Bitter Stereotypes
From the writer: When I was in high school, I was very involved with Amnesty International. Ever since then, the concern about basic human rights has been a vital part of my outlook on life. I chose Elisabeth Rosenthal's article because I liked the challenge of analyzing the complicated and sensitive issue of human rights in China. The realization that most people couldn't care less about the topic pushed me. I hope that by choosing Rosenthal's article, I have made at least one person more aware of the need to protect human rights.
From the teacher: The writer's sense of justice and humanity comes across clearly in this essay. This transitional studio assignment asked students to examine a mass media article for its hidden motives and subtle uses of rhetorical devices. Angie reaches beyond the assignment with her suggestion that the setting (a Western publication) may limit even the potential validity of such a story, due primarily to what constitutes proof in this setting, and that proof's disconnection from the reality of the issue.
From the editors: What drew us to this piece was how passionately Haupt critiques the validity of a strictly Western explanation for the problem of suicide among women in rural China. She points out that such stories may best be told by those closest to the issue. We agree.
The prevailing Western stereotype of Chinese society is that it is cold, harsh, and backward. Our whole image of China is tainted. We associate China with the ridiculousness of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, with the brutality of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with the horrors of human rights abuses in Tibet and in mainland China, with the fortune cookie, and with the phrase "Confucius says" (even though only a handful of us could explain who Confucius was and what he said). Therefore, it is not surprising that the media tends to over-simplify Chinese issues, so that they can fit with our (mis)understanding of Chinese society. I believe that Elisabeth Rosenthal's article, "Suicide Reveals Bitter Roots of China's Rural Life," (New York Times 24 January 1999: early ed. Sec. 1: 1+) fell into the stereotype trap.
Rosenthal's article is about the unusually high rate of suicides among China's rural female population. The title promises to explain the phenomena: "Reveal Bitter Roots." And yet, only six short paragraphs (in a five-page story) address the possible causes (roots) of the problem.
War can be as damaging to the human body as it is to the mind. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, this idea that war causes psychological disorders is represented throughout the book through the main character, Paul Baumer. This book follows the lives of young soldiers in World War I. Together, these men create powerful bonds. They go through terrifying experiences that continue to strengthen their bonds, but also destroy their mental state. Through Paul’s eyes, Remarque shows the devastation that war has on the mind.
Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer undergoes drastic changes as he realizes the full extent in which the war has changed his life. Paul starts out the book as a veteran, yet he is never the less changed by the war that shook the world. Paul realizes the full extent of his transformation when he is forced to kill a Frenchman just because the Frenchman tried to find shelter. Paul Baumer changed by a subject too messy to be discussed in proper decorum. T.S. Matthews says, “This is a book about something that nobody likes to talk of too much. It is about what happens to men in war. It has nothing whatever to do with the politeness, the nobilities, or any of the sometimes pretty and sometimes ridiculous notions to which the world has once again settled down (130).” Paul is changed by a war directed by people who had no idea of the horrors that would change the men of their country. Paul lived in brotherhood and died in anonymity. His life wasted by a political war, and uncaring generals. Only by accepting his transformation can Paul be at peace with his life and live in peace in death.
Before Bäumer gets leave to return to his family, he often discusses how the war has changed him and his comrades. However, he does not understand to the great extent in which he has changed until he returns to his old life. Seeing his family, his old home, his bedroom, his piano, and dressing in his old clothes is a direct confrontation with the distance the war has created between his old self and his new self. "A sense of strangeness will not leave me; I cannot feel at home amongst these things... I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us." (160) It is heartbreaking for Bäumer to see his family because he has learned to disconnect his emotions in the war. Once soldiers train themselves to be so disconnected, it is different to reverse the effect.
All Quiet On The Western Front and Gallipoli are two stories independent of each other that chronicle the experiences of two separate young men in the same war. Paul Baumer, a nineteen-year old German soldier, narrates the story of All Quiet On The Western Front. This tragic story begins with Baumer in training camp and concludes with his untimely death. Archy, an eighteen-year old Australian athlete, is the main character in Gallipoli. Gallipoli, a peninsula in Turkey, becomes the background for another account of a young life wasted. Although these two young men are from opposing forces of the war and lived on opposite sides of the equator, they are alike in every way else.
Contrasted with Baumer’s experiences during his visit home are his dealings with his fellow trench soldiers.
All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Delbert Mann, is based on the novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the story of a German schoolboy, Paul Baumer, and a group of his classmates, who journey from fantasies of heroic glory to the real horror of actual soldiering. Their journey is a coming of age tale that centers on the consternation of war and emphasizes the moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical deterioration suffered by the young soldiers.
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel set in World War I, centers around the changes wrought by the war on one young German soldier. During his time in the war, Remarque's protagonist, Paul Baumer, changes from a rather innocent Romantic to a hardened and somewhat caustic veteran. More importantly, during the course of this metamorphosis, Baumer disaffiliates himself from those societal icons-parents, elders, school, religion-that had been the foundation of his pre-enlistment days. This rejection comes about as a result of Baumer's realization that the pre-enlistment society simply does not understand the reality of the Great War. His new society, then, becomes the Company, his fellow trench soldiers, because that is a group which does understand the truth as Baumer has experienced it.
With each analysis the reader gets a greater understanding of suicide and the mental state of those who commit it, as well as some of their motives. One could read only a single chapter of this book and gain a greater understanding than they previously had on the topic of suicide, but when one brings all the chapters together as a whole a much deeper understanding is obtained. Lester’s analyses start with diaries, using that of a girl he has called Katie as his first example. In this 14 page chapter he analyses her diary, not only comparing her to Ophelia from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but using that comparison to show some of her motives and to make sense of them. It is this astute analysis that sets the tone for the rest of the similar chapters, in a way that is not boring but is not lighthearted in the slightest. The way that the whole book works together to give one insight on the topic of suicide makes it a useful resource for those who wish to understand it in a more in-depth way.
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque 's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing future, reducing the quality of his life.
Suicide is possibly the most personal action an individual can take upon oneself and yet it has a profound social impact. A large Hungarian population views an act of violence that one commits toward oneself as an act of bravery for freeing themselves and others around them of their misery. It’s also consider to be the least understood crime even though sociologist and psychologist are expected to know the answers to questions such as why people kill themselves but often these questions go unanswered. Emile Durkheim was instrumental in bringing a new understanding of suicide, “when in a sociological study he conceived his theory of suicide, and it 's relationship with society. Perhaps put more accurately, his theory was about society, and
• This experience made her very secluded and reserved. She thought a lot about suicide but found comfort in writing. She became an observer rather than a participator in everyday life.
Leenaars, A. A., & Lester, D. (1992). Facts and myths of suicide in Canada and the United States. Journal of Social Psychology, 132(6), 787. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Children can be effected by their caregiver’s alcohol and substance abuse in numerous ways. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a pattern of birth defects caused by maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. Children born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome tend to have physical abnormalities such as deformed facial characteristics. They are generally born with a variety of emotional and/or intellectual limitations. It is very common for these children to...
The concept of stereotypes is what we have been created in our presumptions of a person without even having an idea of how they are. It is a common thing in our society on which sometimes it can create tolerance or intolerance toward other groups because of different ideas or traditions. The film by Gregory Nava My Family and the book by Victor Martinez Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida are clear examples of the concept of stereotypes. In addition, the film Real Women Have Curves by Patricia Cardoso demonstrates some of the ways stereotypes can affect one’s own ethnic group. Racial stereotypes can be good or bad creating influences toward a group. In this case, stereotypes can create bad influences causing misperceptions, confusion within the same
Japanese suicide continues to gain interest and concern throughout the world. More and more people are searching for answers. Suicide preventionists are trying to solve the financial problems by looking to allow Japan’s people second chances within jobs, diminish the idea that suicide can be honorable which came from Seppuku, and make an effort to follow the White Paper. It is important to understand that in Japan, as in every other society, cultural factors greatly intersect with more universal factors and can push someone over their limit.