assignment 9

Zichen Zhang 9

Zichen Zhang

Professor: Michael Buckhoff

ENG106B

March 06, 2019

Introduction

Life is always beautiful because it always brings changes through novelty in learning, experiences, and knowledge. This biography is also is written by James Brown which is showing the harsh realities of life and cruel aspects of this society. For example how people suffer from social problems and how addiction is destroying the young generation. Not only addiction but childhood experiences also crucial in terms of mental and psychological growth of children which largely damage by marital relations of parents. Biography is describing the hardships of the writer and is providing a picture of problems. The mixture of formal and informal language is described the disturbance of childhood and interfamilial issues which leads children toward psychological problems which ultimately cause depression, suicide and issues in their marital life.

Central Arguments:

At page 189, he said:”Yet inside we are scared because we know this hope is fleeting and that the better life we imagine for ourselves may just be another illusion“. Here he used quite formal language but at different places he used informal language. Here he is defining his hope about life and the sentence is defining his pessimitic thinking about better life. He define better life with the word of illusion that it is just imagination but actually better life is not existed. He cared about her very much and wanted to make her happy, but he was always worried about failure. This is a central argument because in most places he talks about his fears, and his concerns are the essential elements of his life. In his childhood, he faces the financial, psychological and social problems but after this mental fight he still tried to make her wife happy for a successful marital life, but he found him unsuccessful and face breakup with his wife.

At some places, the author used very formal language to express his ideas thoughts and emotions or experience from life. At page 174, he says, “we destroy the ones we love as surely as we destroy ourselves“, the most fundamental problem in his life, because he faced the end of his family. This statement is although not depicting the clear definition of love. He was afraid of failure and tired of the struggle to relax his life and make his family or life partner happy, but in the end, he decided to end his life because he accepted his failure. Here author was using very formal language to explain his learning from life. In this statement, he is talking about his decision, at once he decided to undergo psychotherapy and accept it as a choice like death, but at the same time, he claimed that it would be a safe place where he could relax, but also feeling nervous because he accepted that he is a failure. He also said that he did not regret his struggle because he has only one satisfaction in his life that he tried to solve the problems and strive to have a better experience, but it was a misfortune that he could not succeed.

Summary of Book

James Brown wrote a book about his personal life, Los Angeles, which is a good description of different social, psychological and family problems. This book narrates a situation about the suicide of a sibling and his own life. Various social and cultural issues are discussed, such as alcohol and drug abuse, as well as family issues such as divorce and, most importantly, economic collapse. This book explains how can a person fights for his life and what kind of problems he would encounter in life. In this book, author James Brown tells about his personal experience, because such issues were also a part of his life.

This is an autobiography, describing how the author's life is fragmented and he continually tries to solve the problems of life. He struggled with alcohol, financial, and family problems. The book is to clarify his story, to represent the redemption of his form of narrative, he tries to leave his past, tries to make him invariably beautiful in the present, but he again faces problems and indulges in the many psychological problems caused by alcohol. In this book, he USES black humor, which is a well-written autobiography. It is arguably one of the best autobiographies because this describes the dark side of social and cultural issues.

He divides his autobiography into many chapters, each representing a different story of a different problem and a different struggle. His use of informal language affected the writer's use of his expression, and he didn't even change his vocabulary. He never tried to leave a positive impression on his readers by modifying the style, but his current vocabulary describes the more precise meaning of his life and the struggle with it. These words best explain his emotions, feelings, and frustrations in the situation of life. The book defines the situations where the author failed and made sad memories, such as when, at the age of five, he remembered a place where his mother set the fire. This autobiography is a clear illustration of the harsh realities of life and how one recalls the good things one loves. The author's story is the best example of “change or death,” so in the end, the author chooses death because he believes that if you cannot change or fail to improve, you should choose death.

The author tried to write, but like other areas of his life, he failed. Most importantly, although all the chapters are interrelated, they all describe his failure to manage his own life. He is afraid of the dark side of his life, which is caused by his drug addiction. In the snapshot, he talks about his memories, some good and some painful moments, when his family was broken. After that, he felt lonely. He appears as a young professor. However, he is still frightened by the darkness of his life. However, he still faces his life and the broken events in his life.

This book is about the author's accurate portrayal of life, both his single life and his married life. In Daisy, he describes his attempts to make his marriage work, but he failed again and again in different situations. Mainly, when he bought the pig for his son to make him happy but was unable to make him happy. This chapter describes his married life which was also full of troubles and problems. The most positive point is that although the book did not achieve commercial success at the same speed, it was a personal success because it taught us that a person might encounter many troubles in life. In this book, the author writes about his main problem of addiction or drug abuse, which is a lesson for the new generation on how this problem can lead them to a bundle of troubles. He tried to conquer his life, he believed in life, so until the end he struggled with his problems and problems, but he still failed.

Fair Based Arguments

In this book, the author not only introduces his personal life in the form of autobiography but also present a positive side of life; he portrayed everything in a very informal way, using very clear vocabulary. The book is almost neutral on gender-related issues, but in the same place, the author presents the feminist, because he discusses the problems faced by his mother, when he visits his mother, men stare at his mother. That was his childhood memory, so he couldn't understand why people began to treat his mother like this. On page 23, he writes, "I saw several men staring at my mother. They were standing at the corner of the bus stop, and one of them was whistling.” This statement is depicting that Author was not biased but he is just confused about the people.

For the rest of the book, the author is neutral because he didn’t discuss gender differences. That means he used arguments based on fairness. His language is entirely objective, he talks about him instead of blaming others, does not discuss the political agenda, but he only addresses some cultural and social issues, which are very important to reach the government, they need to develop policies such as addiction and equal rights for men and women.

Reflection and Interviews

According to personal experience, this is an excellent biography, it describes the negative things in life, but I think there is always struggle, everyone has at least one positive thing in life, it can help one get rid of problems. The author didn't succeed. He just needed to be positive and confident.

On the other hand, I agree that addiction always harms every aspect of life, whether it is family life, professional life or social life because addiction directly affects people's psychological and emotional states and ultimately leads to mental health problems. For example, in this book, the author also experiences many mental health problems, which may be due to his inheritance from his mother, or may be due to his drug abuse.

When I discuss this with my peers, most of them think that his emotional and psychological distress causes almost all of the author's problems. Secondly, he saw many questions from his childhood, which led to his low self-esteem, his addiction and other mental health problems, such as stress, anxiety, and frustration, which is why he did not establish a strong relationship with his wife. ‘‘As once she said: You look like hell.” He explains his pain for his married life as:

“My wife hasn’t heard from me since I left Friday night. What we fought about, I don’t remember, but I imagine that it had to do with money. It always seems to be about money at first and then turns into something else.”

According to many experts, this book is a powerful example of life's problems. From a psychological point of view, it shows how people experience mental illness, especially in children of mentally ill parents. Rastus Martin thought that a book was creative and introduced it to his class. This is the best example of creative writing skills, he says, because the book has a strong ability to engage readers and gives an excellent example of the troubles in life.

The book argues that childhood events have a strong influence on personality, and studies support the idea that if parents have a mental illness, it affects their children (Hollis, Falcona, and Martin). Another important argument is that “if you can't live, death is a choice.” According to research and psychology, depression can lead a person to do suicide (Bruhn, Dombroski, and Parker). The book claims that the author was facing a problem because of his addiction research, which also supports the idea that addiction can also lead your life towards problematic situations (Fotopoulou and Parks).

Works Cited

Bruin, WändiBruine de, et al. "Late‐life Depression, Suicidal Ideation, and Attempted Suicide: The Role of Individual Differences in Maximizing, Regret, and Negative Decision Outcomes." Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (2015): 363-371. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bdm.1882.

Fotopoulou, Maria and Tessa Parkes. "Family solidarity in the face of stress: responses to drug use problems in Greece." Journal Addiction Research & Theory (2017): 326-333. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/16066359.2017.1279152.

Hollis, Chris, et al. "Annual Research Review: Digital health interventions for children and young people with mental health problems – a systematic and meta‐review." The Journal of Child Psychology (2017): 474-503. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcpp.12663.