Reaction to The Lobotomist Peter E. Doria Gateway Community College The television program The American Experience on PBS ran a section on a man named Walter J. Freeman; a doctor who was the best known for mainstreaming a controversial surgical procedure called a lobotomy. The surgical procedure was used to treat mental illness by severing the frontal lobes of the brain. It was believed mental illness was caused by physical defects in the brain (Goodman, 2008). Freeman believed that he had found the cure for all mental illness, the lobotomy. This in hind sight was a radical procedure that was combined with an individual who was driven by a hunger to become famous and desire for notoriety to create a monster comparable to the likes of Josef Mengele and Carl Clauberg.
A critic from the Literature Network said “Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" consists of a monologue in which an accused murderer protests his sanity rather than his innocence. The point of view is the criminal's, but the tone is ironic in that his protestation of sanity produces an opposite effect upon the reader. From these two premises stem multiple levels of action in the story. The criminal, for example, appears obsessed with defending his psychic self at whatever cost, but actually his drive is self-destructive since successful defense upon either implied charge— of murder or of criminal insanity— automatically involves admission of guilt upon the other (1).” In summary, when Poe creates two personalities within one character, one part of the character will blame the other part of the character. Eventually on part of the character will give in and accept everything.
Once an LSD consumer, Ken Kesey, defines the importance of freedom throughout his world renowned Post-Modern novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. One element of Postmodernism in the novel, is the effect of society against the individual. Society and government power systems become the machine and our postmodern anti-hero rages against that machine (Bendingfield). In the story, Chief, the narrator, in the book is a damaged ex-soldier who sees the machine enemy all around him. The reader takes it as metaphor, but Chief who is a paranoid schizophrenic, sees it as reality.
• Summary: Gone Baby Gone follows the explosive case of just one missing little girl. But inside this investigation lie secrets and a labyrinthine maze of class and corruption, evil and innocence...all leading up to one man's extraordinary choice in a world where right and wrong have become blurred. (Miramax) For his first time behind the camera as a director, the actor Ben Affleck has chosen a brooding, serious drama about missing children, wayward parents and idealism lost and regained. “Gone Baby Gone” is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, who wrote the similarly themed “Mystic River,” which Clint Eastwood turned into a modern classic. If Mr. Affleck hasn’t raised his material to that rarefied level, he has taken a satisfyingly tough look into conscience, to those dark places where some men also go astray.
Chillingworth is a doctor but who is he helping? In the novel, The Scarlett Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the vengeful Chillingworth skillfully and quietly tortures Reverend Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne for their passionate affair. Just as the book states “The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficient plain path before it. It was not indeed precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread.” If this is so, how and why does he end up inflicting the psychological trauma that he does? It appears that Hawthorne infers Chillingworth initially had another plan, a plan that would not ruin Arthur Dimmesdale’s life.
Alyssa Tippens 21 September 2011 Whedon 5 Whedon-Final Written Exam “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life” (p.2). Within the novel The Great Gatsby by F, Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is, if anything, a very misunderstood man. Like every person that has ever lived, he is by no means perfect. He pushes through life in an attempt to live out his dreams and create a life different from the one he was born into. Gatsby becomes corrupted as a result of his surroundings and participates in evil things.
One of the biggest themes that the author tries to get across to the reader is that every person has good and evil in them, but they are not equal. Throughout the book, there is a huge struggle between good and evil between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. These two men are actually the same person, but Dr. Jekyll takes a potion to turn himself into Mr. Hyde so he can do evil deeds. He does this because everybody has urges to do evil things, but Dr. Jekyll could not risk losing his reputation as a “good” guy in the society that he lives in. The main question is if good and evil can be separated, or is everyone stuck between the fight of both.
To continue Kesey expression through strong-willed lead roles who differentiate from the crowd, he created the character of Randle Patrick McMurphy, to showcase his own rebellious ideas into, “a defiant man in a madhouse where madness was the only affirming and clarifying response to the dehumanizing tyranny of an authority figure” (Great American Trip). Though the use of psychedelic drugs contributed to Keseys expression, he states that, “Drugs don’t create characters or stories any more than pencils do. They are merely instruments that help get them on the page” (Ken Kesey). It is in this novel that Kesey sets out to relay his ideas that he lives his life through. He first begins by constructing a setting of societal influence, a mental hospital.
Chapter ten The Leech And His Patient is about Chillingworth's "investigation" of Dimmesdale to clarify that he is the father of Pearl. Chillingwoth goes to extremes when he becomes "fiercely obsessed by his search into Dimmesdale's heart". When having a heated convesation with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth raises a question about "why a man would be willing to carry "secret sins" to his grave rather than confess them during his lifetime." Dimmesdale reminds Chillingworth that most men do not confess their sins and that they are rewarded peace. But Pearl shocks the men in this chapter when she and Hester show up and Pearl flicks a prickly bur and Dimmesdale.
The narrator speaks directly to the reader and opens the story by claiming that he is “dreadfully nervous” but not mad. He also maintains that he has sharpened senses due to his disease especially an abnormally acute hearing. He then tells a story to defend his plea of sanity by confessing to a murder of an old man - which basically contradicts and defeats his argument. He explains that his motivation to eradicate the old man’s existence is neither passion nor desire for the man’s possessions but rather the fear of the old man’s pale blue, vulture-like eye. He insists that he is not a madman for he carried out his scheme artfully like a criminal mastermind.