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Thesis On Dorothea Dix

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Taking a Stand for the mentally ill Thesis Dorothea Dix took a stand by recognizing the importance of establishing mental institutions. Her philosophy saved mentally unstable people from the harsh treatments they once received in jails Background The conditions that the mentally ill lived under in the mid-19th century were unfitting. Unstable individuals were imprisoned and mistreated. People who suffered from insanity were treated worse than criminals. They were hanged from chains and whipped till they were no longer able to scream. This unjust treatment was aimed to tame mental individual from “lashing out.” Their mental conditions were unrecognized; they were forced to endure harsh “punishments” due to their mental state of mind. The stand …show more content…

She asked her students about the harsh conditions they lived under; their answer is what led to her desire to reform mental institutions. Dorothea Dix traveled over 60,000 miles in 8 years gathering information for her reports. These reports brought about changes in treatment. They also revealed that insanity was a disease, not a choice. With her detailed observations, she approached dozens of state legislatures such as: New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland,

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Dorothea Puente appeared to be the sweet old lady that couldn’t hurt a fly, but you can’t judge a book by its cover. When you open Puente’s story, you’ll find a long history of lies, manipulation, and crime. This criminal behavior all began with her troubled childhood. Born January 9, 1929 in Redlands, California, she was originally Dorothea Helen Gray. She was abused by both of her parents who died before she even turned sixteen.

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Douglass uses paradox to demonstrate that slavery degragrates the slaverholder. When Douglass under Mr. Sever’s care he described that: “He was less cruel, less profane… He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. ”(Douglass 24). Most slaveholders are characterized to be cruel and inhuman because of the whipping and the way they treated the slaves.

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They feel they can rise above their oppressors and claim back their freedom. Elie notes after the hanging, the “... soup tasted better than ever,” (pg.63). But in the last hanging described in the book, another boy is convicted, the pipel. He is hung, but he doesn’t have enough weight to support the noose, and he struggles for over half an hour, “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.

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The prisoners had seen and experienced so much brutality, endured repeated beatings, and humiliated beyond imagination, so one more death did not affect them. Their emotions hardened to the point of being non-existent… or so they thought. Although the prisoners seemed hardened and unaffected by death, a different hanging did deeply affect them.

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For many, death was the only option to end their misery. Likewise, the repercussions of resistance were bearable, but so brutal. “The rising was suppressed, bloody punishments dispensed,” Rediker stated (Rediker, 19). The moment they were caught jumping overboard or trying to rebel against the ship’s company was the moment the punishment began. Whippings lasted until some slaves were dead, or captives were flogged for punishment.

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‘’ They were frequently whipped when least deserving, and escaped whipping when most deserving it.’’ (page 18). Douglass captures the audience by using parallelism to explain how the slaves was regularly whipped. Douglass use of parallelism displayed how slavery was inhuman. Douglass again uses parallelism to show how slavery was heartbroken by describing how the overseers didn’t care.

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Patient sufferers! Behold your dearest rights crushed to the earth! See your sons murdered, and your wives, mothers and sisters doomed to prostitution. In the name of the Merciful God, and by all that life is worth, let it no longer be a debatable question whether it is better to choose Liberty or death.” We can see the frustration over the abuse of the children, wives, sisters, and even mothers of these men.

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Punishments are dealt freely and in some cases without real reasoning, rather as a way to inforce superiority of the oppressors. “I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip” (Wiesel 57). Young Wiesel is receives twenty-five lashes by a whip, for merely being at the wrong place at the wrong time when searching desperately for the possibility of a scrap of food. Cruel punishments for no crime torture to keep men silent. The lashes were used as a threat, torture to enforce that he is the slave, forced to work or die, and Idek as the Overseer, watching close with a whip and an iron fist.

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They moaned in agony and lashed out wrathfully with their inflamed eyes. Their hair dampened with sweat from the torture as they were being pinned with needles darting from every direction. Among them I spotted the King of Pop, Michael Jackson himself. The affluent and harmonious life he once led was now being reduced to a seething torture as his skin was being pierced by spikes continually. Moving through that area we came upon offenders of woman, who once held a position of power and wealth were now subject to animal behavior.

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She spoke in front of an all-male audience saying, “I came as the advocate of the helpless, forgotten, insane, men and women held in cages, cellars, stalls, and pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience! (“Prison and Asylum Reform”)” She went on the platform in front of the Massachusetts Legislature, in 1841, though the audience didn’t think much of Dorothea, until she began to describe the living conditions of the mentally ill and how they were treated. She was able to gather evidence to support her case by going to prisons, workhouses, almshouses, and private homes, to show they appalling abuse (“Prison and Asylum Reform”).

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Like worms, the sickest prisoners were writhing around in the front row; while behind, the ones who could almost stand used fitter prisoners as their support, gripping onto them as if their life depended on it. Some prisoners had eyes that were haunted with the deaths they witnessed daily, while others had eyes which were hollow and devoid of any emotions. The prisoners’ eyelids drooped so low that they appeared to be sleeping standing up. Drool seeped out the corner of their lips, frothing at the point of exit, oozing down to their untamed beards and mixing with dirt and dried flecks of blood. Their cock rags, which acted as a blanket to preserve what little dignity they had left, hung haphazardly on their bony hips.

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His combination of appeal and troupes proved to be effective when Leopold and Loeb were gifted life in prison rather than a rope. His plea became an avenue for the digression of capital punishment by creating a sense of shame and sadness in his audience, a result of his ethos and pathos. Darrow’s rhetoric directly saved the lives of two young men as well indirectly saved the lives of many more by creating a negative connotation towards the death

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