Do you ever feel you have everything under control when you really don’t? That’s Kristina Georgia Snow’s memo about meth, as her journey is followed through the Crank series. Crank is about a innocent, 17 year old girl named Kristina, who is on her way to graduating early when she has to go spend one month in the summer with her estranged father. While visiting her father, she falls in love and tries meth for the first time. The book follows her experience being addicted to the “monster” and the consequences that come with it such as hurting her friends and loved ones. The book ends with the teen becoming pregnant due to a product of rape. Glass, the second book in the series, starts off with Kristina, also known by her "alter ego" Bree, has the baby. She names her baby Hunter Seth. Kristina being clean during her pregnancy, quickly relapses and her life slowly starts to crumble around her. Ellen Hopkins own experience dealing with her daughter’s meth addiction influenced her theme of a life spiraling out of control shown through character, style and imagery in Glass.
On March 26, 1955 Ellen Hopkins was born in Long Beach, California. She was adopted by an older couple, her father Albert was 72 and her mother Valerie, was 42 at the time. Always wanting to meet her birth parents, Ellen found her birth mother Toni Chandler in the year 2000. She herself had been writing poetry her entire life. She also found out she has a half sister named Fran, and a birth father who she has yet to meet. Ellen had a cheerful childhood growing up in neighborhood full of famous people such as Elvis Presley, Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas and Arnold Palmer. She won almost every creative writing contest she entered at Santa Ynez Valley Union High School which ...
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..., you feel as if you are in Kristina’s shoes telling her story. Minimalist verses perfectly demonstrate Kristina’s dissociation and muddled despair. (Kirkus Reviews). The author really emphasizes meth as if it’s own character, giving it feelings and power. The emphasision of meth makes you believe that it’s the highly addictive “monster” that makes Kristina’s life spiral out of control and not her.
In Glass, Ellen Hopkins addresses the theme of someones life spiraling out of control through style, character, and imagery. Most critics believe the novel (and the entire Crank series), are Ellen’s best written books. She’s able to put her own real life experience on paper as if you are the one writing it. The book has easy to read poems and would be recommended to anyone 14 years or older. All of her books are a fun and easy read, while at the same time educational.
Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, to KeziahWims Brooks and David Anderson Brooks. Brooks’ family didn’t have much income. Her father David Brooks was a janitor. Keziah Brooks, Gwendolyn’s mother was a school teacher. Soon after Gwendolyn was born her family moved away from Kansas. The Brooks family relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where Brooks remained the rest of her life. Brooks, as a child, loved to read. She was encouraged by her family and friends to do so. She spent most of her childhood immersed in her writing. Gwendolyn became a published poet at an early age. At age 13, Brooks’ poem Eventide was published. Her poem appeared in “American Childhood.” Brooks’ poems were frequently published in the Chicago Defender. At age 16, Brooks had written over seventy poems (J.Williams 28).In Brooks’ early years of writing she spoke on a lot. She talked about racial discrimination and praised African American heroes. Also, Brooks satirized both blacks and whites (A.williams1). In 1993, Gwendolyn meet poet James Weldon Johnson and writer Langston Hughes. The two influenced Brooks’ writing tremendously. The influence lead her to write over seventy poems (Bloom 12).
Drugs, sex, hormones, adolescence, and decisions, decisions; All of such characterize Ellen Hopkins’, Crank. In the attention-grabbing novel is a high school junior named Kristina; a girl who has never done anything other than spend time with her family and focus on receiving straight A’s on her report card. Other characters in the novel include Bree, Kristina’s wild alter ego, Adam, or “Buddy,” whom she meets while visiting her father, Brendan, Chase Wagner, her mother, father, and other friends and family members who experience her crazed evolution. This “evolution” of Kristina begins when she leaves her home in Nevada for a short vacation with her father in New Mexico. She begins as the perfect daughter, but on her trip to visit her absent father, she disappears into her alter ego, Bree, who is her exact opposite: fearless, crazy, and experimental. Furthermore, Kristina/Bree meets what she refers to, “the monster,” also known as the drug, “crack,” and begins an unwinding journey which starts as wild, ecstatic ride, and ends in a struggle through what most call a mental hell.
“ I believed the people who romanticized those years, the ones who told me to embrace irresponsibility before I was slapped with the burdens of corporate adulthood” (23). Zailckas’ alcohol binging started at a very young age and followed her for nearly a decade. She turned to alcohol because of her peers who told her to live it up while she was still young and before she had to take on all these adult responsibilities. In the novel, “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood,” Koren Zailckas opens up about what caused her alcohol addiction and how it left her with lifelong physical and emotional effects.
The relationship between Brenda and alcohol is quickly grasped, as she is experiencing a hangover at the beginning of the story. When Brenda tells her mother, “I have a headache and I think I’m getting car sick,” she tries to blame the car ride for her nausea, even though she knows the truth behind her physical condition (Vande Velde 5). Because even though Brenda shares her alcoholic tendencies as the narrator, she hides them from those within her family. Brenda’s affiliation with alcohol is further unraveled as she reveals, “sometimes my parents let me have half a glass of wine with dinner” (Vande Velde 31). This type of behavior from her parents helps Brenda to condone and minimize the problem of her underage drinking. This is irresponsible of Brenda’s parents and affects her outlook on the seriousness of alcohol use. Once home alone Brenda takes a bath with her “wine on the edge of the tub” and states that she feels, “savvy and downright sophisticated” (Vande Velde 32). This feeling of sophistication that Brenda derives from the wine only stimulates her urge to drink even more. The full extent of Brenda’s problem is clearly perceived when her mother discovers her fake ID. Disappointed in her daughter, Brenda’s mom starts, “crying, soundlessly, tears pouring down her cheeks” (Vande Velde 58). This discovery of her fake ID is another obstacle propelling Brenda and her mother apart as Brenda dissatisfies her parents yet
Ellen Foster lived through a disturbed childhood. Within that unique childhood, there is a few things I can relate to like the resembles of Ellen to her parents, the lack of love and affection from her parents, and a fragile and feeble mother.
Human nature is filled with curiosity, imagination, the desire to learn, and constant change. Jeannette Walls, the author of The Glass Castle, has a childhood filled with all of the above, but it is constantly disrupted by greed, drugs, and fear. This memoir takes the reader on a journey through the mind of a maturing girl, who learns to despise the people who she has always loved the most. Always short on cash and food, Jeannette’s dysfunctional family consisting of father, Rex, mother, Rose Mary, brother, Brian, and sisters, Lori and Maureen, is constantly moving from one location to another. Although a humorous tone is used throughout the whole novel, one can observe the difficulty that encompasses the physical challenge
I have first hand seen the childish ways of a drug abusing parent and my overall standpoint is everyone has a weakness, you just need to find a light to bring you out of the dark hole which the monster and sends you down and see what's worth living for. “I believe if you want to write a memoir, you have to tell the entire truth (yes, I understand it will be colored by your personal lenses), and that means truly opening yourself and those around you to public inspection” (Par. 15) said Ellen Hopkins displaying that she takes informing teens as a serious role. A prediction i could infer based upon the parallel relationship between Kristina and her father is if her son is exposed to drugs he will most likely fall in the same path if her she does not tell him the danger of these substances. This novel is a great tool to get the word out there that hard drugs will hurt you, hurt your family and make you a whole new
Susan Eloise Hinton was born on the 22nd of July of 1950 in the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her parents were Grady P. Hinton and Lillian Hinton. The town of Oklahoma did not have a lot of fun activities for a young girl, so reading and writing became Susan’s hobbies and pastimes. Susan was a very shy girl, who had dreams of becoming a cattle rancher, because of her love of cows. Her dreams of becoming a cattle rancher soon vanished because her love of writing grew stronger. Her first stories started were more about cattles and gun fighting, but she wanted to write about more, that interested her readers. As a teenager she found her options of writing limited and boring. She wanted something that was out there and more realistic than the typical boy meets girl, fall in love story. So, she took different life events that happened in her life at her high school (Will Rogers High School) and put her imagination to work, and create stories about teens, gang life, drugs and violence. When Susan was in her teenage years, her father was diagnosed with cancer and her passion for writing
She kind of abused the substance to the point where she used prostitution to get the drugs and later died of a drug overdose. This book was published in the form of a diary in entry form of a girl’s drug addiction. The characters in this novel are introduced to drugs, sexual activities and abuse.
Kristina starts using drugs during a trip to visit her birth father in Albuquerque. Kristina is already feeling unaccepted by her family. She describes her mother as distant, her step-father as heavy-handed, her older sister as distracted, and younger brother as spoiled; however, thinking of her father, she is hopeful. She is deeply disappointed when she learns that her father is not the prince that she imagined him to be. Instead, he is distant
The Great Gatsby is considered one of the best pieces of American Literature by many critics and authors. This is not because it was an interesting novel, it’s because it represented the time period well. It showed how there were many scandalous and immoral acts revolving around the major characters like Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom. These characters were shown having affairs, breaking the law multiple times, and being immoral. Colors in The Great Gatsby were extremely important because they show symbolism behind objects and characters. The color white represents impurity. Green symbolizes desirable but unattainable objects or people. Yellow is the color of death and corruption. These colors help show that impurity,wealth, and corruption can lead to the immorality of a person.
The novel The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, brings to the surface many of the the struggles and darker aspects of American life through the perspective of a growing girl who is raised in a family with difficulties financially and otherwise. This book is written as a memoir. Jeannette begins as what she remembers as her first memory and fills in important details of her life up to around the present time. She tells stories about her family life that at times can seem to be exaggerated but seemed normal enough to her at the time. Her parents are portrayed to have raised Jeannette and her three siblings in an unconventional manner. She touches on aspects of poverty, family dynamics, alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual abuse from
Even the easiest and trivial problems do have several solutions, dictated by different approaches, driving forces, and starting points. So, what can one tell about solution of the complex issues that require a lot of time, effort and thought to be solved? There are always a multitude of positions, opinions and options to solve the complex problem, so one cannot even tell which of these options is the only true and right. Thus, it is hard to judge whether specific solutions for the problem of slavery in North America of the 18th-19th century would be efficient or not. So, comparing Lucy Stanton’s and Nat Tuner’s positions and approaches to achieve the freedom for African-Americans it seems almost impossible to claim that only one of the points is valid.
“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.” The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about a young girl and her dysfunctional life. Jeannette and her family live a very tough life, constantly leaving to go somewhere new. However, along the way, Jeannette decides she wants to escape her family and move to New York. Throughout her life, she and her sister work on moving to New York to better their lives. The Glass Castle will become a classic because it includes hard times of life, contains lessons from parents, and allows the reader to be inspired by Jeannette's escape plan.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a harrowing and heartbreaking yet an inspiring memoir of a young girl named Jeannette who was deprived of her childhood by her dysfunctional and unorthodox parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Forced to grow up, Walls stumbled upon coping with of her impractical “free-spirited” mother and her intellectual but alcoholic father, which became her asylum from the real world, spinning her uncontrollably. Walls uses pathos, imagery, and narrative coherence to illustrate that sometimes one needs to go through the hardships of life in order to find the determination to become a better individual.