“I liked hurting girls.” This was the first sentence in the book; the sentence that captured my attention and fed my growing curiosity. Another thing that intrigued me about the book is its title--it wasn’t so much as a diary as it is an exploration on psychology through the eyes of the abuser. By reading the novel, I journeyed into the mind of the narrator, as he provided detailed explanations and analysis as to why he obtained such pleasure and enjoyment by mentally and emotionally tormenting his victims. The book made me think. It made me think of every interaction I have experienced where I found my self-esteem drop lower and lower. Taking this into account, I realized that I have been on the sharp end of the verbal sword--often. But it
Thus, he treats her like a child and “laughs at [her]… ” and calls her a “‘...little girl’” (Gilman 90, 94). For these two female characters in “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, their struggles are a direct result of male dominance, and their coping mechanism escorts them away from the world that devalues them.
As Alice was going through major hell during the rape and even after the rape, it seemed as it was not taken seriously by others. Alice describes her pain, fears, and many problems that came along the way when it came for fighting for herself and the after effect of the rape. Being a rape victim was not easy, and Alice showed many signals that she needed more than just comfort, but sadly many of them failed to provide that for her.
Following the examinations of Twyla and Roberta’s experience after the assault, one of Twyla’s ending statements constitutes one of the most significant and explicit results of trauma. As the girls by the
Generally speaking, when someone speaks of an emotional topic such as rape or abuse, they are sympathetic and supporting. However, in Inga’s writing she exhibits neither of these characteristics. In her
The narrator is given a sense of oppression from the beginning of the story by keeping a hidden diary from her husband as “a relief to her mind.” Throughout the story her true thoughts are hidden from the readers and her husband, which gives the story a symbolic perspective.
Every single person has a secret or an experience that they prefer not to talk about. In this case, Melinda Sordino suffers with the traumatic memory of rape. Within the novel, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Sordino’s entire life changes as Andy Evans takes advantage of her innocence by raping her during a party in August. As a result, Sordino’s trauma causes the alteration of her personality and perspective of the world. Sordino ventures throughout the story to rediscover herself as a person and faces several obstacles such as family troubles, disrespectful peers, and the person who has inflicted her with the most mental agony she can possibly withstand.
In our world today, there are many different types of cultures. In America especially, there is so much diversity within culture that it's what makes America what it is today. What is culture you may ask? Culture is basically a human’s way of living life through values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects. In the well-known movie, Mean Girls, there are a lot of different types and aspects of culture throughout the movie. The movie Mean Girls is about a girl named Cady Heron who lived in Africa and was homeschooled for most of her life, has to attend a public high school called North Shore. She is clueless at first and after a while she makes friends with a group of popular girls known as the Plastics. She fits in quickly and tries to adapt through high school. There are different types of cultures and subcultures at North Shore such as the Plastics, the Jocks, the Nerds, the Cool African Americans, the Cool Asians, the Foreigners, and the Losers. Everyone at North Shore high wants to be like the Plastics so some of the girls like to copy everything the Plastics do such as the way they speak and dress. In addition to that all the students are desperate to fit in so in order for them to do that they have to value sex, drinking, partying, makeup, and other typical teenage stuff. Mean Girls did in fact have a lot of different types of cultural aspects to it and there are strong examples to prove this.
Commonly referred to as a classic by millennials, Mean Girls, directed by Mark Waters in 2004, allows an interesting critique of racism when viewed through a sociological lens. The story follows Cady Herron, a normal teenager- except for the fact that she grew up in Africa, homeschooled by her scientist parents- as she is forced to integrate into the public-school system in Illinois. Never having been in an institution like a public school, Cady quickly learns what not to do and who to hang out with. Through trial and error, Cady assimilates and becomes a ‘normal’ American teenager who is part of the ‘popular’ crowd, befriending “The Plastics”; Karen Smith, Gretchen Wieners, and their leader, Regina George. The story of Mean Girls is not as superficial as it seems. This film illustrates the perils of not only teenage life, but current life in America, and accurately depicts the struggles that minorities face. Looking at this movie through Functionalist theory, the racial aggressions present are part of a larger institution of the public school system; insinuating that the micro and macro-aggressions directed towards minorities are part of developing the future generation and teaching them to perpetuate racial inequality in America, allowing white people to remain the majority race and to reap the benefits that come with it. The complexity of the movie lies within an interesting discourse that examines the effects and functions behind the racist
Jacobs’ narrative is open and honest in its depiction of sexual harassment, describing the nature of the abuse and the tortured emotional state it leaves its victims in. Though the narrative tells of a girl’s life over one hundred and fifty years ago, it remains timely in its reminder that many suffering women do not have the ability to safely end the harassment they face every day, and yet, they continue to endure the consequential
A trait that stands out in the book is the symptom of bodily memories. In Melinda’s case, during a frog dissection in her science class, she remembers the opening up and even says, “She doesn’t say a word. She is already dead. A scream starts in my gut – I can feel the cut, smell the dirt, feel the leaves in my hair.” (81). One of the other symptoms that Melinda has is self-harm. The first time that this is shown in the book, Melinda says this, “I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep?” (87). Melinda also has a hard time talking to her parents about the rape to which she says, “How can I talk to them about that night? How can I start?” (72). Some victims recover from such a traumatic experience, while others don’t and live a lifetime of depression and must undergo intense therapy. In Melinda’s case, she finds redemption by talking to her parents and the guidance counselor, and putting her faith into her teachers, friends, and her art project at school. Because rape can affect anybody anywhere, everyone should be aware of the circumstances, and how to deal with it.
With a close examination of Elizabeth Bowen’s suspenseful short story, “The Demon Lover,” I notice a much more frightening element present in the narrative than what appears to be the supernatural as this British author highlights her central notion that those who endure abusive relationships, sustain psychologically scars that may never go away.
In the story “So I Ain’t No Good Girl” by Sharon Flake, our narrator tells a story in first person about a tumultuous morning for her as she waits to board a bus for school. What started as a seemingly normal trip to school turns dramatic when the narrator’s delusions overwhelm her critical thinking, which is worsened further by her abusive and unfaithful boyfriend, Raheem. Marked by her poor decisions, abuse, and delusions, our unnamed narrator only aggravates me but still gets across an important message. Our narrator is a very one dimensional character. The reader can infer that the narrator is a female and most likely a senior in high school, since she refers to herself as a “girl” and of her boyfriend that “if he flunks, he don’t graduate
While not a somatic assault, emotional abuse can cause lasting effects on a woman’s health, so much so that researcher, B. Van Houdenhove and others working on the project have found “that emotional abuse and neglect may be contributing factors to the development and/or severity of illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia” (Karakurt and Silver). Finally, emotional abuse is a rampant issue, Karakurt and Silver report that “Psychological aggression by an intimate partner was reported by 48.4% of women,” which was found in the National Intimate Partner & Sexual Violence Survey (“Emotional Abuse in Intimate Relationships: The Role of Gender and Age”). Nearly half of the population of women report being victims to psychological abuse, making it a widespread epidemic faced by not only women in dystopian novels but also real life. Psychological abuse can take many verbal and non-verbal forms, which can put great strain on a woman’s health, and affects nearly half the population of the United States.
The issue focused on is Domestic Violence; a common yet silent form of battering, harassment , and sexual assault. As explained by Annie, she meets her husband when she was 16 years old. He was five years older than her. Expeditiously they developed a relationship, and she became pregnant. That’s when the abuse began, he would hit her, throw her into walls and leave her helpless in a puddle of her own blood. She was trapped in a world of fear, regret, and slowly began to feel as if all this was her fault. She would scream and shout for help, to call the police. Neighbors would turn away, ignore the issue. Her own family ignored the signs, the cries for help. After a while the hitting and verbal abuse suddenly became a part of her life, she felt as if it was always something she did wrong and accepted it. Unquestionably this is just small insight of Annie’s domestic relationship. The hidden reality that the underlying commonality at the back of all varieties of abusive behaviors related to domestic violence is the reason to gain manage and strength over one 's partner thru patterns of bodily, sexual or mental abuse. According to “Domestic Violence Statistics, a woman in the United States is being beaten and assaulted every nine seconds. Based on the findings of domestic violence studies, at least one in every three women around the world have been beaten, coerced into sexual activity or otherwise abused during her lifetime. It is reported that men who as children witnessed
The masochistic relationships that Janey engages in illustrate the extent of her psychological trauma. She falls in love with abusers, over and over again, hinting at the symbolic and structural violence heteronormative patriarchy commits against women. Janey experiences various masochistic relationships that erase her explicit consent, or her explicit rejection of the abuse she endures. Of one of her violent affairs, Janey writes in her diary, “I didn’t want to