“More teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease, combined,” according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an issue thoroughly discussed in the novel The Program by Suzanne Young. This dystopian story features a society where there is an overwhelming amount of teen suicide. It uses many realistic aspects of life that allows the reader to relate to the exaggerated reality of the story. The author uses the act of suicide and brings it to an extreme sense to create a realistic plot.
The Program by Suzanne Young follows a teenage girl, Sloane who is living in a society where suicide among teens has become an epidemic. As a result,
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On page 9, the author explains how suicide has become common and brought this realistic issue to an extreme. “Teen suicide was declared a national epidemic-- killing one in three teens-- nearly four years ago. It always existed before that, but seemingly overnight handfuls of my peers were jumping off buildings, slitting their wrists--most without any known reason,” explains Sloane. This is effective because suicide is the second most common cause of death among teens. Depression among teens is also becoming more and more common. Although this aspect of the story isn’t completely realistic, based on today’s society it could certainly become a …show more content…
The Program is the government solution to the teen suicide epidemic where they wipe the memories that they believed caused the teens to become depressed. For example, “Kendra Phillip will be gone for at least six weeks--six weeks spent in a facility where The Program will mess with her mind, take her memories. She’ll be force fed pills and therapy until she doesn’t even know who she is anymore. After that, they’ll ship her off to a small private school until graduation. A school designated for other returners, other empty souls.”(p. 10) The aspect of memory loss gives the reader a realistic view of the solution. This is because in today’s society because various diseases can cause memory loss, such as amnesia and alzheimer's. In addition, everyone has forgotten something in their lifetime giving them something to relate to. The reader can use this connection to imagine what it would be like to lose the memories that mean the most to
“Never push a loyal person to a point where they no longer care.” Innocent people will end up doing desperate things for others just the way Conrad committed suicide because his girlfriend made him. Michelle, the girlfriend forced him to kill himself so many times till one day he finally decided too because he couldn’t take it anymore. The ”Suicide By Text” case has prompted many people to discuss social issues such as depression and emotional manipulation.
The book “The Program,” opens with the main character Sloane, in her normal classes, when two handlers come and take away Kendra, a classmate of Sloane’s. Kendra gets dragged away to the program, where all of her “infected” memories are erased. The Program was created because, four years before the setting of the book, a teen suicide epidemic breaks out. It gets to the point where every one in four teens end up dying from suicide. From this point on, the book follows Sloane, her boyfriend James, and Miller as they try to make a plan to find Lacey, Miller’s girlfriend, who just got back from the Program. Sloane, James, and Miller follow through with the plan, and Miller finally meets Lacey. When Miller finds her, she remembers nothing of him, and after this meetup, Miller becomes noticeably depressed. Within two weeks of seeing
Every act of remembering is also, intrinsically, an act of forgetting. Giving preference to particular details of an event lessens the immediacy of others. Thus, memory is its own, unique narrative culled from an almost endless sea of details present, and sometimes not present, in the original event. Memory is the past, reformulated and interpreted through the lens of the present (Huyssen 1995). When an event is commemorated through a physical act of memory, the narrowing of possible details becomes even more finely tuned, limited by the physical scope of possibilities for bodies in a three-dimensional space.
The suicide rate has been rising. In the article " Youth suicide rates are rising. School and the internet might be to blame.", written by Lara Korte. It states in the article "In 2014, the county saw four suicides of people under 18 and under. In 2015, there were five. In 2016, there were 13 suicides. So far this year, seven." This rate went to four to five to a huge jump to 13 than January to May there seven and that just in 5 months. Just in the past three years, there was 22 suicide that just in three years. This rate is starting to get too high and why so people can tease each other and make fun of them for the fun of it. Here is another statement from the article," The most shocking one was the January death of 8-year-old Gabriel
The value of memory is an important aspect in a person’s life because most of the time our brains will go back into our memory and recall past events weather them being good or bad. Memory plays a part in every human being’s life, whether it may be about a great loss of someone you loved dearly or it be a great gift like having a child or a miracle happen like getting a perfect score on your SATs. Memory will always be an aspect in everyone’s life. In the passage, “Hope, Despair, and Memory” by Elie Wiesel, and in the excerpt from The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger the value of memory are treated in both worthy and harmful ways using diction, repetition, and theme.
“The Pact” by Jodi Picoult perfectly describes a typical high school romance. The story accurately creates a scene straight from a teen’s mind. The book is based on two teens Emily and Chris, who are in love, a love so strong they are willing to die for, or rather with each other. Emily and Chris create a suicide pact together, but since only one of teens, (Emily) is actually suicidal, and when the gun only kills one, the question of suicide or murder, stirs in the air. One of the most controversial points among the friends and family of the now deceased Emily is that no one knew of Emily's suicidal intentions, mainly because she did not express the common symptoms of a depressed person. This book addresses the important struggles and issues teens commonly face in today's society, ie. suicide, depression, stress and growing up.“The Pact” may seem like a devastatingly tragic story of two teens, but most do not realize how this is a reality for most of the today's young generation. The article “Teen suicide” by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Shows the heart aching facts and scary truths of teen suicide and depression. The article gets into the mental disorder and creates more depth and truth to what character Emily Gold might have been going through in the book.“The Pact” by Jodi Picoult and article “Teen Suicide” by the American Academy Of Child And Adolescent Psychiatry, expresses how suicide and depression can be an undetectable tragic reality.
In this heart touching article, “Dying Young,” the author Elizabeth Fernandez enlightens us on all the major death of teens. She shares tragic stories of families and their teenagers’ deaths. She tells readers about suicide, car crashes, homicide, and many more. She does babble on a little bit about the things parents can do to help their children before they decide to suicide himself. She does show she is really biased about suicide and how she blames the parents.
Many teenagers are affected by their suicidal thoughts and actions. Although statistics show that only a small percentage of adolescents are invaded with serious suicidal tendencies and thoughts, some millions of lives are still at stake. Anxiety and depression can also be tastefully depicted in stories such as Catcher in the Rye. Stories where it shows the main character’s thought process and their slow deterioration. We need to help our adolescents in the community to make life easier for adults and teenagers
Memory – what it is, how it works, and how it might be manipulated – has long been a subject of curious fascination. Remembering, the mind-boggling ability in which the human brain can conjure up very specific, very lucid, long-gone episodes from any given point on the timeline of our lives, is an astounding feat. Yet, along with our brain’s ability of remembrance comes also the concept of forgetting: interruptions of memory or “an inability of consciousness to make present to itself what it wants” (Honold, 1994, p. 2). There is a very close relationship between remembering and forgetting; in fact, the two come hand-in-hand. A close reading of Joshua Foer’s essay, “The End of Remembering”, and Susan Griffin’s piece, “Our Secret”, directs us
They are teenagers trapped in this toxic cycle of working dead-end jobs and killing their bodies with drugs and alcohol. Although, what is the most devastating aspect about this horrific fate for (these so-called) teenage “losers”? They are not the ones creating this cruel life for themselves. Society and its institutions construct the anomie for these teenagers. Government officials and teachers and parents are denying these children assistance to escape their “druggie” lifestyle. According to this group of officials, teachers, parents, these teenagers are unable to follow the social norms and work cohesively with their communities. These “burnouts” are sucked into monotonous jobs and lives. They believe that their only way out is drugs or alcohol or death. They are trying to breathe in a society that suffocates them with rules and persecution. But maybe it’s just that. Maybe while these “freaks” and “forgotten halves” and “burnouts” are liberating themselves from the social norm, the rest of society sits in jealousy. Because while they were escaping the harshness of society, we were playing along with it. Because those who challenge social norms are not acceptable. Those who challenge social norms are
Suicide is now an international epidemic, and students are under constant surveillance at home and school. Handlers are called when there is a chance that a teenager has caught the epidemic and the handlers take them to The Program. In The Program the patient stays six weeks or longer and all the memories that are important that may have caused depression are stolen from his or her memory, and go back to the real world with the only few memories they’ve allow them to keep. There are so many missing memories and broken puzzle pieces in their lives. It begins when, two years ago when Sloan was fifteen her brother, Brady committed suicide down by the river. Now seventeen Sloan’s best friend Lacey was put in The Program for six weeks after being
Each year suicide is becoming more common in the United States among adolescents, according to the Suicide and Mental Health Association International. The main reason why adolescents commit suicide is because they are depressed. In the article "Nightmare in the Mirror" by Scott Long, he explains that adolescence has changed throughout the years. An assertion he makes is that teens have "Angst and bouts of suicidal despair distinguish this gloomy figure " (Long 156). Long explains that throughout the years, adolescents have become sadder and depressed. Adolescents, who suffer from depression and are suicidal, don't usually inform others. Those adolescents fall into the third quadrant of the Johari Window.
Teen suicide is something that is endless, it will never stop but if everyone was educated on it, it could help prevent deaths. I think with people provided with statistics and further information can help avoid adolescent suicide attempts. I think most teen suicide cases could be prevent if we knew the signs to look for and the ways to stop it. I believe parents would feel safer if they knew knowledge on the issue and how to handle it. The intended audiences for this essay is parents or friends of suicidal teens. This essay is important because, as mentioned earlier, we need to be educated on suicide to end tons of tragedies. It is also important to be aware of the warning signs to help prevent. This essay is relevant because teen suicide is a war that happens daily, and will continue to happen, until we take control of the situation and do something to stop it. If family members were informed of the cause and symptoms leading up to the attempt of suicide, then there is less likely that teenagers would try and commit
Day to day, teens suffer from peer pressure, problem from home, and stress from academics. Despise their status in the environment, majority of high school students refrain from acknowledging the presence of their reality. The problem in most situations in that students feel shut in, trapped in a never ending misery. How do they cope? What are their ways of dealing? Most students live in denial. Others have friends to confide in. For the devastating part, most students are not as open to these ideas and it leaves them with this alternative: suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause in teens the ages 14 to 19 within rural underserved areas. Suicidal ideation (SI), suicidal thoughts, were surveyed in over 12 high schools and it was found that in the past year, thoughts of (SI) were not shared with peers or even adults in the pursuit of receiving help or support (Pisani, 2012). Because a student spends most of their day at school, it is ideal for schools to provide realistic opportunities and school-based programs to assist with the suicide among the youth. The Surviving the Teens Suicide Prevention and Depression Awareness Program designed four 50 minute session or each high school student. This presented information in regards to factual information about depression, suicidal warning signs, suicidal risk factors and myths associated with suicide (King, 2010). The program provide coping strategies for everyday life, referral sources if feeling suicidal, and how to recognize
There are thousands of poems floating around written by bitter or depressed teenagers that are never recognised as works of art. Another form of escape for teenagers is, unfortunately, suicide. It is alarming how high the teen suicide rates have risen over the past decade. Yet, it is comforting that there are support groups and counsellors available now to aid teens through their troubles. Because no one wants to see a life full of promise and potential end abruptly because of a little sorrow in one kid's life. Another reason for teen suicide is their home life. The teenager gets caught in the middle of an argument between their parents, and they take the blame personally. This is not right. Sometimes the child is beaten or abused and is forced to run away into the streets, where they become homeless, and sometimes abducted. Sometimes they just die in a back alley during a cold winterOs night, and they are never missed. At sixteen, a teenager knows about suffering, because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.