Who Is Determination?

The call by Peader O’Gulin introduced interesting ideas about one sided feelings, determination and shutting people out, whilst engaging me with an action-packed story. In this novel, Conner has unreciprocated feelings towards Nessa, who is crippled, although he feels wrong for feeling this way about her, as he believes her disability makes her unworthy of him, this frustrates him, and he takes these frustrations out on her. Eventually he gives into these feelings, forcing himself upon her, and is rejected by her fighting him off. Anger overwhelms him and he plots a way to kill her, as revenge for her embarrassing and rejecting him. This reminded me of a scene from the film Schindler’s list, where Amon beats Helen Hertz out of frustration because …show more content…
There were a few factors that contributed to this, though one of which was determination. This is a quality of her personality that I admired, because despite the lack of belief in her ability to survive from her peers, she worked harder than any of them. Her disability caused people to view her as weak, and many believed that she was a waste of resources, or that she should go home and enjoy her final years. Although everybody, including the people closest to her had negative views on her ability to survive, she worked incredibly hard to ensure she had some form of chance. She ran with the class, learnt to make crutches in mere minutes from her surrounding environment, paid utmost attention in class, she was the first to shave her hair off, she restrained from forming connections that may have an impact on her training, ate an impeccable diet, and made sure she was always in a suitable condition for her …show more content…
Many people believe that you are required to have a natural talent in something in order to achieve well, however, this belief is far from the truth, and this text supports this idea. It made me consider how you can start as a complete beginner with absolutely no skills in essentially anything and still obtain outstanding results if you apply yourself and work hard enough. I believe the mindset that you must be naturally talented in something to excel is harmful, and can often hold people back. It can prevent people from putting in effort and trying for anything beyond than the minimal results. If you do not aim to improve, you will hold yourself back and stop yourself from making noticeable progress as everything takes time. Even if you have a natural talent in something, without taking this time and working hard, you restrict yourself from reaching your full potential, and risk your skills diminishing, as it requires regular practice and hard work to attain exceptional results and develop your abilities. If people realized that excelling isn’t based on talent, but rather hard work and determination, we would witness vast improvements in their level of