Response To The Modern Play 'The Shape Of A Girl'

Alicia Jane Parsons 4.1 Personal Response Essay: Final Draft

In the process of finding oneself, we become swarmed with options and choices. The influences of others can play a role in the actions we take and decisions we make, foreshadowing pieces of our future selves. It is important to understand the impact others have on who we become and why it has such impact. Only then can we begin to understand ourselves and others, as well as the ability of one person to change the outcome for another. We will analyze examples of this in regards to the modern play, The Shape of a Girl, by Joan Macleod, and a personal experience of mine with a friend. First, we consider how the influence of others brought to light the impacts of bullying and pressured …show more content…
Around that time, she had also begun to hang around with this new group of people. I noticed she was depressed and very detached from the world after she hung out with this new group. Changes in her overall self became very obvious. Then I began to hear things from other people. I heard things about her taking drugs, people saying she was a try-hard. There were many different things being said and it didn’t take long for me to realize where these things being said commenced from. What she was doing was trying to fit into a crowd that wasn’t the right crowd for her and so she was influenced to start things up that I wouldn't have ever expected of her and that she never expected of herself. These influences made her forget who she was. She stopped going to school, hardly ever answered any phone calls. Me, as well as our other group of friends, were very worried about her health and that’s when I came to conclude that I would confront her. I told her she could either come with me and we would get her help together or she would lose me as a friend and deal with it alone. After that day we didn’t talk for a few months. I heard nothing from her until the end of summer when she texted me to meet up. So I went and I listened to her talk. She thanked me and told me she went to a facility over the summer to get help and that she was on a program, …show more content…
It is important to understand how much influence people have on who we become so that we don’t influence others to make bad decisions, as the decisions they make can affect their future. Understanding the influence of others may help us understand why we make the decisions we make and take the actions we take. If it hadn’t been for Braidie speaking up about the bullying, Sofie may have suffered a terrible fate. Just like if it wasn’t for myself my friend could be going down a long and difficult path. We grow as individuals with the influence of others and over time this causes us to better understand each