Conrad was a suicidal boy who didn’t know what to do with his life. Confused and hopeless someone needed to help, shape his life around and make everything better. Someone with experience, someone to help make him better, someone to help turn his whole life around. His brother died and he witnessed it. When Conrad witnessed a death of a close one his soul and heart were broken for ever and it needs someone to help heal and bandage it up. He also heard about the girl he was in the hospital with committed suicide at the end of the book. He was devastated and he didn't know what to do, so we would go to talk to one person he trusted which was Dr. Berger. Dr. Berger changed his whole life around and helped him be a man that he always wanted to be. Conrad looked up to his brother, that was his role model and he couldn't do anything to help him in the last moments of Buck’s life. Dr. Berger helped him in so many ways, get through obstacles he would of never got through alone. Not only was Dr. Berger his Doctor but he was his friend, his only friend he could really trust. Dr. Berger helped Conrad get his life more in “control”.
First, Dr. Berger helped Conrad quit the swim team. He didn't do it for him but he encouraged him to do it. Conrad came out and told Berger what was really bothering him and told him it was the swim team. Conrad told Berger that the coach had to guys who could make it father because they could swim better than him (Guest 78). Berger asks him why he didn’t want to quit but Conrad think he will look stupid if he quit. Berger tells him, “Forget how it looks. How does it feel?” (Guest 79). Berger is showing him that is doesn’t matter what other people think about him or how he will look, but to do the things he want...
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In conclusion, Conrad’s life has changed and for the better all because of Dr. Berger. He witnessed his own brother die and Karen one of his close friends from the hospital, commit suicide. Conrad went into Dr. Berger’s office thinking he didn’t need help and that he was fine. He was wrong Conrad was at a point in his life where he needed someone to talk to, because his mom cared too little and his dad cared too much. Berger soon became his friend and got close to Conrad; they became friends. Berger told him to do things and go for things he would have never thought about doing. He made Conrad feel like he was normal again and Conrad then always would want to go to the meetings to talk. Dr. Berger changed Conrad’s entire world and made it so much better and helped him go through things he couldn’t go through alone.
Works Cited
Conrad’s Ordinary Life
In the novel Ordinary People, by Judith Guest, many people affect Conrad. Three people that have an affect on him are his father, mother and therapist. Conrad goes through significant changes by the way he has been affected.
Dr. Berger helped Conrad and Calvin in many ways, Conrad and Calvin were going through a hard time and Dr. Berger really helped there problems. Dr. Berger was one of the main reasons why Conrad got better and without Dr. Berger helping him he maybe wouldn’t have gotten better. The first way Dr. Berger helped Conrad was by letting Conrad know he could trust him and know everything he said would stay right in that room. That opened Conrad up a lot more making it easier for Dr. Berger to understand his problems. This helped because Conrad didn’t have anyone he could trust. No one he could open up and let out all his feelings to. Conrad needed that very badly. Conrad could yell to him and let out all his feelings inside and Conrad couldn’t do that with anyone else. The next piece of evidence for how Dr. Berger helped Conrad is he lets Conrad cry for him and Dr. Berger comforts him. Like in the book after he found out Karen died, he went to Dr. Berger’s and cried to him. He didn’t cry to his dad, but cried to his therapist. In the book Conrad never had someone he could cry to, he always had to deal with everything on his own. But now that he has someone that is Dr. Berger he could cry to someone. By crying to someone he got all of his emotions out instead of just keeping them in and letting them build up to where he might kill himself again. The last reason why Dr. Berger made Conrad feel like family was by Dr. Berger supporting Conrad’s decisions and not getting mad at him at all, it showed that Conrad could trust him...
Conrad Jarret is an eighteen years old white male who live with his parent’s Beth and Calvin Jarret in an upper middle class suburban in Chicago Illinois. He is a high school junior also part of the swim team. Within the Jarret family, Beth, Conrad and Calvin all have different problems. Beth is a perfectionist who is unaccustomed with tragedy. Conrad pursuit to find himself, while trying to please the people around him, his father Calvin is cautious about his son and his feelings. Conrad 's mother refuses to forgive him for his suicide attempt, she believes he did it in order to destroy her perfectly ordered life.
Conrad's psychological problems generated from the facts that he repressed his feelings and that he looked to others for approval. He hid all his feeling and emotions and judged himself based on what others saw and thought. When Miss Melon, Conrad's English teacher, asked him, "Do you want an extension?" Conrad's immediate response was "NO"(18). He rejected her offer of assistance because he felt that help took away from his dignity and self pride. Conrad internalized what everyone else said and did and judged himself based on this. Conrad thought about himself: "All his fault. All connections with him result in failure. Loss. Evil… Everywhere he looks, there is competence and good health… He does not want to contaminate, does not wish to find further evidence of his lack of worth"(116). Conrad looked at everyone else and concluded that everyone else was "ordinary" and that he was a problem. He was afraid that since he was not "normal," ...
Conrad asked his therapist “So what should I do now?” The therapists responded with information and advice “Recognize her limitations” etc. These were educational comments about the mother’s probable narcissistic character disorder which were intended so Conrad might begin to understand his own conflicts about her love Conrad’s focus was initially external when he then questioned ” you mean why she can’t love me”. The therapist responded to an internal psychological explanation aided by educational comments about the mother’s personality limitations.
Tessitore, John. "Freud, Conrad, and Heart of Darkness." Modern Critical Interpretations." Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 91-103.
Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness Written by Joseph Conrad in the early 20th century, "The Heart of
Throughout its entirety, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utilizes many contrasts and paradoxes in an attempt to teach readers about the complexities of both human nature and the world. Some are more easily distinguishable, such as the comparison between civilized and uncivilized people, and some are more difficult to identify, like the usage of vagueness and clarity to contrast each other. One of the most prominent inversions contradicts the typical views of light and dark. While typically light is imagined to expose the truth and darkness to conceal it, Conrad creates a paradox in which darkness displays the truth and light blinds us from it.
The child’s game had ended. After I nearly ran Kurtz over, we stood facing each other. He was unsteady on his feet, swaying like the trees that surrounded us. What stood before me was a ghost. Each layer of him had been carved away by the jungle, until nothing remained. Despite this, his strength still exceeded that of my own. With the tribal fires burning so close, one shout from him would unleash his natives on me. But in that same realization, I felt my own strength kindle inside me. I could just as easily muffle his command and overtake him. The scene flashed past my eyes as though I was remembering not imagining. The stick that lay two feet from me was beating down on the ghost, as my bloodied hand strangled his cries. My mind abruptly reeled backwards as I realized what unspeakable dark thoughts I had let in. Kurtz seemed to understand where my mind had wandered; it was as though the jungle’s wind has whispered my internal struggles to him. His face twisted into a smile. He seemed to gloat and enjoy standing by to watch my soul begin to destroy itself.
Without personal access to authors, readers are left to themselves to interpret literature. This can become challenging with more difficult texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Fortunately, literary audiences are not abandoned to flounder in pieces such as this; active readers may look through many different lenses to see possible meanings in a work. For example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be deciphered with a post-colonial, feminist, or archetypal mindset, or analyzed with Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The latter two would effectively reveal the greater roles of Kurtz and Marlow as the id and the ego, respectively, and offer the opportunity to draw a conclusion about the work as a whole.
Literature is never interpreted in exactly the same way by two different readers. A prime example of a work of literature that is very ambiguous is Joseph Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness". The Ambiguities that exist in this book are Marlow's relationship to colonialism, Marlow's changing feelings toward Kurtz, and Marlow's lie to the Intended at the end of the story.
In Heart of Darkness and The Stranger Joseph Conrad and Albert Camus manipulate different styles of language and structure, yet both emphasize the isolation of the protagonists from society. In Heart of Darkness Conrad employs descriptive language and metaphors about society while using minor roles in order to display Marlow’s isolation. Meanwhile in The Stranger Camus structures the story in two parts to capture both sides of Meursault yet still develops a simple and direct writing style throughout the story to keep the theme of isolation. Through the theme of isolation both Conrad and Camus present the idea that life can be meaningless if not shared with the company of others.
Modernism began as a movement in that late 19th, early 20th centuries. Artists started to feel restricted by the styles and conventions of the Renaissance period. Thusly came the dawn of Modernism in many different forms, ranging from Impressionism to Cubism.
In studying Joseph Conrad's, The Heart of Darkness, many critics dwell on the issue of heroism. Who is the hero, Marlow or Kurtz? It is clear that both Marlow and Kurtz are the protagonists of the story; however, protagonist and hero are not always synonymous. Marlow is the hero in the traditional sense of the word, while Kurtz is the more modern hero, often referred to as the anti-hero.
I will choose Conrad’s father, Calvin. Although I am a female, I think that he is the one of the characters who in this book can connect to me the most. As I know that he always care about his son, Conrad even he lost an elder son already. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with Conrad. He doesn’t know how he can really help Conrad either. All in his mind is that his son is not okay but he never tell. So he asked Conrad to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger. It maybe a way that can help his son but not perfect. At least he tried. I appreciate it because I know that it is not easy to communicate to a person who has a very large generation gap even he or she is important to you. For me, I don’t even know which way to talk with my parents is the most suitable too. They always have a different point of view that I don’t agree with. For example, my mom always tell what she is angry for. No matter it is my business or not. when every time she complains, I will give her response or advice. But she thinks that I am challenging her… So I started to be a “listener”. I only listen what she is complaining and shut my mouth. The relationship between us seems good when I start to shut