Alcoholism and Angelas Ashes :: essays research papers

Alcoholism and Angela’s Ashes Alcoholism is one of the most common disorders in the world today. It is a disease, a sickness that harms the body and the mind in the most violent ways possible. The body is racked by a need to suffice its desire, and this leads addicts to do anything to get the alcohol into their systems. In Angela’s Ashes, alcoholism is a major theme, and becomes the destroyer of the families and loved ones that are involved. In Angela’s Ashes, the father Malachy is inflicted with the disease of alcoholism, and his need for the drink leads him to use his paycheck to buy alcohol instead of using it for the basic needs of his family. Countless times, Malachy’s alcoholism harms or gets in the way of his family. Not only this, but Malachy is blind to what his behavior is doing to his family. Because he does not use his money on food for his family, they are forced to beg and accept help from friends and strangers—and yet he is too proud to admit this. Repeated instances such as when he asked the RIAA person for enough money just for one pint—when the money was supposed to be for a cab to get he and his son back to the station without having to walk. Or even when his first child was born and he was too drunk for the hospital staff to interpret what he was saying he wanted to name his son. There are too many of the same repeated episodes—he gets a job, brings home money at fir st, then just stops altogether and uses it at the pub, he gets fired from his job, and his family is worse off now, they are forced to move or live off the kindness of others. It’s the same cycle over and over again. Lives are lost along the way—the innocents, the children. And still Malachy depends on the drink. He is a constant disappointment—and spirals the family deeper and deeper into poverty over the years, mainly because of his addiction. Alcoholism is a terrible disease that can happen to anyone, and the person might not even notice it until the addiction is at its worst. In Angela’s Ashes, Malachy’s alcoholism ruins his family’s chance for a happy life, and he doesn’t even seem to care, as long as he has his alcohol everything seems fine.

Insanity Defense Essay

Imagine for a moment, someone has just inexplicably murdered a mother or child. Imagine the rage, tearing you apart, physically making you shake or be ill. At the same time this rage is entangled and somewhat smothered by the crushing grief welling up inside of you. A thought flashes into your head, â€Å"I will kill the person responsible for this!† but our sanity stops that action. A persons insanity allows you to know that to actually carry out a murder is illogical, immoral, and illegal. You know that your actions will land you a spot in hell next to all the other Murders. That thought process is exactly what separates you from a killer. Although with the right lawyer, the person who committed this tragic crime may someday be able to be free. This murderer may be able to push such anguish onto another family because they were let free on grounds of temporary insanity. The insanity defense should be wiped out nationwide unless certain tests of mental insanity are met and a patient has a history of a mental illness. The insanity defense is a criminal defense that is used when the defendant’s case states that the crime occurred because the defendant had a severe mental disease or defect and was unable to apprehend the wrongfulness of his or her acts. When someone claims insanity, they are not held responsible for their criminal actions. There are two pieces of evidence the first being the accused was unable to tell right from wrong and the second that the accused did not intend to act the way he or she did and/or could not control their behavior. The insanity defense should not be a valid excuse to free criminals. Insanity is a legal term, not a psychological one, and experts disagree whether it has valid psychological meaning. Critics of not guilty by reason of insanity have claimed that too many sane defendants use the insanity defense to escape justice; that the state of psychological knowledge encourages expensive â€Å"dueling expert† contests that juries are unlikely to understand; that, in practice, the defense unfairly excludes some defendants. Research on not guilty by reason of insanity fails to support most of these claims but some serious problems may exist with this. The insanity defense goes back to 1843 when a man by the name of Daniel McNaughtan attempted to assassinate Edward Drummond, Secretary to the  British Prime Minister Robert Peel. McNaughtan was under the impression that he was being prosecuted, so he reacted with murder. Daniel McNaughtan killed Robert Peel’s secretary. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Following his trial, he spent the next twenty years in a mental asylum until his death. Soon after this case, the English House of Lords set standards for the insanity defense which they called McNaugtan’s Rule: â€Å"Every man is to be presumed to be sane, and†¦that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wro ng.† (Encyclopedia Of Everyday Law) Soon after this rule became legal, the United States criminal justice system adopted this precedent. In 1981, after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, the insanity defense received a lot of harsh publish criticism. John Hickley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Various people argued that Hinckley was guilty because the premeditation of the crime committed proved him to be sane, therefore the insanity defense should not have proved him not guilty. Hickley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remains in psyciatic care. This allows the mentally ill defendant to be found liable of his or her crime, but requires them to seek psychiatric treatment or be placed in a mental hospital. When the defendants are well enough, they are moved to a prison to serve their sentences. Because of cases like this, the insanity defense still undergoes a lot of public criticism today. Although, during a more recent trial of Jeffrey Dahmer, who mutilated and consumed his young victims, the defendant tried to use the insanity defense, but the jurors found the criminal both sane and guilty. This case showed that the insanity defense does not work for all criminals and supported the public’s criticism of the insanity defense. In another famous case, the Unabomber case, defendant Kaczynski refused to allow his attorney to present an insanity defense, and instead pled guilty and was sentenced to a life in prison. Had he let his attorney go through with the temporary insanity plea, there is a good chance that Kaczynski would be a free man today and could potentially kill again. The insanity defense does not eliminate the responsibility of a criminal act from the  person committing the crime; instead, it is a defense mechanism for criminals who argue that at the time of the crime the defendant did not have willful intent due to a severe mental defect or disease. As stated before, numerous people are opposed to the insanity defense. They are against the insanity defense because they see it as a means where the defendant can avoid the consequences of his or her action s. People fear violent crimes and will be more apt to prosecute a criminal versus allowing the criminal another chance. The public, as they should be, is shocked when a criminal is successful in pleading insanity, is sent to a mental institution, and then is released once deemed â€Å"cured† by a team of physicians. The public does not see this as punishment, because it is not. A short stint in a mental institution is nothing compared to serving hard time. Some studies suggest that prison time is ineffectual, that may be but isolating violent criminals is a public safety matter. If left to their own devices, there is a very real possibility that they may strike again. The temporary insanity plea is almost always used in cases of extreme mutilation, murder, and other horrific crimes, yet after undergoing a physiological evaluation some of the most vile people earth are allowed to walk free. Incomprehensibly, the very people who most deserve to be locked up for life are the ones who most often get off by claiming temporary insanity. Due to the violent nature of there crimes it is not a stretch to claim that they were insane. The vast majority of violent criminals are repeat offenders, and that affects every taxpayer in the United States, because it costs tens of thousands of dollars just to run a criminal through the justice system, not to mention the cost of providing care for them afterward. Once a person has proven they have the capacity to commit such an offence, they have proven that they are not fit to enjoy the freedoms that we as Americans are entitled. The insanity defense is an excuse for criminals to break the law and have no bearing on p unishments. In most criminal cases the insanity plea is just a defense strategy aimed at delivering guilty defendants from serving time in prison or getting the death penalty. Most defendants that are found guilty by reason of insanity are released from the mental hospital years if not decades earlier than they would have been if they served their regular prison sentence. The insanity defense allows criminals to avoid the punishments they should be receiving for the crime they committed. When  someone is found not guilty by reason of insanity, jurisdictions require that the person spend at least some time in a psychiatric facility; if not automatically, many states require commitment to a psychiatric facility on grounds of mental illness, dangerousness, or both; most states do not have a limit on the amount of time that someone can be institutionalized insane. How long they spend in an institution also varies by state, but on average most stay three and a half years; in New Jersey 35% of the sample were still in institutions 8 years later; in Michigan it was 9 1/2 months; in Illinois it was 17 1/2 months, however, in this sample over 70% had been found incompetent prior to trial and had spent an average of 38.4 months in institutions. (Washington Post)= In the early 1990’s involving eight different states a study was conducted. They found that less than one percent of criminal defendants used the insanity defense. Only a quarter of these resulted in successf ul acquittals. Today a number of states have replaced the option of pleading â€Å"not guilty by reason of insanity† with pleading â€Å"guilty but mentally ill†. Currently, Idaho, Montana, and Utah banned insanity defenses, along with the supreme courts ruling. Along with this, between sixty and seventy percent of cases in which the insanity plea is invoked are for crimes other then murder. In actuality, it is used approximately 0.9% of the time. There are 51 different types of insanity defenses in the United States, one for each set of state laws, and one for federal law when dealing with someone pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. With astronomical operating costs of a psychiatric facility that increase the tax burden on every tax payer in the nation, especially the maximum security facilities that this caliber of criminal is housed at, the temporary insanity precedent set forth over a century ago should be phased out. Unfortunately, murder and violent crime has and will continue to happen as long as there are human beings living in close proximity, it is and ugly and regrettable reality of human society. There is no real solution to this horrible truth, but the closest and most logical option to preventing the deaths of more innocent people is for temporary insanity regulations to become much more strict. This will inevitably save lives, for if just one murderer has a second opportunity to kill another person that is one more person that is needlessly killed because the killer was given a second chance and not put in prison the first time they proved they have the  capacity to take a life. Works Cited â€Å"Insanity Defense†. The Lectric Law Library’s Lexicon. 2 February, 2009. 12 February, 2009.http://www.lectlaw.com/def/d029.html Martin, John P. â€Å"The Insanity Defense: A closer look†Ã¢â‚¬ . Washington Post. 27 February, 1998. WP. 24 February, 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/local/longterm/aron/qa227.html â€Å"Other U.S. News: AMA Opposes Insanity Plea.† Facts On File World News Digest 23 Dec. 1983. World News Digest. Facts On File News Services. 23 Feb. 2009. â€Å"Supreme Court: Arizona Insanity Defense Law Upheld.† Facts On File World News Digest 29 June 2006. World News Digest. Facts On File News Services. 23 Feb. 2009.

Analysis Of The Book Fahrenheit 451 - 775 Words

Fahrenheit 451 begins by introducing Guy Montag, a fireman who starts fires rather than putting them out, in a grim futuristic United States. The author describes Montag, along with the other fireman, as having, â€Å"†¦black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look (page 30).† The book opens by describing the pleasure experiences doing his job as a fireman one evening. The first sentence being, â€Å"It was a pleasure to burn (page 1).† After his day at work he strolls home and happens across a young girl, around sixteen, named Clarisse McClellan. This young girl proves to the fireman to be unique, she is a deep thinker and rises above society. â€Å"She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why (page 57).† After talking with Clarisse Montage arrives home, finding is wife in bed and an empty bottle of pills on the ground. He takes her to the hospital were he watches strangers help is wife, Mildred. Here he be gins to ponder saying, â€Å"There are billions of us and that’s too many. Nobody knows anyone (page 14).† Meaning that everyone lives for themselves and not for others, no one cares to make friends or understand another person. They live to be happy. The next day, and many days after that, Montag would meet Clarisse and they would walk together and socialize, on the way towards the train that took Montag to work. They wouldn’t talk about cars or clothes, but about what a leaf smelled like or wonder how race car drivers viewed the world. She toldShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Book Fahrenheit 451 1413 Words   |  6 Pagesand Fahrenheit 451 Book-burning is the first thing that is explained about this future based society of Fahrenheit 451. Burning books is the obliteration of the single thought on paper or in one word- censorship. Books are considered evil because they make people question and think. All intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge must be quelled for the good of the state — for the good of conformity. Without ideas, everyone conforms, and as a result, everyone should be happy. When books andRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book Fahrenheit 451 1965 Words   |  8 PagesIn the novel Fahrenheit 451 the main character Guy Montag hides forbidden books in his house; consequently, he is caught by the chief firefighter, Beatty. Without really thinking about his actions, Guy burns Beatty alive out of fear of being caught. Near the end of 1984 we are shown protagonist Winston in a weak, frightened stage because of the repeated torture inflicted upon him. This causes him to spill every last secret he has to his torturers, and when they show him his worst fear, he actuallyRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book Fahrenheit 451 Homework Questions 980 Words   |  4 PagesCao Futagaki English Honors 1 4 March 2016 Fahrenheit 451 Homework Questions Part 1 1. 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This film is based off of Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel of the same title.Truffaut took the novel and created a full length film to tell the story. The use of future is a common characteristic of science fiction movies, yet this particular film uses future to relay its message, not just as the setting. The technical aspects, effects and setting work togetherRead MoreFahrenheit 451 By F. Montag1378 Words   |  6 Pagesincluding books and technology, which leads to the perceived protection from dangerous notions or exposure to outside ideas. As a result of these fears and assumptions, countless books have been wrongfully banned including Fahrenheit 451 which not only conveys concepts such as freedom of religion, but of the dangers of replacing communication with mass media, as well as advocating freedom of expression and ideas. Freedom of religion is shown in numerous forms throughout Fahrenheit 451. Montag, whoRead MoreRay Bradburys Fahrenheit 451: A World Without Books1095 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches† (Wikiquote, â€Å"Ray Bradbury†). Author Ray Bradbury made this observation in 1979 and his thought has only become more true as time has gone on. Bradbury warns of the possibility of this happening in his novel, Fahrenheit 451. The message of Fahrenheit 451 is more important than ever because today’s book editors, movie critics, and plays have intentionally and unintentionally removed Bradbury’s