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Analyzing Anne Fadiman's 'Under Water'

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Forgetting about bad memories Although people cannot automatically delete bad experiences that they went through, they can actually forget about horrible memories from the past because one shouldn’t spend their daily life thinking about their horrible experiences. The essay that led me to this topic is “Under Water” by Anne Fadiman the reason is because Anne tries to think about other things during a crisis such as happy and knowledgeable things, this cause my thoughts to expand. Some articles that I found are “Erasing bad memories” by Stacy Lu, “Can We Erase Bad Memories?” by Brian Wiltgen, “Selectively Deleting Memories” By Lauren Gravitz and “Erasing Memories” by Emily Singer. There are ways in which people can forget their bad memories and some ways are shown in articles and other texts. Some people look towards going to therapy and going to a psychologist to talk about their bad memories and experiences. …show more content…

She said that thanks to technology people won’t have to pass through a several perceptions, emotions and behavior. The way that technology helps is by letting neuroscientists and psychologists to “ explore the neural mechanisms by which memories are made and stored”. Every time that they research they end up finding useful information such as physiological interventions, electrical currents and well-timed pharmacology. These help “destabilize fearful memories” this can also be a pathway to finding something more

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“The Undercurrent” by Kellie Young is a story of a mother and daughter’s relationship that takes place in Hawaii throughout Young’s childhood. It describes to readers how her mother has influenced her life by becoming an admonitory voice inside her head. The impact Young’s mother has on her is widely due to the amount of admiration Young has for her. A crucial element to “The Undercurrent” is the short stories found throughout her narrative that exemplifies the greater concept of how her mother has shaped her life.

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In Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, two cultures clash with each other in the struggle to save Lia Lee, a Hmong child refugee with severe epilepsy. Although Lee and her family live in the United States, and thus receive medical care from Westerners, her family believes that Lee’s condition is sacred and special. The following miscommunications, both culturally and lingually, between the American doctors and the Lee family leave Lia Lee in comatose at the end of the book. However, Lia Lee could have been saved if the Lee’s had a better understanding of the American doctors’ intentions, and the American doctors understood the Hmong culture. Essentially, the tragedy of Lia Lee can be attributed to the clash of American and Hmong cultures at both the surface and sub-surface level.

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Laurie Colwin (1944-1992) was born in Manhattan, New York. She was a prolific writer and her very first works were published in the New Yorker. Her first short story collection was published in 1974. Her stories were written about love, relationships, and being happy in general, however, this story “The Man Who Jumped into the Water” is quite a bit different from the others. Hiding behind a persona to get away from reality can lead someone to a breaking point because a person 's troubles catch up to them.

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As we look all around us, we begin to become aware of the many different technologies that are in the world today. The different technologies started not very long ago, however they have advanced very quickly to please the new generations. The older generation that has grown up without technology is having to quickly adjust to the new world. The technologies could be shaping our minds in ways that we are not aware of or in ways that we don't take the time to actually think about. As technology is changing and evolving for the worst, so are our minds.

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Carr is effective in his argument by sharing his fears and personal experiences to have an effect on the audience utilizing pathos and ethos. Not only does he include his own experience, but he also includes other people’s point of views. He goes on to support his claim of how technology

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She mentions that these “dangerous” memories are presented in legal cases and explains her part in two of which she was apart of. In the first case, the photos of Thomas Sohponow who was mistakenly identified as the murderer of a young woman during the identification process were arrayed simultaneously rather than sequentially giving witnesses an easier target. This practice is not reliable as it allows witnesses to easily be persuaded by their naïve “memories” of a person and unfortunately in his case resulted in four years in prison. The second case Michael Kliman who was an elementary school teacher was accused of molesting a 6th grade student based on “repressed memories”. After two decades the student who “recovered” her memories laid charges on Kliman, which makes the case questionable since it could be difficult to justify the validity of a “repressed memory”.

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Carr introduced how he was felting with the technology “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain…,” (313) expressing that he is not really comfortable on how his brain is chaining because of the technology. Furthermore, Carr continue expressing how he was able to read with no issue “Immersing myself in a book or a length article used to be easy (314). After that, expressed that now is getting harder for him to concentrate but he found the reason why he has this issue “I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of the time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great database of the internet” (314).

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This made me scared for what will come in the future, if this technology keeps increasing. This piece made me realize how much technology is really a distraction to us. The internet has made it hard for me to stay focused when reading things and things that we can’t learn about quickly. My expectation of the internet is to find and receive information quickly and with little or no effort. So we try to find a way that we don’t have to do anything.

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The Color of Water Ruth McBride has a system of values and ethics that she teachers to her children through her experiences and other situations. There are a lot of categorizable values she teaches but the main ones include her views on education, religion, and race. Where education is concerned Ruth constantly pushes her kids to academic excellence. Ruth also influenced how her children thought and acted when faced with different racial situations that they are placed in. Ruth taught her children various values that mainly had positive effects and impacted their lives.

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Nicholas Carr, What the Internet is doing to Our Brains The Shallows (2010) asserts that, “The price we pay to assume technology’s power is alienation.” He supports this assertion by saying, “They both ultimately achieve their mental and behavioral effects by shaping the synaptic organization of the brain.” Also by, “ We long to keep it activated.” The writer concludes in order for people to improve their thoughts, they will have to cope with the new technology and how they think. Carr believes that technology is taking over how people interact with each other.

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In the present global world, we are living in the era of advanced technology like computes, smart phones, TV and so on; and I love that. As early day goes by technology is changed. Technology makes things happen so faster. In the article, “Meet your iBrain,” the authors Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan talk about the current explosion of digital technology and how is changing the way we lives, how we communicate, and it is also rapidly and profoundly altering our brains. “Our brain is evolving right now at a speed like never before” Gary and Gigi.

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Stacy Davis, self-proclaimed activist for feminism and womanism, is a “scholar trained in feminist theory and African American biblical hermeneutics” (Davis 23). In her article, The Invisible Woman: Numbers 30 and the Policies of Singleness in Africana Communities, Davis argues for a prominent place for single woman (specifically those who have never married) in biblical scholarship, and as leaders in the church, with questions of their sexuality left alone. Davis argues this viewpoint from the perspective as an unmarried black woman. Davis establishes the foundation for her argument in Numbers 30, a text that altogether omits reference to single woman, rather each group of women mentioned in the text about vows refers to them in relation to men (21). Thus, Davis establishes the omission of single women in the Hebrew Bible as the invisible women.

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1273 Words | 6 Pages

Anne Fadiman’s “Under Water” strikingly relates a particularly morbid, yet surreal experience: the death of a teen, Gary, in a freak canoeing accident. From writing about this particular incident, Fadiman reflects her own development and maturation as a person, from an “impatient” person to one who is “no longer in a hurry.” However, in a more general sense, the essay also deals with how people react to death. In the seventh paragraph of “Under Water,” Fadiman’s use of personification and the use of a metaphor describing the body of Gary highlights how individuals insistently attempt to detach themselves from death, refusing to accept the truth of the situation, ultimately damaging themselves in the process.

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One of the limitations is the construction of the memory. The gaining of trust on how much an individual can trust the memory of recollection. While one may not remember what happen in their daily day life, how can one trust this therapy to recollect the memory many years ago. The construction of memory may include good memories and memories which can worsen the client’s life as it can be painful one. The client can take drastic decision such as pulling the person to court after the memories have been recollected.

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