It is easier to feel sympathy than empathy about mental illnesses. Challenger Deep shows the perspective of a teenager with schizophrenia, while The Soloist shows the perspective of those around mental illness. Although schizophrenia is tough to understand, but the stories make it easier to understand what they feel. While both stories show the journey of a mental illness, The Soloist presents the viewpoint of adults, and Challenger Deep shows the perspective of the person with mental illness. Both Caden Bosch and Nathaniel Ayers have schizophrenia. They had a normal life, but they then developed mental illness that changed them forever. Their stories teach the reader about how difficult it is for a schizophrenic to live in this world. People …show more content…
His story, unlike Caden, presents the perspective of a man, a news reporter, that is trying to help Nathaniel survive. It shows the problems adults have compared to children. Nathaniel had no one to care for him so he ended up homeless, and because he couldn’t work, he could not get medication so he got worse. Schizophrenia ruins adults because of how it affects them compared to kids. He started off as a cello player that was a student at Juilliard, but ended up getting a mental illness making him “a musician with mental illness” (The Soloist). It also showed were the homeless go to get help. Nathaniel was taken to a ghetto part of town where there was a non profit institute that was helping people like him. The doctor there told the news reporter that he “literally have changed [Nathaniel’s brain] chemistry by being his friend” and the change can be seen in Nathaniel’s behavior (The Soloist). The story puts the light on how desperate the homeless with mental illnesses are. Nathaniel, sadly, never ends up getting better and the movie ends with saying that he plays his cello everyday on the streets for all to …show more content…
Unlike Nathaniel, he had a family to care for him and a home to live in. As his situation got worse, his parents noticed that he had a problem so they started to act. His parents had the money to get Caden the proper help and medication he needed, so Shusterman is able to show everyone the effects of medication on his schizophrenia. He was also able to share moments like how Caden did not “want to take this trip” or how after arriving at the hospital, having therapy that he thought were “so awful you can’t purge them from your mind” (Shusterman 103 and 151). You see what happens in a hospital and what this kids go through. Caden shared his moments of feeling like jello and told facts, like when you are on medication “you can’t get in your head, [and] you can’t dream” (Shusterman 153). His story presents the perspective of him and his thoughts. You are able to see what it is like to be in the mind of a schizophrenic. Because his parents send him to a hospital, you can see the process of him getting better. Caden, at the end, gets better and goes home to live the rest of his
The book ¨Million Dollar Throw¨ is a novel that was written by Mike Lupica in 2009. Mike Lupica is a popular sports writer who has written various books about different sports. This book is about a kid named Nate Brodie, a thirteenyearold star quarterback. Nate is a huge New England Patriots fan, but most of all he admires their quarterback, Tom Brady.
Life Sentence: Nathan Ybanez On the night of June 5,1996 in Highlands, Colorado, 15-year-old Nathan Ybanez and his friend, Erik Jensen, bludgeoned and strangled 43-year-old Julie Ybanez after being told that he was being shipped off to a Missouri Military school. The next day a police officer found Nathan in a deserted park with his mother’s corpse. Both Ybanez and Jensen were both charged with first degree murder and sentence to life without parole in the year 2000. Currently Nathan is 35 years old, the latest heard of him was in July 2013, he is still in the process of repealing his case, but he continues to voice out his opinion using the outlet known as YouTube.
To Steve, this was just another story , but little did he know that this story would turn into a friendship. Nathaniel was very startled and doubtful of Lopez at first, but he slowly developed a trust with him. Nathaniel connects through music and lives through it. As Lopez writes his first article on Nathaniel, it catches the attention of many readers. Many feel sympathy for Nathaniel and want to
The ethical stance one has as an adult is more often than not the result of the cultural conditioning that one received as a child; however, as one grows to adulthood it is necessary for one to examine one’s ethics. A way that people can be made to re-examine their values is by reading thought provoking texts such as Steven B. Oats’ “Fires of Jubilee. ”The book reviews the accounts of the life of Nate Turner, who lead a rebellion against the slave owners of South Hampton County Virginia. Fires of Jubilee strike one with the philosophical question of when if ever does one have the right to take another person’s life, while at the same time reemphasizes that it is man’s most essential nature to try and escape from any place or thing that would
In the words of Steve Lopez, “You're only as good or bad as your latest attempt to make some connection with the world.” The novel, The Soloist, by Steve Lopez is an insight to Lopez’s time helping and connecting with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless schizophrenic. When Lopez meets Nathaniel he is awed by his musical talent and soon discovers he once attended Julliard, a prestigious school of performing arts. Lopez’s story was transformed into a film produced in 2008. Lopez’s character in the book and film share similarities and differences in his personal life, attitude towards Nathaniel, and struggles that contribute to the overall theme of the novel.
Throughout the book Nic faces many challenges with drugs and people around him. The main cause of all this chaos that happens is because he started drinking and using drugs at a very young age. This led to many dysfunctions with his family and himself. Nic’s father really wanted to help Nic out when his addiction started but Nic refused to stay in the rehab centers through the whole process. Nic’s conflict with his father teaches the reader that having a drug addiction can hurt relationships with family through making one wrong decision that can affect someone for the rest of their life.
Among the many themes represented in the novel The Glass Castle, the most prominent is family hardship. Family hardship is when a family is going through severe suffering or privation. The Walls family represent the theme of family hardship because their parents weren’t caring enough for their children. This theme can be seen in the memoir written by Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle, the movie Running with Scissors and in the book No and Me. Family hardship makes a family stronger and closer to each other.
Then there are patients like Cheryl. Cheryl is a middle aged white woman, who is mostly seen dressed in sweats and t-shirts. Her hair is usually wild and untamed and she wears a pair of broken glasses, pieced together with tape. Many of these patients have experienced trauma, which may have been minor (i.e. bad grade on an exam) or extreme (i.e. sexual abuse), and may have led them to become more ill. This documentary exposes the truth behind those who suffer a mental illness and shows how they are still people who struggle with the same issues as those without a mental illness.
She also states that “we parents should act like it” too and “then maybe kids will believe” that mental health isn’t something to be ashamed of because it’s an actual illness that more people should become aware of. She also mentions that “Kip Kinkel might be out of jail and off the taxpayers tab and leading a productive life” “if only there had been a long-term intervention and medication” to help them. Overall this essay effectively represents Quindlen's standpoint on mental illness and the effects of it by it and by using similes, tone, and bias she was able to let her audience understand the seriousness of an issue many people need to become more aware
Mental illness plays a significant role in both Patrick McCabe’s The Holy City and Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Both texts are imbued with a bleak outlook on life, an outlook which is only enhanced by the rural trappings in which the characters find themselves confined; however, in each text, the darkness and austerity is undercut by lashings of black comedy. In this essay, I will discuss the authors’ representations of mental illness in their respective texts and the black comic sensibility of their writing used in tackling the topic of mental illness in their work, and the difficulties that lie in their realisations of such a sensitive subject matter. Mental illness has frequently been used before in both film and literature as a storytelling device; both The Holy City and The Beauty Queen of Leenane utilize this particular storytelling device, and the mental illness depicted in both texts inevitably, it seems, leads
Frail Bird <<<IMAGE>>> Words On A Wing by David Sanford Ridgway THE MUSIC OF WAVES The sea sings a song of love and nature nurturing me with its rumbling power humbling me as I walk in awe of the spiritual peace and amazing love that the ocean gives us and we need to love it back and not destroy its soulful serenity with the poison of pollution we spew out every day and clean the ocean as it clears our souls forever - David Sanford Ridgway FATHER Alone at a table listening to my father lecturing about business and what I should do with my life losing weight working never once congratulating me on recovery walking on my knee living on my own living in my bipolar world taking care of my own life but my father is all about himself and being in control of everyone and giving love with many conditions never reaching out and touching my love and it must
In The Soloist (2009), the beginnings of Ayers’s symptoms were shown immediately, so his prodromal stage was never portrayed: the active phase was shown first. As a child, Ayers experienced loose association and hallucinations. His loose association first appeared at his cello lesson. Nathaniel went on and on about Beethoven and his love for music, hopping from one subject to the next, merging the separate statements together (The Soloist, 2009). Still a child, Ayers’s first hallucination was seeing a burning car roll passed his window (The Soloist, 2009).
This is evident when the crew on the ship only have counterparts to the other patients in Caden’s surroundings. In his other life, he is an average teenage boy with a mother, father, and brother; he attends school and occasionally visits his two friends, Max and Shelby. As the novel progresses, the reader is provided hints that Caden’s experiences on the ship foreshadow his perception of his time in the hospital. While he is undergoing heavy medication and unaware of being hospitalized, Caden thinks, "You know you can make the pirate ship as real as anything else, because there's no difference anymore between thought and reality” (Shusterman, 75). Caden’s unique perception of the ship’s crew parallels Caden's hospital experience.
The poet successfully illustrates the magnitude with which this disease can change its victim’s perspective about things and situations once familiar to
In the last few years, the representation of people suffering from mental illness in popular culture has greatly increased, showing actual teenagers that characters and idols have real problems in everyday life. One of the literary leaders in this psychological revolution is the novel, and recent film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Throughout this story, the viewer learns about different types of mental disorders from depression, to post-traumatic stress disorder, to schizophrenia. The events that occur throughout this storyline show real-life situations and struggles that teenagers go through. Stephen Chbosky expertly handles the topic of mental illness in the novel and film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.