In the book,”The Program.” by Suzanne Young, Young begins with the protagonist,a seventeen year old named Sloane Barstow, who witnesses her classmate, Kendra Phillips, being taken away by a handler during school. Kendra Phillips is terrified and barely hanging on to reality. Two years ago, Sloane's brother, named Brady, committed suicide and six weeks earlier, her friend Lacey was taken by “The Program” as well as her father because she was “sick”
In an attempt to manage with the constant monitoring of their reactions to all of this, Sloane, James Murphy, and their friend Miller try to cover their emotions and act normal. Sloane and James are dealing with Brady's suicide while Miller is trying to cope with the loss of his girlfriend, Lacey,
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The novel focuses on certain behaviours that make young people more susceptible to suicide - the inability to grieve in a proper way and the lack of understanding and empathy from adults. For example, instead of helping these young people to express the emotions they are feeling over the deaths of friends or coping with intense stresses and difficult situations, The Program's very existence is pushing these teens to bury their feelings, creating more problems. "There is a pamphlet for The Program sitting next to our phone in the living room --....But to me that paper is like a threat, always reminding me of the next step if I slip up. So I don't slip up. Ever."(Young 53
When Lacey returns, Sloane is horrified at what Lacey is, "washed out", hollow and empty. Unable to grieve properly for the loss of the girl she once knew, Sloane deliberately burns her arm on their gas stove so that she can cry in her own home, in front of her parents. "...And they fuss, letting me cry as long as I want because they think I was accidentally injured. They have no idea that I'm really crying for Lacey. For Brady. And most of all, for
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"I wish that there were blood stains or tears, something to outwardly show how hurt I am. But instead it's just a pair of jeans and a pink T-shirt. Something so painfully average that it makes me hate myself."In fact this leads to a paradoxical situation where teens would rather die than be admitted to The Program and lose their memories and their identity. One of the strongest themes in this novel is that of identity. Part of who we are is our memories of people, places and experiences. But when we lose our most important memories do we lose who we are? "But The Program steals our memories. They reset our emotions so that we're brand-new, never having been hurt or heartbroken. But who are we without our pasts?" Sloane tries to explain this to her mother when she tells Sloane that James admittance to The Program will save him."Do you really think Brady would have wanted his memory erased? Nobody wants this, Mom. No one wants to be numb. They're killing us!""No!" she yells back. "You're killing yourselves. They're saving you." "...It's not just James! They'll take out parts of me. Parts of Brady. I won't even know my friends. I won't remember why I love going to the river...It's because that's where James first kissed me. Did you know that? That's where he first told me he loved me. And now they'll take that from him and he won't remember. He won't even
When all the money that they saved up got taken from them Jeannette arragnge for lori to be taken to new york after she is done babbysitting for someone in the
In Michael Lehmann’s facetious Heathers, various characters display their perspectives on the complications and difficulties of navigating the dynamics of adolescence. The teenage years are known throughout American culture to be some of the most trying times in one’s life. The pressures of fitting in, being popular, and feeling loved can become so important to teens, often close to obsessions. JD is someone who sees the falsehood behind these needs and looks down on those who epitomize them. While shown in an exaggerated form, JD’s animosity towards those in the popular clique reveals itself to the extreme.
After a suicide attempt it becomes evident that she is emotionally unstable and feels trapped with no way to advance her life. A mix up with the Visa’s makes it impossible for the couple to return home for Christmas which devastates Abby because
Detective Jasmine Steele has an obsession with death trying to connect the dots believing that somehow every case that comes across her path is connected to Officer Garrison. It doesn’t matter he is dead since she is sure there is more. In her basement a wall stands as she strings the lines to connect the dots determined to solve the death of her brother and all who may be involved in shooting her. Her girlfriend, friend and therapist Frankie is afraid she’s losing her again determined to hang on to raise Jazz’s brother’s son Chase hoping for children of their own and their future. Jazz has more than an obsession as revenge plays on her mind.
Unfortunately suicide is the absolute result of conditions such as untreated depression, negative events in one’s life, stress and other occurrences. Sadly suicide rates have only been increasing (according to numbers that the story provides). Janice Mirikitani’s poem “Suicide Note” specifically expresses her struggle in pleasing her parents by emphasizing no matter how hard she tries, she simply is not good enough. Mirikitani explains in lines nine through twenty her effort to fulfill her parents; line ten mentions that if only she were a son, maybe she would satisfy her parents.
Daisy had gone to bed angry. She'd always known that her parents did awful things down in the lower levels of the facility. It was the only justification she knew of that would keep them from allowing her below. By the time she'd turned fifteen she'd started to hack into her father's files. She began to see with her own eyes through his video logs what was happening.
In the book,everyone has the same attribute’s but one twelve year old boy named Jonas. Throughout the novel,Jonas has suffer and has been misunderstood. Jonas opened his eyes to the reality of the community. This causes tears,anger,lonely’s,confused,unaware and misunderstanding. “He killed it my father killed it”,Jonas said to himself” (Lowry 188).
Leo decides to won her again to have his wife back, but her ex-fiance Jeremy is courting Paige and she dose not know why she had broken with him. When Paige wakes from a coma following a car accident she has no memory at all of the last few years of her life or of her loving husband Leo. She remembers living chose between the life she knows. A car accident puts Paige in a coma, and when she
When she learns she has cancer, this becomes too much for the boyfriend who then breaks up with her, leaving her all alone. She apparently had nobody in her life but the boyfriend. Not her mother, father, siblings, coworkers,
Sociological Paradigms A clear understanding of Donna Gaines’ Teenage Wasteland is important for the clarification of the choice of sociological paradigm in this regard. The issues and questions raised by Gaines (1990) are sensitive issues that are of great reality, even nowadays. In most cases, different reasons are raised based on how kids commit suicides, especially when they are frustrated and do not have whom to interact with to explain their pains, their wants, and their desires.
Lincoln and Jordan reach the real world and try to right what is wrong with what Dr. Merrick is doing. If Lincoln and Jordan stay and do not examine their life, their life is truly not worth
While it stirs them from the norm, it also enlightens Lilly as to what she’s missing in her life, and what she desires most in her relationship with Morgan. A connection of family and care can be easily sensed between Lilly and Morgan given how they converse about Morgan’s recent heart attack and Lilly’s nightly sleeping pills. The concern, however, comes off as cold and mandatory rather than genuine affection, highlighting the key issue in their relationship; the exhaustion of the normal. The dysfunction of their marriage comes to light even further as Parker, bleeding from the head, stumbles into their bedroom one night.
As well as exploring serious themes that teenagers can relate to such as being confronted with consequential choices about life and love that can determine their lives, even more so than in adults. I was curious on what the authors actual purpose was so I found online an interview with Forman explaining why she wrote this
This could implement teens with the idea that they should not resolve their own troubles. According to “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest a portrait of despair in on dimension” the article states “Bibbit’s ultimate failure to stand up to Miss Ratched, and his consequent suicide are designed to show us that the struggle is useless, that the best alternative is escape... yet escape in this case is no liberation but merely a gravitation away from the center of tension” (Nostrand 25). Students need to be taught that they should be capable to express their opinions in an open and safe environment rather than hiding away as seen in the characters from the novel. This expresses that those who forget their personal struggles were capable of becoming free through negative alternatives that in the long run mentally destabilize a human being.
The last task is simple. On a date set by the administrator, the victim just has to jump off a building, hang or any other means to end his or her life. Cuts, burns, asphyxiation, the list of ways by which adolescents are willing to self-harm and even die in the name of a challenge is bewildering and it makes sense to step back from the hysteria and hearsay and try to understand the psychological dynamics of a teen mind and peer pressure. Now for many the proverbial elephant in the room has transformed into a Blue Whale and the