Imagine Charles Yu as a young man, ready to take the field of World Cup Championship. Before the game Charles meets his father—the inspiration of his success—to thank him for always believing in him and his dreams. Charles thanks him for being his friend and his coach ever since pee-wee league. His father, on the verge of tears, can only say one thing with his cracked voice, “I’m so proud of you, son.” Now, imagine the Charles Yu from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe as a young man, the same age as the soccer Charles Yu, sitting in a time machine, alone, talking to a computer program with no healthy human relationships. What separates the two men? Is it the biological make-up of one that makes him prone to becoming more successful
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The young boy is so proud of his father who is described by Yu as looking athletically built (p.185); consequently, the young boy will most likely become a successful athlete due to the heredity passing of athletic traits from the father to the son, hence, nature. The nurture aspect comes into play by the father being active in the boy’s life and doing things, such as bringing him to baseball practice (Yu p.185). However, the protagonist, Charles, does not live a life worth bragging about: right before the young boy hits a fly ball out of the park, he watches his father fail at doing the only thing both him and his father know—building the time machine (Yu p.185). Charles’s nurture consists of his father placing the time machine before him and his mother, and watching his father fail at what consumed all his time and energy. Charles is constantly surrounded by failure; however, he also shares fifty-percent of his DNA with a man who failed at what he did. Was Charles born a failure? Or was it because he was surrounded by failure all his life? The answer is simple: both. Charles was born with half the DNA of his father, but his genes have adapted to his surrounding environment, like Ridley stated, “nature via nurture” (2010). If Charles was surrounded by success and a more supportive family like the author Wes Moore was, he could have become successful. Maybe the day in the park would have turned out differently. Instead, Charles’s life turned out more like the other Wes Moore: defeated by the world. Whether the nature versus nurture argument is applied to psychology, the real world, or fictional books, it is an ongoing argument which will never be fully answered by even the
The young boy is so proud of his father who is described by Yu as looking athletically built (p.185); consequently, the young boy will most likely become a successful athlete due to the heredity passing of athletic traits from the father to the son, hence, nature. The nurture aspect comes into play by the father being active in the boy’s life and doing things, such as bringing him to baseball practice (Yu p.185). However, the protagonist, Charles, does not live a life worth bragging about: right before the young boy hits a fly ball out of the park, he watches his father fail at doing the only thing both him and his father know—building the time machine (Yu p.185). Charles’s nurture consists of his father placing the time machine before him and his mother, and watching his father fail at what consumed all his time and energy. Charles is constantly surrounded by failure; however, he also shares fifty-percent of his DNA with a man who failed at what he did. Was Charles born a failure? Or was it because he was surrounded by failure all his life? The answer is simple: both. Charles was born with half the DNA of his father, but his genes have adapted to his surrounding environment, like Ridley stated, “nature via nurture” (2010). If Charles was surrounded by success and a more supportive family like the author Wes Moore was, he could have become successful. Maybe the day in the park would have turned out differently. Instead, Charles’s life turned out more like the other Wes Moore: defeated by the world. Whether the nature versus nurture argument is applied to psychology, the real world, or fictional books, it is an ongoing argument which will never be fully answered by even the