Issues with Identity
A young honors student hardly ever chooses to sign up for all advanced courses solely by themselves and what they want. Most teenagers in high school want a social life and free time, but the academic rigors of advanced courses usually don’t allow for what a student wants. My mother, who went to Harvard and put herself through law school with a child to care for, has high expectations for me and my sister. She won’t let me sign up for a course that isn’t honors or advanced placement because of those expectations. But my desires don’t always match up with hers. She knows I’m ready for the academic portion of advanced work, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the emotional portion of it. The conflict that arose from her …show more content…
In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Benjamin Button ages backward, which goes against what society expected. Benjamin’s father’s first attempts to strong arm him into what a baby “should” look like results in Benjamin bowing with a meek “Alright, father...you’ve lived longer, you know best” (Fitzgerald 5). Benjamin completely bowed to his father’s wants that were based on the image he had in his head of what a baby should be. However, this solution led Benjamin to feel a personal unhappiness, which stemmed from denying himself what he wanted. When his father arranged for him to play with several boys his age, “he spent a stiff-jointed afternoon trying to work up an interest in tops and marbles” (Fitzgerald 8). Benjamin wasn’t intrigued by the same things that boys his biological age were, but put aside how he felt to please his father, which only hurt him emotionally. Similarly, in Ernest Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants, a young woman feels pressured by the man she is in a relationship with to have an abortion, though she tells him she will have the abortion, “because I don’t care about me” (Hemingway 5). The young woman, like Benjamin, is willing to be ordered around in order to make someone else happy, in this case her boyfriend. And, like Benjamin, she is dissatisfied with the outcome. Bowing to expectations and shoving personal needs to the side causes poor emotional development and health, and is never a long term
A young honors student hardly ever chooses to sign up for all advanced courses solely by themselves and what they want. Most teenagers in high school want a social life and free time, but the academic rigors of advanced courses usually don’t allow for what a student wants. My mother, who went to Harvard and put herself through law school with a child to care for, has high expectations for me and my sister. She won’t let me sign up for a course that isn’t honors or advanced placement because of those expectations. But my desires don’t always match up with hers. She knows I’m ready for the academic portion of advanced work, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the emotional portion of it. The conflict that arose from her …show more content…
In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Benjamin Button ages backward, which goes against what society expected. Benjamin’s father’s first attempts to strong arm him into what a baby “should” look like results in Benjamin bowing with a meek “Alright, father...you’ve lived longer, you know best” (Fitzgerald 5). Benjamin completely bowed to his father’s wants that were based on the image he had in his head of what a baby should be. However, this solution led Benjamin to feel a personal unhappiness, which stemmed from denying himself what he wanted. When his father arranged for him to play with several boys his age, “he spent a stiff-jointed afternoon trying to work up an interest in tops and marbles” (Fitzgerald 8). Benjamin wasn’t intrigued by the same things that boys his biological age were, but put aside how he felt to please his father, which only hurt him emotionally. Similarly, in Ernest Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants, a young woman feels pressured by the man she is in a relationship with to have an abortion, though she tells him she will have the abortion, “because I don’t care about me” (Hemingway 5). The young woman, like Benjamin, is willing to be ordered around in order to make someone else happy, in this case her boyfriend. And, like Benjamin, she is dissatisfied with the outcome. Bowing to expectations and shoving personal needs to the side causes poor emotional development and health, and is never a long term