"Suicide, what a terrible concept. There are two types of suicide: physical, and theoretical. Physical suicide is the more commonly heard type of suicide. It entails the person actually, physically killing himself or herself. On the other hand, theoretical suicide is when the person does something that will, in turn, get him or her killed. For example, in “All About Suicide” by Luisa Valenzuela, Ismael, a man that works at a minister’s office, murders the minister, a high-ranking public official. Ismael has been forced to be quiet by the government; therefore he lashes out by killing the minister so that he can reveal the truth about the government. In doing this, Ismael technically “kills himself” because he knows the government will eventually find him and execute him. The theme of this story is that quite often, the truth is misconstrued or is hidden from the public. In order to reveal the truth, action must be taken to bring the truth to the people. Valenzuela reveals this theme through flashbacks, pronoun usage, and imagery.
To begin with, the theme about truth is introduced through flashbacks throughout the story. For example, when the author states, “No, Ismael in the ministry without being able to tell what he knew, forced to be silent. Ismael in the bar with the glass (his third) in his hand, and the irrevocable decision: better death” (Valenzuela, 6), it clearly shows that the government is up to no good. Ismael is not very happy about it, considering he is in a bar drinking it off. When someone, such as Ismael, is forced to be silent, they may take drastic measures in order to reveal the truth. In Ismael’s case, his drastic measure is taken by killing the minister. Also, when the narrator says “better...
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...eme of All About Suicide was that the truth is often misconstrued or is hidden from the public. In order to reveal the truth, action must be taken to bring the truth to the people. Ismael killed the minister in order to get the truth to the people. In some cases, this would be the wrong choice, but in Ismael’s situation, murder was the only option. Valenzuela reveals this theme through flashbacks, pronoun use, and imagery. Through this theme, the reader can learn to be more assertive and aggressive when trying to expose the truth. For example, they could start a protest, a website, even a political campaign in order to get the truth to the public. The public has the right to know what happens in their governments, and even though certain countries try to contain the truth, there will always be “freedom fighters” like Ismael to ensure that the truth is heard."
Every day in our lives, we desire to be perfect to please others. No matter how hard we try, if we do not achieve the concept of being perfect, then we would feel like failures. For example, every year in the Olympics, a new crowned Olympic champion receiving a gold medal persuades young athletes to worry over winning a medal in every competition they compete. If they do not win a medal in a certain competition, then all their hopes are vanished for the next competition. This action shows how if we do not strive to emulate other people’s achievements, then we will not stand out from the rest of our population. In “Suicide Note” composed by Janice Mirikitani, Mirkitani describes the speaker as a college student who kills herself after not receiving a perfect grade point average. When people look at her body lying down on a cover of snow, they perceive that her suicide is due to her inability of becoming perfect. However, on a deeper meaning, the suicide symbolizes her inability of realizing the concepts of family love, hard work, and happiness.
Author Steve Lopez persuade his readers to accept his idea of finding the brutally beaten victim that many witness during the riot, the author does so by finding Fidel and having his story told, which in my perspective was a success, because Fidel was meant to have his story told so a great outcome would occur. In addition as the reader it kept me alert and curious to know more. Fidel Lopez argument was to remain undiscovered as a victim of the LA riot which persuade me because Fidel’s daughter Vanessa stated in the article “ He does things his way, doesn’t like asking for help and is more interest in providing for his family than revisiting the past” (Lopez, pg. 5). This statement was well brought out because Fidel did not do it for his family, the fame, nor for the sadness people would feel for him. Article “The forgotten victim from Florence and Normandie” brought well life learn lessons that are relevant today as many are still able to forget those who need to be remembered most as time passes, because we can easily forget, but once it is gone, sometimes we cannot bring our memory back, memories are always with us lets not take that away from
Durkheim was a functionalist, and theorised that a holistic social narrative could be identified which would explain individual behaviour. He argued that, whilst society was made up of its members, it was greater than the sum of its parts, and was an external pressure that determined the behaviour of the individuals within it. At that time, suicide rates in Europe were rising, and so the causes of suicide were on the agenda. Since suicide is seen as an intrinsically personal and individual action, establishing it as having societal causes would be a strong defence for Durkheim’s functionalist perspective. Durkheim used the comparative method to study the official suicide rates of various European countries. While he was not the first to notice the patterns and proportional changes of suicide rates between different groups in European societies, it was this fact that was the foundation of his theory – why did some groups consistently have much higher rates than others? This supports the idea that it was the external pressures placed on certain groups within society that induced higher rates of suicide, and is the basis of Durkheim’s work.
My article, “Assisted Suicide: A Right or Wrong” by Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez, discusses the importance of making assisted suicide something to consider when the patient is in pain and does not want to deal with the pain anymore. This article tells the very personal, detailed story of Matthew Donnelly and his time spent before he died. This article was written to open the eyes of people who are against assisted suicide to show them a case where the writers believe it would be acceptable to grant Donnelly’s wish and assisted him in ending his life. The purpose of this text is to be able to persuade the readers to see their point of view and hopefully get them to be for assisted suicide. The authors hope to achieve the well-assisted
In a psychological perspective, the author’s life is linked with the behavior and motivations of characters in the story. The author’s name is Edgar Allan’s Poe who portrayed his self in his writing. The miserable life of Poe can be measured through “The Cask of Amontillado” in which character named “Montressor” showed indifferent feeling towards his victim. After burying Fortunado alive, Montressor felt bad after burying his victim alive but then he attributes the feeling of guilt to the damp catacombs. To the character and to the author, it seems that ghastly nature murder and the immoral approach of treachery is merely an element of reality. This story is a true representation of author’s anguish and torment nature.
Many authors have different types of writing and different ways of telling the story regardless of whether it is a horror type of story, a romantic type of story or even a comedy type of story. However, in this story by Susan Glaspell, it is a fiction type story which is about Mrs. Wright who seems to have lost control of her emotions and snaps. She kills her abusive husband which is found dead with a rope around his neck while she was asleep, but nobody knows her motive of killing him. The inequality between Mrs. Wright and Mr. Wright, which is based in gender, affects Mrs. Wright’s sense of enjoyment of life, which explains Mrs. Wright’s motive for the murder. Factors like, loneliness, depression, and lack of freedom justifies how Mrs. Wright sense of enjoyment of life was negatively affected and they are the reason for Mrs. Wright to murder her husband.
In 1987, Janice Mirikitani wrote and published a poem titled Suicide Note. The speaker of the poem, a female, Asian American college student who commits suicide after receiving slightly-less-than-perfect grades, gives repeated apologies to her parents and tells them exactly how she feels in a suicide note - one most probably addressed to them. In the poem, Mirikitani conveys a sad and somber mood while implementing an extended metaphor to compare the speaker to a bird.
“Killings", written by Andre Dubus in 1979, involves several aspects such as revenge, morality, and murder. Elements, such as the story’s title, the order of events, and the development of the characters, are very unique. It successfully evokes emotion and suspense as the plot unfolds in sequence. Though it seems easily overlooked, the title “Killings” is very important due to the fact that the thrill of suspense is left in the mind of the reader. The title encourages readers to question who and what. It is also an intricate setting for the plot’s mood. It implies that a murder has taken place, but that is all the reader knows. The chronology of the story uses a style called "in media res”, a term used to describe the common strategy of beginning a story in the middle of the action or entering on the verge of some important moment (Meyer 2198). In this story, the readers are shown that murder not only takes a life, but it can also take away a living persons sense of self worth, their spirit.
A Study of Suicide: An overview of the famous work by Emile Durkheim, Ashley Crossman, 2009, http://sociology.about.com/od/Works/a/Suicide.htm, 25/12/2013
Suicide is the third leading cause of teenage death in the United States. If this is the case why wouldn’t there be more prevention programs out there for these teenagers? Suicide prevention in schools is up for debate on whether or not it would have a positive effect on teenagers, or a negative impact on their state of mind. According to the study “A Review and Application of Suicide Prevention Programs in High School Settings,” by Gregory Cooper, Cooper declares that in the long run prevention programs in schools would be beneficial to suicidal students. However, Dena Wanner the author of the study “The Impact of a Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Program on Knowledge, Attitudes, Awareness, and Response to Suicidal Youths,” believes that
In “The Fortune Teller,” the author, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, uses symbolism to prove to one that an affair is not worth a person’s life. He uses the letter to symbolize hate between Villela and Camillo regarding the affair. This very ambiguous letter has terrified Camillo and put an end to his life. The letter enhances the theme of the short story by showing the anger and hate that Villela now had for Camillo. This hate is a focal point in the short story that leads to ending the affair along with Camillo and Rita’s life. Ultimately, the affair caused a large amount of tension between the three. However, the author was successful in grabbing the reader’s attention with the letter as the turning point of the short story.
...all want to believe that the crime was truly “foretold”, and that nothing could have been done to change that, each one of the characters share in a part of Santiago Nasar’s death. Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about the true selfishness and ignorance that people have today. Everyone waits for someone else to step in and take the lead so something dreadful can be prevented or stopped. What people still do not notice is that if everyone was to stand back and wait for others, who is going to be the one who decides to do something? People don’t care who gets hurt, as long as it’s not themselves, like Angela Vicario, while other try to reassure themselves by thinking that they did all that they could, like Colonel Lazaro Aponte and Clotilde Armenta. And finally, some people try to fight for something necessary, but lose track of what they set out for in the first place.
Amongst other things, “The Dead Man” is a story of political ambition, and personal pride which ends up being the downfall of our protagonist. Benjamin Otalora, the Argentinean Buenos Aires hoodlum turned Uruguayan gaucho, is ambitious and most of all brave. However, he is also reckless and lacks any kind of discretion whatsoever. His physical daring is un-complimented by any higher meaning or purpose. He doesn’t save Azevedo Bandeira, the mobster boss, in the knife fight because of any morals or virtues he believes in, but simply because he was drawn “to the sheer taste of danger.” Otalora’s braveness is also completely selfish. It is a raw, violent, braveness that ultimately blinds him to the reality to which he becomes self-aware in the last moments of his life; he is a man who is completely oblivious to forces outside himself. Otalora’s uncontrolled ambition and unchecked bravery disallows him the ability to calmly make calculations, to make the most intelligent choices, to think things through; all essentials in leadership and especially in ultimately coordinating a power grab from someone the likes of Azevedo.
As the narrator describes how people line up to see the character due to the fact that she comes back after every suicide attempt the narrator explains why her character does it. Plath reveals that the character does it “so it feels like hell. /I do it so it feels real” (46-47). The narrator is using a hyperbole to explain why her character commits suicide, we can understand that she does it in order to flee from everyone who sees her as a showcase. Moreover, it is a hyperbole because no one would want to feel the pain of hell which makes it exaggerated. Therefore, Plath also uses a hyperbole to explain that her character views suicide as “[a] miracle! /[t]hat knocks [her] out” (55-56). The character views death as a miracle which is a hyperbole because no one views death as a miracle but a tragedy. Moreover, the character views death as a miracle because it takes her out from reality and all her problems which to her it’s a miracle because she doesn’t have to deal with it. Therefore, death allows the character to escape from her problems by being in a place where she doesn’t have to
Throughout time, death has been viewed in a negative light. In general, it is an event to be mourned and is seen by some as the end to existence. People do not usually seek death as an answer to their problems. In various pieces of literature, however, suicide is contemplated by the characters as the only solution to the pain and grief that they experience.