She's Come Undone - Self-Destruction
In She's Come Undone Wally Lamb addresses the effects of personal trauma on one's self-image and the propensity of survivors to move towards self-destruction. Dolores believes that she is the cause of all of her tragedies, including her rape and her mother's death, and that the one true evil in her life is herself. She convinces herself that she deserves whatever pain she may receive along the course of life. With each new hardship, her guilt is increased. Her destruction begins with overeating and culminates in attempted suicide.
When Dolores is in eighth grade she is raped by Jack, one of her grandmother's tenants. She had always had a crush on Jack and allowed him to give her rides to and from school. She decides that he must have been encouraged by her actions and that therefore the rape is her fault.
Shortly after Dolores is raped, Jack's wife, Rita, has a miscarriage. Although Rita has had many miscarriages before, Dolores is sure that this one is a result of "the filthy thing that {she and Jack} had done" (Lamb 111). From then on, Dolores considers herself to be a "baby-killer" (112).
During her high school years, Dolores' only companions are her television and her junk food. She isolates herself from her peers. She eats constantly and becomes extremely overweight. She also takes up smoking. Although her doctor warns her that her lifestyle is putting her health in serious danger, she continues to binge and smoke. She does not feel that her life is worth worrying about (126).
Shortly after Dolores' high school graduation, Dolores' mother is killed when she is hit by a semi truck. Dolores blames herself and reasons that her mother's death must be Dolores' punishment for being a horrible daughter. She recalls what her mother said on the night of her death: "You've made me so ... tired" (135). She remembers how awful she was to her mother during the months before her death (138). She feels that she should have died instead of her mother. She bargains with God to bring her mother back and take her instead (138).
Dolores' self-destruction culminates in attempted suicide. She hires a taxi to take her to Cape Cod, where she plans to commit suicide amongst the beached whales.
By reviewing the state sales tax, and the income tax charged by thee three states, I can identify the type of tax that each one of them uses to acquire their revenue. Texas uses a regressive tax type, because it lacks of income tax revenue that divides each individual by brackets according to their incomes, while the sales tax charges everyone the same rate, regardless of their income, making this type of taxation a big problem for the poor. Utah also has a regressive tax because it charges a flat 5 percent from income Tax to e...
Sal explains, “When my mother was there, I was like a mirror. If she was happy, I was happy. If she was sad, I was sad. For the first few days after she left, I felt numb, non-feeling. I didn’t know how to feel”(Creech 37).
While Jeannette’s father acknowledges that he is harming his family and tries to better himself, her mother never once tries to improve. She ignores all of her and her family’s problems, often times contributing more to the problem to benefit herself, worsening the situation for her children. The mother copes in selfish ways, disregarding her family in order to make her life more enjoyable. A perfect example is when the family is sitting in the living room without any food, trying to keep their minds off of hunger, when Brian, Jeannette’s brother, sees that the mother is discretely eating a chocolate bar. The mother tries to defend herself, saying that she’s a “sugar addict, just like [their] father is an alcoholic.” (Walls 174) The mother has never showed any signs of an addiction to sugar, and she’s clearly trying to get the kids sympathy for being selfish. She has behavior that is completely destructive for her family, and she needs to learn and practice better coping
Jimmy always tried to keep these memories out of his head, but somehow they always found a way to come back to haunt him. Jimmy sates, “My brain would start boiling forth so many memories that I had to put toilet paper in my ears to block out the voices. Other times, however, nothing helped and I would wake up sweating and frightened, feeling I had no chance of ever having a decent life” (116). In that quotation, Jimmy is trying to shed free of all the nightmares that always seem to haunt him, but Jimmy knows that he will never be fully capable of getting rid of this memoires. Furthermore, Macaron, Jimmy’s closest friend in prison, was the only true person that Jimmy trusted, for Macaron taught Jimmy how to survive the brutal prison life. However, Macaron couldn’t fight Jimmy’s fights for him, so when Jimmy was faced with a situation with another inmate, Jimmy had to back up himself. Jimmy then states, “I planted my feet firmly apart and hit him until he sprawled out on the concrete floor. A voice inside my head kept yelling the whole time I was hitting him that I was doing this for Theresa, whose father had raped her, and for my brother, who’d been raped by those two white guys” (123). In that quotation, the reader is shown just how brutal Jimmy Baca has become, for Jimmy brutally injured an inmate who
King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Letter From a Birmingham Jail." African Studies Center. University of Pennsylvania, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. .
Through the terrifying events she experienced as a child and her parents’ miscommunications, she begins to realize how her mother tried to protect her from the mistakes that she made. Lena does not truly accept this at first, but ultimately discovers that she should strive to do better.
The Chinese have repeatedly tortured, imprisoned, and murdered Tibetans all for what they claim is national unity. While the oppression of the Tibetan people began in the 1950’s with the invasion of China, it continues just as strongly today. From religious oppression and unfair trials to the torture of nuns and monks, the Chinese abuse even the most reverent aspects of Tibetan culture. Political prisoners, whether they are monks, nuns or lay people, are tortured with utter disregard for human rights. Chinese laws have also been established to eradicate the Tibetan people entirely. Women often must endure forced abortions and sterilization due to Chinese birth policies. Through all of these crimes against humanity, China repeatedly commits acts of genocide as established by the United Nations.
For lack of parent involvement as a teacher I would make sure I can get all the parents to participate in the student’s school life because whether they like it or not their parents or guardians involvement means the most. If I can’t get that to happen I will try to insure my students that they can come to me for help and if they need help with anything they can talk to me. I would show my students I care but it works better with both the teachers and parents working as a team.
In the novel Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a character named Beatrice also known as Mama, has many dynamic traits. Mama is a religious woman who respects and highly prioritizes her family. Mama’s husband Eugene becomes more abusive toward her children and herself which causes her to lose her unborn baby. In Mama’s mind and heart, she knows she has to protect her children so she makes the decision to poison Eugene. Mama’s character changes throughout the book, as she first starts as a very quiet and caring character but as Eugene’s abusiveness increases, it develops her into becoming a perpetrator that caused her to be very depressed.
One of the main push factors is increasing amount of strikes caused by crisis in Athens. In December 2008, in Athens, riots broke out that quickly embraced and shook the whole of Europe . The reason was long growing discontent economic situation and the global economic crisis. Since spring 2010, there are almost continuous national strikes , riots and terrorist attacks in Greece.
The Narrator’s family treats her like a monster by resenting and neglecting her, faking her death, and locking her in her room all day. The Narrator’s family resents her, proof of this is found when the Narrator states “[My mother] came and went as quickly as she could.
tragedies that befell her. She is an example of a melancholic character that is not able to let go of her loss and therefore lets it t...
... is hard to believe that he was not in control and just “followed nature”. Furthermore, he claims that he was not even the first person to have intercourse with Dolores which minimizes his act of rape because he did not “deprive her of her flower” meaning she was already tainted so there is no crime in his having sex with her. Essentially there is no crime committed here because Dolores is not a victim according to Humbert Humbert.
The madness and nothingness of the family gets the better of Shelly and she begins to doubt her own existence as well:
In addition to denial, she reaches a stage of anger and indignance with herself and others in the small world that is her life. She can no longer perform the simplest tasks such as dressing herself or walking down the stairs. It irks her to need help, which is one of the reasons she can't stand Doris. She is also angry at the lack of emotional control as she perceives how "laden with self‑pity" (pg. 31) her voice sounds when arguing with Marvin in one instance. She cannot control how her "mouth speaks by itself, the words flowing from somewhere, some half hidden hurt" (pg. 68).