Wake-up
I grew up on the corner of Ocean Ave. and Dorchester Ave., where all the older kids sat by the stoop that provide a gust of breeze during the summer. As the little ones on the block cool off form the open fire hydrant. Brooklyn, New York, Flatbush to be specific is the topic of the composition. Flatbush is a place where people pray to God so long that they soon become an Atheist. It’s a place where you can be with your friend one day and tomorrow he is dead. And the A-Team comes by, excuse me the cops, we call them that because they come out of vans and begin shooting with no regard. They may seem odd to many, but to me this is a typical and natural condition.
Death is so normal, young men think about writing wills at eight-teen. In my apartment building, I walk through broken glass in the hallway and bloodstained floors. When I come from the corner store neighbors, look at every bag you bring through your doors. Once I come through my door I lock the top lock, my mother would love have cuffed me to the radiator so I wouldn’t go out. Just imagine and try to envision these sentences as the depict various scenarios that go on as you read this essay. These events probably won’t make it to your evening news, but stories as such affect people in a lesser or same magnitude that the victims of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and crashed airplane accidents.
So it’s most likely my responsibility and duty to inform the less-informed about the tragedies that occur on a everyday cycle. Tragedies that touches thousands but the media feels it really isn’t that important. Let me clarify that this doesn’t only go on Flatbush, Brooklyn, N.Y., rather this goes on practically everywhere in our great nation. From the hot and humid streets of Miami to the cold hostile settings in Chicago, the same cycles reenacts itself in different regions.
It’s not important to broadcast every single “bad” occurrence, but it is imperative to realize such events are going on and not just be blind about it. If a tall and towering tree falls down and no one is there, does the tree make a loud and terrible noise.
Through the story the protagonist a young teenage boy who loses his mother after her suicide herself is then followed by the death of his father in a car crash. At such a young age this boy describes the pain he goes through by the way he responds with regard to how others treat him. He demonstrates how grief can alter a person
"Brooklyn Cop” written by Norman MacCaig, a Scottish poet, is about an American cop who roams the streets tackling crime. Our impression of the stereotypical cop changes throughout the poem as we find that he isn’t all that he is made out to be. This essay will look at how the cop is portrayed and the techniques used to give this impression of him.
We all deal with death in our lives, and that is why Michael Lassell’s “How to Watch Your Brother Die” identifies with so many readers. It confronts head on the struggles of dealing with death. Lassell writes the piece like a field guide, an instruction set for dealing with death, but the piece is much more complex than its surface appearance. It touches on ideas of acceptance, regret, and misunderstanding to name a few. While many of us can identify with this story, I feel like the story I brought into the text has had a much deeper and profound impact. I brought the story of my grandmother’s death to the text and it completely changed how I analyzed this text and ultimately came to relate with it. I drew connections I would have never have drawn from simply reading this story once.
There are many short stories in literature that share a common theme presented in different ways. A theme that always keeps readers’ attention is that of death because it is something that no one wants to face in real life, but something that can be easily faced when reading. “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both exemplify how two authors use a common theme of death to stand as a metaphor for dystopian societies.
When a 10 year old boy (Robert “yummi” Sandifer, from Atlanta) in a gang is executed by his gang “friends” because he was bringing heat from the cops on the gang because that boy shot a 12 year old girl, it’s a sad commentary on society. When there is a lack of social stability in a community, it reflects onto the children who seem to have nothing else to do, or no other way of getting the attention they need.
Death is painfully unpleasant for anyone who is approached with it. It can be difficult to comprehend and scary to live through, but just because death isn’t very well liked does not mean it doesn’t happen. In fact it happens every day through every hour; no rich, poor, healthy, or sick can escape it. The contemporary writer Amy Hempel gracefully writes about death between a friendship in her piece titled “In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” showing a relatable situation everyone will undergo at some point in their life. Hempel’s relatability to the subject of death and reactions, unique style of characterization, and rhythmic balance display the great qualities that make her work so rare; making it belong to the 21st century literary
William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye both follow a young male protagonist who is just out of school and attempting to come to terms with the ideas of death and mortality. In their respective stories, Hamlet and Holden inform the reader of the tragic death of a family member that they are still dealing with. While both of these deaths occurred before the stories began, they both shape the entirety of the plot. These deaths deeply affect both of the main characters and neither knows how to cope with it. However, the differentiating factor between the two is how they believe those around them should react to tragic events and how that shapes their view of the world.
Lossography is the concept that death can be meaningful based upon cultural values, traditions, and personal beliefs. There are many situations that pertain to the concept of Lossography one particular relation is death education. According to Lossography pertaining to students studies show that students tend to express the issues of death more elaborately through writing (Bolkan, 2015). This is an important aspect of Lossography due to the students being able to express how they feel about death, and be able to express their experiences and cultural beliefs pertaining to a loss loved one. According to the study the most frequent reported death is the loss of a grandparent; many students have encountered the loss of a grandparent at an early
...start to understand death and not to be afraid of it. Death is the most common fear among people and the author’s goal is to help others accept that death is not a tragedy on the contrary it is to be celebrated. The son’s transformation through this shows his fear of death for himself and his father to peace when the son utters, “I am not afraid for my father/…[and] his not afraid for my life, either,” communicating the idea of death being something that will happen no matter what. Death may be one of the most common fears, but fear will never hurt more than regret for one that does not live their lives to the fullest. “The Hospital Window” fulfills its purpose of helping others start to understand death in a superb way.
From comparing the death rates and even mentioning the deaths Alexie shows an emotional impact on Junior from the deaths he has to go through. Alexie writes how Junior being an Indian has impacted his life. Junior says how he has been to many funerals and is at a young age. “Jeez, I’ve been to so many funerals in my short life. I’m fourteen years old and i’ve been to forty -two funerals. That’s really the biggest difference between Indians and white people” (Alexie 199). Throughout the years Junior has been to many funerals which impacts Junior in an emotional way. The way that the funerals and deaths that happens to Junior impact him in an emotional way because He has to go through the funerals of loved ones many times that sometimes he doesn't know how to react. With the emotional impact it shows how Junior deals with it. By emphasizing the funerals, it hooks readers to know more and keep turning the
As Laurell K Hamilton once said, “death is the last intimate thing we ever do”. It comes in different ways and at different times, but death comes for all of us. In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, Edna is faced with enormous heartache and desperation that she feels she has no other choice but to take her own life. This is paralleled in The Tooth and The Lottery, two short stories by Shirley Jackson. Both stories feature a character who is met with their death at unexpected moments in their lives, but in very different situations. The event of death plays a central role in these three works.
After reading or watching horror, the emotion produced from this action is similar to that of someone who just finished watching a documentary on absurdly lazy adults, thinking “at least I’m not like them,” and by doing so, we re-establish our normality in our behaviors or positions. “Strawberry Springs,” another piece of work from King, does an exceptional job in fulfilling this reason for craving horror. The short story depicts the mystery of serial murders of college students on their campus, all in the perspective of Springheel Jack. Springheel Jack was a normal student like the most of us, and we all relate to him in many other ways. What re-establishes our normality is that, hopefully, we don’t go around killing our classmates like he did. Furthermore, he was not even aware of the shadow that followed him, as he had forgotten of his whereabouts the night before, pleading that he was “with another woman,”(King, “Strawberry Spring” 5) as his wife suspected he was, rather than have killed someone, even if both situations would end in a divorce. By reading “Strawberry Springs” one may feel a sense of relief that they’re not dead, that they don’t live on a campus with a serial killer on the loose, or especially, that they are not unknowingly killing their classmates-- and all of this leads up to the fact that “no matter
Upon arrival into the jungle of vast buildings, the first thing noticed is the mobbed streets filled with taxi cabs and cars going to and fro in numerous directions, with the scent of exhaust surfing through the air. As you progress deeper into the inner city and exit your vehicle, the aroma of the many restaurants passes through your nostrils and gives you a craving for a ?NY Hot Dog? sold by the street venders on the corner calling out your name. As you continue your journey you are passed by the ongoing flow of pedestrians talking on their cell phones and drinking a Starbucks while enjoying the city. The constant commotion of conversing voices rage up and down the streets as someone calls for a fast taxi. A mixed sound of various music styles all band together to form one wild tune.
My childhood was a playground for imagination. Joyous nights were spent surrounded by family at my home in Brooklyn, NY. The constantly shaded red bricks of my family’s unattached town house located on West Street in Gravesend, a mere hop away from the beach and a short walk to the commotion of Brooklyn’s various commercial areas. In the winter, all the houses looked alike, rigid and militant, like red-faced old generals with icicles hanging from their moustaches. One townhouse after the other lined the streets in strict parallel formation, block after block, interrupted only by my home, whose fortunate zoning provided for a uniquely situa...
I was very excited to take Death and Dying as a college level course. Firstly, because I have always had a huge interest in death, but it coincides with a fear surrounding it. I love the opportunity to write this paper because I can delve into my own experiences and beliefs around death and dying and perhaps really establish a clear personal perspective and how I can relate to others in a professional setting.