Youth

Mary, as I will refer to her in this paper for the purpose of confidentiality has lived in my neighborhood for many years. Mary is a 14-year-old black adolescent girl and is currently an eighth-grade middle schooler who attends hayfield secondary school. She lives with her mother, father and older sister. At first I was worried she wouldn’t open up to me since we were not close but luckily that was not the case. She willingly answered all my questions honestly and although she often has short answers when I asked her to elaborate she did. In the end Mary and I ended up having an amazing conversation. Despite the fact that at times Mary gave me short answer with these answers that connected to topics and theories that we studied in this class. Mary focused primarily on her family, and friends/friendships and school during our interview. She seemed more hesitant to describe herself.

Unintentionally, Mary and I were able to discuss the family systems theory during the interview. The family systems theory is a perspective on family functioning that focuses on the interconnections and interactions among different family relationships. Adolescence is considered a time period of constant change within a family. This change has been especially drastic in Mary’s family as her older sister moved out of her house and began college this year. Although I knew this prior to the interview, I was curious to see how Mary felt her home life had changed since her sister left and was sure to ask her about it directly. Mary said that her house was quieter and, since they were all busy and her sister and father were away a lot, it is harder to get together as a family now. I asked her clarifying questions and realized that Mary’s father is away on business for typically a week at a time; therefore, Mary and her mom spend the most time together. Due to the order in which Mary listed her family it appears she is closest to her mother. Mary being closest to her mother is expected since they spend the most time together; but regardless, studies have shown that typically children have closer relationships with their mothers. This research has determined that adolescents usually have very different relationships with their mothers and fathers despite the individual’s gender.

However, Mary described her family as close because they have previously spent a lot of time together, but later in the interview she added that recently they have not spent as much time together because they are all very busy. Mary didn’t seem too concerned; instead, she considered this a good thing. Sarah believes that her relationship with her family will become closer in the future, despite the fact that the amount of time they were spending together was decreasing. I found this intriguing so I asked her to elaborate, “Because when I leave the house and when my mother is gone I think it will be even better when we see each other, or when we talk to each other on the phone. I think it will be more special.” Little did mary know, she was stating exactly what studies have shown. While conducting, studies regarding parent-adolescent interactions, researchers concluded that the healthiest families are those that permit the adolescent to develop a sense of autonomy while staying emotionally connected to the family.

Mary’s response also alludes to the idea of autonomy. Mary’s comment about leaving the house relates to detachment and individuation. Detachment is referred to as the process where adolescent sever emotional attachments to their parents in psychoanalytic theory. According to psychologist’s detachment is not ideal. As previously mentioned, studies show that adolescents should remain emotionally connected to their family; thus, individuation would be better for the adolescent’s mental health. Individuation is the gradual, progressive process of increasing an individual’s sense of being an autonomous, independent person. Individuation allows adolescents to have close family relationships where adolescents are encouraged to develop and assert their individuality healthily.

With Mary’s description of her family and her freedom to participate in extracurricular activities, Mary will likely develop a healthy individuation. Asking Mary about the change in the family dynamic after her older brother left for college also gave insight into her relationship with her sister. It has been found that relationships among siblings often change during adolescence and an adolescent’s relationship with his or her sibling is affected by the quality of his or her relationship with their parents. Since Mary has a good relationship with her parents it would be expected that she would also have a good relationship with her older sister. After our conversation about her family, Sarah and I began discussing her school. Mary goes to hayfield secondary school, a suburban public school located in Alexandria, VA Mary stated that social and economic status is most dividing within the school. It has been found that socioeconomic status is an extremely powerful influence on educational achievement. Adolescents from a higher social class generally have higher academic achievements and longer educational attainment. This academic achievement is based on standardized tests of scholastic ability while knowledge and educational attainment refers to the number of years of schooling completed by an individual. This reflects the fact that individuals’ levels of achievement are affected by the social context in which they develop. Thus, the adolescents that come from homes where their parents value and expect scholastic success are more engaged.

While most People use drugs to help, some choose to abuse them. This is what leads to crime, and it affects our kids and society. The increasing phenomenon of drug abuse in society impacts American society in ways that economically cost society almost $100 billion a year. Illegal drug use has to stop! It hurts the society, it hurts us, and mainly, it hurts the user. Drug users feed of society’s money, insurance, and taxes. If we let this behavior continue the crime rate will shoot sky high. Drug use has increased over the years at an alarming rate and can be fatal to a person’s health.

In this paper, I haven’t chosen to elaborate on any particular drug; just drugs in general and the effects they have on our society and our youths. A survey was conducted and showed that most people found it to be true that youths between the of 14-22 use recreational drugs. Recreational drugs are not limited to any particular group in society, meaning that a very wide variety of people choose to use the drugs; including teenagers, parents, business people, and often very dedicated students.

As we possess an interest in how drugs affect a number of social groups. These groups range from teens to high-class elderly individuals who will have different reasons. It is generally known that most drugs do have negative effects on people. No matter race, sex, or age. Addiction is blind Drugs are substances used without medical supervision to alter a person’s feelings, or behavior, especially teens with a family history of substance abuse. Most drug use begins in the preteen and teenage years.

During these years, teens are faced with difficult tasks of discovering their self-identity, learning to cope with authority, and searching for something positive that would give their life meaning. One of the most important reasons of teenage drug usage, is peer pressure. This is what represents social influences that effect teens. It could have a negative or positive effect, depending on a person’s social group. References The Journal of Early Adolescence, Vol. 14, No. 1, 24-48 (1994), Retrieved August 4, 2009 from http:/drugsandyouth. adolescence. com

Throughout this poem there is a theme of mourning and funeral. In the first stanza it is almost sarcastic with instruments of war conducting a service on the battlefield for their victims. The guns become ‘passing-bells’ and shells become ‘demented choirs’. The second stanza takes us back home where the true mourners are. The poet speaks of how ‘the holy glimmers of goodbyes’ will shine in the eyes of boys instead of their hands and how ‘the pallor of girls’ brows’ being the ‘pall’ of the dead. The last two lines, for me carry the greatest effect and meaning:

‘Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds’

The first is about the disappointment of people who have worried and waited for a long time and whose pain can only be expressed in small gestures or things such as flowers. The second could be interpreted in many different ways. It could be referring to the custom of drawing down of blinds but it could also be about the end of a life and hope leaving as reality settles. These two lines also delineate the pointlessness of hoping as the dead were ‘doomed’ and predestined for slaughter in the way that ‘cattle’ are in the first place.

‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ is structured like a sonnet and has a very strong rhyme which never appears to be forced and does not interrupt the meaning of the poetry. Indeed, most things about the structure and choice of language appear to be unforced as they are so well incorporated with one another and only after the second reading does one realise how carefully thought out they are.

In the first stanza, there is a large use of onomatopoeia: ‘stuttering’, ‘rattle’, ‘patter’, ‘wailing’. This has the effect of bringing the reader to the battlefield. Wilfred Owen has personified the warfare and made the rifles ‘stutter’ and the shells ‘wail’. He has also made them come to life; guns cannot be angry and neither can shells be ‘mourning’. This forms an image in the first stanza that is slightly ‘demented’ and disturbing. He often repeats vowel sounds and uses alliteration throughout the poem. In ‘the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle’ the ‘a’ sound is repeated along with the alliteration of the ‘t’s.

The words of the poem are cleverly chosen to heighten the expression of the poem in the way it is read. For instance, in the quotation about the rifles above, the alliteration he has chosen to make makes the sound interrupted and quickens the pace. This also reminds of the panic and rushing of war. In the final lines the words are not ones that can be said quickly: ‘flowers’, ‘patient’, ‘minds’, ‘slow’, ‘blinds’. This dramatically slows the pace of reading and makes them more expressive because it makes the reader think that the poem also dies with the soldiers or the hopes for the soldiers’ lives.

What is interesting is that there are no phrases that bind this poem to the First World War. Of course, it was written about it, but if given to a reader who did not know about Wilfred Owen or his works, they could think it was about any or all wars after the invention of the rifle. The poem does not mention trenches or gas. ‘These who die as cattle’ are not necessarily British, neither are they necessarily of any side in war; they are the collective dead. ‘The guns’ are not our guns or their guns.

In the preface for a book of poems he intended to publish, Wilfred Owen wrote ‘My Subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.’ ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is unique in that the pity is not only for the soldiers of the First World War, but also for those who suffered the loss of people they loved. It can be raised to a universal level where it comments on the shame and futility of all wars. In his other poetry, there is often blame involved but in this poem he evokes an air of sadness and waste only. There is genius behind the phrasing of it, but it is almost hidden because of its perfection.

“Who longs to charge and shoot,

Do you my laddie.”

This jingoistic wartime poem by Jessie Pope ignites Owen’s anger at these false impressions of war. This is evident in such poems as Dulce et Decorum est, originally penned towards Pope, hence the initial title, To a Certain Poetess. Owen’s “senses were charred” at the sight of the “suffering of the troops”, such accusations about the nature of warfare fuelling the malice of his work. Owen never openly retaliates, instead opting to include his resentment towards writers like Pope in his poems. Owen frequently conveys his convictions of lost youth in Anthem For Doomed Youth by referring to “the hands of boys”, evidently refusing to acknowledge the maturity of the men.

Owen’s numerous references to religious symbols heightens the effects of his poems. In Anthem, we hear the “demented choirs of wailing shells.” Angelic choirs are ironically reversed as Owen negates Christian ritual as being unfitting for those who die amid screaming shells. In Mental Cases, we also bear witness to Biblical images, asking if we are:

“Sleeping, and walk hell

But who these hellish?”

Owen often compares war to Hell, comparing soldiers to creatures undergoing eternal torment, “Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows”. This adds to the created impression of those driven mad by war, as he asks if the “multitudinous murders” these men have committed has doomed them to Hell. Owen insists these soldiers are not to blame, for ‘we’ dealt them this “tormented” fate. Anthem is a similar reversal, where Owen utilizes heavenly elements, “orisons”. Yet, these spiritual references are used negatively: the only true regret is the “holy glimmers of goodbyes” in the dying soldiers’ eyes. The gloriousness of Heaven and God is ignored, extending the distressing impact of the poem on the reader, as similar devilish imagery is used in other poems, such as the gas victim’s “devil sick of sun” face in Dulce. This imagery is so contorted it is unearthly, and seemingly impossible – just as the devil becoming tired of sinning is impossible. Owen’s verbal images are parallel to artwork of the time, in particular Otto Dix’s Assault Under Gas, shown below.

In this art piece, Dix mirrors the tortured, hellish scenes of Dulce, with the cries of “Gas!” almost audible. The visual imagery suggests the mental effects of the attacks on the soldiers, highlighted by the colour grey – as if life had been drained from them. Owen would have been aware of this, as he was treated at Craiglockhart Hospital for shellshock, amongst men whose “slumbers were morbid and terrifying.”

In Futility, the image of the Sun is frequently used. It is often associated with life and its joys, however, Owen is very sarcastic in his reversal of the sun, first writing:

“If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.”

Owen then goes on to criticise the Sun, labelling it as useless. He asks why we are created and given warm life, when war destroys everything of value:

“O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?”

Owen also adopts animal imagery to his poems to further the displayed messages. In Anthem, Owen’s opening line contains the powerful simile comparing soldiers as those, “who die as cattle?” referring to the high numbers of dead soldiers, especially young soldiers, being cut down in their prime, just as cattle would. Owen suggests they were grown for a specific reason (to fight), and killed once they had met their purpose (being slaughtered on the battlefield). In Owen’s first draft of Anthem, written, with guidance from Siegfried Sassoon, in Craiglockhart, he stressed the “cattle” reference as an emotional jeer at the overly ambitious generals who used the men as cannon fodder.

The parallel to animals is used to great effect. In Dulce et Decorum est, Owen details the men who “had lost their boots, limped on, blood-shod.” “Boots” and “shod” remind us of the horses used in the war, who had iron-shod shoes – portraying men as if they were beasts of burden, slumbering forward with heavy loads on their back – the worry and terror of what would face them weighing the men down. We see the effects of such an affliction in Mental Cases, where the “jaws that slob their relish” disparage “us who dealt them war and madness” by “pawing”. Such quotes accentuate the dehumanisation of these men that once “sang their way”, signalling the end of their transition into “rocking” wrecks.

Owen recreates the horrors of war through his gruesome graphic imagery, particularly in Dulce’s “green sea”, where the “flound’ring” of the victim “smothers” his dreams. The realisation of such a sight is alarming to the reader. Even in Owen’s time, such a description would shock the reader into picturing the “sick of sin hanging face”. Owen’s passion displays the real effects of such a grim and “monstrous” war, trying desperately to erase the false screen created by such jingoistic writers as Pope.

One of Owen’s tendencies is to incorporate intense sounds to support the potent imagery:

“We were caught in a tornado of shells”

This extract, from one of Owen’s letters, provides insight into his writing of Anthem:

“The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells”

Owen uses his “submerged memories of warfare” to great effect, frequently applying onomatopoeia to his poems – the “stuttering rifle’s rapid rattle” in Anthem, and the “batter of guns” in Mental Cases. The powerful resonance of the weapons intensifies the empathy the reader has for the “sacrificed men”, as the hellish scene recreates the “rattling” in our own ears, as if we, the reader, were there. In Futility, a direct contrast is apparent, as the “whispering of fields at home” signifies the sharp difference between the frontline action, and the calmness of Blighty.

This is a stark reminder from Owen that, whilst everything’s fine and calm in Britain, there are “full-nerved” men dying in France. The continuation of Anthem’s onomatopoeic clatters is mirrored most notably by Mental Cases’ “batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles”. The rhyming extends Owen’s vivid ideas by suggesting that, as well as fighting and seeing the misery of comrades falling, the sounds of the “multitudinous murders they once witnessed” replay constantly in their minds, reminding them of the torment they met.

In Dulce, we can ‘hear’ the “guttering choking” and “gargling” of the “hanging face”, as well as visualize the grotesque scene, subjecting the reader to view the true nature of war further. As well as applying haunting adjectives to his work, Owen utilizes pace to maintain his high level of passion. This is most evident in Dulce, where each verse is different in speed. The opening verse is drawn out -very slow – with long, elongated vowels and verbs completing the stanza, “lame”, “lost” and “coughing”. This mirrors the fatigue of the soldiers, who would be deprived of sleep and be very slow in their speech. As the poem progresses into the gas attack, a pacy, urgent tone is adopted, with the cries of “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” As Owen describes the gas victim’s painful end, the solemnly spoken words are slower, reverting back to the lingering sounds of the first verse, “writhing”. In Anthem, the “passing bells” of the funeral suggests a slow, sombre tone, as is the case with funerals. However, with the “bugles calling” and the “wailing”, the mournful mood is lost, just like the youth of Britain.

Owen often ends his poems with an accusatory conviction, a controversial one that projects his innermost feelings, chosen to express the untold truths about war, and how the patriotic campaigns to conscript men are disgraceful. In Anthem, Owen ends with:

“Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds”

This is a direct contrast to the whole poem, where Owen suggests the “monstrous anger of the guns” accompanies them in death. Instead of his habitual ending of a “Lie”, Owen’s ending is surprisingly peaceful, displaying a compassion for the dead previously unseen in his other poems. Mental Cases, Futility and Dulce, however, all oppose the somewhat ‘upbeat’ ending. Dulce ends with

“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.”

Owen flat out accuses the old saying, and the certain poetess, that to die for your country is not sweet and meet. Owen even goes as far as ironically rhyming “glory” and “mori”, as to satirically jeer at Jesse Pope, completely contradicting her. Owen asks if “my friend, you would not tell…the old Lie”, passionately addressing the reader, but also the frank direction at Pope not to print her jingoes, ironically donning her “friend”. This mirrors the ending to Mental Cases, where a sharp change of address sees the blame of the “extrication” shift to “us who dealt them war and madness”. Owen deliberately develops the poem to the startling climax, enveloping the blame around society as a whole, and not just certain poetesses.

Dulce and Mental Cases match in descriptions, where the futile attempts to “pick” and “snatch” combine to provide the reader with an overwhelming sense of grief, at having sent these men off to war. Owen’s ideas mean that we, the modern reader, feel this guilt at having sent innocent youths to their untimely deaths, when we had done nothing. However, contextually, the reader would have read this, and known that they had done wrong, becoming guilt-ridden at their mistake. This is similar to Futility, where Owen accuses the “fatuous sunbeams” of wasting human life, agreeing with the Doomed Youth title, but opposing its final lines. Futility describes how men are killing others, ending life, when we should not be ordering the termination of it – undoing God’s work, when it is not our right to.

Owen’s feelings towards death, and the ending of life, are the fundamental issues in his poems. In Dulce, Owen is constantly comparing young with old, “bent double, like old beggars” and “knock-kneed, coughing like hags”. Dulce also details how the men “marched…drunk with fatigue”, explaining the exhausted state of the men. These three quotes are shocking, as these men are young, energetic men, but they’re being reduced to quivering wrecks – suggesting men age quicker in the trenches, due to the horrors they see, and what they have to experience. This is a direct juxtaposition, where the young are dying before the old (A role reversal), but are seen as being ‘old’ themselves. Owen’s visual ideas on death are nothing short of morbid, describing:

“at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”

In Dulce and Mental Cases, Owen adopts a macabre approach to extend the demons of these men. In Dulce, the “white eyes” of the “hanging face” suggest death is upon the man, and that he is looking at the men to choose his next victim. This idea is carried into Mental Cases, where there are men “whose minds the Dead have ravished”. Owen suggests, through a conviction of anxiety, that death is omnipresent, and that the worst fear is to become a “purgatorial shadow”.

Owen writes to display one main conviction: that the false pretences of war are just that – false. By writing about such shocking and disturbing issues, Owen breaks the fabricated lies and makes his feelings known by adding ambiguous sentences to his poems, “marching asleep” – fatigue of war, or asleep to the glorious propaganda that recruited them? Owen’s poems are full of truths, however controversial they seem, and he projects his convictions and feelings any way he can, regardless of consequences.

A Bad Day in my Youth When I was 11 years old, I was like all boys of this age; I loved to do what ever my parents forbade me to do. Now, I understand that they had a reason to warn me about many things. One of them was climbing places where children shouldn’t be. I couldn’t resist climbing trees or buildings just like a monkey. It was a nice, summer day and we lived in Odessa, Ukraine. Ukraine buildings formed courtyards. My friend and I played in the yard. The yard was small with garages and a big tree in the back.

We climbed everywhere we could: tree, the roofs of the garages and the attics. We were like adventurers; we tried to imagine being Indiana Jones the man from the movie I saw on TV. I was impressed by his adventures. We knew that no one would tell us to stop because our parents were shopping, that day, and we stated with my best friend’s grandmother. She was a chubby and pleasant woman, 78 or 79 years old, and couldn’t always see what we were doing. So we took advantage of that old woman who couldn’t really know what we were doing.

When we climbed the tree; my friend accidentally stepped on my arm and I fell and broke my leg and right hand. At first, I didn’t feel anything because of shock, but then, severe pain pierced the broken bones. My friend’s grandmother called the ambulance. I was scared when, in the hospital, doctor put a cast on my leg and hand. I imagined what my mom was going to say, I was afraid that she would be angry but she wasn’t. She said “I told you a million times you shouldn’t play like this and that, one day, you would break neck. You are lucky that it’s not a broken neck.

Please don’t play games like this anymore. ” I understood that mom was right and was trying to warn and protect me; the result of my disobedience was a broken finiteness’s. I was in a leg cast for 6 months and had to be home-schooled. My arm was in a cast for 3 months, but now it’s fine. Now I always to do what my parents tell me to do, because I know that they want to do the best for me. They are older; they have life experience and they know what way is better. Once, I did what I wanted to do. I will not make this mistake, again.

Charming and Intellectual beyond this universe. I am Traveon, an angel blessed and hell risen youth. As the Prince of California, I look to expand my territory, and make Arizona a part of my domain. I am the son, of Timothy Presley and Jamie Freeman. I have helped young children, build dreams, not even they could destroy. I have helped, the Queen of my birth, through many obstacles in which she too, has returned the favor. What you see on the outside, is not, what is on the inside.

You see tattoo’s, and there shall be many more. My body is, and for ever will be, marked up so those who seek to see my inside shall understand, this sacred soul. I have many skills, and am known as the best. A beast on the gridiron, I am called and known, as a Goblin. When I step on the field, I transform. I become Ferocious, Powerful, and Callous. Not the biggest, but I have proven to be ticking time bomb, test me, and feel my wrath. l, Assassin of the holy ground, have been noticed, for my destruction.

With a full-ride scholarship, I wait for more offers. My inferiors talk sweet in my face, and curse me behind my back. Jealous of my accomplishment, I pay them no mind, whether it is good or bad, it’s Just fuel to my fire. No matter what they say, I will never back down, or never lose focus, because they cannot deny, nor will they get in the way of my mission, Dominance. I close my eyes, and listen, as Lucifer plans to lead me in the wrong direction, he loathes my success.

It does not phase me in any ay, for the creator of all man, has given me enough strength, to walk past his facile and futile attempts to fluster me, and knock me off course. I continue in the same direction as I started, straight, the fork in the always remain in this direction, no matter how often my father neglects me, or how often he denies ever forgetting me and blames our separation, on the golden princess that raised me. He only wants me to carry his name, he knows what IVe become, and only sees that my future is promising.

I hold his blood, but I have already found my father, Blaine Freeman. I will no longer let the dread of my familys drama decide my dedication or failure, my happiness or my sorrow, I have overcome it. Pain is something I do not express, I hate the pity, I only wish to pursue my dreams, I will not pretend or be humble, and I will make it to the top. It will not take too much longer though; I am already way ahead of everyone else.

Influences on Belizean Youths As we the year passes by it is less common to see any youth showing how proud they are of their culture by dressing and practicing the aspects that their culture represents. It is more common to see the influences that other countries have brought into our country and which have caused a cultural erasure especially in the lives of us the young one. However, society tends to see these changes and take in mind as it doesn’t affect our origins and from where we initiated.

Presently today it is very rare to see any youth dressing according to their culture, listening to cultural music and eating cultural food that once used to be the delicacy and cuisine of Belize. For the way of dressing of the youths in Belize, there is more skinny jeans and miniskirts than garifuna headbands and maya mipils. The clothing used here in our country has been influenced by the clothing weared in the United States or other foreign countries. It is visible anywhere because the only ones wearing cultural dressings are the elderly who live in villages but rarely anyone living in towns and in the city.

At school you can see that every youth will be dressing fashion according to other societies of the foreign. Now a day’s young girls and boys only speak about Emporio Armani and E- hardy. At stores you can see that there are only important clothing brands on sale of which the designers are foreign and very famous. Music plays an important role for a young adult because that is the way they identify themselves. In this generation most youngsters will listen to hip-hop, rap, regeaton, rock, reage, etc. but for sure never any Rancheras. The closest cultural music found in our country is Punta.

Closest I say because today Punta has been mixed with foreign music in order to form Punta rock. The present artists in our country would be Supa-G, Gilhary 7 and Youth Connection Band, which all of them base their music in Punta. Also the influence of music can be seen in our same Belizean arists. Those who participate in Duets and K-TV Latino would only perform foreign songs and never any cultural presentation. It is sadly that our most famous artist, Andy Palacio, who stuck to his culture and sang in Garifuna his Punta songs, has passed away. Will there be any other who would want to follow Andy’s example?

Even the food here in Belize has changed as the years passes by. The influences in Belizean diets comes from England, the US and Mexico especially for the youths. At school you can see that students prefer to buy food that is not Belizean such as enchiladas and quesadillas. The most common Belizean cousin that has not lost popularity in our country is the rice and beans although some still prefer Chinese burger or fry chicken. It is true that foreign cousins have a delicious flavor and are very appetizing but so is the food prepared that once our elderly used to cook for us, being 100% Belizean.

Belize is a very beautiful home land for us Belizeans and we should appreciate such heritage given to us by our ethnic groups. It is very clear that our culture is being left behind and that the influences of other countries are impacting our youths. The way they dress, the music they listen to and the food they eat all can be seen that there is foreign influence. Belizean youth must not forget that they form part of an ethnic group and that they represent the future of Belize so if they forget their origins so will Belizean history.