Knight’s Poem, Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane

In Etheridge Knight's poem "Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane," he uses a fictional tale to describe the tyrannical elements of prisons while simultaneously conveying the oppression that those who defy authority face in society. Knight effectively utilizes imagery and analogies (implied or clearly stated) to appeal to the readers senses and draw them into the story (and ultimately the motif).

The Hard Rock was very strong. Hard Rock was standing every treatment he had, no matter how badly the treatment was; thus, his body was full of scars and welts. His treatment by officers and doctors were inhumane. For instances, he has cut his brain and shot electricity while he was operated by doctors to make him submissive. In addition, there was testing if Hard Rock had changed his attitude and submitted to officers, yet he has not changed. Diversity of extreme punishments on Hard Rock could not only change the behavior; it could also ruin the

The first Moore, the author, began his deviance in school through failing to do his assignments and performing extremely poorly in class. The second Moore, the prisoner, began through the use of a knife to solve conflicts as a child. Another case of defiance in the two children is evident when the first Moore, the author, started vandalizing public property. On the other hand, the other Moore was busy helping drug peddlers in supplying narcotics in the neighborhood. The mother of the first Moore became concerned of his son’s behavior and enrolled him to a prison school, where he would later become a leader of several cadets. It was while at this school that he gave his deviant behavior after several attempts to escape failed. The discipline levels in the school were extremely high, resulting in the young Moore changing his behavior for the better (Moore, 2011).

But, in seeking this goal, they sacrificed the prisoners’ liberty within the prison to the extent they went insane. Solitary confinement and beatings are two examples of the terrible conditions. The search for finding a way cure deranged men led to unjust treatment against democratic ideals even though the reformers were trying to improve their lives.

Inmates at Shawshank were often beat within an inch of their lives by the administration at Shawshank in order to instill a sense of obedience and to keep enforcing routine. Head Guard Captain Hadley would on occasion hurt the prisoners so much they would die of injury’s they sustained from him. “Black man, white man, red man, yellow man, it doesn’t matter because we’ve got our own brand of equality. In Prison every con’s a nigger and you have to get used to the idea if you intend to survive men like Hadley and Greg Stammas who really would kill you just as soon as look at you. When you’re in stir you belong to the state and if you forget it woe is you. I’ve known men who have lost eyes, men who have lost toes, Men who have lost fingers, I knew a man who lost the tip of his penis and counted himself lucky” (44) this shows the lack of moral judgment

Greg Dobbs is a journalist, professional public speaker, and ABC News correspondent. Dobbs argues in agreeance of keeping solitary confinements in the prison systems for way of punishment. He first talks about Rick Raemisch’s, Department of Correction boss, experience as he stayed in solitary confinement for twenty hours at the Colorado Prison. Dobbs quoted Raemisch when he said, “I sat with my mind”. Raemisch brought a lot of attention to the evil side of solitary confinement says Dobbs. He then reminds the reader that convicted criminals

In Thomas C. Foster’s “How to Read Literature like a Professor”, myth and archetype are thoroughly discussed and analyzed. Some of these themes are exemplified in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s work, The Yellow Wallpaper, in which a nameless narrator experiences her own personal hell, driven into madness by her improper psychiatric treatment. Gilman’s text is not only a story of a woman who is essentially driven into the underground, but also a criticism of society’s view of women and mental illness. She describes the narrator’s descent as a journey, through the use of symbolism and her treatment as a mentally ill woman.

This book presents two individuals, named Richard and Perry, who strived to do a few things once they were out of prison that were very horrific, and unbearable which by any means is not permissible. During and after the killings of the Clutter family, Perry comes to his senses and speaks on the aftermath of what these killings have brought upon him. “The sounds of breathing, the gasps, the hysterical inhalations of a man with a severed windpipe. When Perry said, “I think there must be something wrong with us,” he was making an admission he “hated to make” (110). Criminals who admit on their behavior. The position becomes, are they human beings anymore, or are they dehumanized? The fact that Perry Smith comes to the realization that they are demented, should they be given a chance? The level of detail that speaks

The distressing experience of operating as a prison guard in such a notorious penal facility as New York State’s Sing Sing Penitentiary is one that is unlikely to be desired by one not professionally committed to the execution of prison uniformity. However, the outstanding novel written by Tom Conover illustrates the encounters of a journalist who voluntarily plunged himself into the obscure universe of the men and women paid to spend the better portion of their lives behind prison barriers. In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Conover creates a noteworthy document resonating personal emotional occurrences that nonetheless suggest the cultural sensitivity of a true prison guard. From the standpoint of our studies

Before the reform movement, prisoners and the mentally ill were treated cruelly under the prison system. Up until the 1800s, it was believed that mental illnesses meant some form of “religious punishment or demonic possession”. Most people had negative feelings toward the mentally ill during the years up to the reform movement. Hippocrates actually was well known to treat the mentally ill. He’d change their lives to change their feeling or he’d use certain substances to help these people. In the times of the middle ages, most people believed that the mentally ill were in need of religion. In the 1800s, people could be hanged for a variety of reasons, ranging from murder, to arson, to forgery, or even for being an single mother hiding a stillborn child. Almost all the mentally ill people were jailed in 1800s America. Others were hidden by family members (Brief). In this time period, the New York

Can words change person’s thoughts from desperation, violence, to peace and normality within a dehumanizing prison? Some prisoners spending short to long term sentenced, sometimes lose themselves in a world of violence and become worse off when coming into the prison system, than how they used to be before prison life. Trying to hold on to any bit of sanity or respect for humanity becomes an everyday struggle. Sometimes the smallest thing can help prevent the feeling, of going over that edge of no return from a dreadfulness act of death.

After reading the book I have gained a new understanding of what inmates think about in prison. Working in an institution, I have a certain cynical attitude at times with inmates and their requests.

Prisoners not abiding by silence or working rules were punished. Punishments ranged from diets of bread and water, banishment to the 'dark hole' or whippings with a cat-o'-nine-tail. (Johnson & Wolfe: 135)

In this world, there are two sides to everything. Whether it may be a message, a film or a novel, each platform of literature has two different windows. The first being the depiction of the author and the second being the interpretation of the audience. This concept is evident within both works this essay seeks to explore. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, a charismatic criminal, Randle P. McMurphy is admitted to a state asylum due to his will of serving out of prison sentence in a mental hospital rather than the penitentiary. McMurphy brings in the outside world to the admitted patients after being legally declared insane through a condensed interview with a psychiatrist. He symbolizes freedom, life and the power of an

What was at issue was not whether the prison environment as too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its very materiality as an instrument and vector of power, it is this whole technology go power over the body that the technology of the ‘soul’ - that of the educationalist, psychologists and psychiatrists - fails either to conceal or compensate, for the simple reason that it is one of its tools. (TBOTC, Foucault, pg. 28)