Really Happening By Erin Chack

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.

To help inspire the students more, Erin gave them an educational trip about the Holocaust War that the students don’t have any idea about. But after giving so much effort and time to her students, her husband eventually gave up on their relationship. They divorced, but that didn’t stop Erin to continually support her

The most important lesson for Rachel that comes out of this situation is that after wearing the disgusted sweater she has become even older, and it was tied to the experience instead of the birthday itself. She understands that it is the challenge she needs to grow up faster as she will receive additional benefits of behaving the way she wants and resisting to the outside irritators. As for the literature techniques, the author applies language, diction and symbolism to reveal the issues of experience, aging, knowledge, power, authority and freedom. The discovering is gaining age are conveyed with the help of the memories of eleven-year-old girl on her birthday. Rachel resists her humiliation from Mrs. Pierce, and that is the exact moment when her “smart eleven” comes as well[2].

We also learn about the new SAT and its essay component, which some college completely ignore. Some college and universities are eliminating their requirement for the SAT or ACT in an effort to minimize their importance and stress that surrounds them.

In her book, It's Complicated, Danah Boyd expresses her views on modern-day social media and the modern-day teenager's reliability with it. The book is comprised of 8 enlightening categories: identity, privacy, addiction, danger, bullying, inequality, literacy, and searching for a public of their own. Throughout the book, Boyd provides data, true stories, and factual conversations to help support her main claim: social media has taken over our youth.

Amy Tan had many personal experiences in her story. For example, when Amy Tan was living in Northern California, her mother had very high expectations on her. Her mother wanted her to be with the American society and be the best she could be. Amy Tan had to get a haircut very short to the way other famous children were acting in the United States. Amy’s mother was the one who encouraged this. With that, in the story “Two Kinds,” the young girl named Jing-mei live in a part of California and she had to get a very short haircut. Jing-mei’s mother wanted her daughter to look and act the same way Shirley Temple did. Within both of the girls lives, they each had to act like an already famous person exactly to please their mothers.

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.

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.

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.

“Passing,” by Nella Larsen is a novel all about pretending to be something that you are not. It is about giving everyone the impression that everything is in order when in reality everything is falling apart. Passing in this novel refers to the ability of a person to be classified as one thing, normally a social group, while belonging to a different group. Passing is usually done to gain class or acceptance by groups other than one’s own. The primary focus of the novel is on racial passing which is the ability to look white and belong to a white group when in reality the person is an African-American in order to gain privileges that were unavailable to them. Although racial passing is the main focus, another major theme in this novel is sexual passing and identity.

Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The real question of life after death isn 't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.” The idea that death is inevitable is well known by everyone, yet no one is certain as to what happens afterwards. Even though the subject of life after death has been argued for centuries by many philosophers and theologians. In the article Sign Here If You Exist, Jill Sisson Quinn adequately employs figurative language, rhetoric questionings, and personal anecdotes to demonstrate a controversial argument on the topic of life after death.

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.

Trauma is an experience of such intensity, that it overwhelms the boundaries of the self. The intensity of trauma might indeed overwhelm psychological resources, fragmenting the idea of the ego and altering the ability to sense self, and distinguish reality from fragmented reality. From such trauma many issues may arise, including psychosis. Psychosis is characterised by an impaired relationship with reality and can be seen through a depressed mood, anxiety, suspiciousness or paranoia, withdrawal from family and friends, and hallucinations. Psychosis could mean a complete loss in being able to distinguish between truth and reality, and losing a sense of self. Literary works, through different literary elements can shape the meaning of

‘All The Bright Places’ is a story about love and depression, where a boy, Finch, helps Violet find the will to live, while he has trouble keeping his head above water. My family has gone through the stress, anger and sadness of depression, too: my cousin, Mitch, committed suicide by hanging himself. Although it has been two years, the pain has still not completely gone away.

In a Perfect World by Trish Doller takes place in Cairo, Egypt. Caroline looked forward to spending the summer with her best friend in her boyfriend before senior year. Plans quickly changed though when her mom got offered her dream job in Cairo at a One Vision clinic. She moves to Cairo with her mother while her dad stays in Ohio to work. Caroline expects to spend her senior year trying to navigate a new city and being homesick. What she wasn't expecting was a thrilling new culture, a few new friends, a beautiful city, and a new love who challenges her in many ways. In a Perfect World mainly focuses on how love will always find its way.