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Essay on the life of a teen
Essay on the life of a teen
The life of a teenager
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A Ticket out of the Past
By (Teresa) Yung-Ching Chuang
Life is like an ascent, the more you climb, the higher you will get. J. C. Burke skilfully undertakes this philosophy as a source of inspiration for ‘The story of Tom Brennan’. It is not another crazy adventurous tale with a heroic storyline that seems unrealistic; the novel is about individual representation as Burke insightfully illustrates the long and slow journey of Tom Brennan, navigating through his road of self-discovery that eventually leads to his destination and achieves his “ticket out of the past” (Burke, pg 182).
The catalyst of the novel is a traumatic car accident causing two instant deaths and one paralysation. However, the star of the story isn’t the driver Daniel,
Teenage drink driving is typically an overlooked social issue which is cleverly depicted in ‘The story of Tom Brennan’. The National Council on Drugs statistics have shown that “almost one in eight deaths of people aged under 25 is due to alcohol”. This statistic highlights the commonality of drink driving amongst adolescents, thus, allowing further resonation for readers. Burke intentionally places frequent flashbacks throughout the novel to ignite curiosity in the readers. The novel soon reveals that not only did Daniel’s illegal action cause him to “lose his spirited outlook on life” (Burke, pg 123), but also uprooted everything Tom once had. Nevertheless, lesson by lesson, the tragic incident succeeds admirably in teaching Tom to overcome
After the traumatic event, the Brennans are continuously mistreated, causing them to feel they are “no longer wanted” (Burke, pg 1). After feeling ostracised by the township, the alienated Brennan family are driven to leave the town of Mumbilli at 4:30am. With hardly any peer support, Tom begins to lose his sense of security, resulting in his transformation into an unconfident teen who is afraid of public opinion. It is no wonder that Tom is unable to move on in his new town as he is being held back in fear of revealing his past. Burke tactfully illustrates Tom’s emotional kaleidoscope through phrases such as “I felt the knot snap” and “my guts landing at my feet” (Burke, pg 172) when reflecting on the accident. On the contrary, with encouragement from family members, Tom begins to step out of his comfort zone and face the future that is to
Diane Urban, for instance, was one of the many people who were trapped inside this horror. She “was comforting a woman propped against a wall, her legs virtually amputated” (96). Flynn and Dwyer appeal to the reader’s ethical conscience and emotions by providing a story of a victim who went through many tragedies. Causing readers to feel empathy for the victims. In addition, you began to put yourself in their shoes and wonder what you would do.
Michael Patrick MacDonald lived a frightening life. To turn the book over and read the back cover, one might picture a decidedly idyllic existence. At times frightening, at times splendid, but always full of love. But to open this book is to open the door to Southie's ugly truth, to MacDonald's ugly truth, to take it in for all it's worth, to draw our own conclusions. One boy's hell is another boy's playground. Ma MacDonald is a palm tree in a hurricane, bending and swaying in the violent winds of Southie's interior, even as things are flying at her head, she crouches down to protect her children, to keep them out of harms way. We grew up watching Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow and Peanuts. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up watching violence, sadness and death.
The main character, Tom Tin, faces hardships and struggles many fourteen year olds do not have to face so early on. His father has mistakenly got himself into trouble and it is up to Tom to save his father and help make his family’s future bright again. Tom has good intentions throughout the novel, but he gets himself into trouble. He turns out to be an unlikely hero after pushing through his doubts and finally triumphing over his mistakes along his journey.
The human need to be relatable is unquenchable. We love to be able to see parts of ourselves in others, and to be able to feel like our idols are not untouchable. The Hero’s Journey format is one that can be found in almost any story, even in real life. Overall, it is the perfect recipe for keeping readers engrossed. Another place the journey has shown up is in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and Odyssey by Homer. These two stories—one a biography, the other, an epic poem—are so effective in their storytelling, it is easy to see how authors today continue to use the same method to make stories that grab the readers’ attention. What makes them most alike, however, is the emotions and thoughts they have the power to provoke.
The story describes the protagonist who is coming of age as torn between the two worlds which he loves equally, represented by his mother and his father. He is now mature and is reflecting on his life and the difficulty of his childhood as a fisherman. Despite becoming a university professor and achieving his father’s dream, he feels lonely and regretful since, “No one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly in the waters of the pier” (MacLeod 261). Like his father, the narrator thinks about what his life could have been like if he had chosen another path. Now, with the wisdom and experience that comes from aging and the passing of time, he is trying to make sense of his own life and accept that he could not please everyone. The turmoil in his mind makes the narrator say, “I wished that the two things I loved so dearly did not exclude each other in a manner that was so blunt and too clear” (MacLeod 273). Once a decision is made, it is sometimes better to leave the past and focus on the present and future. The memories of the narrator’s family, the boat and the rural community in which he spent the beginning of his life made the narrator the person who he is today, but it is just a part of him, and should not consume his present.
Drugs is one of the themes in this story that shows the impact of both the user and their loved ones. There is no doubt that heroin destroys lives and families, but it offers a momentary escape from the characters ' oppressive environment and serves as a coping mechanism to help deal with the human suffering that is all around him. Suffering is seen as a contributing factor of his drug addiction and the suffering is linked to the narrator’s daughter loss of Grace. The story opens with the narrator feeling ice in his veins when he read about Sonny’s arrest for possession of heroin. The two brothers are able to patch things up and knowing that his younger brother has an addiction. He still buys him an alcoholic drink at the end of the story because, he has accepted his brother for who he really is.
“The Hero’s Journey.” Ariane Publications, 1997. Course handout. AS English I. Dept. of English, Woodside High School. 26 October 2013.
If you been in or around law enforcement or military you properly heard of Lt. Dave Grossman. Lt Grossman is a retired Lieutenant colonel with the United Stated Army. Lt. Grossman is an author that specialize in the psychology of killing. “It’s from a police training conference with Dave Grossman, one of the most prolific police trainers in the country. Grossman’s classes teach officers to be less hesitant to use lethal force, urge them to be willing to do it more quickly and teach them how to adopt the mentality of a warrior. Jeronimo Yanez, the Minnesota police who shot and killed Philando Castile in July, had attended one of Grossman’s classes called “The Bulletproof Warrior” (though that class was taught by Grossman’s business partner, Jim Glennon).” (Balko, 2014)
...panic” as they slip “precipitously from his control”(125). He feels nothing constructive, but he feels panic, which is a typical reaction to being unable to cope with one's surroundings and situations. It is this moment which affords us most clearly a view of how Tom has been consumed by his ambitions.
God used seven days to create the world; Tim, the main character in Seven Pounds, extends seven lives by donating his seven organs or properties to them. The name of the film refers to The Merchant of Venice, which was written by Shakespeare. One of the central characters in that play, Antonio, asks for a pound of flesh as payment for a loan that is owed him. Tim Thomas has taken seven lives in a single car accident, so he needs to repay the debt with his "flesh". Since Aristotle says that, a tragedy needs to be in a dramatic form with incidents arousing pity and fear, the movie is a brilliant tragedy, according to Tim’s morality, his impossible love and his death at the end.
When the parents run off without them and never come back for a long time, and when Uncle Trash scams the boys out of everything they own and takes off for days at a time, then sells their belongings and buys cigars and alcohol with the money he made. Growing up being forgotten about can have serious, long lasting effects on children. The author tries to portray the boys as being forgotten so the audience reading will understand that it is a serious issue. “During the knocking down nobody notices our mother. She is a flatfooted running rustle through the corn all burned up by the summer sun”. At the end of the story the mother finally returns to see her house burned down by the sons she left in the hands of their drunken
Drug leads to individual’s mental and physical collapse; “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” and “Work” both convey this by abrupt and confusing plot that follows narrator’s stream of consciousness, and unique figurative language. However, “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” delineates protagonist’s destruction more directly. Jesus’ Son provides readers with second hand experience of being high on drugs by unique tone and diction that emulates the experience of drug addicts almost perfectly.
For centuries, authors have been writing stories about man's journey of self-discovery. Spanning almost three-thousand years, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's Odyssey, and Dante's Inferno are three stories where a journey of self-discovery is central to the plot. The main characters, Gilgamesh, Telemachus, and Dante, respectively, find themselves making a journey that ultimately changes them for the better. The journeys may not be exactly the same, but they do share a common chain of events. Character deficiencies and external events force these three characters to embark on a journey that may be physical, metaphorical, or both. As their journeys progress, each man is forced to overcome certain obstacles and hardships. At the end of the journey, each man has been changed, both mentally and spiritually. These timeless tales relate a message that readers throughout the ages can understand and relate to.
It is the first time that Lizabeth hears a man cry. She could not believe herself because her father is “a strong man who could whisk a child upon his shoulders and go singing through the house.” As the centre of the family and a hero in her heart, Lizabeth’s dad is “sobbing like the tiniest child”She discovers that her parents are not as powerful or stable as she thought they were. The feeling of powerlessness and fear surges within her as she loses the perfect relying on her dad. She says, “the world had lost its boundary lines.” the “smoldering emotions” and “fear unleashed by my father’s tears” had “combined in one great impulse toward
... eventually realizes it can only temporarily satiate his desire for knowledge and friendship, and that eventually, he like all other people, must grow up and move on to new passions and explorations. The entire book in fact returns to this idea many times as Tom has to grapple with the meaning and importance of time. In the same way that Tom must solve the problems he faces, all people must learn to answer the seemingly unanswerable questions of life. At some point or another, we all face situations that seem impossible, but as Tom comes to learn there is always a reason or some explanation for the route life takes. As Tom constantly questions the concept of time and reality versus imagination, we too must ask the same questions for, as Pearce asks many times throughout the novel, “What is time?” (Pearce 168) and how can the seemingly impossible really happen?