Someone Like You By Sarah Dessen

Everyone has had an embarrassing moment in their life at one point or another; slipping on ice in public or forgetting a coworkers name at the company picnic. Making a fool of yourself is bound to happen, especially in a setting outside of what you are accustomed to. Some people do not like reliving these moments while others have a gift for turning their embarrassment into a great story. Kellie Schmitt’s essay “The Old Man Isn’t There Anymore” is a perfect example of laughing at oneself. Throughout a cluster of Chinese do’s and do not’s, Schmitt tells the reader of one specific event and its comical conclusion. The essay is fun to read and relate to. Laughing with the author is made easy while she gracefully shares her missteps while she and her husband adapt to living in China. Learning new customs for an inevitable occasion most Americans probably are not privy too makes the essay most interesting.

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.

Presidential elections are almost always controversial, thus, the year 2000 proved that both parties would stop at nothing to win the spot of hierarchy. Through the disruption of votes during George W. Bush and al Gore’s election, there were many indicators that Al Gore, was in fact the real winner. The movie presented in class mentioned that, “The old people in Palm Beach Florida think they voted for Pat Buchanan.” This was the initiation of havoc within the presidential race, as it angered many and led to a recount. Furthermore, Buchanan mentioned that he believed they had mistaken his name for Al Gore, this shows that he was more liked and was more susceptible to winning the popular vote in the

Jamie Fader’s book Falling Back which was published in 2013, is based on ethnographic research over three years, from 2004 to 2007, of black and latino males on the edge of adulthood and that were incarcerated at the Mountain Ridge Academy reform school located in a rural area: “within a dense forest in western Pennsylvania, is Mountian Ridge Academy … ninety-acre campus contains eight dormitories, each of which houses thirty-two young men between ages 14 to 18” (p.1). The criminal thinking approach was intended to help young people identify the patterns that had led them to delinquency and replace it with corrective and prosocial thoughts. These young boys had been involved in drug offenses and violence within their suburban communities and were now in the process of behavioral change in order to help them reflect and be able to make better decisions which would lead them to a better life.

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.

“We don’t really care about diversity all that much in America” (132). In “People Like us” David Brooks takes a logical approach through examining the demographics of our neighborhoods, our educational institutions, and he touches on an emotional approach by having his audience examine their values; he does this with hopes of having his audience question their word choice for the American value diversity, and question if the way they are living their lives invites diversity.

Ghost Singer by Anna Lee Walters is a tale of the historical injustices suffered by Indigenous peoples and the modern consequences of those injustices. Although it is clear that the spirit people in the novel serve as the most outwardly fearsome people in the novel, it is important to take into account the overall systemic injustices that the characters of Native American heritage suffer under throughout the histories presented in the novel. Walters addresses fearsomeness and sympathetic characters through the use of dangerous characters and situations presented directly and indirectly to the characters. The fearsomeness of the characters and the sympathy felt for the characters is dependent upon the perspectives of the readers since these fearsome figures are “a cultural construct and a projection” of that cultures fears (Cohen 1). The fearsome figures in the novels are presented to initially be the spirits haunting the artifacts, but upon closer examination the larger more entrenched issue of outdated models of thought in relation to Indigenous peoples appear to be the most important fearsome figure. The protagonist of the novel is dependent upon the views taken, and the fearsome figures that the historians, such as David Evans, and characters are attempting aid the spirits, such as George Daylight. Walters addresses the fearsome nature of a system dependent on examining and judging indigenous societies based on white values, which is problematic since both cultures do not

In 1955, Flannery O’ Connor published the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” which became her best-known short story. Although many appreciated her work it received much criticism for its peculiar character, The Misfit. His callous violent behavior made people uncomfortable with her work describing it as consistently distorted and manipulative. The Misfit’s unsentimental and cruel behavior characterizes true psychological disturbance similar to that of Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer. Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Is an accurate representation of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). Through The Misfits recollection of his past, his trauma, and his lack of guilt he depicts a severe case of ASPD.

Through this examination of the differences between past and present, wrong and right, and North and South, by Ray West Jr., the different viewpoints and conflicts that appear throughout “A Rose for Emily” are deeply analyzed. West’s critical assessment divides the characters based on who represents the old ways and who represents the changing times. However, the story shows the South’s fervent desire to keep their lifestyle the same. Emily attempted to hold her love for Homer like the South attempted to hold its love for gentile days before the Civil War. West’s asserts that Emily’s fall from grace symbolizes the South’s fall. The deterioration of Emily and the South during reconstruction parallels the slow deterioration of Emily’s house.

Technology, the advancement of knowledge and productivity through the application of tools, information, and techniques to create an effortless process, has ultimately lead to the declination of our society and our future. In “A Thing Like Me,” Nicholas Carr addresses the development of technology from the day it was created and how it initiated an immediate impact within the lives of humans leading to an unhealthy dependency. Carr establishes how technology, what was intended to be a tool, has become the “pacifier” of our generation. This “pacifier” causes a loss of freedom, not through the laws of the government, but rather with the values of freedom one holds within themselves. This freedom is the individuality that distinguishes each person from the next, and forms a desire for the development of oneself through the experiences of life and the wisdom that is acquired along the way. Technology has blinded man from this pursuit of self-enhancement and with the advancement of technology occurring daily, there is no resolution. Each day people are confined within themselves and the pieces of technology that will continually limit them in their lives. Freedom is more than just a concept of laws instilled by the government, it is the thought process found within each individual person and their “hunger” to become more. With technology, social media was created and immediately immersed within our lives. The society of today has

Racism has always been a hot topic issue in America. Starting, of course, with slavery and enduring long after its abolishment. Many try to put an end to it, but this is one of those things that will take many, many years to completely eradicate from society. In this paper, I will briefly discuss both the Clark Doll Experiment and the film A Girl like Me, discuss my opinion on racism in America, demonstrate how racism effects the schools, and discuss how and why my interpretation of this compares with the views of another culture.

The election of Barack Obama as the 56th president of the United States raised many hopes that the “Black struggles” was finally over. For conservatives, Obama victory reassured their beliefs that there was no longer such thing as racism and that every American had equal rights and opportunity to pursue the American dream. While many people have come to believe that all races have equal rights in America, Tim Wise argues in his documentary “White Like Me” that not only does racism and unconscious racial bias still exist, but that also White Americans are unable to simply relate to the variety of forms racism and inequality Blacks experience. This is mainly because of the privileges they get as the “default.” While Wise explores the variety forms of racism and inequality today such as unconscious racism, Black poverty, unemployment, inadequate education system, and prison system, the articles by the New York Times Editorial Board, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Adam Liptak further explore some the disparities in the criminal justice system. Ana Swanson points out in her article, “The Stubborn Persistence of Black-White Inequality, 50 Years after Selma” that while the “U.S. has made big strides towards equal rights,” significant gaps still remains between the two races. With the Supreme Court striking down a “portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement,” civil

The piece is classified as Aboriginal Australian literature. It was published in the 1960’s. The purpose of the text is to give hope in a new beginning after the events involving the racial tension between the Aboriginals and the white settlers. The poem is directed to the Aboriginal people of Australia who suffered from these events

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.

Young adult literature such as The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, emphasizes teenagers using both their actions and their voices to overcome injustices such as racial inequality and police brutality. Racial inequality and police brutality is discussed greatly throughout The Hate U Give, due to the difficulties the protagonist, Starr Carter, endures when her best friend, Khalil, is killed because of him being African American and situated in an unsafe neighborhood. Starr embraces an inner conflict with herself in regards to speaking up and taking action against the presented injustices she constantly faces. The author, Laura M. Robinson, of Girlness and Guyness: Gender Trouble in Young Adult Literature thoroughly explains why adolescents are