On The Run By Alice Goffman

In Robert Cormier’s novel, We All Fall Down, is a young-adult thriller that explores the evil side of humanity through a number of corrupt characters. Cormier, to a large extent, accurately depicts manipulative and dishonest behaviour whilst also showing the evil lurking within the prominent characters of Harry Flowers, Buddy Walker and Mickey Stallings who showcase the dark side of humanity. Cormier explores this through Harry Flower’s manipulative actions that result in the suffering of others. Additionally, the constant dishonest behaviour is shown predominantly through the main protagonist of Buddy Walker, who deceives the one he loves. Cormier continues to depict the evil lurking in society through the theme of appearance

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.

Many kids have not been to jail or experienced the loss of a close sibling or parent, and we do not understand the difficulty of being a slave. We can not even imagine that these terrible phenomena can occur. The book Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson depicts two young, black slaves that have survived through the uprising of the Revolutionary War, the immoralities of slavery, and the tragic loss of family members.Throughout the book, Curzon and Isabel suffer through multiple events that have made them chained both figuratively and physically, but the couple of juvenile slaves grow more determined to receive freedom after they go through their hardships.

Two best friends, Chris and Win, decided to do something great their summer of senior year before heading of to collage. Chris and Win are going to bike along the West Coast to Seattle, where Win’s uncle lives. At first Chris’s mom is against them going, while his dad pushes him to go because he had a similar dream that he did not accomplish. Win’s parents seem to not have a care in the world that their son is going to bike across the country. Eventually both sets of parents agree and the boys start their journey. The trip is going great but somewhere along the way things started taking a turn for the worst. The book Shift by Jennifer Bradbury is a great realistic mystery that keeps the pages turning.

Unlike animals, humans are able to observe past the mere monochromatic vision of survival. We have an impeccable ability to desire more than just living to breed, and breeding only to someday perish. Thus, we gradually brush this canvas with the colours of ethics, control, and knowledge. Whether the colours fade or become prominent through time, this canvas becomes our perception of normality and we allow it to justify our actions; favorable or harmful. We, as well as the narrator in the short story The Hunt by Josephine Donovan represent this. However, because of the narrator’s difference in perception, self-indulgence, and greed for power, the story introduces a feeling of infuriation to the reader.

In her article, On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto (2009), sociologist Alice Goffman uses data collected from her six year ethnographic study to explain how incarceration and threat of incarceration impacts daily life within a Philadelphia neighborhood. Her work focuses primarily on how policing and supervision in the neighborhood, referred to primarily as Sixth Street, impacts the lives of its poor Black residents. Gossman focused on the many men in the community that had warrants out for “minor infractions” including failing to pay court fees or breaking curfew, and the daily struggles they faced while trying to avoid identification and imprisonment. Using evaluation guidelines from Creswell (2013) and Anderson (2010), I have provided a critical review of Goffman’s research methodology and practices. I have highlighted many major flaws in her work, yet I have also recognized the promising advancements to sociological understandings that could come from her findings.

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.

The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).

In On the Run by Alice Goffman, one can see the inside perspective in a particular black community in 6th Street, Philadelphia. Goffman gives an “on-the-ground” account of the fear of being captured and the changes that fear brings upon the community in basic daily activities such as working, maintaining relationships, and seeking medical or police care when it is truly needed. Within these accounts that Goffman shares there are many connections to class readings and disscussions throughout.

In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.

In this essay I intend to explore the narrative conventions and values, which Oliver Smithfield presents in the short story Victim. The short story positions the reader to have negative and sympathetic opinion on the issues presented. Such as power, identity and bullying. For example Mickey the young boy is having issues facing his identity. It could be argued that finding your identity may have the individual stuck trying to fit in with upon two groups.

In the search for suspects in the cases, the police are mostly involved in the brutalization of the family members in search of evidence to present in court. The use of physical force is dominant with the police and also there is destruction of property of the suspects who are involved in the police brutality. In the search for the suspects too, the police may involve the people through long interrogation processes which entails issuing of threats to arrest the people, eviction of the people and also threatening to lose their children in cases whereby they want evidence on the crimes. In the search of people with warrants of arrest, the police become brutal in a way which may make them promise things like funerals and also putting the people to emergency rooms for medication purposes quickly (Newcomb, 2014). The higher pressures in arresting the people according to Goffman indicates the failure of the police on the war against drugs which has made them to be brutal in such ways. The war against drugs according to the writer has led many people in prison instead of finding solutions to end the trading of drugs or to end poverty in many homesteads. According to Goffman, the agencies which are entrusted with the enforcement of law and order “address the significant social problems of able-bodied

Short story analysis In this analysis I will look at a short story called ?Nineteen Fifty-Five? from ?You can?t keep a good woman down? written by Alice Walker. I will analyse the short story by looking at the title, characters, theme, point of view, plot, structure/form and the style.

What do you think of when picturing a swamp? In “Crossing the Swamp” by Mary Oliver, the speaker views the swamp as challenging and difficult but gradually realizes the beauty of it as well. Using imagery and parallelism, Oliver focuses on how the speaker feels about the swamp and how that changes over time. The parallelism in this poem points out how confused the speaker felt.

In On The Run, Alice Goffman focuses on a particular group of young Black men living in a poor neighborhood, struggling to live a “good” and “fair” life. These boys from 6th street are segregated from resources that would be found in more economically advanced neighborhoods. A “resource” that they do run into more than often is over policing in their neighborhood. As they are disproportionately targeted for arrest to fill quotas, this constant behavior and events deemed as a norm (even little children play a game about cops catching and being overly aggressive to Black boys), hinders their process at advancing within American society. Systematic oppression against a minority group slows and puts racial tension progress at a standstill, as they are continued victims of larger forces. What truly works against them once locked up and released, is that they were not given a chance based on race, now it becomes based on race plus their criminal history. People in such situations are left with one option, in order for them to survive and provide for their families, they must do it through illegal activity. Locking people up and returning then into the same environment which had limited resources does nothing to solve larger powers at play. Laws and documents may exist that describe an “equal” and “fair” society, but without action, words seem to hold less value. The Declaration of Independence, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are both documents meant to symbolize