Alias Grace
Based on a notorious double murder in Canada in the1840's, the novel Alias Grace tells the story of a pretty 16 year-old servant girl who conspired with a ranch hand to kill their employer and his mistress and escape with their belongings. They were captured in several days, and later, in a much-publicized trial, found guilty of premeditated murder. The young man, James McDermott, was sentenced to death, and the girl, Grace Marks, narrowly escaped it.
Alias Grace begins after the murderess has served 8 years in prison. The death of Nancy Montgomery, Kinnear's housekeeper and mistress, has been disregarded as both villains had already been sentenced to death. Grace is around thirty years old, being accused of the crimes when she was only sixteen. Grace is in prison where she has been mentally tortured during her rotation from prison to asylum over time. Doctors who wish to "examine" her frequently visit. She now has a subconscious aversion to these doctors and the world which she knows. She has become accustomed to being silent and unseen.
A young doctor, Dr. Simon Jordan, has taken an interest in Grace. Dr. Jordan is from a wealthy family and of good name, but he is more interested in studying abroad about sanity and those enclosed in asylums rather than interest at home. He has little experience in dealing on a personal basis with the question of sanity of patients, but is intrigued by this fabulously sensationalized murderess. A group that has continuously tried for the pardon of Grace Marks has recruited the doctor with hopes that he will find Grace sane and innocent on all counts of murder.
Dr. Jordan's main purpose is to help recover the lost memory of the time during the murders. This memory which some to believe was conveniently forgotten helped convict her during the trial; almost as if she had admitted to the killings. During the course of his visits with Grace, Dr. Jordan encourages her to tell of her life before the murders. Grace begins her story with her family in Scotland. Grace had been left with her abusive father and the smaller children after her mother died on the passage to America. A trip taken for necessity rather that need: for her father was in a bit of financial trouble in Scotland. Grace is sent out in Canada as a servant.
When they met it was very awkward for the both of them. Maya´s family was obviously very wealthy and Grace´s parents were even shocked. The moment Grace saw her sister, she was so excited because they looked so alike. They had the same exact hair and smile. Once she started seeing Maya more often Grace´s whole mindset of things changed because she realized that her mother did not give her away because she did not want her, it was because she could not give her a stable life. Grace did the same thing with her newborn daughter and realized that adoption is a beautiful thing. Grace became more open to her foster family about everything from how she felt about her childhood and what she wanted to do next. To add to that, Grace and Maya then figure out they have a brother named Juaquin. They both set up a email and he agrees to meet them. Grace then became terrified because there weren't just two of them now, it was three. Grace decided she wanted to find their birth mother. Maya and Juaquin did not agree at all. Grace started to search for her mother by herself. She then started to feel lonely all over again. She felt like Maya and Juaquin were complete strangers to
Grant successfully managed to treat Mr. G she comes to the realization that a doctor should not judge a patient no matter how they may act, as each patient may have a reason for acting the way they do. Dr. Grant has managed to learn how to combine her own personal experience with her doctoral skills she had learned in medical schools. Dr Grant believes. “ …[A]fter twenty-eight years of schooling, my education continues, both inside and outside the classroom” ( 183). Mr. G was the key figure in changing Dr. Grants judgement. If Mr. G had not shed light onto why he was in the hospital and how he felt stripped of his freedom to Dr. Grant she probably would have just branded him as crazy, she probably would have done the same to similar patients. As Dr. Grant states, “ … I was proud of myself for having accomplished my task… I was proud of myself because I had decided not to prejudge Mr. G” (182). Mr. G exposing his true emotions to Dr. Grant was the reason that she learned that she should not judge unique patients but instead, she should try to communicate with them and better understand so she can better help
People trust doctors to save lives. Everyday millions of Americans swallow pills prescribed by doctors to alleviate painful symptoms of conditions they may have. Others entrust their lives to doctors, with full trust that the doctors have the patient’s best interests in mind. In cases such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the Crownsville Hospital of the Negro Insane, and Joseph Mengele’s Research, doctors did not take care of the patients but instead focused on their self-interest. Rebecca Skloot, in her contemporary nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, uses logos to reveal corruption in the medical field in order to protect individuals in the future.
It is first seen when she convinces March to teach a young slave named Prudence, which is strictly prohibited by Mr. Clement and illegal. Although March fully understands that teaching slaves is not allowed, he tries to take the “heroic” path and do it anyways since it is the right thing under his principles. His idealistic views on life allow him take lofty and over-ambitious actions that ultimately lead to his misery, as shown when he watches Grace get whipped for his wrongdoing. When he meets Grace again after he is married with 4 children 30 years later, he allows himself almost cheat on Marmee to fulfill his desperate need for care. Her strong character stops him from doing so, leading them to only hug, but causes him to be forced out of the military unit and into a plantation where he educates freed slaves. After he is dangerously injured and ends up on the military ship, he meets Grace again as she tends to him and nurses him back to life. While doing so, she yet again catches his attention and love, seen by Marmee. When Marmee leaves and he decides whether to go back to his family, she tells him to pay more attention to real life: his wife, his sick daughter, Beth, and his duty to be reverend with his people in Concord. Grace’s character constantly tempts March, although she always tries to stop him from making rash
Throughout the story of Antigone, particularly the end, Creon proposes the bad-boy in control personality. He acts as the ruler he is and puts his power to work. He fears nothing unless his family is involved. He has no mercy when it comes to the law. Additionally, he is greatly affected by the environment he creates around himself.
Just Mercy touches on the idea of racial inequality and profiling the modern day american justice system by bringing us to a variety of cases that demonstrated this injustice. Bryan Stevenson also referenced an experience he personally had where he was being targeted by authorities for no good reason other than racial profiling. This theme of racial injustice and profiling connects Just Mercy to To Kill a Mockingbird. This idea is brought upon in To Kill a Mockingbird with Tom Robinson’s court case in which he is accused of committing rape. Many people judged Atticus Finch for defending Tom, not because of the allegations of committing rape, but rather the fact that he was defending a black man. Further proving the point that the contents in To Kill a Mockingbird can still be valuable today.
In the novel, Saving Grace, author Lee Smith follows the life of a young woman who was raised in poverty by an extremely religious father. In this story Grace Shepherd, the main character, starts out as a child, whose father is a preacher, and describes the numerous events, incidents, and even accidents that occur throughout her childhood and towards middle age, in addition, it tells the joyous moments that Grace experienced as well. Grace also had several different relationships with men that all eventually failed and some that never had a chance. First, there was a half brother that seduced her when she was just a child, then she married a much older man when she was only seventeen, whose “idea of the true nature of God came closer to my own image of Him as a great rock, eternal and unchanging” (Smith 165). However, she succumbs to an affair with a younger man that prompted a toxic relationship. What caused her to act so promiscuous and rebel against everything she had been taught growing up? The various men in Grace 's life all gave her something, for better or worse, and helped to make her the person she became at the end of the novel.
Almost doctors and physicians in the world have worked at a hospital, so they must know many patients’ circumstances. They have to do many medical treatments when the patients come to the emergency room. It looks like horror films with many torture scenes, and the patients have to pay for their pains. The doctors have to give the decisions for every circumstance, so they are very stressful. They just want to die instead of suffering those medical treatments. In that time, the patients’ family just believes in the doctors and tells them to do whatever they can, but the doctors just do something that 's possible. Almost patients have died after that expensive medical treatments, but the doctors still do those medical procedures. That doctors did not have enough confidence to tell the truth to the patients’ families. Other doctors have more confidence, so they explain the health condition to the patients’ families. One time, the author could not save his patient, and the patient had found another doctor to help her. That doctor decided to cut her legs, but the patient still died in fourteen days
A turn of events comes about in the story when Gary Hazen and his two sons, Gary David and Kevin, go with him on a hunting trip and Gary accidentally shoots and kills Gary David. After this, he feels so badly about the incident that he shoots himself. Kevin finds his father lying in the woods and saves him from dying. Kevin rethinks his feelings toward his father by realizing all that his father has done for him and taught him which leads him to show grace to his father in this difficult situation. Towards the end of the story, Gary extends grace toward both Kevin and himself. The meaning of The Grace that Keeps This World is that humans need the presence of grace in their lives to keep on living, and this is shown through Bailey’s use of the themes of forgiveness and redemption throughout the novel, which is especially evident in the lives of Kevin and Gary Hazen.
With this great power came great responsibility not to abuse it but it was indeed abused. Women at the time found themselves extremely vulnerable to being committed because the current medical opinion was that women were more likely to be insane than men. This was due to how a woman’s weak mind was plagued by her raging hormonal cycle. But this was not the only aspect of being a woman that made them vulnerable to accusations of false insanity and commitment to an asylum. The virtues of True Womanhood were being called into question. Packard was released from the Asylum by Dr. MacFarland for the reasons that she was unfixable in his eyes but an ulterior motive for Dr. MacFarland could have been that he did not want Packard’s strong will to bring her case in front of a judge. The possibility of her winning a hypothetical case could jeopardize his credibility and ruin his career. After her release her husband locked her up in a room with barred windows and no clothes or heat. Word got out through a letter that Packard slipped through the crack of her window to a fellow neighbor who went straight to a judge and the reverend was ordered to appear in court for ‘false imprisonment’. From there the case turned into a sanity trial because what was at question was the sanity of
The film gives a historical overview of how the mentally ill have been treated throughout history and chronicles the advancements and missteps the medical community has made along the way. Whittaker recounts the history of psychiatric treatment in America until 1950, he then moves on to describe the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia. He critically summarizes that it is doctors, rather than the patients, who have always calculated the evaluation of the merits of medical treatment, as the “mad” continue to be dismissed as unreliable witnesses. When in fact it is the patient being treated, and their subjective experience, that should be foremost in the evaluation. The film backs up this analysis with interviews of people, living viable lives in the town of Geel, Belgium. I would recommend this film to anyone interested in the history of medicine and specifically to those examining mental illness. It provides a balanced recounting of historical approaches to mental illness, along with success stories of the people of Geel, Belgium. And although I had to look away during the viewing of a lobotomy procedure, I give credit to the power of the visual impact the footage
In this scene, the reader is able to see inside Hester's head. One is able to observe the utter contempt she holds for the Puritan ways. She exhibits he love and respect for the father of her child, when she refuses to relinquish his name to the committee. The reader can see her defiant spirit due to these actions.
In 1843, an Englishman named Daniel M’Naghten killed Secretary British Minister. Daniel thought British minister was conspiring Daniel. The court put him in for Insanity Defense and was put in ...
After surgery Grace just lied in bed in so much pain. She cried out “help me…. I’m so cold, I’m so frightened” (654)! This is when the reader notices the shift in Graces attitude. Her attitude shifts into a tone that can practically be heard by the reader. As many times as Grace cried out for help the reader could tell she was desperate.
...pitals and psychiatrists were like that, although he only paints a negative picture of this, it would have been better to see a more neutral sided view of the account of hospitals and psychiatrists during that time. Similarly, the thing that I did not like about Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind was her way of relying on others so much. She was personally struggling with a disease that she needed help with, but she focused too much on herself (although this is understandable as she was in pain and depressed). She really did not care for others and had the empathy to understand the pain that her disease was putting on them as well.