Analysis Of The Book ' Ordinary People ' By Judith Guest

Grief is a painful emotion that people experience through troubling times in life, such as losing a loved one. Swiss psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler Ross, introduced the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, in the year of 1969. She explains that there is no correct way or time to grieve; the stages are used to familiarize people with the aspects of grief and grieving. Grief can over take someone’s life and lead to a negative downfall, such as Hamlet experiences in Hamlet, written by Williams Shakespeare. He undergoes a variety of barriers throughout the novel, such as his father is murdered, which leads to his downfall-death. Although Hamlet grieves, the denial stage is not present in the novel as it

Based on Conrad’s character in the movie, he could be described as having more of an intuitive grieving style. This style of grieving utilizes more of the affective domain and uses little of the cognitive (Martin & Doka, 2011). For the intuitive griever, grief is characterized by the experience of painful feelings. The feelings of guilt and sadness were those that Conrad experienced the most. After

Arturo Madrid in his essay entitled, “Missing People and Others” in the book, Race, Class and Gender, speaks about his form of otherness that he experienced in schools. Madrid has a Latino ethnicity and is a citizen of the United States as are his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. However, he learned about othering before he knew of the concept. Though his school tried to erase otherness through denial, it only amplified the issue. He viewed his educational experience as a socialization process where you learned to become “American” (Race, Class and Gender, 2010, p. 18). Instead of viewing his educational experience as an academic journey, due to othering it become more of a social journey. Madrid realized early on that otherness was built into the American system by the society around in every facet. Therefore, he saw this systemic rationale of othering permeate into the school system. The denial almost seemed like a dismissal of the person’s culture and ethnicity. The implicit denial existed in many facets such as economic, political, cultural and social through the absences of the “others” (Race, Class and Gender, 2010, p. 18). However, schools is where it was felt the most severely.

Regarding psychological functioning, Conrad is under the vicious cycle of depression. His brother’s death led him to adapt a negative explanatory style. This in turn resulted in his depressed mood and cognitive and behavioral changes. He also believes that he has disobeyed his parents and does not deserve their forgiveness or affection (1:09:38). Conrad lives with a sense of guilt, not only for attempting suicide, but for things he had no control over (ex. Karen’s death). From a socio-cultural approach, Conrad depression worsens due to his unstable relationship with his mother, along with other relationships in his life. Throughout the movie, we clearly see that Conrad’s mother does not understand the severity of Conrad’s mental state. She frequently believes that Conrad is fine and wants their lives to ‘get back to normal’ (0:24:37). She believes Conrad’s mental health is a phase that can be fixed by simply being harder on him. The movie also takes place in a time where discussing mental health is taboo. Mental illness was significantly less common and thought to be a touchy subject. Throughout the movie, we can see that people do not know how to approach the Jarretts about Conrad’s state and frequently stumble through conversations or do not understand the situation (0:22:14; 0:31:52; 0:48:05). This plays a part in Conrad’s depression because he feels he can’t talk to or relate to anyone

This ending adds more obscurity to the work as a whole and goes right along with how Conrad wrote the novel in its entirety. This is how he shaped his characters as well. Vague descriptions and details make the readers think and try to process things on their own instead of the narrator telling them. That is why this ending and novel as a whole is one of the hardest to understand and

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

Wolterstorff’s story, Lament for a Son, is about the death of his son, Eric, who died in a mountain climbing accident at age 25 (1978). The five stages of grief are addressed throughout the story. The author experienced the denial stage when he was called and told that Eric had gotten in an accident. Wolterstorff had a few seconds of silence where he had no words because of the shock and disbelief in the news. It was hard for Wolterstorff to understand that the death of his son was a reality (Wolterstorff, 1978). Wolterstorff did not talk a lot about physical anger, or the anger stage, even though he must have been angry with the situation. He stated that he was angry that Eric climbed and that he was taken so early (Wolterstorff, 1978). Wolterstorff’s bargaining stage occurred when he stated that he wished Eric would have died of a disease instead of a mountain climbing accident. He said he believed that it would have lessened the pain of his loss because he would have had a chance to say goodbye (Wolterstorff, 1978). The depression

The emotional agony that Conrad experienced following the death of his brother almost led to his end. The conflict inside of Conrad is only the beginning of his suffering. The emotions that engulf one's mind can swallow them up and eat them from the inside out. They demand to be felt, but the management of the emotional conflict has been just as important. For example, when the Jannett family is together to take family photos, including the grandparents, the disconnect between Conrad and his mother are clearly visible to the naked eye. After being asked to take a picture with her son, Beth hesitates, violently insisting a different photo to be taken in order to avoid accepting and showing the increasing disconnect between her and her son. Siting and watching, Conrad struggles internally to decode the intentions of the scene depicted in front of him before he burst into an outrage. Initially, Conrad practiced silence in the form of withdrawal. Thus, he situated himself in the isolated window chair. The actions of his mother spoke to him in the sense that she hated him, wishing to have nothing to do with him. The silence remained silent until he burst with rage, projecting the instructions of his father for the camera to be given to his emotionally silent mother. Conrad rested on the assumptions he formed based not only on his mother’s current action, but passed actions as well, to reveal what he

He was used to live in his brother’s shadow, but when the boat accident happened to them, he was the only one to survive. As he was always indentifying himself the less important one, he considered it was wrong that he was the one who would still have a life. As a result of nervous breakdown, he tried to kill himself with cutting his wrists in the bathroom, fortunately his father found out and save him. Then he went to the psychiatric for four months. When he comes back, there are still issues he needs to deal with.

The book, Lament For a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff talks about his pain and grief after losing his 25-year-old son (Joy, 2009). His son died while on a mountain-climbing expedition. Dr. Wolterstorff has several books published during his career as a philosophical theology professor in Yale Divinity. However, he wrote Lament for a Son with a different journal style since it is a personal thing for him. The book is similar to a journal as he narrates the events that happened before and after his son’s death. The emotions expressed in the book are common among people who lose close relatives. What matters is how a person handles the issue. Kubler-Ross invented the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptancethat explain the escalation of grief when stricken by bad news (Axelrod, 2004). The paper looks into the book and its relation to the five stages of grief.

Berger, "She loved my brother, too.  It's just me"(120).  He concluded that Beth could not love him because there was something wrong with him.  After the big fight that Conrad had with his parents, he revealed to his father his opinion of Beth's feelings for him. Conrad tells him, "All right, then.  She hates me"(114).  Because Conrad felt that there was something wrong with him, he did not know how to react to situations nor did he know when to express his feelings.  For his Christmas present, Conrad's parents and grandparents bought him a car.  His response to this extravagant present was, "Yeah, okay… Thank you both, it's beautiful really.  It's terrific"(126).  He was not overly excited, as one should be, on receiving such an extraordinary gift.  He was not quite sure how to act, so he repressed all of his feelings.  In an early conversation with Berger, Conrad said, "What I'm doing here is that I had to come"(41).  This proves that Conrad was in denial of his psychological state and foreshadows Conrad's severe state of depression.  Conrad repressed all of his feelings and emotions.  He told Berger, "I don't feel anything"(98). Later on in the conversation, Berger told Conrad that the "Only way you're ever gonna get to know him [the guy in the closet] is to let him out now and then."(100)  This alludes to the fact that Conrad repressed his feelings and was extremely depressed.  All of these factors led to

Conrad's father does most of the worrying because he blames himself for Conrad's suicide attempt. Though the logical part of Cal's brain tells him it wasn't his fault he still believes that he should have paid more attention to Conrad. Conrad's mother, Beth, on the other hand thinks that Cal worries too much about Conrad. Beth thinks that Conrad is just trying to hurt her. Conrad tells Beth that he would tell her more about him if he thought she "gave a damn." Conrad tells Beth that he thinks she is the one trying to hurt him. Conrad finally releases all of his emotions when his mother confronts him about his quitting the swimming team. Conrad tells Beth how what he thinks of her visiting other countries instead of visiting him at the mental institution. After the fight, Conrad tells his father "She hates me. There's nothing I can do about it." Beth is a very unforgiving person, and Conrad doesn't think that she will ever forgive him for his suicide attempt.

Amory Blaine, the main character in the novel, is a rich young boy in the beginning of the book. Amory’s father Stephen Blaine became wealthy when two of his brothers, successful Chicago brokers, died. Although this classic song’s lyrics are about a girl, Daryl Hall explained to that the song is actually about one of his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriends who had a rich father. (Hall further explained that “Rich Girl” was used instead of “Rich Boy” because the former sounded better.) The song warns a young man that because he depended on his father’s money, he “won’t get too far”. As a young boy, Amory is used to living with riches in a sophisticated way. He’s never warned about the dangers of depending on wealth, however. This leads to Amory not having enough money to support himself later on in the novel.

The novel Ordinary People by Judith Guest is a work of realistic fiction which delves into the lives and emotions of Conrad and his father Calvin: two dynamic characters who have recently endured the tragic loss of Buck, their brother and son, respectively. Despite the insight Guest gives the reader into the inner thoughts of these two characters with her well-executed stream-of-consciousness writing technique, she does not fail to deliver a variety of secondary characters that add to the story immensely. One such character is Jeannine Pratt, the red-headed vocalist and love interest of Conrad. Jeannine’s role in the story evolves into far more than a meager romantic pursuit. Jeannine is an invaluable character to the novel because she causes major character progression in Conrad and leads him to his eventual recovery.

The life you live is what shapes who you are and is what leads you on your path towards self discovery. This may seem obvious, that self discovery is a journey that happens during one’s lifetime, but some people are not as fortunate to live such a fulfilled life that they are able to partake in such a journey. There are people that would argue that to simply have a life does not mean that one is actually living. With that being said, it is privilege to not only live a life, but to also discover one’s own identity because some people who live do not get that far either. In these three novels the three protagonists, Billy Lynn, Jay Gatsby, and Invisible Man, have all lived lives that have led them on their path to self discovery. Billy’s own journey was one mainly focused on battling with his own inner self. “Inner peace—you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself” (Fountain), in this quote Billy is recognizing and showcasing to the readers his own path to understanding and discovering himself. Billy