning, brave and determined to find her way to the psychiatric hospital.

Nellie Bly was born as Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born on May 5, 1867 in Cochran Mills, Pennsylvania. After financial struggles, Bly convinced her mother to move with her to Pittsburgh, where her two older brothers resided. Since she was now responsible for her family Bly looked for work but found it hard since most women's jobs where low-paying. Bly began her career in journalism when after firing back at to the editor, George Madden, of a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch for his definition of the "woman's sphere". She was later hired for a full time position because of the talent George Madden believed she had, Bly was just 18 at the time. Since it was not appropriate for female journalist to use their real name she changed it to what we