I Never Told You, By Celeste Ng

Narrative stories or essays can expand through a wide variety. Although a narrative is telling a story, it could be a person narrative or something they have experienced. This allows others to become creative when telling their stories. Reading “The Sanctuary of School”and “Tell Me Something”, the authors used various ways of writing and publishing a narrative story.

In the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, Susanna Kaysen was only 18 years old when she agreed to enter a medium security psychiatric facility in Boston, McLean hospital in April 1967, after a failed suicide attempt. She insisted that her over dose on aspirin was not a suicide attempt, but after a 20 minute interview the doctor decided she needed to be admitted to a hospital. During her prolonged two-year stay at the hospital Kaysen describes the issues that most of the patients in her ward have to deal with and how they all differently deal with the amount of time they must stay in the hospital for. While in the hospital Kaysen experienced a case of depersonalization where she tried to pull the skin of her hands to see if there were bones underneath, after a failed escape attempt. Soon, after going to therapy and analysis she was labeled as having recovered from borderline personality disorder. After her release she realizes that McLean Hospital provided patients with more freedom than the outside world, by being free responsibility of parental pressure, free from school and job responsibilities, and being free from the “social norms” that society comes up with. Ultimately, being in captivity gave the patients more freedom then in society and created a safe environment in which patients wanted to stay in.

Just dive in. You can swim. It will clear all the burden you have ensued throughout your life. It will be a fresh start. Trust yourself. The novel Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng, examines how failure stems from the fear to fail and are caused by sexism and racism, thus placing a burden on victims of this discrimination. Unfortunately, racism and sexism are constant forms of discrimination that have been holding individuals back from reaching their full potential for centuries. Discrimination is due to the tragic reality that people are fearful of the ones that are different from them. They fear that this different race or gender may upstage them in the competition of life. The Lee family unfortunately has to bear the burden of discrimination in their everyday life due to racism and sexism. This burden carries the Lee family down like an anchor billowing to the bottom on the sea in hopes to find peace once it hits the ground.

Jenn Yeahgley says that there are things you can do to stop discrimination. Jenn says that we should identify what we believe, by saying why you think your beliefs are important. You should challenge yourself to learn something new by looking into what that other person thinks/ believes and look at how you can talk to them without arguing. Ask questions for example why they think that way, etc... Listen to what people have to say about what they believe in and what they stand for. Speak up against

Sanity is subjective. Every individual is insane to another; however it is the people who possess the greatest self-restraint that prosper in acting “normal”. This is achieved by thrusting the title of insanity onto others who may be unlike oneself, although in reality, are simply non-conforming, as opposed to insane. In Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, this fine line between sanity and insanity is explored to great lengths. Through the unveiling of Susanna’s past, the reasoning behind her commitment to McLean Hospital for the mentally ill, and varying definitions of the diagnosis that Susanna received, it is evident that social non-conformity is often confused with insanity.

Discrimination can be challenged in different ways, but in order for it to stop, we must also encourage change.

In the poem, Because I Never Learned, author Patrick Lane laments innocence and gentleness stolen from him as child as he reminisces over an action he committed without question. Lane begins setting the scene of fateful action, describing the desolate environment in which he grew. In his own words it was a hard land, a land of dead animals and dead men. This is the land that Lane will commit the act the that he is still unable to reconcile himself with. Lane then uses the experience of how he crushed the kitten's skull to demonstrate the harshness of this environment. The recollection juxtaposes an innocent creature, the kitten, with the harshness of the reality that Lane grew up in. Lane's recollection emphasizes the helpless of the kitten

The fundamental root of discrimination is prejudice. Prejudice starts with cognition and our thoughts towards another group which often leads to a generalization or stereotyping (Myers, 2014, pg.572). Stereotyping leads us to emotions directed towards a particular group or person; including fear, hatred, and hostility, fundamentally this is negative prejudice (Myers, 2014, pg.572). Myers (2014) states that if we believe our thoughts to be true, our emotions will lead to the actual act of discrimination. Taking action on prejudice is discrimination; it is the behaviours or actions directed towards a specific distinction of a group (Myers, 2014, ph.572). We do know that discrimination can take many forms, some acceptable and others purely inexcusable.

Excluded for having dark colored skin. Excluded for being a female. Excluded for liking to read. Imagine being treated as less than human just for being who you are. Often in life the act of oppression may not even be labeled as such; other times oppression may be experienced so severely and powerfully, that there may be no hope of stopping it.

Dating back to several hundreds of years ago, people have always been discriminated against. In today’s society, one might think that discrimination is outdated, however, it happens more than a person might think. Stemming back from how a person was raised to what type of social situations they have been immersed in can result in some sort of discrimination or bias. Three physical characteristics are often times the root cause of most discrimination, race, gender, and age.

How can it be that someone may not like you because you are different? For me it is hard to understand how someone can discriminate against another human being, for the reason that the color of his or her skin is different. Discrimination may seem as something from the past but this is a reality in this day in age that many people still endure. Discrimination affects people in several different ways such as creating fear, anger towards society, and in some cases even be ashamed of whom they are. Although we have negative experiences, difficult obstacles or meet people who will bring us down to our lowest points in life, I believe we can use these negative experiences to make us a stronger person, and make us want to reach our dreams, and to want to live life.

The novel, Girl, Interrupted is a memoir of author Susana Kaysen’s life and her journey through early adulthood as she suffered with Borderline Personality Disorder. The novel captures her time at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital located in Belmont, Massachusetts. Kaysen divides the novel into separate anecdotes of events and fellow patients she encountered during the two years she was admitted at Mclean.

Oppression and discrimination has plagued our society since early times. As a collective society one would think that over time oppression and discrimination would turn into acceptance and equality. Conversely, our society has taken sluggish steps towards diversity, acceptance and equality. Our society is focused on labeling people and putting them into limiting boxes. Oppression occurs across various groups of people based on gender, sex, race, religion, and disability. Members of these diverse groups are discriminated among work places, schools, and other places. Work places and schools promote diversity and non-discrimination, however little seems to be practiced. Oppression across generation leaves damaging consequences hindering society in the growth towards a more accepting environment.

There are so many serious issues like poverty, disease, war and so much more happening in this world. Life is already difficult therefore, why must we allow something like discrimination makes people afraid of whom they truly are. It is clear that discrimination is a part of a systematic use of power that “the enslavement of Africans in the United States, the official domination of Blacks by Whites in South Africa, and Hitler's widespread extermination of Jews are some historic examples of systematic, legal discrimination” so why can’t we break this chain. Like I mentioned in my introduction, discrimination is an action people have come to witness but yet, we still discriminate against each other. Everyone wants to be superior over the other, others on the other hand, would never accept different types of races in their mist therefore, and we will never find peace.

Have you ever been judged because you are different? Sometimes people judge others who are different than them just because they are scared. This leads to those who are different to become weaker. This is called discrimination, it’s a big problem in the world today, it also plays a big part in the book Fire From the Rock. Discrimination leads to people to think they are worthless and useless. This is not okay and this why discrimination needs to stop. Discrimination leads to people becoming weaker and vulnerable because it lowers someoneś self-confidence and become insecure, it hurts them mentally and physically, and it destroy their peace of mind.