English Nonfiction Assignment

Danny Feiler April 15th, 2009
"Lindsay Lohan Talks To Us" :Suicide Fears
Written dy Kevin O'leary with reportings by Natalie Thomas
April 20th 2009

The article that I have chosen to do my report on, "Suicide Fears", is about Lindsay Lohan's feared suicidal tendencies. Lohan's role in hanging around a new friend, along with the stress and bad influence that came along with her new friend, all added up to a very serious state of depression that soon began turning heads. Lohan's depression began creating fear that she may be suicidal.
According to the article the source of Lohan's depression and lean towards suicide is the time spent with specific actress friend Samantha(last name not given). From when Lindsay and Samantha first started spending time together Lohan began spiraling downward. As stated in the article Lohan was charged with a DUI around the period that she began hanging around Samantha. On top of the DUI, Lohan also was enrolled in rehab. Once let out of rehab, it was said that Lohan turned from drugs, to Samantha, meaning that instead of making stupid decisisions by taking drugs, she began making stupid desisions by hanging around her new friend Samantha.
Lindsay's Friend Samantha was said to have tried to end their friendship but this only made matters worse. Samantha stated that every time she tries to end their friendship, "Lindsay threatens to kill herself".
A said to be close friend of Lohan also stated "She needs to get help because she could harm herself", this statement to me, sums up the drama that has been going on in Lohan's life. Lindsay's reactions to the accusations of her being suicidal were that she is doing fine and she is working with her mother and sister. She says that she is hurt by the relationship shared with her and Samantha but is not depresed or in danger of hurting herself, but merely hurt and insulted.

Some vocabulary words that gave me trouble while reading this article were "garnered", and "turmoil". Through the online resource of Dictionary.com, I've figured out that garnered means to be stored and that turmoil means a state of great commotion, confusion, or disturbance. To give myself a better understanding of these words i used Dictionary.com to find the parts of speeches, synonyms, and antonyms of both words. The part of speech for turmoil is noun, synonyms are turbulence, disorder, and uproar, and antonyms are order and quiet. For the word garnered, the part of speech is adjective, a synonym is stored, and an antonym is released.

I feel that the main point of this article was to try to prove that Lindsay Lohan is indeed showing signs of being suicidal. I feel that this is the main point because the author uses examples that support Lohan's downfall such as trips to rehab and DUIs and then tries to convince the readers that she is in danger of harming herself by using quotes from Lohan's "close friend" saying she has threatened to kill herself before.

One point of this piece that I did agree with was how the author points out Lohan being suicidal because from the examples he used to persuade the readers that she is suicidal, i also feel that she is in danger of harming herself.
A point of this article that I found difficult to believe was where Lohan claimed to be doing fine in life by taking care of herself and spending time with her family. I found this hard to believe because i don't feel that someone in bad of shape as Lohan was can just recover from that kind of depression without any help.

I thought that this article was a very well-written and developed piece of writing. This article gave me a whole new view on reasons people may have for suicide, it made me realize that every suicidal person has different reasons for being suicidal, and more importantly it isn't just something happening in someones life that causes depression and possible suicide, but it is how people deal differently with events going on in their lives that influence their depression and possible suicide.