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As a child, I was always told, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” however; I have come to disagree with this adage. While some people choose to express their feelings, others would rather hide them. Neither person is “right,” but they are both affected by words. My personal experiences, literary events, and my observations support that words hurt people. In my fifteen years of life, I have been hurt by words countless times, causing me to lose my self-confidence and gain a desire to alter my appearances. My self-confidence started going downhill when I received negative comments about the size of my ears. I became fragile, vulnerable, to insults like these, thus creating challenges for my future. Later in life, I became taunted with names like “ginger” and “fat,” triggering me to long for appearance alterations. I believed that the hurt caused by words would cease to exist once I eliminated the cause and learned how to hide being affected. In hindsight, I realize that I could not have been more wrong. Externally hiding my feel...
words along with a tremendous amount of credibility. Turner's words in "The Hurt Locker" create a window for his readers to see through h...
Words hold great power and when used correctly can influence what people believe and how they act.
Although people say many things out of realization that those words could harm others everyone should always be careful in what he/she says because someone else could misunderstand and commit a crime. Many of mankind cannot stand things people say and end up doing things which do not have good outcomes. Some people’s anger or hate may make them hurt another emotionally or physically. Stating an idea without an explanation may be misunderstood by someone else and thought of in a different matter. Foolish human beings like Napoleon get their friends against others when someone does something that does not make him/her happy. There are many people out there, like for example teenagers, get into fights becau...
I affected by what people have thought of me. I let the fear of one person in high school keep me from doing what I loved which is theater. I was afraid of Kayla because I was bullied by her. In 8th grade I was afraid to speak out because I thought I was wrong. During presentations three guys who thought they were “all that” the “jock type” the muscular guys who thought they could get any girl were mean to me. They probably had to be mean on the outside to hide some hurt on the inside. They would call me names and throw spitballs when the teacher was not looking .I looked around the room and saw the kids faces all laughing. I couldn’t speak after that. I felt like I had a lump in my throat that was preventing me to talk. After that day I felt like a ghost wandering the halls, that everyone ignored. I felt that everyone was out trying to get me for something I didn’t do. I was an easy target. I was too sensitive. I was self conscious about my body. People where telling me I was fat, I wasn’t pretty, I will never get a guy because I was a “looking like a
Some people think words are just written letters, but unfortunately, for some, words are dark memories of a time filled with despair, remorse, and a gnawing uncertainty as one thinks of their future. Words can also teach us a lesson and educate us of the past. Literature can help us remember and honor the victims of the holocaust by preserving their stories and learning from their actions and feelings, including the Acceptance Speech, Anne Frank’s diary, and Levi.
...me feel as if what they thought about me was actually true because so many people thought the same thing. Even though I was emotionally hurt, my reaction to this event made things positive. As stated before, I purposely tried to smile and look less intimidating. This got me into a better mood and gave me happy thoughts. People reacted differently to a new me and my emotions were not the same as before when people judged me as a shy and hard to approach girl.
Words have always affected how an individual. In more than just one way perhaps, maybe not just any word either, maybe some in particular just get your emotions to flutter and one just may not be capable of understanding how that is, or why. Taking a step back, we look at insults. Insults and swear words seem to have such a great power over others, and typically there is a bigger meaning as to why they might be used. This sort of phenomenon isn’t always used out of spite, or anger. It can also be used to get a point across, or to express a deeper sense of emotion. Although, according to William B Irvine, a writer for Time Magazine, expressed that the pain caused by insults are really just a symptom of a far more serious ailment: our participation in the social hierarchy game. William goes into further explaining the effect of insults due to psychological reasoning, and it depends on how one may interpret their meaning. Cursing can be best described as a form of linguistic activity, using words to express the meaning of strong instincts (Irvine 3). Since cussing typically includes taboo words, these words can be more powerful than non-swear words. Therefore, people who swear are often judged negatively, because swearwords can shock and disturb others.
You can’t say just anything about anyone without consequences. If you say the wrong letters in hangman, the man is hung and it is game over. However, same can be said of real life. Some end their lives by cutting themselves, hanging themselves, shooting themselves, and even overdosing themselves. Some may even jump off high buildings, wanting to die because of those words. In a word, suicide. Most suicides are caused by bullying. Do you know why? Those people, perfectly sane, listen to everything that was applied offensively to them. Everything. That comment about their clothing? They heard it. Soon, they can’t take it and close the book on their
Anne Bradstreet’s poem “The Author to Her Book” is her response to having her private poems published without her consent and having them be criticized by people that were not intended to see them. Bradstreet began to see the flaws in her work and wants to fix them but it is too late and they had already been released to the world. This experience by Bradstreet is something that is able to be related to at some extent by most individuals at some point in their life, including myself. In my life I have been forced to endure my fair share of betrayal, negative judgement for things that are out of my control, and developing a sense of dislike for something that I once loved because of influence of the loud opinions of others.
For example one day on Twitter the hashtag #teamlightskinned was trending. Being curious, I clicked on it and decided to read the tweets. This was a huge mistake on my part and each tweet that I read felt like it lowered my self-esteem by the second. The tweets were absolutely horrible and degraded dark skin women so much that it made me sick to my stomach. Since it was such a traumatizing moment for me, I can still remember almost each and every tweet. There was one guy that stated, “All dark skin women should take a bath in bleach to lighten their skin so that they could be at least a little more attractive,” at that point I logged off of my Twitter and decided to take a break from it. At this point in time I actually hated my complexion and made the choice to buy skin bleaching cream to try to make myself lighter. The chemicals in the cream were so strong that they actually caused me to have a horrible break out. My skin looked horrible and it was my own fault. I let what other people had to say online get to me and made me want to change something that I once was so proud of. I loved my skin complexion before the people on Social Media made me hate
The implicit warning of the film is that without emotions to feel, and words to express those feelings, our world would be a very bleak and inhospitable one. It goes on to deal with the dilemma of mindlessly following the imposed
As I grew up, I developed a personality based on a victim mentality. When someone would say something about me, I would accept it, believe it or perceive it as truth. Therefore, to protect myself, I developed a set of rules that came from feeling rejection and reasoning that I was merely a drop in the ocean, "One of the Many." However, these laws in my life turned into wrong thinking, low self-esteem, and low self-worth. It would be years when I realize this thought process of self-protection had pointed my life on a path of self-pity with large doses of emotional pain such as loneliness, depression, and unavailability for love.
There is a wall that I have built up in my life. I let very few people in, and I let even less information from myself out. I feel like I am protecting myself by hiding behind this wall. I realize that this wall inhibits me from furthering myself even in the slightest bit, but it’s not necessarily something that I have chosen. Things that have happened in my life made me the way I am today. A series of experiences largely caused by my homosexuality has led me to close myself off from other people. Instances that have happened within my family, school, and even my adult life that have just reaffirmed every wall that I have put up against those around me. I wish that I didn’t feel the necessity to do this, but as time has proven, I must guard that which I hold dear or it will be exploited.
There is truth in the phrase “hurting people hurt people.” A cycle of causing pain and receiving it is one that can only be broken by rising above the desire for revenge and living your life to the fullest. In the films THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE (2001) and SCARLET STREET (Fritz Lang, 1945) we see a cycle of a different kind: dissatisfaction leads to more dissatisfactions. In THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, the audience is given the sense that perhaps the series of events that lead tho the main character’s was no fault of his own, however, knowing that the Coen’s influence was SCARLET STREET, one might argue that the main character in THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE was in full control of the situation.
“Words can poison, words can heal. Words start and fight wars, but words make peace. Words lead [people] to the pinnacles of good and words can plunge [people] to the depth of evil.” - Marguerite Schumann