PASSAGE 1: The first passage I would like to discuss is “A short, sleeveless shift was all that covered her, but she wasn’t cold. The temperature in the room was precisely calibrated to keep her comfortable. Punishment was meted out in other ways: in increments of solitude, monotony and, harshest of all, self-reflection, both figurative and literal. She hadn’t yet seen the mirrors, but she could feel them shimmering at the edges of her awareness, waiting to show her what she’d become.” (page 1) There is something to be said about the indomitable human spirit when faced with outer turmoil. I believe that when people outwardly subject others to torture, it is easier for the tortured to identify the torturer and outwardly resist. Survival instincts kick in and a person does whatever it takes to endure the process by focusing and both the pain and the person who is inflicting it. However, when there is no active act of torture and one is left to their own dark thoughts the mental anguish can be harder to endure then the physical pain. Before the protagonist is released into society, where she will most likely be stigmatized as she had stigmatized the “Reds” before, she must endure her own stigmatization, self-loathing and dejection, all while feeling very publicly exposed. Studies have shown that solitary confinement causes psychological issues as well, so it may be extremely difficult on her mental state and have long term psychological effects.
PASSAGE 2: Another passage I would like to discuss is on page 33. “ ’Will it feel any pain?’ Raphael shook his head… Her shoulders slumped with a sigh of relief, and Raphael added, ‘it’ll be painful for you though. The cramping can be severe.’ ‘I don’t care about that.’ Hannah wanted it to hu...
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... feels the elderly man has been very straightforward with her up to this point, so why does he choose now to conceal the truth. Who is he protecting?
1 OBSERVATION: One element of fiction is the color symbolism and its uses to designate criminal castes in society. Red is for murder( kind of obvious as a representation of blood), then there is blue for child molesters, and yellow for misdemeanors(not too alarming of a color but still noticeable). Not only is the color of Hannah’s skin a constant reminder to her of the blood of her unborn child and the life that she took, but she will have to deal with the stigmas of society upon her release. I think the use of color pigmenting to the skin as a way of public branding will play an important role thought the novel including affecting the way the society, her family and friends, and Hannah herself, will perceive Hannah.
Bales and Soodalter use this to their advantage very effectively by using a multitude of personal stories from people who went through slavery. They tug at your heart strings by starting with Maria, who was 12 years old when she was taken into slavery for seven months by Sandra Bearden. During that time she was reportedly “ . . . dragged into hell. Sandra Bearden used violence to squeeze work and obedience from the child.” (722). Bales and Soodalter begin by giving you an emotional connection with Maria by telling a short story of her life growing up with her two loving parents, and small details of their house and living conditions. After the backstory is established, it goes straight into the accounts of beatings and torture endured by Maria, to quote “ . . . Sandra would blast pepper spray into Maria’s eyes. A broom was broken over the girl’s back, and a few days later, a bottle against her head . . . Bearden tortured the twelve year old by jamming a garden tool up her vagina.” (722-723). The inclusion of the tortures paints an image of how horrible slavery is, and evokes a sense of dread, despair, and helplessness for Maria. Bales and Soodalter not only state the tortures but they follow the text immediately by stating “That was Maria’s workday; her “time off” was worse.”
In the article, “The Cause of Her Grief”, Anne Warren tells us a story of a slave woman ordered to be raped and forced to reproduce. Warren first begins telling the slave woman story by taking us back and recollecting the slave woman’s voyage from her home land to the ownership of Mr. Maverick. She used vivid language during this passage to help the reader imagine what type of dissolute conditions she traveled in to end up being a rape victim. For example in the section where Warren attempts to describe the condition of her travel. She wrote “When speaking of the origins of captured slaves, we are often reduced to generalities”. (Warren 1039) In that moment she addresses the fact that as readers we often over simplify the idea of slavery and what it was like, we could only imagine. The author uses the words “captured slave” to set the wretched and forced precedent for the remainder of the reading. At this moment she is requiring that you imagine being captured, held upon your rightful will of freedom. This is important to the slave experience; they did not have a choice just as this woman had no choice. She goes on to address the conditions of the vessel on which the salve woman traveled. She wrote “crammed into the holds of wooden ships, trapped in excrement, vomit and sweat” (Warren 1040). This was yet another demand from the author for the reader to place themselves in the feet of the slaves. It is also another key element in understanding not only slavery but also John Maverick’s slave woman. She travelled weeks, sometimes months to make arrive at the given destination. Once the slave woman arrived to land it was time for her to be sold. Yet again we are now asked by the author to paint a more vivid picture of the slavery exp...
Many characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls say that they would prefer suicide to being tortured after becoming captured, or being a prisoner of war. In wartime, when someone is captured, they may be tortured so the enemy can get intell...
Gresham M. Sykes describes the society of captives from the inmates’ point of view. Sykes acknowledges the fact that his observations are generalizations but he feels that most inmates can agree on feelings of deprivation and frustration. As he sketches the development of physical punishment towards psychological punishment, Sykes follows that both have an enormous effect on the inmate and do not differ greatly in their cruelty.
The narrator also feels intimidated by his wife?s relationship with the blind man. When he is telling of her friendship with Robert h...
The mother understands her husbands trust and she will not read his diaries. “... She saw where he had hidden the current volume, was tempted to open it and see what it was he didn’t want her to know, and then thought better of it and replaced the papers, exactly as they were before” (p. 44). The mother does not need to read the diaries to know what her husband is like. She knows that what her husband thinks is secret and unkind because she also has unkind thoughts.
The men who played the role of prisoner, like the guards, were selected at random. The harassment they endured, while all voluntary, was by any means less than humane. They were treated with very little respect, and denied basic rights, such as use of the restroom, and were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors for many nights as a form of punishment. When they arrived to the prison, they were stripped down, and given a change of clothes, but the “change of clothes”, was anything but what they expected to receive. They were actually dresses. The dresses were meant to emasculate the men even more than what they had been already. Rendered powerless, with lack of control of their environment, what other choice did they have than to accept what
In his book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski shows how the conditions and situations that the prisoners were put through made them make a choice that most humans never face. The choice of compassion and concern for ones fellow man or only loving and caring for one’s self. This may sound harsh people, but after seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling the things they did in camp, it was the only way to survive physically and mentally. The narrator in the book makes the decision numerous times and suffers from these choices as he
Within the thin exterior of the cold dark building she called home, she wanted to keep the bodies of those in which she felt she had a connection. Whether it be a reasonable connection or not, she didn’t want to be alone. Her connection with her father brought her to keeping his corps in the house as well as the other man. Her distance from other people around her only drove her to madness causing nothing but isolation and a craving for any type of relation she could hold or be close
In the “Yellow-Paper,” the protagonist seeks to relinquish her forms of imprisonment in hopes to escape her mental illness, yet she is still oppressed by those around her and forced to hide her coping mechanism, her journal; from this she is not able to escape her mental illness. The torment caused by the role society consigns for her husband is depicted when he states, “‘What is it little girl’ he said. ‘Don’t go walking about like that - you’ll get cold’” (Gilman 652). Her husband controls her every action and she lacks her needed self expression. She only frees herself after she tears down the wallpaper, freeing the girl inside, which represents her hidden non-expressed self. Similarly, a coinciding of this theme is presented in “The Story of An Hour,” in which Louise Mallard seeks refuge from oppression resulted from a male-dominated society. Mrs. Mallard states, “She said it over and over her breath: ‘free, free, free!’...There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself” (Chopin 2). Ecstatic at the thought of being released from the propriety enforced throughout the nineteenth century, Mallard exclaims that she is able to do the things she is ambitious about. Wanting to live away from the roles of marriage, her short-lived passion is later diminished at the sight
Political prisoners and criminals alike were subject to brutal conditions in the Soviet gulags at Kolyma in the 20th century. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the stories of many different prisoners are told and much is revealed about how humans react under these pressures, both naturally and socially. Being in an extreme environment not only takes a toll on one’s physical well-being, but on one’s mental and emotional state as well. The stories show that humans can be reduced to a fragile, animalistic state while in the Kolyma work camps because the extreme conditions force many men to focus solely on self-preservation.
A common theme in books that involve slavery, but extremely important. Race can be defined as a group of people who are grouped together because they are related by similar descent. Throughout the book the whites were grouped together and separated by their power. The blacks as well were grouped together and was withheld from freedom. Even in the book when Celia persistently told the lawyer that she worked alone in her crime. They did not want to come to terms with the fact that no other slave helped, especially given her gender and physical state. They categorized the slaves based on there race, in wanting to punish someone for the death of Mr.
Knowing and understanding the author’s purpose, we see where he is coming from and what his “point of view” is. We see that the author is someone that does not agree with the activities that occur in the native prison. It makes the author feel uncomfortable with the establishment and its procedures.
“If one speaks about torture, one must take care not to exaggerate,” Jean Améry view of torture comes from a place of uneasiness (22). He discusses in his book At The Mind’s Limits, about the torture that he underwent while a prisoner in Auschwitz. In his chapter titled “Torture”, he goes into deep description of not only the torture he endured, but also how that torture never leaves a person. Améry goes to great lengths to make sure that the torture he speaks of is accurate and as he says on page 22, not exaggerated.
The narrator wrestles with conflicting feelings of responsibility to the old man and feelings of ridding his life of the man's "Evil Eye" (34). Although afflicted with overriding fear and derangement, the narrator still acts with quasi-allegiance toward the old man; however, his kindness may stem more from protecting himself from suspicion of watching the old man every night than from genuine compassion for the old man.