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Depression as narrative essay
Depression as narrative essay
Depression as narrative essay
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The novel Go Ask Alice written anonymously tells the story of one girl’s struggle with drug addiction. The conflict in this novel is person versus self. The protagonist is struggling against herself trying to overcome addiction. The mood is depressing. The main character reveals how drugs ruined her life, which evokes depressed feelings in the reader. The point of view is first person. This is a publishing of a teenage girl’s diary and she wrote in first person. The conflict, mood, and point of view make this book a work of realistic fiction.
Karen Hasse’s novel is an attention grabber because of the way it is written. Moreover, it is very interesting and is broken up into four different seasons which are spring, summer, winter and fall. Many young adults reading the text and undergoing challenges in their lives can identify themselves with the character Billie. The story is told in first person point of view and narrated from the main character’s view who is Billie. Billie faced a lot of challenges in her life and she did her best in trying to overcome them. At Billie’s age, many young adults will always want to escape from their lives and look for a change just as she did but they will learn after reading her story that one needs to face her challenges because running away makes things worse than they were.
This book portrays the life and choices that fifteen year old Alice faces in her life. Although the character is named Alice, she does not correlate with any specific person in real life. The journals were a combination of different patients Sparks was seeing. Since its publishing in 1971, Go Ask Alice has become one of the most controversial banned books. This is because of its strong commentary on sexuality, suicide, heavy drug usage and teen pregnancy.
Holly Janquell is a runaway. Wendelin Van Draanan creates a twelve year old character in the story, Runaway, that is stubborn and naive enough to think she can live out in the streets alone, until she is eighteen.She has been in five foster homes for the past two years. She is in foster care because her mother dies of heroin overdose. In her current foster home, she is abused, locked in the laundry room for days without food, and gets in even more trouble if she tries to fight back. Ms.Leone, her schoolteacher, could never understand her, and in Holly’s opinion, probably does not care. No one knows what she is going through, because she never opens up to any one. Ms. Leone gives Holly a journal at school one day and tells her to write poetry and express her feelings. Holly is disgusted. But one day when she is sitting in the cold laundry room, and extremely bored, she pulls out the diary, and starts to write. When Holly can take no more of her current foster home, she runs, taking the journal with her. The journal entries in her journal, are all written as if she is talking to Ms.Leone, even though she will probably never see her again. Over the course of her journey, Holly learns to face her past through writing, and discovers a love for poetry. At some point in this book, Holly stops venting to Ms. Leone and starts talking to her, almost like an imaginary friend, and finally opens up to her.
Neil Postman, in his 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” asserted that Aldous Huxley’s worry, we are becoming a passive and trivial society controlled by what we love, is coming true. Now, more than ever, these fears are becoming reality. Our society’s addiction to drugs and the stigma against the communication of emotions are causing us to fall down the slippery slope that is leading to an oppressive society similar to that of the one depicted Huxley’s Brave New World. ****
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
“Eleven”, narrated by the young main character, uses first person and a minimal amount of second person to relate to readers and allow them to put themselves in the story. These particular points of view also provide readers understanding into how an eleven-year-old may feel. Likewise, Collier uses first person in her short story “Marigolds” to not only provide a connection for readers, but also to show the transition from childishness into adulthood in Lizabeth’s life. Her overall goal is not to allow readers to put themselves in the story, but rather for them to learn from and possibly change because of the story. She closes her story with this poignant sentence “one does not have to be ignorant or poor to find that his life is as barren as the dusty yards of our town” (11), providing the big picture perspective of what she wants to accomplish through her story. Point of view in stories allows authors to fully achieve their purpose in writing the story whether by causing readers to identify with the characters through second person and first person as in “Eleven” or to leave readers contemplating their lives and wanting to learn from the character through first
The activity of understanding Alice Williamson's diary begins prior to reading the first word. The reader begins to identify part of the reading experience based upon their feelings on diaries themselves in the moments of suspension between knowledge of type of text and the reading of the first entry.
Go Ask Alice is the diary of a young 15 year old drug abuser. At the beginning of the book, "Alice" is a typical, insecure, middle class teenager that only thinks with boys, diets, and popularity. She never taught of getting into drugs. This girl had a lot of self esteem, and was very happy. Her life changes for the worse when her family moves to a new town and she finds herself less popular and more isolated than ever before. That is why she buys this diary to express herself with personal taughts. She becomes unhappy in the new town, she is overjoyed to be allowed to return to the old town to spend the summer with her grandparents. During this stay she is invited to a party by an old acquaintance; there she unwittingly ingests LSD that had been added to random bottles of Coca Cola and distributed to the party guests as a game. The other guests had mistakenly assumed Alice was aware of what the "game" entailed. After this, she seeks drugs deliberately, and rapidly proceeds to marijuana, amphetamines, and casual sex. A pregnancy scare and the return to her new town encourage her to turn away from drugs; however she soon falls in with the drug crowd where finally she finds acceptance. She starts dating a drug dealer and sells drugs to grade-schoolers for him. After realizing he was using her, she turns him in to the police and runs away from home with her new friend Chris, moving to San Francisco. After being given heroin and then being raped by Chris' boss, Shelia and her boyfriend, she and Chris return home.
The term addiction can be interpreted in many ways, concering both illegal and legal substances. Not only can one become addicted to a substance, but also activities like gambling, shoplifting, and sex. Prior to considering addiction, one must first understand what constitutes a substance. Levinthal (2002) describes a drug as a chemical substance that changes the functioning of the body when ingested (4). Although illegal drugs may come to mind when hearing this definition, alcohol and tobacco fit under this criteria as well. For the purpose of this essay, controlled and regulated (licit/legal) substances will be focused upon. Alcohol is a regulated substance that can be thought of as a social drug (Levinthal, 2002, p.192) and arguably tobacco
Substance abuse is the habitual use of mind altering substances (Substances). Addicts have a false or altered look on reality; they need help seeing what is wrong with the life style they are living. Nikki Sixx once said,” Addiction- When you can give something up at any time, as long as it’s next Tuesday!” Recovery is teaching a person to break old habits. Substance abuse counselors are very important, not only in the mental health field, but in society as well.
Drug use has been around since the B.C. era and will continue until the extinction of man. Humans have a history of using drugs that affect the mind and vision and that aspect of humanity still continues to this day. “Since the dawn of history, mankind has found ways to relieve the daily grind of life.” The earliest known use of drugs dates back to the ancient city of Mesopotamia where the farming of wheat and barley came a product known as beer. The ancient Mesopotamians would indulge on the beer and get drunk creating a problem with alcoholics for the ancient city. This is not uncommon to see, mankind has always had an experimental side. If it wasn’t for that experimental side civilization would not be where it is today. Humans used drugs in the past in the medical field, such as cocaine to alleviate toothaches, or opium which was also cultivated by the Mesopotamians as a relaxing plant. Even ancient Greece used a special mixture of beer to induce hallucinations, or they would also partake in using opium to stimulate their minds and get the creative flow started. Ancient Rome was also known to be a civilization that had a large population of drug users. Drugs in the past weren’t always used just for recreational use; they did have a part in the medicinal field. Doctors of ancient times would give the patients a prescription depending on their ailments. Opium was used as a headache medicine, pain reliever or even a stress reliever. The use of opium has even been used up until recently in the civil war in the United States, even former President Harrison was given opium to try and help with pneumonia. Opium is also the plant that morphine is derived from, which is used in the medical field today as a powerful pain reliever. Drugs ...
Drug abuse and addiction are issues that affect people everywhere. However, these issues are usually treated as criminal activity rather than issues of public health. There is a conflict over whether addiction related to drug abuse is a disease or a choice. Addiction as a choice suggests that drug abusers are completely responsible for their actions, while addiction as a disease suggests that drug abusers need help in order to break their cycle of addiction. There is a lot of evidence that suggests that addiction is a disease, and should be treated rather than punished. Drug addiction is a disease because: some people are more likely to suffer from addiction due to their genes, drug abuse brought on by addictive behavior changes the brain and worsens the addiction, and the environment a person lives in can cause the person to relapse because addiction can so strongly affect a person.
Drug abuse dates as far back as the Biblical era, so it is not a new phenomenon. “The emotional and social damage and the devastation linked to drugs and their use is immeasurable.” The ripple of subversive and detrimental consequences from alcoholism, drug addictions, and addictive behavior is appalling. Among the long list of effects is lost productivity, anxiety, depression, increased crime rate, probable incarceration, frequent illness, and premature death. The limitless consequences include the destruction to personal development, relationships, and families (Henderson 1-2). “Understandably, Americans consider drug abuse to be one of the most serious problems” in the fabric of society. And although “addiction is the result of voluntary drug use, addiction is no longer voluntary behavior, it’s uncontrollable behavior,” says Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Torr 12-13).
Drug addiction is a very big problem in today’s society. Many people have had their lives ruined due to drug addiction. The people that use the drugs don’t even realize that they have an addiction. They continue to use the drug not even realizing that their whole world is crashing down around them. Drug addicts normally lose their family and friends due to drug addiction.
At the beginning of the story Alice is a little girl who is very curious, but also quite scared of being alone. First of all, she has an inquiring mind that brings her down the rabbit hole and, even if her way of thinking could remind the adult kind of thoughts, she still acts like a child. A clear example of this kind of behavior is when she finds a bottle with the words “DRINK ME” labeled on. Before drinking f...