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Effects on mental illness essay
Effects on mental illness essay
The red convertible louise erdrich full text
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Death is a horrific event to have to go through, it is even worse whenever the cause of death is suicide. Thoughts of “why” and “could I have tried harder” race through the minds of family members. In Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” two close brothers named Henry and Lyman drift apart after Henry is drafted to fight in Vietnam. When Henry returns from Vietnam after being a prisoner of war, he is a completely different person because he has post-traumatic stress disorder. Just as things start to look up for Henry and Lyman, Henry jumps into the river and drowns without explanation. Henry jumps into the river intending to die due to his depression and his resolution of conflict with Lyman. After being in the Vietnam War, Henry comes home with post-traumatic stress disorder which led to depression. One main reason why Henry is depressed is that he was captured by the enemy and held as a prisoner of war. …show more content…
Lyman says “[…] the enemy caught [Henry]” for three years, forever changing Henry (128). He shows signs of depression immediately when he gets home, pushing everyone away. He is “very different” and “the change was no good” according to Lyman (129). Henry is always quiet, “jumpy and mean” and rarely laughs although before the war “he’d always had a joke […]” (129). Due to his depression he pushes his family and friends away without even thinking about any pain it may cause them. While watching TV “[…] he’d bitten through his lip” so Lyman went to turn off the TV causing Henry to attack Lyman who reassures himself that “[Henry] didn’t know what he was doing” (129). Post-traumatic stress disorder causes Henry to change and fight with depression. While Henry is depressed for a long time while he is home, he becomes happy during the time he fixes the car Lyman destroyed. Being happy before committing suicide is a common occurrence, because the victims have planned how they will die. Working on the car makes him feel a little more like himself and less like the man that was held prisoner. Lyman notices that Henry starts becoming a little more normal by “[…] [eating] more slowly and [not jumping] up and down during the meal […]” (130). Henry is happy but it is not a lasting, true happiness. Lyman comments that Henry “seemed friendly” not that he was happy or back to his old self, although Lyman hopes for the best. Lingering depression can be seen in the picture of Lyman and Henry, because Henry is wearing “[…] the worn-in clothes he’d come back in and kept wearing ever since” (131). Lyman notes while on the trip to the Red River “his face looked to me as if it was clear, more peaceful” (131). This shows that Henry is at peace with himself and is ready to go. Henry’s depression reaches the full stretch from the time he comes home until he decides to go to the River. Once Henry makes his complete transition through depression, he decides he will be able to pass after he resolves conflict with Lyman.
Henry knows that he has to clear up his relationship with Lyman because they were always close before the war. Lyman comments “we had always been together before” during the period that Henry was working on the car (130). Henry tries to enjoy his time with Lyman since it is the last time they will ever spend together alive. He smiles in the picture and in the car “it [looks] as though he wasn’t thinking of anything in particular except the bare fields and windbreaks and houses […]” (131). At the river Lyman says “We made ourselves a fire, and we sat down and watched the current go” (131). To clear the air since about the car Henry tells Lyman “I know it. I can’t help it. It’s no use” (131). The car has always been shared between the two of them, but as Henry’s farewell he gives the car to Lyman for good. Lyman says “He said he’d just fixed it just to give it back and I should take it,” but does not want to take the car
(132). After all he goes through, Henry just wants to fix his relationship with his brother and end his suffering. Vietnam changed him as a person as he exemplifies signs of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Henry just wants to repair the damage between Lyman and himself. He wants to make the death easier on his brother, since death can be harder to handle for some people than others. Death is a difficult event to experience, especially when it is the death of a brother.
During the war, Henry was taken P.O.W. and spent time in a Vietnamese prison. When he returned home, Lyman said, "Henry was very different...the change was no good," (463). Henry was constantly paranoid and evidently mentally unstable as a result of his wartime trauma. When the family had exhausted all efforts to help Henry, Lyman thought of the car. Though Henry had not even looked at the car since his return, Lyman said, "I thought the car might bring back the old Henry somehow. So I bided my time and waited for my chance to interest him in the vehicle." (464)
By spending so much time caring for the car, Lyman was caring for his brother. Little did Lyman know that his brother was going to come back a changed man and those changes were going to hemorrhage Henry's relationships.... ... middle of paper ... ...
...who endures pain. His brother, Lyman, suffers from many of the same things as Henry. Lyman also experiences post-traumatic stress. Although Lyman seems to acknowledge this stress in a rather different way than Henry, it is there all the same. Just as Henry tries to give the red convertible up to his brother, Lyman does the same in the end, and pushes it right back to him. The red car represents a bond between the two brothers, and with Henry gone, Lyman can not bear to have it around anymore. Unfortunately, getting rid of the car does not take care of Lyman's pain. Even a long time after Henry's death, Lyman still experiences post-traumatic stress. Only now he has a tragedy of his own to endure.
It appears that the war in Vietnam has still gotten into Henry. The war may be over in reality but in his mind it is still going on. This can explain all the agitations and discomfort he has such as not being able to sit still. Based on research, what Henry was experiencing was shellshock from the battlefield from the many soldiers being killed to t...
Whereas, when Henry was drafted, not to face his feelings and fears he offered his half of the car to Lyman. Clearly, this was his way of using the car to communicate, as Henry said to Lyman, “Now it’s yours” (326). Also, this could also be considered as a means to try to ease Lyman’s pain. Nevertheless, Lyman fought for the relationship without speaking the words. Besides, what’s more Lyman could not deal with the fact that Henry may not return, and he also used the car to communicate by rejecting his offer saying, “Thanks for the extra key,”(326). By the same token, they were using the car, by giving it up, as a symbol of their love; however, neither wanted the car without the other brother. In any case, without the car to connect them, they are in a break-up
Even though Lyman and Henry’s relationship ends up ending, the red convertible will always be with Henry and will always be a memory for Lyman. While Lyman struggles with losing his brother to the war, the red convertible brought them back together, even though it was really the end. Henry was faced with war and when he was finished and came back home he changed because of his experiences. Both Lyman and Henry changed throughout the events that took place, but unfortunately for Lyman the red convertible was not able to bring back the relationship they had when they first bought it together.
There are diseases in the world that we can touch and see and there are those which we cannot feel or see. Depression and suicide are one of the few that are not physical diseases but mental. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of deaths in America, and 20-25% of Americans eighteen and older have depression. The two poems ‘Summer Solstice, New York City’ by Sharon Olds, and ‘The Mill’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson are both discussing the different ways that suicide and depression can affect an individual. The first poem by Sharon Olds goes into details of suicide prevention whereas the poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson goes into the details of how suicide and death affect the loved ones of the deceased.
"Suicide, what a terrible concept. There are two types of suicide: physical, and theoretical. Physical suicide is the more commonly heard type of suicide. It entails the person actually, physically killing himself or herself. On the other hand, theoretical suicide is when the person does something that will, in turn, get him or her killed. For example, in “All About Suicide” by Luisa Valenzuela, Ismael, a man that works at a minister’s office, murders the minister, a high-ranking public official. Ismael has been forced to be quiet by the government; therefore he lashes out by killing the minister so that he can reveal the truth about the government. In doing this, Ismael technically “kills himself” because he knows the government will eventually find him and execute him. The theme of this story is that quite often, the truth is misconstrued or is hidden from the public. In order to reveal the truth, action must be taken to bring the truth to the people. Valenzuela reveals this theme through flashbacks, pronoun usage, and imagery.
We learn that when Henry comes home from the war, he is suffering from PTSD. "It was at least three years before Henry came home. By then I guess the whole war was solved in the governments mind, but for him it would keep on going" (444). PTSD changes a person, and it doesn 't always stem from war. Henry came back a completely different person. He was quiet, and he was mean. He could never sit still, unless he was posted in front of the color TV. But even then, he was uneasy, "But it was the kind of stillness that you see in a rabbit when it freezes and before it will bolt"
PTSD, also known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, can cause change and bring about pain and stress in many different forms to the families of the victims of PTSD. These changes can be immense and sometimes unbearable. PTSD relates to the characters relationship as a whole after Henry returns from the army and it caused Henry and Lyman’s relationship to crumble. The Red Convertible that was bought in the story is a symbol of their brotherhood. The color red has many different meanings within the story that relates to their relationship.
The emotional appeal can be felt on every sentence of the essay. Form this we can see the suffering faced by the writer. Even the first sentence of the article grabs the reader’s attention. It says,” The blood was like Jell-O. That is what blood gets like, after you die, before they tidy up” (Roberts). The words, blood, suicide, death are themselves filled with emotion which grabs reader’s attention to read the essay. Life is precious. We don’t have a second chance to live. We just live our life once and nobody sacrifices one’s life uselessly. Roberts effectively makes appeals to pathos throughout her essay. Her essay is full of emotionally charged words and phrases like death, suicide, motorcycle accident, abandonment and so on which create a sympathetic image. “Second-guessing is the devil’s game, for there are no answers and infinite questions. But it is an inevitable, inescapable refrain, like a bad song you can’t get out of your mind” (Roberts). This statement clearly supports her appeal to pathos because by the death of a loved one, we have all kinds of difficult emotions and it may feel like the pain and sadness will never go away. Her goal is to make reader feel sympathy for her by writing her personal experience of
Henry suffers from retrograde amnesia due to internal bleeding in the part of the brain that controls memory. This causes him to forget completely everything he ever learned. His entire life is forgotten and he has to basically relearn who he was, only to find he didn’t like who he was and that he didn’t want to be that person. He starts to pay more attention to his daughter and his wife and starts to spend more time with them.
In the first part of the novel, Henry is a youth that is very inexperienced. His motives were impure. He was a very selfish and self-serving character. He enters the war not for the basis of serving his country, but for the attainment of glory and prestige. Henry wants to be a hero. This represents the natural human characteristic of selfishness. Humans have a want and a need to satisfy themselves. This was Henry's main motive throughout the first part of the novel. On more than one occasion Henry is resolved to that natural selfishness of human beings. After Henry realizes that the attainment of glory and heroism has a price on it. That price is by wounds or worse yet, death. Henry then becomes self-serving in the fact that he wants to survive for himself, not the Union army. There is many a time when Henry wants to justify his natural fear of death. He is at a point where he is questioning deserting the battle; in order to justify this, he asks Jim, the tall soldier, if he would run. Jim declared that he'd thought about it. Surely, thought Henry, if his companion ran, it would be alright if he himself ran. During the battle, when Henry actually did take flight, he justified this selfish deed—selfish in the fact that it did not help his regiment hold the Rebs—by natural instinct. He proclaimed to himself that if a squirrel took flight when a rock was thrown at it, it was alright that he ran when his life was on the line.
The National Institute of Mental Health recognizes PTSD as a “disorder that develops in some people who have seen or lived through a shocking, scary, or dangerous event.” Since Henry’s return from the war, Lyman describes his brother as tense. There are many examples of Henry’s strange behaviors. However one truly stood out to Lyman and his family. He says, “I looked over, and he’d bitten through his lip. Blood was going down his chin” (970). Lyman continues that, “he took a bite of his bread his blood fell onto it until he was eating his own blood mixed in with the food” (970). Henry clearly is troubled by something, and the troubles all began after Henry went off to the Vietnam War. I’m no doctor, but one could simply recognize Henry is suffering from some form of
Throughout time, death has been viewed in a negative light. In general, it is an event to be mourned and is seen by some as the end to existence. People do not usually seek death as an answer to their problems. In various pieces of literature, however, suicide is contemplated by the characters as the only solution to the pain and grief that they experience.