In Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy,” there is an underlying sense of hope that is seen in spurts through the constant stories of injustice and unfairness that take place. Throughout the book there are multiple people that are wrongly condemned and have to suffer on the dreaded death row. All of the inmates of the row know they will eventually be executed, but only a select few stay positive and give the reader a sense of hope in such a negative situation. Mr. Jenkins is one of those men. The mentally ill man was in and out of foster care as a child, and his terrible experiences lead to more serious brain damage.
Throughout history there have been many cases in which defiant people commit horrendous acts that one cannot even fathom. Often times if these individuals perform acts in violation of moral laws and regulations, they are subject to confinement in a jail or prison. Of these non-obedient individuals are those who are known as serial killers, who murder innocent lives, due to their desire to receive relief. A famous example of a devious serial killer who raped, tortured, and fed the remnants of human flesh to his captives was Gary Heidnik. Like most criminals, his story is revolved around the achievement of a particular goal, which in his case was to create a ‘baby factory’ from the women he kidnapped.
In the novel Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel creates a parallel between a pre-apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic world affected by the nation-sweeping epidemic: The Georgia Flu. This dystopian world opens up the conversation about the following unresolved dilemmas: displacement, disorientation, dislocation, alienation, and memory. Each of the main characters faces a certain level of uncertainty while fighting for survival, evidently affecting them mentally, emotionally and physically. For this reason, some readers may question Mandel's choice to have her characters continue suffering from their inner turmoils.
The prisoners had seen and experienced so much brutality, endured repeated beatings, and humiliated beyond imagination, so one more death did not affect them. Their emotions hardened to the point of being non-existent… or so they thought. Although the prisoners seemed hardened and unaffected by death, a different hanging did deeply affect them.
When thrown in a unique situation, how one reacts may not reflect their normal social behavior. In fact, it may push an individual to react in a way that could be deemed negative, regardless of having a genuine and positive nature. In the novel Station Eleven written by Emily St. John Mandel, the author explores the conflict desires between good and evil in a post- apocalyptic world. Mandel shows the conflict between good and bad through the characters of Kristen, the Prophet and the boy.
In the drama film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest, Patrick McMurphy was moved from a prison farm to a mental institution to get evaluated for his erratic behavior. Upon being transported to the institution, all his assumptions about his new home were completely wrong. The head nurse, Nurse Ratched, has the whole hospital under her control with little to no freedom for the patients. All the inmates at the institution go through rigorous training to become obedient to Nurse Ratched and her strict schedule and rules. The institution was a very controlled environment with the patients having no control over their own life’s while there.
Gilman also highlights a lack of identity of the narrator through the setting of the novella which reflects the narrator’s societal confinement. The protagonist is surrounded by “hedges and walls and gates that lock”, which create a sense of separation that the narrator feels from others and the outside world. In addition, the room in which she is confined contains a “heavy bedstead, and… barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on”. These physical and ‘prison-like’ restrictions imposed on the protagonist clearly demonstrate her lack of freedom. Additionally, Gilman’s use of syndetic listing to describe the narrator’s physical entrapment is perhaps reflective of her feelings of suffocation and her inability to escape as the list feels never ending.
When stepping inside a hospital to receive help, one should expect care, treatment, and respect. However, shown in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and “Howl,” American society equates mental illness with inhumanity. In both texts, the characters are forced to live without basic human freedoms and a voice to change it. Society pressures the mentally ill into becoming submissive counterparts of the community by stripping away their physical freedoms, forcing inhumane treatment, and depriving them the freedom of expression. By pressuring confinement and treating the patients inhumanely, society strips away their freedom to express themselves.
By creating characters in the novel who are excluded and labelled the author demonstrates how cruel society can be to people. The purpose of this essay is to show how the author reveals the experiences of marginalised characters in society. Joseph Davidson is an introverted, fourteen year old boy who feels that he is trapped within his own world of chaos, and he too is a marginalised character in the book. It is suggested by the author that other characters believe that Joseph’s mother smothers him too much and his father has
Have you ever felt trapped unable to escape a certain situation, as if stuck in a room with no doors? It is easy to get lost in this feeling living in this type of world. Living in a world full of endless possibilities people tend to get trapped in their own vice. A professor of psychology by the name of Dr. Stone once said “We are not trapped by our thoughts. What we generally do, however, is create thoughts that trap us” (Stone 162).
Throughout human history, humans have been known to execute gruesome acts. Whether these acts are small and insignificant or massive and change history, humans are capable of performing horrific plots against one another. To make matters worse, most of the people who commit these terrible crimes are people who are entirely in a clear state of mind. Nevertheless, there are some cases in which the line between sanity and mental instability blurs. For example, there is an ongoing debate regarding the mental health of the main character in William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily.”
The repressed self is released out by detaching from reality. This detachment allows her to be free from social norms as her madness now allows her to no longer conform to cultural bounds. Her final protest, thus, comes out in the form of insanity. She can now escape from the cage of her husband by refusing to accept her identity as a repressed woman. This text thus brings to focus the dark theme that cultural and social expectations of women are so rigid that the protagonist has to give up her identity as a sane woman to finally achieve the freedom she is denied through
Throughout the novel, hypnopaedia and the use of soma are shown to be the main components to the society’s lack of individual identity. Soma, a drug sponsored by the government, is used by the citizens of the World State in order to suppress any emotions which make them feel somewhat uncomfortable. The use of soma leads to a society which lacks any understanding of real emotion, an important piece to the formation of an identity. While soma by itself is destructive, the effects of hypnopaedia are comparable to a “...liquid sealing wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is one scarlet blob” (Huxley 28). Hypnopaedia is a process which is used throughout childhood to result in adults that have the exact views the World Controllers want the citizens of particular castes to have.
One in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorder at some point in their lives. 450 million people are currently suffering from a mental disorder according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The nature vs. nurture debate within psychology is worried with the extent of particular behavior, whether or not it is caused by the way you were raised, or if it was inherited through disease. In Cold Blood, they take us on a journey of how Dick and Perry made November 15th, 1959 the Clutters last day on earth. Dick and Perry are both troubled men.
The 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, consists of many psychological concepts. Two concepts in particular seem to have the biggest impact and role throughout this film. These concepts being, classical conditioning and the idea that our environment and our experiences of nurture are what shapes us. A Clockwork Orange is the story of a group of young men who take pleasure in committing crimes and causing others to feel pain, they call themselves the “Droogs”. Alex, the group leader, suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder, a disorder also known as “psychopath”.
