“In this day and age, a film about female action heroes must refuse to take itself even remotely seriously in order to be accepted by the masses. American audiences can accept Tom Cruise breaking into a highly secured vault, but Cameron Diaz doing the same thing must be presented as a campy joke.” – Scott Mendelson discussing Charlie’s Angels back in 2000 for his college newspaper.…
Charlie is a wallflower and he is befriended by a senior named Patrick. Patrick is gay and is dating a football player secretly. Patrick introduces Charlie to Sam, Patrick's step-sister. Charlie is attracted to Sam, but says nothing for a while. He is absorbed into their group of friends and can begin to control flashbacks he has had about his aunt Helen dying on his birthday.…
Jeannette Walls tells the story of her dysfunctional childhood during the 70’s. Her life is dismal to the reader because so many negative things happen throughout her first 6 years of life. She is full of optimism and joy. She is able to see the good in every person and every situation. Jeannette tells the intriguing yet disturbing story of her childhood without putting pity on herself.…
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrays a story around the narrator who is suffering from mental illness, which is internal. The narrator begins to explain how she knows something is wrong with her even though her high standing physician husband, John, and high standing physician brother don’t see anything except a temporary depression. John takes the narrator to a house over the summer to get her away from people and society, because John believes it makes her think of her condition, which is the worse thing the narrator should do. The narrator then explains the house as “the most beautiful place!” (Gilman, 552), the description is very personified and creates a bright, visible image in the readers’ head. The description…
In the "Catcher in the Rye," written by J.D. Salinger, Holden experienced a traumatic event that would stay with him for the rest of his life. When Holden was 13, his 11-year-old brother, Allie, passed away from leukemia. Holden would never recover from that experience. Holden develops a condition known as PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is best described as "An anxiety disorder that people get after seeing or living through a dangerous event." As described in the post-traumatic stress disorder article written by the National Institute of Mental Health. Holden is suffering from PTSD, and he witnesses multiple traumatic events that will ultimately shape his way of life.…
The movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is directed very differently than how the book is written. The book is written in letters that Charlie writes to a friend. In the book, it’s harder to “get to know” the characters. Charlie describes them very well but it is harder to actually feel like you “know” the characters. Charlie sometimes narrates the movie, but it is also in 3rd person. Because the movie is also in 3rd person, you can “get to know” the characters better. In the movie Charlie also has flashbacks. When he has them he describes himself as “getting bad again”. Because the book was written in 2nd person, Charlie never had flashbacks.…
Charlie Gordon’s life began to worsen as he got further from the operation. Charlie life didn’t improve because he found out who were his real friends and then he began to become less intelligent at the end of the short story. Charlie wanted to become smart, so he can be like his “friends” and other people in the world. He didn’t really know that when people had him around they were laughing at him and making fun of him.…
In Flowers for Algernon Charlie Gordon goes through a life changing experience. He is a mentally retarded man who struggles every day because of his disability and wishes he could be smart like other people. When he gets the chance to have a brain surgery that will increase his intelligence it sets him off on an exciting and scary journey. He learns that in life people can be cruel to those that are different, that being smart is overated and that intelligence alone is not enough to make someone happy. Through the course of his experience of first being mentally retarded and then becoming a genius Charlie learns some good lessons about life.…
After finishing “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” I realized that there were so many plot twists and character developments in the last part of the book. First of all, the major thing that we discover at the end of the book is Aunt Helen’s full story. Early in the book Charlie tells us how his Aunt Helen was molested which made her turn to a life of drugs and alcohol. So, she came to live with Charlie and his family. We also learn that he feels responsible for her death because, she was going to buy him an extra birthday present.…
On Chesil Beach focuses on the wedding night of Edward and Florence. McEwan describes their few hours of a honeymoon as painful. They sent through a long awkward dinner. McEwan incorporates flashbacks to Edward’s and Florence’s families and upbringings. It is very clear that their marriage has already demonstrating failure. The novel is based on the year 1962. They are encountered with difficulty in sexuality, trust, and anger issues. After almost twelve hours, Florence and Edward have a huge argument about Florence’s fear of have sex. Florence walked away from Edward. This was the major step toward ending their marriage. One of the leading…
In the late nineteenth century Sigmund Freud began using the term repression to explain how memories of a traumatic event can be inaccessible for a period of time and then return at a later date sometimes suddenly while during other times slowly developing over a period of time into a more clear memory. It was believed that repressed memories or motivated forgetting was a defense mechanism for people who needed to protect themself from the harmful and painful memories of a traumatic experience (Boag, 2006). More recently repressed memories being recovered about childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has caused more studies to be conducted to determine if the memories being recovered are valid or if false memories are be produced due to the fact that “human memories are vulnerable to distortion, that illusory memories can be created and therapies designed to recover memories of repressed abuse may inadvertently foster false memories of trauma” (Clancy, Schacter, McNally, & Pitman, 2000, p. 26)…
Trauma can be defined as: an occurrence so disturbing and painful it never seems to leave ones mind, leaving an emotional scar for life. There is an abundance of trauma within the pages of Beloved by Toni Morrison, but there are three specific instances that can be dissected and are extremely unique to the text in terms of language and what the author is conveying. These three instances are when Sethe is sexually assaulted by the teacher’s nephew, when Paul D almost drowns in the mud while in prison, and when Sethe kills Beloved to save her.…
In the novel Beloved, the author Toni Morrison demonstrates how the past, when not dealt with, can have a negative and stunting effect on the future. By constructing a narrative that allows for the past, present, and future to intertwine, Morrison illustrates how each time period is not an isolated entity because of the existence of memories. Throughout the novel, the characters work to suppress the past due to the horrific events that occurred in slavery. However, through this active avoidance of coming to terms with the trauma of the past, the characters are incapable of fully claiming their freedom and their future. Morrison, through the unsuccessful coping mechanism of suppression, constructs a narrative that reveals the truly horrific…
“We Were Liars” is about a seventeen year old teen named Cadence Sinclair. In the book, Cadence experienced trauma in her life that must have been very tragic to her. In the book it states, that she accidentally started a fire in her house, and killed her whole family. Because of this Cadence expressed the possibility of an unstable mental health. Through evidence provided in the text which will be discussed further in this essay, it is clear that Cadence is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Some symptoms of PTSD include; nightmares, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and depression.…
Child sexual abuse (CSA) can result in both short term and long lasting psychological effects. General psychological distress and disorders such as depression, anxiety disorders and post traumatic distress disorder are some of the manifestations of sexual abuse during childhood. Gibb, Chelminski, and Zimmerman (2006) state that “Theorists have long thought that negative experiences in childhood may contribute vulnerability to development of psychopathology across the lifespan [with] studies supporting the relationship between a history of childhood physical or sexual abuse and diagnoses of depressive and anxiety disorders, particularly posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adulthood” (p. 256). PTSD is the most common manifestation of childhood sexual abuse trauma and is sometimes related to disassociation disorder. In his article, David Finkelhor communicates that “studies suggest that a significant fraction of sexual abuse victims suffer from PTSD-type symptoms including fragmentation of memory, intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, and dissociation (or the unconscious separation of some mental processes from the others” (Finkelhor, 1990, p.…