The poem, To This Day, written by a world renowned poet Shane Koyczan, Brings to light “the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.”
It starts with Shane’s personal story of his first nickname. When Shane was younger he thought that pork chops and karate chops were the same thing, his grandmother, whom we can assume he was living with at the time, thought it was harmless so she never did anything about it. And as young children do he went exploring, he decided to climb up a tree that he had found but he then realized that “fat kids weren’t designed to climb trees,” this showing the first signs of self-deprecation. When he fell out of the tree he regretted to inform his grandmother about the incident so he wouldn’t get in trouble, but the fall had left him with a bruise on his side. While his grandmother hadn’t noticed, his gym teacher had, he was then questioned by “a nice lady” in the principal’s office, most likely a social worker who already had a biased opinion about the situation before even asking Shane what had happened. He then told this nice lady
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that his grandmother would give him “karate chops” when he was sad, and that’s when the situation went under investigation. Once the social worker had finally asked Shane what had happened everything went back to normal at home, but at school word had carried and Shane was given his first nickname, pork chop. Even though you may think the main subject is when the bullying began for Shane, which is most likely true, this also symbolizes the age when children start to care less and less about how nice a person is and more about the external, such as looks and reputation. For some children this is the start of the hardest journey of their lives. This is the point where sticks and stones feel like pillows compared to the violent marks that are left by the words they are called. That is when their confidence level plummets so low they grow up believing that they aren’t good enough and never will be, that no one could ever love them. He started to realize that he was not alone.
In the third grade Shane met a girl just like him, out casted and not wanted, it was in the third grade when that girl got her first taste of the words that would haunt her forever. This was the first time she was called ugly because of a birth mark that took up a little less than half of her face, for the first time children joked and laughed about her appearance, this was her “pork chop story.” Shane and her tried to get through it together, take on the world together, but they were outnumbered and were beat day after day. Despite making it through the years of taunts and teases, getting married to a loving husband, and having two wonderful children that looked up to her everyday like she was a super hero, she couldn’t shake the past. She was convinced that they were right, she would never be good enough and no one could ever love
her. The next story that Shane shares is more intense to show a stronger version of the effects of bullying. This boy’s story began when he was adopted and at the age of three he could feel the effects of not being wanted. As he grew so did the feelings, and by the eighth grade he was put into therapy where he took tests and was prescribed pills. But those where just the beginning, after the ignorant children at school began to tease him for being “weak” or telling him “to get over it,” he attempted suicide. Because what most people don’t know is that you can’t take a special pill, you can’t sleep it off, you can’t take a break and be better within a week, and you definitely don’t choose to fell a certain way. It is a process that is complex, it takes a lot of time, compassion, and love. But since he wasn’t able to get that type of medicine he is still struggling day after day, surrounded by people that use his story as a piece of gossip. Then Shane brings reality into the poem because this isn’t a single generation problem, this is an epidemic that effects all generations. “Kids will be cruel” is like saying when a girl gets sexual assaulted that “boys will be boys.” It’s not okay, yet year after year the names get crueler, the cuts go deeper, and children continue to fall without making a sound. But Shane wants to send a message that kids need to continue to find beauty within themselves and if they can’t then they need to try harder, because one day they’re going to want to say that they made it. And if they can’t picture themselves moving forward now then that’s okay because they aren’t stuck forever. The poem: http://www.tothisdayproject.com/the_poem.html The video: https://vimeo.com/59956490 (Not included in my analysis but I recommend watching it)
I chose “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly” by Johnathan Sofran Foer, and “Wake Up Call” by Megan McGuire. They have similar underlying themes and will be an interesting comparison. “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly” is about what seems to be a daydream about the future relationship between two lovers and how it evolves over the course of their adults lives. “Wake Up Call” is about the relationship between a girl and her parents as she grows up from adolescence in to young adulthood. .
Have you ever been so focused on achieving your dreams that you become unaware of your current situation? When we focus on the goals ahead of us, we fail to see the obstacles and dangers that are in front of us. In order to achieve our goals we involuntarily put ourselves in an unwanted situation. Connie, herself, struggles to achieve her goal of being a desirable girl that turns heads when she walks into the room. She becomes so set on being this girl that she doesn’t realize the danger of the situation. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates utilizes metaphors, diction, and imagery to show how Connie is in a constant tug between her reality and her dreams, and how this confines her freedoms in a world that is surrounded with malevolence.
Chris a sixteen year old African male enter into therapy seeking professional help. Chris grew up in an urban neighborhood in New York, together with his mother and father. Chris develop problems due to longing attention. He begins to act out, hang around with the incorrect crowd, and get into fights.
The short story "Where are you going, where have you been?" by Joyce Carol Oates is full of symbolism that represents elements such as evil and loss of innocence. The symbolism is a crucial part of the story because it helps the reader to read between the lines and see beyond the obvious meanings of things. Some of the important symbols present in this story are Arnold's car, Arnold himself, and the doorway of Connie's family's house.
It seems at first easy to look to the author when considering lots of the experiences of Fitzgerald and that of his protagonist Anthony Patch. Fitzgerald’s work of ‘The Beautiful and Damned’ was published in 1922, the beginning of an era where prohibition attempted to keep the type of people like Anthony Patch himself from becoming an alcoholic. ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his turbulent personal life’ so it could be thought that because of his turbulent and unhealthy lifestyle during the aftermath of the success of his first book Fitzgerald chose to take his ‘social context’ and life and place it into a novel thus Anthony Patch was created.
The documentary film Bully (2011) – directed by Lee Hirsh – takes the viewer into the lives of five families that live in various, predominantly remote, towns across the United States. All families presented have been affected by bullying, either because their child was at the time being bullied by peers at school or the child committed suicide due to continuous bullying. The film also profiles an assistant principle, Kim Lockwood, whose indiscreetness makes the viewer...
The movie is about Shane helping out a fellow town and their freedom from a gang called the Rykers. When Shane first shows up, he helps defend a family, Joey, the son, Joe, the father, and Marian, the mother, from the Rykers gang after they show up and try to make the family leave their home. The Rykers gang leaves, and Marian invites Shane for dinner, offering her gratitude. The day after, little Joey tells Shane that his father is worried about the Rykers gang, as he could see, as they have been causing trouble all around town. Shane, of course, agrees to help. Shane, while in town, ends up in an altercation with someone else. The guy throws a glass of whiskey at him, but, being the better man, he decides to ignore the man who threw the whiskey. Joey, who overheard about this, is reassured by his mother that Shane did the right thing. The next day, however, the same man decided to do it again, and it got the best of him as he threw some whiskey of his own and slugs the guy. Ryker, the leader of the gang who has been terrorizing the town, offers him a job, but, obviously, Shane turns him down and ends up having to fight the entire Rykers gang. He
Even though I work in a school district where we are expected to watch videos on bullying annually, this series was eye opening to the real problem of bullying. According to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development three out of ten children are a bully, victim, or both. Another statistic from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reveals that 3.2 million youth are bullied and 3.7 million youth are the bullies. These statistics are staggering. The characteristics of bullying is repeated aggressive behavior that is carried out over time with the intent of inflicting verbal, nonverbal, or physical harm to another individual. Normal peer conflict happens infrequently between two equal
The crisis of bullying has grown dramatically in the past years. Bullying surrounds everyone, from daily harassing insults that are thrown around in the hallways, to bruising from shoves or punches, and even to lethal bullets. Never before have there been large amounts of horrendous cases of bullying with fatal results – the growing prevalence i...
Imagine a society overrun by bullies. It would be awfully frightening if it was true, but it is. The Bully Society, by Jessie Klein discusses the many stories kids who are entangled with issues regarding bullying and how they are struggling to cope. Before Klein began writing her book, she worked for years as a high school teacher, a social worker, and a conflict resolution coordinator. Klein writes many scholarly journals, articles which have appeared in many well-known media organizations. One of her main goals as described on her website, www.JessieKlein.com, is “I hope to help schools build compassionate communities leading to more peaceful and productive education environments.” Klein is a very diligent and hardworking woman. She tries to emphasize the need for improvements whether it is about education or communities. She strives as an influential role model to possibly many of her past students and those she has encountered.
Bullying has been around for decades and yet it is still a reoccurring problem, and it is only getting worse. The National Center for Educational Statistics, in 2009, said nearly 1 in 3 students between the ages of 12 and 18 reported being bullied in school. Eight years earlier, only 14 percent of that population said they had experienced bullying(Ollove,2014). There are two types of bullying the direct form and indirect form, in the direct form the victim receives physical harm example kicking pushing shoving. In the indirect form the victim receives emotional or mental harm by name-calling, rejection, gossip, threats, or insults(Green,2007). It doesn’t matter which way the victim was bullied it still causes
Bullying in schools is something that is currently on going and most likely never disappear on its own. Bullying is the unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance (stopbullying.gov). Although, bullying is not new it is becoming more prevalent today. Socially withdrawn, shy, and reserved children are prime targets of bullying (Juvonen, 2007). For many years bullying has been put off as a sort of rite of passage, everyone must go through it. Many adults today will say that they have been involved in bullying as child and it just faded. That was okay in the past, but today many children are hurting themselves as a result to bullying. To try to help with bullying one must know the
Bullying is something that is not something new and is actually something that society continues to face. Over the years, bullying has been looked at as being so ordinary in schools that it is continuously overlooked as an emanate threat to students and has been lowered to a belief that bullying is a part of the developmental stage that most young children will experience then overcome (Allebeck, 2005, p. 129). Not everyone gets over the extreme hurt that can come as an effect from bullying, for both the bully and the victim. Because of this, we now see bullying affecting places such as the workplace, social events and even the home. The issue of bullying is not only experienced in schools, but the school environment is one of the best places
“"If bullying is every single mean thing that happens, then there's nothing we can do to stop it," says Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones.” (pg. 8).
Bullying is a serious problem in our society today. There are many examples in the world, either in direct contact or through social network to harass peers. Bullying can leave many different effects on child’s development, and adulthood as well. Bullying not only affect physical health, it also can affect mental health. The effects bullying can have on its victims is something that may last throughout their lives, or something that may end their life. Violence can be psychological, economic, physical, and sexual. Bullying can affect your brain and body. There is also workplace bullying, which became international problem. Children hood bullying can leave lifelong scars.