Analysis Of Staying Fat For Sarah Shernarby

In Wil Haygood’s essay Kentucky town of Manchester illustrates national obesity crisis he turns a spotlight onto how obesity is affecting the nation. He discusses what it is like for one family in particular to deal with obesity. Haygood also writes about a study done by Jill Day, and gives a plethora of facts on the matter.

"He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."-Muhammad Ali. In my book, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher this quote is perfect. This is about a girl who was burned when she was younger. Everyone thinks the burns are from a pot of spaghetti but only a selected few know that her dad actually did it. Sarah is so scared of her dad that she is staying in a hospital and is refusing to talk. Eric Calhoune knows the true identity if the burns and refuses to stay on the sideline. Him, his friend and his teacher get Sarah Byrnes out of the hospital to look for her mom. But Sarah's crazy dad, Virgil knows something up. After it all Virgil gets caught and Sarah lives happily with Mrs Lemry. My thesis is "who shows courage in Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes?"

When seeing the title “The Fat Girl” by Andre Dubus, I assumed it to be another story about a fat girl who would be depressed and insecure about her size. However, as I started reading, I learned that Louise, the fat girl, was not ashamed of herself and I became interested because my assumption was wrong. All the conflict about her size came from her mother and other relatives or friends. The title itself tells what the entire story is about. The entire story is about the life of “the fat girl”. The story is realistic because most girls deal with not being the unrealistic image society portrays. Moreover, this story could be used to show others who are not happy with their size to not worry about others opinions because those opinions can contribute to their unhappiness or insecurities.

that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It 's when you know you 're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” As Harper Lee once wrote, courage is something that anybody can show, as long as you forget about if you are going to lose or win and your selfish reasons and just remember why you are doing it. In “Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes” most of the characters show courage at some point so it was difficult to pick just one person. I ended up picking Sarah Byrnes because she stayed with her dad just so that no one else would get hurt. She showed courage when she was only as little girl and she saved her

In the article “The Globalization of Eating Disorders”, Susan Bordo analyzes misconceptions about stereotypes associated with eating disorders. Bordo explains that eating disorders are no longer associated with one particular race, gender, or nationality. He notes that “we are dealing here with a cultural problem. If eating disorders were biochemical, as some claim, how can we account for their gradual ‘spread’ across race, gender, and nationality?” (Bordo 642). Bordo believes that imagery and mass media are to blame for the problem. The anglo saxon idea of a perfect body causes other cultures to

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” -Elie Wiesel

“One Picture Is Worth a Thousand Diets.” The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America, by W. Charisse Goodman, Gurze Books, 1995.

Whether in delicacy or excess, gluttony is the most readily accepted of the seven deadly sins. Guinness argues both that, in the modern world, gluttony of delicacy has replaced the gluttony of excess and the proper response to this vice is courage under suffering.

Obesity remains a growing epidemic that affects people who continually overindulge, causing weight gain which affects many countries and communities around the world especially the United States. During the last couple decade obesity has doubled and threatened people 's health because of adverse habits of overeating. Due to the advancement of mobile technology, fewer individuals perform physical labor. Instead, many people work from a computer where they spend long hours sitting at a desk consuming junk food non-physicality activity that leads to obesity. Consequently, some of the expense to the community regarding how obesity occurs causing medical complications of diabetes, heart attacks, and high blood pressure which produce expense on the economy. Preventing obesity educating individuals and families through the proper eating practices to prevent childhood and adult obesity. The study of sociology regarding obesity could use the theory of structural functionalism that analyzes obesity in the United States.

Eric was also very courageous for staying Fat for Sarah. Eric was a chubby child who didn 't do any sports, then he started getting involved with swimming and as he started to love the sport he kept doing it, and as he kept doing it he started losing weight. Eric started realizing that his weight was just shedding off of his body so as it came to meal time he would eat more and more to stay fat because he wanted to stay friends with Sarah and he thought the only way he could do that was to stay fat, so every night he started eating double his real meal. “Now Sarah Byrnes is here. My best friend. I stayed fat a whole year for her” (7) Sarah wrote a letter to Eric telling him about the reason why she went to the Sacred Heart Hospital. She also was explaining how thankful she 's is to have a good friend like Eric who stayed fat for her. This letter was written on page (174-179). Eric was courageous for staying fat, because he liked this girl named Jody Mueller. Eric wanted to lose weight but he knew Sarah 's friendship was way more important than

Western society has been seized by twisted and unusual opinions about attractiveness, wellness, respectability, and hunger. Author Roberta Seid wrote the essay “Too ‘Close to the Bone’: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness” in 1994, while she was a lecturer in the Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. In the essay, Seid covers the complex issue of the society's unhealthy obsessions with food, which can cause physical and emotional destruction. Although American culture bears distorted beliefs about weight, Seid deems that health should be held as the utmost importance.

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia McLachlan is a historical fiction which takes place in a rural place, such as, the prairie sometime during the 1800’s. This book centers around characters Anna, the 12 year old narrator, Caleb, Anna’s little brother, Jacob, the children’s father, and Sarah Wheaton, papa’s new wife. Anna, Caleb and their father, Jacob are so stricken by their mother’s death that they long for the need for her void to be filled. The children soon become worried for their father because this almost seemed impossible. Anna’s father, Jacob was having a hard time raising his family and taking care of his farms’ needs after the passing of his wife, so he began to search for another wife. Luckily, Sarah, a lady from Maine, answered

In the critical period of forming her identity, Louise battles with her obesity. Criticism from her family and friends cause her to question her body image and consequently, her self worth. Louise is not the only adolescent to struggle with her appearance; with his depiction of her transformation, Andre Dubus addresses those whose view of themselves is marred by society. After years of her weight and emotions fluctuating, Louise realizes a deeper change. Through Louise’s journey, Dubus communicates that the power to change oneself emanates from one’s self control and ability to surpass societal pressure.

Schwartz’s essay is written in the satirical style using a sarcastic dry humor to appeal to its audience. He claims “if fat people are unhappy people, blame not their fat but their fellow citizens who bill them as clowns, clodhoppers [a clumsy or awkward person], cannibals, or criminals;” (Schwartz 179). This claim when read by a fat audience member may allow them to relate despite the bias because it is biased in their favor, however if Schwartz is trying to appeal to other audiences this claim comes across as not even close to what they as non fat people experience. Schwartz tells the reader to “[b]lame the kindergarten teachers, the coaches, the friends, and physicians” (179) as he claims they are the ones who start fat people on the diets that do not work. His statement does not come across as sarcasm but rather a fact he believes to be true and most people don’t see kindergarten teachers pushing children into diets. This turns off both fat and non-fat audience members because they cannot relate to or find humor in this argument. If kindergarten teachers were taken out of the statement the argument would be more believable however still not sarcastic. In an attempt to get the reader to find a personal experience to relate to his argument that fat acceptance is necessary value in our society, Schwartz says, “fat people are seen as throwbacks to a more primitive time...The modern world is passing them by.” (181). By using an image most people have seen, Schwartz effectively appeals to any audience member’s ethos. Schwartz argues that fat people are not allowed to do well in whatever they choose to do with their lives because people are too focused on their looks rather than their work ethic. He then argues that physicians are just as bad as the rest of society because, “They find fat patients distasteful… Fat

Written in the 1970s, Jennifer Traig reveals in her humorous memoir how she changed and overcame the mental and social challenges that life threw at her from childhood into adulthood. Life certainly threw her tough challenges in the forms of OCD (obsessive compulsion disorder), scrupulosity, and anorexia. . To say the least, she looked for the devil in every detail believing if she didn’t do something perfect someone would get hurt. Traig begins her book by recounting a memory where scrupulosity took over. Being a form of OCD, scrupulosity makes its “victims” have an obsession with religion, in Jenny’s case her obsession was Judaism. Although her mother is Christian and her father Jewish she found herself drawn to the rules of the Torah and its Anorexia applied to every little aspect in her life, which is where it differs from anorexics who are only worried about food. She found herself counting every calorie that came near her body and digging through encyclopedias for every element in her food. Her new coming skinniness didn’t come from her sister’s nickname of “Sister Infinity Fats” that even her parents joined in on, it merely formed on something Jenny considered a hobby. But her “hobby” became more than that after a while, thinking she would be “condemned to hell” for taking up so much room and felt guilty for eating. As Jenny neared college she desperately filled her schedule with every activity she could fit into her schedule from French club to drama club. With her schedule filled with activities and keeping up with her grades she had no time to live the “real high school experience” or as she tells it, that was her excuse. Her life had always been consumed by mental illnesses and obsessions that she had never made close friends or developed socially beside her classmates. Always feeling drawn towards France and its culture, Jenny and