In life, a lot of people have psychological conflicts that can result in issues throughout their lives. In “Killings” by Andre Dubus, “Ounce of Cure” by Alice Munro, and “Death by Landscape” by Margaret Atwood each of the authors portray a character who has problems that they face psychologically. These challenges they face can hurt them physically and emotionally causing hardships and struggles throughout their years. In the short story “Killings”, Matt Fowler is the father of Frank Fowler, a young adult only twenty-one years old. He is a nice boy, going to school and has a decent job. It is the summer and he is in an intimate, but rather immature relationship with Mary Ann Strout. She is recently in separation with her husband Richard …show more content…
The narrator falls in love with a boy named Martin Collingwood during her high school years and within in months he left her for another girl. She doesn’t get out much, or really puts off a “sexy” vibe, so to her she was very lucky to have been with Martin. It takes awhile for a girl to get over someone they loved, or still love and that’s exactly what she is trying to do, get over him. “That is what we are apt to do, speaking of love; with adolescent love, of course, its practically obligatory; you would think we sat around, dull afternoons, amusing ourselves with these tidbit recollections of pain. But it really doesn’t make me feel very gay- worse still, it doesn’t really surprise me to remember all the stupid, sad half ashamed things I did that people in love always do” (594). She has reasons to believe that something is wrong with her when there clearly isn’t. Being torn to pieces by someone they adored can stay with someone for a very long time. She tries to numb the pain by stupidly and not even closely “killing” herself by taking one too many aspirin. She always decides to get belligerently drunk while babysitting her neighbors. Now, who’s to say her decision to get drunk was because of her heartbreak, or because she just wanted to try it is beyond anyone. Girls tend to have self-image problems a lot. From trying to fit in with the …show more content…
Throughout her life she has had to deal with loss from mostly everyone who was close to her. Both of her kids have moved out and her husband passed away. She continues to live life as if she is living two separate ones, acting one way when people are around and another when she is alone. When she was growing up she made a dear friend at summer camp. They became very close throughout the years they spent at that camp between the ages of nine and thirteen. Lucy was her friend. Lucy is included with the people who Lois has lost in her life. Lucy became distant after a few years during summer camp. Her parents had been divorced and she started being rebellious with boys and such. Lois and Lucy were on a hike with a few other people. Lucy went off to go to the bathroom and Lois heard a harsh scream. No one thought anything of it so went back to the camp. Everyone realized that Lucy was gone and no one could find her. The blame was put onto her and it breaks her heart because she had nothing to do with the disappearance of her friend. “How could you ever find anything there, once it was lost? Maybe if they cut it all down, drained it all away, they might find Lucy’s bones, some time, where ever they are hidden” (1106). Lois has fear of nature and the wilderness because what had happened in the past. Lois paints pictures of the wilderness and nature and every time she looks at them she sees
“Another source of greatness is difficulty. When any work seems to have required immense force and labour to effect it, the idea is grand” (Edmund Burke).We may not enjoy tremendous obstacles while we’re experiencing them, but when they’re over, we can definitely see the benefits. In Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen, the protagonist, Cole, has had to face many obstacles in his life, such as his abusive father, his neglectful mother and his anger. Many people can relate to Cole because they, too, have had many obstacles in their life. Overcoming obstacles makes Cole more empathetic and emotionally stable. Empathy is important because it is what allows humans to be human. Being mentally
Divided Minds provided me to look at mental illness as a whole, looking at the individual who is significantly affected by it, discovering/establishing their main perspectives, viewpoints, and challenges but also their social, and environmental dynamics. However another book which also captivated my interest within the mental health field consisted of the novel entitled, The Beast, allowing a new discovery of the underlying problems people may face with
The short story “Virgo” in Jess Walter’s book We Live in Water is set in modern times which gives it a familiarity for the audience. For something that maybe unfamiliar is that he creates the protagonist to have a psychological problem. The author uses mental illness as an important part in his story, because the story is about the protagonists failing psychological health. This was caused from his parent’s lack of knowledge about mental disorders and his school’s fault for not educating him or his parents about mental illnesses. The protagonist has issues with his social skills, which are caused by the lack of treatment that he has never received from his schools and parents, then as a result attempts to commit suicide at the end of the story.
The story begins in a small town in America. The Fowler family is faced with the burden, frustration and pain of having to bury their twenty-one year old son, Frank. The inward struggle faced by Matt Fowler, his wife, and family drives him to murder Richard Strout, Frank's killer, in order to avenge his son's murder and bring peace to himself and his family. Matt faced a life-time struggle to be a good father and protect his children from danger throughout their childhood. Dubus describes Matt's inner ...
I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.
Esther Greenwood was a scholarship student attending an all-women’s college in New York. While in school, she wrote for a women’s magazine under the supervision of her editor Jay Cee. Writing was her passion and she especially loved poetry. Unfortunately, the college life and New York City were not exactly what Esther had thought they would be. She always found herself being a third wheel or the outsider of the group. This may have been the spark that began her battle with depression. Either that, or the realization that her childhood crush Buddy Willard, a medical student at Yale, was a hypocrite. He and Esther had known each other since a very young age through the church and their parents had intended for them to eventually be married. After Buddy invited Esther to attend Yale’s prom, they began spending a lot of time together until she found out that he had lost his virginity to a sleazy waitress. This contradicted everything Buddy was and had claimed to be. His whole good and pure act was flawed whenever Esther discovered these facts. She was especially hurt, because they were very competitive with each other and she now wanted to lose her virginity so as to no...
Edgar Allan Poe was the epitome of a tormented genius. He possessed uncontrollable and self-inflicted internal problems. In addition, Poe was plagued by external difficulties—some preventable, some not. Most doctors today would pronounce Poe to be bipolar, chronically depressed, and perhaps even OCD. Most people today, and any day, would declare Poe to be self-obsessed and arrogant, or—at the least—snobbish. His personal life would also be considered less than ideal, though how much he was personally responsible for is still unknown (Hutchisson 19). Art, however, often springs from controversy and instability. In fact, Jacqueline Langwith, editor of Perspective on Disease & Disorders: Mood Disorders, notes that “creativity appears to be associated with mental illness” (Langwith 8). Furthermore, remarkably few artists had anything short of incredible—especially incredibly difficult—lives. Poe suffered from internal “handicaps” and an interesting life, both of which showed up in his unique writing. Edgar Allan Poe's mental disorders, pride, and negative relationships within his family are reflected in “The Cask Of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale heart,” and gave them their characteristic qualities.
Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting poems and morbid stories will be read by countless generations of people from many different countries, a fact which would have undoubtedly provided some source of comfort for this troubled, talented yet tormented man. His dark past continued to torture him until his own death. These torturous feelings were shown in many of his works. A tragic past, consisting of a lack of true parents and the death of his wife, made Edgar Allan Poe the famous writer he is today, but it also led to his demise and unpopularity.
Despite the differences between the characters in the poems, I will also go on to say how the preoccupation with death and violence all seem to stem from the apparently unstable minds of the characters; from the instability brought on by varying emotions such as grief, jealousy, resentment, guilt and madness, and the fact that these emotions may lead to paranoia.
However, Matt Fowler had different reasoning for his actions. After burying his twenty-one year-old son who was just on the cusp of graduating college, he finds that Strout, his son’s murderer, has been released on bail pending trial and until then he has resumed his normal life. Watching his wife not only mourning the loss of their son, but also having to see the killer in daily activities, has caused a mental and emotional strain on their life. The affect on Fowler’s family that Strout is walking around free and seemingly unconcerned is one of the main reasoning that is posed when Fowler and his friend Willis T...
After Lucy’s death the remaining characters feel various powerful kinds of emotions that help with avenging her death.
...vident truth that Lois knows is that her best friend is dead and she will continue to wait for her until she dies because at this point Atwood shows that Louis has forgotten how to be a mother and wife to her children and husband.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous writers in the American literary world. His stories and poems are known for their gothic style and having the common theme of death. This is certainly seen in his short story “The Cask of Amontillado.” It is speculated by many that Poe suffered from the mental illness known as bipolar disorder. In a letter to James Russell Lowell, Poe said, “I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious — by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but solitary communion with the “mountains & the woods” — the “altars” of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures.” In “The Cask of Amontillado” he presents two very different characters, Montresor the spiteful, revenge seeking killer, and Furtunato the impulsive, pleasure-seeking victim. The two opposing personality types in these two characters fit the mania and mixed state characteristics of those suffering with type one bipolar disorder. Poe used the characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” to express the feelings of madness he dealt with during his lifetime.
Emotional discomfort can sometimes be perceived as mental instability. A person may look, act, or feel insane, when in truth they are just very uncomfortable in their own skin. The narrator has a genuinely difficult decision to make which far outside his comfort zone. He is choosing between a woman who has been like a mother to him and much needed job that he feels he may enjoy. This choice is tearing him apart from the inside out. From the ringing noises that interrupt his every thought to the skin he is scraping off. The author uses diction, syntax, and extended metaphors to express the complete and utter discomfort of the narrator, both physically and emotionally.
We are going to describe factors associated with the suicidal process in lives of Sarah Kane and Sylvia Plath as reflected in the late works of these two female authors who committed suicide when they were 27 and 30 years old. Antoon Leenaars and Susanne Wenckstern (1998) have written: ?Suicide notes are probably the ultrapersonal documents. They are the unsolicited productions of the suicidal person, usually written minutes before the suicidal death.? Literary works of suicidal authors written in the time before their death can be read as such suicide notes.