Repression of emotions may lead to a refusal to accept, or acknowledge oneself which is often dangerous. Notably, in Garden State, Bright Lights, Big City, and “The Story of an Hour,” each character consciously struggles with there everyday lives, secretly hiding how they really feel, leaving them with an emotionless facade. In a state of unease, the characters from Garden State, Bright Lights, Big City, and “The Story of an Hour” repressed their emotions while living in repressive relationships.
In the movie Garden State, Andrew, the main character, uses drugs to repress his emotions and personal problems. Andrew awakens gradually from a long, sedated nothingness due to antidepressants. He returns home with repressed unease and spends most of his time in New Jersey steering clear of the serious conversation in which he needs to have with his father. “You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.” (Andrew) Depressed and emotionally unstable, Andrew continually represses the guilt he feels over his mother’s death. To repress his emotions, Andrew relies on antidepressants, ironically prescribed by his father. As an adult, he is now seeing the world without drugs for the first time. Motherless and controlled by drugs, Andrew was missing a sense of normality, as well as a sense of home. The scene in which Andrew examines his lifeless reflection in the medicine cabinet expresses the numbness that he feels and his inability to feel emotion. The split mirror shows a combination of his lifeless image and countless bottles of prescription medications which leave him feeling void...
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...ther. Unfortunately the mother is waiting to see if the baby can be born, which can risk her life. The only way the Coma Baby can survive is if he accepts his mothers death, which will force him to face reality. The baby is an exiled prisoner inside the womb, and cannot accept the fact that it feels incapable of escaping its failure, to come outside of the womb. Similarly to the Coma Baby, the narrator is trapped inside looking out at his life, having the world revolve around him; he is slowly coming to life, slowly rescinding his exile.
Conclusively, each character fights with the idea of repressing there emotions. Just like in Garden State, Bright Lights, Big City, and “The Story of an Hour,” each character struggles with their own self. Fighting to face reality, each character diminishes their everyday struggles as they learn to cope without their own realities.
Oppression signifies an authority of a dominant group over a monitory group, disengaging the minority group from society. “ The term oppression encapsulates the fusion of institutional and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures that shade most aspects of life in our society” (Bell, 2007). In one way or another every individuals experience some form of oppression, whether it be through, sex, gender, religion, age, economic status and/or sexual orientation. In some instances, an “individual may experience multiple oppression and they can be experienced simultaneously or singularly depending on the context” ( Vernon). For, an example as an African American who also
Andrew Largeman's (Zack Braff) journey throughout "Garden State" seems to be a testament on the meaning of liberation. Going from his struggling acting life in Los Angeles to his hometown in New Jersey, where he witnesses his mother's funeral, Andrew is in the mist of confronting difficult issues. One of the biggest issues is coming to terms with his psychologist father (Ian Holm), whom he has distanced himself from for many years because he has put him on powerful antidepressants for most of his life. The reason for this I will not reveal but it has caused Andrew to feel as if his father has controlled his life in a way.
Baby narrates her story through her naïve, innocent child voice. She serves as a filter for all the events happening in her life, what the narrator does not know or does not comprehend cannot be explained to the readers. However, readers have reason not to trust what she is telling them because of her unreliability. Throughout the beginning of the novel we see Baby’s harsh exposure to drugs and hurt. Jules raised her in an unstable environment because of his constant drug abuse. However, the narrator uses flowery language to downplay the cruel reality of her Montreal street life. “… for a kid, I knew a lot of things about what it felt like to use heroin” (10). We immediately see as we continue reading that Baby thinks the way she has been living her life is completely normal, however, we as readers understand that her life is in fact worse then she narrates. Baby knows about the impermanent nature of her domestic security, however, she repeatedly attempts to create a sense of home each time her and Jules move to another apartm...
Coma Baby will see the "light of the delivery room". In this passage the main
Andrea Smith’s “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy” introduces an alternative framework for the organization of women and people of color (Smith 67). Such framework is non-singular, contrasting the previous which have proven to be limiting to these groups (Smith 67). Through the discussion of the three pillars which are separate, but interrelated and heteropatriarchy within society Smith provides a helpful starting point for organizers to break from systems of oppression and ultimately deconstruct White supremacy (Smith 73).
Whether a person’s life is something experienced authentically, or factually written down as literature, there are more complexities faced then there are simplicities on a daily basis. This multifariousness causes constant bewilderment and hesitation before any sort of important decision a person must make in his or her life. When it comes to characters of the written words, as soon sensations of ambiguity, uncertainty, and paranoia form, the outlook and actions of these characters are what usually result in regrettable decisions and added anxiety for both that character as well as the reader. Examples of these themes affecting characters in the world of fiction are found in the novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and the play Glengarry Glen Ross written by David Mamet. Throughout both of these texts, characters such as Oedipa Maas who allows these emotions to guide her in her journey of self discovery, and Shelly Levene who is so overcome with these emotions that they become his downfall. For both of these characters, these constant emotional themes are what guide their most impulsive actions, which can generally also become regrettable decisions. Even though it is a distinguishing factor of human beings, when these characters are portrayed in print, it somehow seems to affect the reader more, because they are able to see the fictional repercussions, and also know how they could have been avoided.
Immediately after the delivery, Victor catches the baby blues, and feels overwhelmed by the situation he has rendered himself with. Birth, under normal circumstances is viewed as a blessing; Victor elucidates the event a catastrophe and labels his child a creature and a wretch. Losing all self-control, he goes into a fit of egotistical rage, describing the painstaking effort, which caused the being into life. His disappointment is evident as he rushes from the room in horror of that which he calls monster. Victor forgets the newborn is not yet a man he can blame for his own imperfections. His ardor goes sour and lacking a support group of family and friends around him who conjugate around every new parent for this exact reason; Victor begins to resent the thoughtful cultivation and aspirations, which he sought for his child. Parenting guru’s tells new parents to adjust expectations to fit the baby; Victor is unable to do this. He views his child under a romantic guise until the spark of life enters baby’s lifeless yellow eyes, after which, Victor loses rational thought and abandons his blessing to the hands of an apathetic society. H...
In society, a racial hierarchy is constructed in the form of racism, where each race is classified, such as the whites being the most superior, whereas the blacks are perceived as inferior. Oppression takes formation in several ways and can limit a certain group from excelling in life, and suppressing their own cultural values. In the autobiography of Assata, Skakur depicts how oppression is present in every day society and its impact on Blacks.
Restraint and Activism Judicial activism is loosely defined as decisions or judgements handed down by judges that take a broad interpretation of the constitution. It is a decision that is more of a reflection of how the judge thinks the law should be interpreted, rather than how the law has or was intended to be interpreted. There are many examples of judicial activism; examples include the opinions of Sandra Day O'Connor in the Lynch v. Donnelly and the Wallace v. Jaffree trials. Sandra Day argues for the changing of the First Amendment's ban on "establishment" of religion into a ban on "endorsement" of religion. Others include the U.S. v. Kinder, where Congress passed legislation that would require a minimum sentence for persons caught distributing more than 10 grams of cocaine.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive. Although the society that we are living in is different than the one the Emerson's essay, the idea of fitting in still exists today. Although society and our minds make us think a certain way, we should always trust our better judgment instead of just conforming to society.
Individuals may or may not go through a situation where they would enjoy nothing more than to yell, scream, or even fight another person for something that he or she said or did. It is challenging to hold back such intense emotions, but it is the wise thing to do in order to avoid further conflict. In Carolyn Kizer’s “Bitch”, the speaker demonstrates holding back her emotions in front of her ex-lover. It was tough for her to do so because she wanted him to understand how she felt. Overall, Kizer establishes the importance of being the better person by holding back one’s feelings in order to avoid further consequences. She illustrates this through portraying the speaker’s true emotions, revealing information of her ex-lover, and showing how the speaker carries herself on the outside.
The history of African-American oppression began in the early 1600s as slaves arrived on America’s shores. For hundreds of years, African-Americans struggled against crippling segregation, terrorism, and racial enmity to no avail. As a result of extensive physical and psychological beatings, African-Americans became fearful and very reserved in expressing their emotions. Their suffering, however, fuelled a sense of courage in some, such as African-American poets, who found the strength to address uncertainties that others had against their racial identity. These brave men included George Horton, who wrote “Liberty and Slavery”, and Paul Dunbar, author of “We Wear a Mask”. Through their powerful race-protest poetry, Horton and Dunbar portray that African-Americans feel incessantly trapped, both physically and emotionally, resulting in a deep-rooted yearning for freedom.
Throughout history, there have been many types of oppression. Oppression occurs when someone is viewed as a lesser human in a way that makes the suppressor feel superior (Oppression, slide 5 and 6). Always, the person who is doing the suppressing is viewed as the terrible human being. However, humans are equally guilty when they sit back and do not do anything. Doing nothing is a way of encouraging the oppression that is occurring. The only way to change the cycle of oppression is speaking up and out against what is wrong. Thus, binary ideology can only be challenged when the individual silence is broken; the effect will be the increased visibility of others.
Time is not a barrier to demonstrate the beliefs and values of each character. Sam finds himself in a difficult situation when Avery was blamed for the Dinner Money. Sam avoids confronting this issue by assuring to Avery that he was going to leave the job since they no longer operate a projector. Furthermore, Avery copes with his mental disturbances with the help of his therapist; the assimilation of his dream allows him to see his identity. Heaney and Carlos take a brief moment to either honor family or value a thing. This is a blinking of the eye to see that life can be valuable even in its simplest form. The characters do not need weeks, days or hours to express feelings or beliefs but it only takes a few moments. In real life, human respond to dramatic experiences this way. A human experience of any form such an encounter with a person or a thing awakens a past or a new experience that forces anyone to respond in any way, either positively or negatively. These are special moments in which we either accept or reject an idea. These are crucial points for any of the character since these are the true moments. The masks are taken off and the true personality are uncovered. The authors manage to place a value or a belief that makes the character human beings. They come to live as if we, as readers, were around the situations
Freedom and equality are intertwined with one another. Freedom is defined as the custom of being free, political independence, and the possession of civil rights. When reflecting upon the history of the twentieth century many people all over the world were not afforded the luxury of being born with freedom or born with equal rights. In most cases, those people were often oppressed or subjugated by various forms of systematic state sponsored authoritarianism and terror. In order to receive the freedom necessary to survive and the equality required to live a happy and successful life the oppressed people had to take action. Often times the action took on various forms such as, revolts or nonviolent campaigns. Because the governments reliance on authoritarianism and terror to control their citizens, often times revolts and/or nonviolent campaigns were the consequence. Therefore, any advances towards gaining freedom and equality cannot happen without some form of systematic state-sponsored authoritarianism and terror taking place first. It is no coincidence because the two phenomena are linked.