Analysis Of Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

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Barbie Dolls
Author, Marge Piercy, introduces us to a young adolescent girl without a care in the world until puberty begins. The cruelty of her friends emerges and ultimately she takes her own life to achieve perfection in “Barbie Dolls” (648). At the time when all children are adjusting to their ever changing bodies, the insults and cruelties of their peers begin and children who were once friends for many years, become strangers over night caught in a world of bullying. A child who is bullied can develop severe depression which can lead to suicide; and although schools have been educated in recognizing the signs of bullying, there is an epidemic that has yet to be fully addressed within our schools or society.
Bullying is described as …show more content…

In 1862, a soldier named John Flood killed another soldier due to the torment that had been inflicted upon him, he was sentenced to death but the Queen overturned that ruling (The Tablet, 504). “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens published in 1838, is reported to be the first novel in Literary Fiction to include bullying behavior. In regards to school bullying, the first documented case came from the King’s School in Cambridge, England after a twelve year old boy was bullied to death by a group of older boys in 1885 (Koo, 110). Given that bullying was identified so many years ago, it would seem that much more should have been accomplished to defeat this …show more content…

Suicide due to bullying has been given the name of bullycide. One example of bullycide would be Jon Carmichael from Texas who was bullied so harshly that “one day they stripped him naked, tied him up, and stuck him in a trash can, and they taped it with their cell phones and put it all on You Tube” per his mother’s account (Texas Monthly, Hollandsworth). A few days later Jon was found hanging by a rafter from their barn after committing suicide. The perpetrators of this abuse were his fellow classmates and it is reported that “60% of boys who bullied others in middle school had at least one criminal conviction by the age of 24; 40% had three or more convictions” (van der Valk, 41). Bullying behavior not only negatively affects the victims that are singled out and tormented, but from a legal perspective can lead to long term criminal

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