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Research papers on drug rehabilitation
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An essential part of writing creative non-fiction is writing as truthfully as possible. This allows readers to better trust the author. Readers expect that the author will recount events as accurately as possible, or choose to market their writing as another genre. Sometimes writers choose to ignore this. Even with the best intentions, this is deceptive to the reader. Such trickery can turn even the most strong and powerful stories, stories with a message of hope for readers into crackpot writing that serves no other purpose other than to create controversy. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is one of these cases. The author shares his riveting story of overcoming drug addiction to avoid an early death, forbidden and overwhelming love, and emotional reconnection with friends and family.
Frey chooses to write the story without the use of quotation marks. When a new thought begins, a new line on the paper begins. Oftentimes, there is a lack of punctuation to distinguish the different thoughts and lines from different characters. However, this style also enables him to make his thoughts come alive, to share his inner dialogue with readers. The imagery that he uses brings the reader to him; to the rehabilitation center, the moment he reunites with his parents, and the first time he sees Lily, his love. His simple style makes his writing relatable, even to those of us who have never been addicted to crack or sniffed glue.
His tale begins on a plane where he awakes, unaware how or why he is where he is. His teeth are broken. The reader later learns that he has fallen from a fire escape and on his way to a drug treatment center. He has spent the last 10 years addicted to alcohol and the past 3 years using crack, altho...
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...'s the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.”
He is accused of lying about the death of his girlfriend Lily whom he claims to have formed a forbidden relationship with during rehab. She was described as part of his reason for living. In the end, she commits suicide. In the book it is stated that she does this by hanging, but Frey later states that she killed herself by slitting her wrists. There is no record of such events.
This essay will provide quotes representing the parts of life that make a story relatable. It has all of the elements of a good creative non-fiction story. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver its promise to readers. It is a great story, but it is not creative non-fiction. Unfortunately, because of its tainted history it will never be remembered for its greatness. Too bad.
Stories are the way humans share, create, and explore their many experiences and identities with each other. When a story is told, the original content lingers depending upon how the storyteller recalls the content. Once the story is retold, it often takes on different details and meanings, because each storyteller adds their own perspective, experience, and meaning. The story then begins to have its own life. Each storyteller has a connection to the beginning and the end of the story.
What is in a story if you can’t take something out of it and relate to your everyday life? The book “Typical American” by Gish Jen, gave me something that I never fully, and I probably still don’t, comprehend: foreigners, and their struggles in making a new life in another country. I have been on my share of trips, both domestic and abroad, but was never in a distant land long enough to feel the effects of the unknowing these people felt every day. The manner in which this story was presented has given me a new insight into, not only foreign nationals, but more importantly, how one goes about presenting emotional feeling not just through words, but setting, characterization, point of view, conflict, and theme.
There are many different types of characters in stories, and each has been described differently leaving different impression to readers. Reading some stories gives the readers the feeling of empathy for characters. Speaking about characteristic, it is great to know how a character feels in order to understand the story. Through this essay, I would like to show how stories make the readers feel empathy to other’s concerns, feelings, and troubles.
Jonathan Kozol's book, Amazing Grace, analyzes the lives of the people living in the dilapidated district of South Bronx, New York. Kozol spends time touring the streets with children, talking to parents, and discussing the appalling living conditions and safety concerns that plague the residents in the inner cities of New York. In great detail, he describes the harsh lifestyles that the poverty stricken families are forced into; day in and day out. Disease, hunger, crime, and drugs are of the few everyday problems that the people in Kozol's book face; however, many of these people continue to maintain a very religious and positive outlook on life. Jonathan Kozol's investigation on the lifestyle of these people, shows the side to poverty that most of the privileged class in America does not get to see. Kozol wishes to persuade the readers to sympathize with his book and consider the condition in which these people live. The inequality issues mentioned are major factors in affecting the main concerns of Kozol: educational problems, healthcare obstacles, and the everyday struggles of a South Bronx child.
Story Time, by Edward Bloor, Harcourt: United States of America, 2001. 424 pages. Reviewed by Mar Vincent Agbay
The emotional tale of James Frey’s journey in rehab is told in the memoir A Million Little Pieces. Born in Cleveland but living in New York, James Frey was an alcoholic for ten years and a drug addict for another three years before he decided to finally receive treatment at the age of twenty-four. Since his doctor told Frey that he would surely die at the age of twenty-four from his habits of drinking and doing drugs, his family checks him into the oldest rehab clinic in a last effort to change his ways. He fights his evil, or as he calls it the “Fury”, throughout the entire book as it begs for another drink or anything. It begs for anything in his six weeks in rehab. A Million Little Pieces tells the author’s struggle as he attempts to get clean in his treacherous six weeks in treatment.
Short stories are temporary portals to another world; there is a plethora of knowledge to learn from the scenario, and lies on top of that knowledge are simple morals. Langston Hughes writes in “Thank You Ma’m” the timeline of a single night in a slum neighborhood of an anonymous city. This “timeline” tells of the unfolding generosities that begin when a teenage boy fails an attempted robbery of Mrs. Jones. An annoyed bachelor on a British train listens to three children their aunt converse rather obnoxiously in Saki’s tale, “The Storyteller”. After a failed story attempt, the bachelor tries his hand at storytelling and gives a wonderfully satisfying, inappropriate story. These stories are laden with humor, but have, like all other stories, an underlying theme. Both themes of these stories are “implied,” and provide an excellent stage to compare and contrast a story on.
In many short stories, characters face binding situations in their lives that make them realize more about themselves when they finally overcome such factors. These lively binding factors can result based on the instructions imposed by culture, custom, or society. They are able to over come these situations be realizing a greater potential for themselves outside of the normality of their lives. Characters find such realizations through certain hardships such as tragedy and insanity.
All stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies. They are known collectively as The Hero’s Journey. Understanding these elements and their use in modern writing is the object of our quest. Used wisely, these ancient tools of the storytellers craft still have tremendous power to heal our people and make the world a better place (xxvii).
A good story is one that isn't demanding, that proceeds from A to B, and above all doesn't remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles; it tells lie after lie, and the happy ending is the happiest lie of all. (85)
A compelling story reveals a deeper level of meaning without committing the error of defining it. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, Le Guin utilizes allegory, realism, and symbolism. By applying these literary elements into her short story, Le Guin has made “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” effectively compelling.
Anecdotes are essential criteria to successful nonfiction books because they help the reader connect with the author and understand what the author is trying to prove. Furthermore they entertain the reader and keep them engaged in the book. Also they provide key examples and show the reader complex situations in a simple way; therefore, they are a critical component of argumentative nonfiction books.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
The visual description of a text is the perfect way to wrap the reader’s senses into the story.