Concept Blog

I’m doing this for an AP English project for a huge chunk of my final grade. I need five pieces of literature of multiple genres with the same theme. I’m going with something slong the lines of death being inescapable.

And yes, I already have “The Masque of the Red Death” by Poe. That’s all anyone at school could tell me.

Any suggestions? All I really need is a character, minor or major, who tried to get away from death, only to fail. No positive “death is valiant” views or whatever. I’m going for hopelessness. I’d like to use a play, a poem, and a novel along with the short story…and I’m really trying to avoid going with Harry Potter and Voldemorte…

Any help is much appreciated!

By: Kinkatia

I’ve suffered from depression twice before, but the duration was about 6-8 months. After my second one, I regained my zeal for life and entered high school with an overwhelming motivation to succeed and do well. A lot of my self-confidence rides on grades ( I live with my Chinese mother :P), and I worked hard and received all 96’s and above in my classes, but starting the year after I suddenly fell into my most severe depression. A few times I thought about killing myself, and almost did, but I told myself that eventually things would get better if I just held on. I read that the average duration of a depression was 8 months, but soon the year ended, and my depression wasn’t cured. My mother finally conceded to allowing me to take antidepressants (Wellbutrin/Lexopro) but she told me was ‘ashamed of having to take care of a freak.’ She doesn’t really notice or care what I do in my life anymore. I switched over to living with her because my dad had anger management problems; so my mom is a pretty negligent parent without any experience. And this year her treatment of me has only worsened, especially since my grades have gone down considerably. I have a wonderful boyfriend who’s willing to do anything for me and cares for me more than he does himself, but I’m losing hope for myself and this depression ever ending. I don’t know how to love life anymore, and be motivated to do the things I used to enjoy doing or prided on like working hard in school. Is it hopeless? I feel like I have to act around others, because I don’t want to impose my depressive feelings on them. Especially for my boyfriend; I don’t want him to feel obligated to stay with someone who is as psychologically messed up as I am. He may not notice it, but depression and hopelessness tends to be infectious, and it seeps into his everyday perspective on life and drains his emotional energy as well. Should I give up? What can I do?

By: Lisa

it has happened to me before too
both today and yesterday just at the time when it starts to darken
i suddenly started feeling a strange feeling of doom mixed with some mild to moderate anxiety
i guess that maybe some hopelessness as well
and in a certain way or another - loneliness (NOT that kind of loneliness which you feel from being alone - as i wasn’t alone at that time)
from outside my behavior didn’t seem to change that much
but from the inside i felt a similar feeling to mourning/grief
i felt like the whole world started being a sad and depressive place and - as they say “blue”
all i wished was that the world will just get filled with love caring and happiness and everybody will give up evil and live this way for all eternity

By: Uriel

Sometimes it’s not a big deal. But; it usually bothers me when I get ready to go to sleep at night, or when I wake up in the morning. It’s just a sense of hopelessness, combined with me just having no girlfriend. I see so many people being happy with the one they love, and I’m glad to see people happy, but why can’t I have a chance to be happy?

The person I’m interested in (My good friend) is not up for it right now, she has so much to deal with, but I just can’t get this lonely feeling off of my mind. Sometime I feel like I’m never going to find that right girl. I see so many bad people do wrong to girls, yet they still find another good girl, eventually.

I know I’m only 20, but when you feel so alone, with no good girl to make you feel better, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you’re gonna be stressed. How can I stop this bad habit? I really wanna stop feeling sad, but my mind won’t let me.

Serious answers only, because this isn’t a joke.

By: Milkman101

I have Asperger Syndrome - a form of it that makes me very ugly to others, and I cannot see how ugly I am. I just know because people reject me for no apparent reason.

Most human beings want love - I want it as much as everyone else - I want a family and a normal life…. but even among asperger syndrome sufferers, i am odd. I am an outcast among outcasts.

I see the situation as absolutely hopeless. I will always be alone. I do not believe that there is someone for everyone. Some people are irrevocably damaged.

On a larger scale, I also see that there are many people worse off than me - people who are starving, orphaned, have birth-related deformities - or just people who have frontal lobe damage and end up in prison. In other words, I see the gamut of suffering and other people in hopeless situations - people who also have no one.

I have tried helping people - it doesn’t work - I’ve been screwed a few times and it really, really hurt. Plus, I can’t feel a thing. Nobody trusts me.

All I want from a therapist is to tell them what a cesspool this world is, basically how i feel everything - that wake up, where is the help for people who need it most - people that would be overlooked by you or me because it is impossible to help everyone.

I feel an overwhelming sense of futility, pointlessness and hopelessness. I feel bleak and terrified about the human condition.

I just want someone who will believe me for once - who won’t pull out a script pad or say that I am being too “negative”. I really, really with all of my heart feel I am sharing the honest-to-goodness truth about how I feel. But to share this spooks almost everyone out, so I don’t.

Who can help? Who will listen?

By: sQuirrel

Cure for hopelessness, how do you get yourself out of a low place?

And is marriage really the cure for anything, think before yu say ‘get married’
EDIT: I’m not sis kinza
EDIT: My Iman is not weak.
@Ninja - NOUB was in my mind when I said that And yeah I’m fine, just… fine.
Not afrid, the purpose of writing that was to tell you, dont mention marriage because to me, thats not a cure, its an addition to my problems.

By: Amirah (Gone, kind of)

Over the past three years I’ve been noticing a change within myself. I am becoming very unhappy with who I am and sometimes become overwhelmed with a feeling of hopelessness. I want it to stop, and I want to feel normal again, but I don’t know how to make this happen.
I wouldn’t say I was ever truly happy with myself, as I never had quite the social life I would’ve wanted in high school. However, I had a few close friends that I hung out with outside of school. Inside of school I was pretty social and enjoyed being around everyone even if our relationships never grew outside of the classroom. At home, when I wasn’t around my friends, I was very moody and shut myself off to my family. I don’t know why this happened because my family never did anything to hurt me, yet I was beyond rude and unloving. Something inside always told me to be nice, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t control the way I’d act towards them for no reason. I feel like even if they did something nice for me, I was still a jerk. I felt like I was two different people: My family would never imagine how happy I was at school, and the people at school would’ve never imagined how I acted at home. The switch in personalities happened instantaneously from school to home.

Now I’m in college. I have more real friends now in college than I did in high school. I thought I was happy for a while. I surround myself with my friends all the time, but I’m feeling a lot more negative lately and feel like I have no control of myself. I have no direction for what I want to do with my life and I often have jealous feelings towards others. My friends tell me I should try to be more positive, and its true—I’m constantly negative and very pessimistic. Sometimes I wonder they even bother hanging around me to be honest; I feel like a downer all the time. At the same time, when I’m not with my friends, I feel lost. The other day I was by myself in my apartment and felt the weird internal feeling like I was trapped because I was alone. I was overwhelmed and nervous and felt myself panicking inside. I seriously didn’t know what to do with myself and was pacing back and forth around my apartment like an idiot just because I felt so alone. I honestly don’t know how I’ve gotten to this point. How can I not handle being by myself for a few hours with nothing to do–it feels so rediculous.

Now I’m on break from school for the holiday and have been sitting at home by myself for a couple days. The first day was terrible, but I’m getting used to dealing with the boredom of being alone. I find myself looking at my friends’ Facebook accounts several times a day to see what’s they’ve been up to—I’m creeping myself out, I feel like I’m obsessed with them now that I’m not around them.

I guess I don’t know what kind of advice I’m asking for. There’s so much I could use. How do I stay more positive? How do I learn to like who I am? Be more confident? Less obsessive and jealous of my friends? How can I be nicer to my family and others, and why am I rude to them in the first place? What is wrong with me…

By: UIB

1, Huge, few times a month mood swings that last for a week or so. Anger, stress, carelessness, boredom, loud, or quick talking and, more. Some sort of stress disorder? Bipolar disorder maybe?

2. Hug mood swing where you wake up one day and feel like crap for a week or so. Hopelessness, sadness, lose of energy, feeling useless, carelessness, longer hours of sleep.

They seem alike. Though to the first one it happens more often and, there different feelings.

By: Pocky

“Hopelessness”

Reaching out,
arms extended
muffled shouts
our love has ended

your mind’s made up
no more screaming
the only thing left
is dreaming

back to a time
where happiness stood
the words all rhymed
just like they should

jolting back to reality,
our love is dead
I can sense you spirituality
hearing cruelties you have said

reaching out towards your face
you gradually blend in
within the air and into space
but i feel you within
If you give it a bad rating, I’d like to know why. I wrote this in like 5 minutes, but that’s no excuse if it’s bad..
Of course I don’t take offense to your suggestions! I highly appreciate them, and I prefer them over someone telling me my poem is bad and leaving it at that. Thanks.

By: TAY to the LOR!!

Is anybody good in english who can edit this essay????????????????????…
A sense of personal identity, of individuality, is something that every person needs in order to survive and thrive in modern society. If a person does not create their own identity, there is little chance that it will have any staying power. “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” is a story of a person, who is trying to balance his personal identity with the challenges brought on by his family’s many issues. He is forced to become his family’s caretaker. His life is burdened by the family’s emotional and financial needs. Living in a small town, he faces many conflicts due to his mother’s obesity, the mental handicap of his brother, Arnie, and the financial hardships of his family.
“Some days you want him to live, some days you don’t.” This quotation shows Gilbert’s ambivalence towards Arnie. His love for Arnie is pure, until he questions his identity. Arnie is the biggest challenge for Gilbert due to his disability. There is an ever-present fear in Gilbert, because Arnie has a habit of climbing up the water tower. According to the doctor, Arnie does not have much time to live. His passing is inevitable, which is why Gilbert feels a sense of hopelessness at times. Gilbert’s love for Arnie shows itself in many ways, but he is in denial of it when he yearns for his own identity. Even though there is no big difference in age, Gilbert becomes more and more like a father than a brother to Arnie. He wants to play with his brother and talk to him as a brother, but he always has to show that he is his caretaker. His identity of a brother was losing between responsibilities and love.

Bonnie, Gilbert’s mother, has always been an embarrassment to her son. He loves his mom and has always wanted to be a good son to her. Nevertheless, he has been more like a father to her, too, because of his role as a caretaker. Gilbert felt the same ambivalence towards her that he felt for his brother Arnie. Other people’s view of her as an irresponsible person who never leaves her couch and a burden to her family, affects him greatly. In order to hide his fear he begins to show anger toward his mother and makes fun of her. For instance, when Bob asks him, “How’s the mom?”, he replies, “She is fat, an obese whale.” His identity of son was losing between fear and anger.
Endora- a lifeless town- is “dancing to no music” for Gilbert, because when a person does not like the surroundings in which he lives, it is difficult to feel at home there. Endora is a small town, where keeping secrets is as fruitless as telling a math teacher, who has no interest in literature, to write an essay about Shakespeare. Immature townspeople and their senseless reactions to his mother’s size and his brother’s disability cause many problems in Gilbert’s life. For instance, when his mother comes out of the police station, everybody starts looking at her as if they wished she didn’t exist. The fact that the town is so small, there is little opportunity to earn enough money to provide for one’s family. After his father’s death, the weight is all on Gilbert’s shoulders, because he is the only one in the house who is able to work and earn a living. At an age where a young man wants to enjoy his life and create his own identity, he is determined to help his family survive. His dream of making his personal identity is crushed between his family obligations and a lifeless town. His sense of responsibility forces him to take on the challenge to provide for his family. . As a caretaker and bread winner for his family he did not have the energy or the opportunity to discover who he really was. He struggles mentally, because of the town people’s prejudice towards his family’s imperfections and physically because of the hard work he has to endure with so little gain in the small town of Endora.

By: . .