TOW #24- Go Ask Alice

As the diary Go Ask Alice, written by an anonymous girl, progresses the audience is able to take a deeper look into the downward spiral that the main character goes into. Alice begins her diary because she has no one else to talk to, and she spends her energy searching not for drugs, but for someone who understands her. Once she is introduced, the drugs only create a temporary illusion that she is in touch with people, nature, etc. Her purpose of illustrating the growth of what it is like living as a teenage drug user and the outcome of her life that her addiction caused is shown through her use of parallels and expressive prose.  One of the positive aspects of this diary is that Alice is a very good writer allowing her to lace her unhappy vision of the world with poetic and sensitive language. Through this Alice puts a focal point on the parallels between the two different worlds that she lives in, one being the real world and the other being the fantasy world. The real world is surrounded by her home with her parents, her home with her grandmother, the homes of parties she attends with her friends, the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley, and eventually a psychiatric hospital ward. The fantasy world is everything she sees and believes in when it comes to her hallucinations. Due to the use of drugs, a parallel is created between the real world and everything that she used to know. When showing that parallel between these two different worlds, we can see that Alice thinks and acts differently when she lives in each place. Most of all, Alice wants someone to talk to and because of her longing to do so, she uses the diary to fulfill her need to talk about things, promoting her expressive prose style. From the beginning, the audience notices that Alice feels like she has to hide her identity with others, however when it comes to her Diary, she can be her true self. As she goes deeper into the counterculture, drugs replace the diary as the center of her attention, but even so she still maintains her devotion to it. The diary's use finally comes to an end when when Alice gets rid of it because she feels she wants to share herself with other people, the tool that once allowed Alice to better communicate and understand herself has served its purpose and is no longer being used. The author does a good job of achieving her purpose because the diary is able to highlight her initial innocence which soon progresses into into a character much different than she had ever expected. The book may have been confusing at times because of the constant ups and downs that were apart of Alice's life, also the fact that in the end it seems as though there is hope for her but it is revealed since the beginning that Alice died 3 weeks after she stopped writing in the diary. However, this does not take away from the purpose of the book because it exposes the audience to the harsh realities of drug users.

TOW #23- The Effects of Cannabis on Bipolar Disorder

In my interest in mental disorders has lead me to read many articles on diverse psychiatric disorders.  In one article that came out on the 13th talked about the relation between bipolar disorder and cannabis in London.  A study done by the Lancaster University said that, although only 2% of Britain's population has bipolar disorder, 60% used cannabis.  And most people assume that most use cannabis to deal with the depressive state.  This study, which asked bipolar patients to log their feelings and their drug use, showed that most people use cannabis when they are in a good mood, not a bad mood.  But, because of the drug use, it causes the manic and depressive stages to become worse. The study showed that people use cannabis to self-medicate, even though their medicine is actually making them worse. This article gives an implicit warning to everyone suffering from bipolar disorder.  Even though the cannabis might make you feel better short term, the worsening of your symptoms only make you more dependent on the drugs.  Even though the studies next course is to see the long term of the cannabis on this emotional disorder, the current study suggests that drug use may seem like a way to handle a hard-to-control situation, but it actually makes it worse. 

TOW #22- What My Mom Does at GE

The advertisement is called "Childlike Imagination - What My Mom Does at GE". It features a little girl describing in childlike terms what her mother makes at work, exploring some of what GE does through the eyes of a child. It is also unique as an advertisement because its purpose is slightly different than most; this ad is not trying to get the audience to buy something. Rather, the advertisement serves to promote General Electric to the wider public audience to generate interest in and support for what they are doing. It does this by explaining and emphasizing the imagination of what GE creates.The whimsical images which are simultaneously described by the little girl and pictured on the screen contribute to this childlike view of the technology GE develops. For example, the images of planes with wings like birds and trees that walk around and wave to trains are fantastical and appealing, yet they represent the real technology that GE actually develops. GE's use of the child's view is effective because the audience understands that what the child describes is not literally true but is an imaginative interpretation. Trees are not literally friends with trains and actual hospitals do not fit in your hand as described in the ad, but using this perspective to show how they develop environmentally friendly trains and hand-held medical resource devices is more imaginative and appeals to the audience. Another strategy the ad uses is its environmental message. GE emphasizes their environmentally-friendly work by specifically highlighting their environmentally-friendly trains, but also implicitly by including naturalistic themed images. For example, the scenes of the moon powering the underwater turbines, the planes flying on birds wings through the clouds, and the little girl sitting among the waving trees associate GE technology with nature and help them appear environmentally friendly. This helps boost GE's ethos as a company by showing that it cares about the environment, which would help promote the company to a wider audience. Overall the advertisement is artfully crafted and visually appealing. It effectively promotes General Electric to a wider public audience by emphasizing the childlike imagination of the company.