The Bully Essay

As a child who had to endure being bullied all through middle school, the film “The Bully” was quite impacting. To me, the most impacting story was Tyler Longs. He was a kind-hearted young boy who just so happened to be one of the unlucky few that had to live the life as a victim of being bullied.

Day by day he was tortured by his fellow students. They would shove him in lockers, take his clothes while he was in the locker room, and push him into the urinal making him soil himself.His friend Ronan would see him getting bullied and would try to stop the bullies but Tyler would just wave it off, smile, and walk away. But one day the torture had gone too far. Tyler decided to take his own life by means of hanging himself in his closet on October 17, 2009. His father and younger brother witnessed him as he hung there with the life completely gone from his body.

The only explanation was a letter on his bed. Empathy being the ability to understand and share the feelings of others is a quite serious deprivation in our country. No cares to feel others’ pain anymore.This film helps to build empathy for the targets of bullying by telling somber stories of bullying that may or may not have resulted in suicide or suicide attempts. It also gives insight on what is really happening in school and on buses from a student who video tapes everything.

The audience of the film would most likely feel the need and want to help those poor, devastated families. Increasing empathy would help a community reduce the amount of bullying that occurred because it would inform people on what is really going on in their children’s or siblings school environment.People would be more willing to stop the ongoing spread of bullying if they were to actually listen to the tragic stories of the victims and their families. This increased awareness would help the viewers realize what they should look out for when dealing with bullying. The increase of empathy would act as a catalyst for developing more effective strategies for combating bullying. This would actually make the audience want to work harder to stop the problem at its core.

Having to listen to those depressing stories would make the audience think a lot more about the victims and if maybe they knew someone who was being bullied.Courage is the ability to do something that frightens you. This basically defines all of the victims of bullying that we encounter in this film. All of them have either tried to stand up for themselves or had to live the life as a victim, both very frightening things to do but they push themselves to try and stop this ongoing torture. Resilience, another fine characteristic that these victims share, is recovering readily from adversity or depression. Basically rebounding.

This makes the victims even more courageous because they are not willing to give up, they push themselves to keep going no matter the cost.The young people we meet in this film were courageous because they dealt with being name called, ignored, beaten, pushed and shoved, and gossiped about yet they still went to school everyday or as much as they could handle and were strong enough to keep moving forward to tell their stories. They were resilient because they have been bullied to the point of almost committing suicide but had such strong wills that they bounce back in recollection that their lives are in fact worth living and to show others that they are not alone.The difference between these two characteristics is that courage is just facing your fears but resilience is never giving up no matter the consequence. When distinguishing between how much abuse is too much when bullying is involved, the answer is simple.

Just the slightest hint of abuse such as name calling or pushing and shoving is too much. In societies viewpoint, someone committing suicide or going out a shooting up their school is what it takes to reach a threshold for when abuse has gone too far. I completely agree with Mr.Lee Hersh when he states that bullying is as serious as assault and abuse between adults.

Both have the same resulting end so why wouldn’t they be seen in the same manner. When these young people are getting bullied, typically they feel as though they have no one to turn to, but they couldn’t be more wrong. When in this situation, these young people could turn to school counselors that have now been shifting their line of work to be focusing more on bullying; they could turn to their friends or most definitely their family.If none of these works, the alternative would be to speak to people on bully prevention hotlines.

Many times these young people tend to not get the support they need because they may either not think it will help, or the people they ask for help will just brush it off and won’t think it will progress. This is terrible though because in listening and trying to help someone that is going through a difficult time, you may be able to actually save their lives.