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Jackie Martinez
Professor Ditch
Eng 113B
2 April 2015
Inside the Mind
Many people go through different situations that they are not mentally or physically ever
prepared for. At any given moment a wide range of events, actions, and or situations can occur
that are not always the best. People have the amazing ability to mentally be somewhere else
happier than the physical area around them. If you were to ask a friend or a colleague around you
they would possibly say something like, think of your happy place when they are scared or
somewhere they do not want to be but there is no where to go so they have to block it out. That is
like the situation in the book The Guernsey Literacy and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann
Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The Guernsey Island was being occupied with German Soldiers
during World War II and influences these fellow people of Guernsey to create a book club.
Influenced by the madness outside, The Guernsey Literacy Potato Peel Pie Society Book club
was created to find an escape that was a therapeutic remedy. The escape by being in the book
club gives them a way to mentally develop internal values which gives them the power to regain
strength and mentality to cope with overcoming depression during this challenging state.
In the book The Guernsey Literacy and Potato Peel Pie Society they have constructed
internal values that developed with being in the book club have which helped them mentally. It
gave them a way to get away from the war. It became bearable to the point that they would lose

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track of time. They lost track of time by getting so entertained with the book club meeting they
passed curfew without realizing. The dinner was a rare treat, but the company was better. With
talking and eating, we forgot about clocks and curfew until Amelia ( thats Mrs. Maugery) heard
the chimes ring nine oclock we were an hour late(29). With losing track of time they were
risking getting in trouble by walking back home past curfew with the German soldiers who have
taken over the Guernsey Island after World War II. Id heard folks being sent to prison camp for
itand keeping a pig was a worse one, so we whispered and picked our way through the fields
as quiet as can be(29). That shows how they were in their own little world, their book club, that
they completely blocked out the outside world which was a way to cope with the madness
outside but had to eventually face through it because not all the days were suns and roses.
I can relate to the way the members of The Guernsey Literacy Potato Peel Pie
Society Book Club used their book club as a way to mentally escape from the craziness they had
to go through in their everyday lives. For as long as I can remember there were everyday fighting
going on between my parents. Not only my parents but because there were so many of us
including my grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts all under one roof, there were constant
fighting and bickering 24/7. Sometimes they would even get a little too crazy. But a way that I
would deal with it was I joined a team. Just like the members went somewhere, so did I. Which
is how I found my love for cheerleading. As like some of the members who found their love for
reading and writing as well. Joining a team gave me a way to escape and be able to free my mind
about the reality I would have to go back to eventually. It was more of a therapeutic session that
helped release the tension that would build up inside me if I would have stayed home to view and
witness the constant fights and bickering. It was literally another World War II. But instead of

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constantly being sad and depressed, cheerleading mentally helped me forget, escape, and
basically overcome depression that had developed for being in such a bad place for a good
amount of time, just like how the book club members did. For the book club members, their
point of view was that their books were therapeutic to them.
Just like how books were therapeutic to the people part of the Guernsey book club,
people can use other ways to have therapeutic remedies to calm themselves and get their mind
off of things. Just how I used cheerleading as an escape, another example could be music. Music
is a common therapeutic remedy that many people go to, to escape reality. In an article Music
Therapy With Bereaved Teenagers: A Mixed Methods Perspective by One young man stated that
the music therapy group was good because he learned a new way of taking your stress out on
stuff. The release of feelings being described not only resulted in feeling less stressed, but also
well not just get over it but to, um, be happy(557). This has proved to me that there are a
wide range of options for a person to choose when trying to cope with a situation that cannot be
easily fixed right away. I think that was the place where I could just relax a bit (557).
Just like the book club members being able to relax and forget about the outside world. I could
write to you again, if you want me to, I could tell you more about reading and how it oerked up
our spirits while the Germans were here(53).
In the article The Secondhand Book Seller by Marina Nemat describes her love for
books. But looking at her background she can also relate to the people from the book club. Just
like the people dealing with the World War II and German Soldiers, she had to face
imprisonment and torture. But she used to escape for a little was to read and write. I decided to
stay out of my mothers way, and the best way to achieve this was to stay in my room for as long

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as possible(571). For her to stay out of her mothers way, she would read books in her room day
to night. A couple of times every night, my mother opened the door of my bedroom to see what
I was doing and smiled when she found me reading. In a way, books had saved us both(571).
Just like the book club, her remedy and answer to cope with things were books.
By using cheerleading as an escape and having a book club for them to escape reality,
it created a culture about mentality, meaning through the mind, an escape where you can go
mentally. By culture about mentality I mean about what study it has fallen into. Eventually
people started recognizing the mind and how it is a powerful object. The mind can
psychologically make you believe you are in one place when you are in the complete opposite of
where you are. Hence the study of psychology. Over the years people it became a culture to
study the mind on how it functions, how it can mentally make you believe your own lies, and
many other things that it developed into a their own study. A study that has their on degree to it.
The study or science of the mind and of the ways that people feel and act (McGraw-Hill 577).
This is just a brief definition of the word psychology. The definition itself relates to how we
used our mind with cheerleading and the book club. Our behavior was affected with our
surroundings that we used an escape to take our minds out of that space and into a new
environment.
In the article Group Therapy with Hospitalized Patients,the have experimented with
patients on hospitalization. This study showed how just talking to others having group
discussions can help a person deal with a situation they are just trying to get through or trying to
cope with the actions that it has brought upon. For some they can find a way to escape even if
they do not like it. But it can help get them through it no matter what to help speed up the time.

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From personal observations, it is noted that patients frequently find it aversive to discuss their
problems. For some patients, the aversiveness of discussing their problems is probably a factor in
maintaining their hospitalization(492). People can hate the way they are told to resolve
situations but it the end it will eventually end and get better where as in the book everything
eventually resolved.
A culture is a group of people who share a way of life(Kurylo 3). Like Kurylo states in her
article, sharing a way of life. The people in the book club shared a way of life. Their way of life
was going to the book club where they all used it as was to make their lives bearable in the tuff
situations of their time. The book club can also be intercultural. Intercultural communication is
communication between and among those from different cultures(Kurylo 5). Although Juliet
was part of the same culture, she was a writer which can fall under the category of reader like the
people in the book club, but she was not from the same place. She lived elsewhere that by
interacting with the Guernsey book club they are being intercultural. Similar to how cheer is
cultural and also mainly intercultural.
Although some may argue that by creating these internal values with the book club and other
ways talked about like cheerleading, music, etc, does it mean that it showed a ray of sunshine for
everyone everyday but no it did not. Although it did help them overcome difficult situations they
could not always be in their therapy session because then the problems would never be solved.
Eventually they did have to confront the current situations but by constructing the internal values
it helped make the situations less intimidating and made it more bearable for them.
Overall it is a good resource for a person to find a way that they like to escape from reality
for a little because it teaches them a different way to think and view the world. People can think

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that it is childish or inappropriate to block out the world because many would say to just deal
with it and face the situation all at once, but not all situations are approachable. Some may need
so that they could get better but we or I would not want to be in the middle of it. So create
internal values and find your mental escape be the cause to find your own happiness.

Work Cited
Kurylo, Anastacia. Inter/cultural Communication: Representation and Construction of
Culture. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2013. Print.
Lindberg, Fredrick H., Reed S. Morrill, and Dennis R. Kilstorm. "Group Therapy with
Hospitalized Patients: Increasing Therapeutic Interactions Using a Feedback Escape
Technique." (n.d.): n. pag. US Sage Publications. Print.
cFerran, Katrina, Melina Roberts, and Lucy O'Grady. "Music Therapy with Bereaved
Teenagers: A Mixed Methods Perspective." (n.d.): n. pag. Australia, Self Perception
Profile for Adolescents. Web.
Nemat, Marina. The SecondHand Book Seller.
Publishing, S. S. and Staff, S. S. P. (2001) The Ameerican Education Publishing Childrens
Dictionary. 20010913th ed. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill Childrens Pub.
Shaffer, M. A. and Barrows, A. (2009) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
United States: Random House Publishing Group.