It has become evident, more so in our day and age, that children often feel burdened by the expectations that one’s parents have. Blinded by their own pretences, parents pressure their children to follow a path which they themselves think is best. As seen in “The Boat” by Alistair MacLeod, the narrator endures a tremendous amount of pressure from his parents. In comparison to my own life, my parents also put a lot of pressure on me because they want me to be successful. However, I find that the pressure exerted by my parents onto me is not helpful at all. To start, pressure often leads to stress, which then leads to long term complications such as anxiety and depression. Ever since I was young, my parents have wanted me to pursue a career in medicine. I was not very happy as it was not a field that I found …show more content…
However, the same could not be said about the narrator. The narrator loved school, but every day his mother would tell him to drop out and continue the family tradition of becoming a fisherman. He tried to do what his mother pressured him to do, and now every night he wakes up “at four o'clock in the morning with the terrible fear that I have overslept” (1). The narrator now wakes up in the middle of every night because he has anxiety after experiencing a traumatic experience which was caused by his mother’s constant pressure and expectations for him to do what she feels is right for him. Also, my parents would suggest that I attend a prestigious university after graduating high school because they hear exceptional things about those certain universities and associate success with them. This makes me feel rushed as they are constantly bringing it up, and I also feel like I have no choice but to apply to the schools that they recommend. The narrator’s mother would also make him feel as if he had no choice but to become a
In Stevie Cameron’s essay “Our Daughters, Ourselves,” she proclaims “ We tell our bright, shining girls that they can be anything: firefighters, doctors, policewoman, lawyers, scientists, soldiers, athletes, artists. What we don't tell them, yet, is how hard it will be. Maybe, we say to ourselves, by the time they’re older it will be easier for them than it was for us.” My parents raised my sisters and I very congruous with this view. They would always tell us that we could do or be anything we wanted when we got older. However, contrary to Cameron’s apprehension on the matter, my parents always told us how difficult it would be straight from the beginning. They told us how financially strenuous becoming a doctor would be. They told us how
In “The Boat” by Alistair MacLeod, the mother shows the importance of tradition to her, which has been cemented in her since youth. Throughout the piece, the reader realizes that the mother comes from a large traditional family of fisherman, which in effect the mother’s most defining characteristic was that she “was of the sea, as were all her people, and her horizons were the very literal ones she scanned with her dark and fearless eyes”. Tradition and her inherited family values shaped her personality that was shown throughout the piece, such as her diligence during her husband’s fishing excursions to her stubbornness throughout the family’s hardships. In a sense, a large part of her identity came directly from her traditions, which she felt
The author Wes Moore dad was a hard worker and he had dreams & goals set for the future. The other Wes’s parents didn’t have as much drive and ambition. The other Wes’s dad walked out on him and his mother was left to work jobs just to provide for the family. Author Wes’s parents ambitions rubbed off onto him and his mother’s love for education drove her to push Wes academically. The two mothers had different expectations and ambitions for their sons. The other Wes states “‘We will do what others expect of us, Wes said. If they expect us to graduate we will graduate. If they expect us to get a job, we will get a job. If they expect us to go to jail, we will go to jail.” (Moore 126). The expectation the families had on both Wes’s shaped who they were and that influenced the decisions they made, that caused their lives to end up so
"In the end that was the choice you made, and it doesn't matter how hard it was to make it. It matters that you did." (Cassandra Clare) In the novel Tangerine by Edward Bloor, Paul's parents make many decisions that affected Paul's life. From moving to Tangerine, being inattentive towards Paul, and to having secrets kept from him, you could tell Paul Fisher has a pretty crazy life. Those decisions were made by his parents. However, those decisions that his parents made has molded Paul into a stronger person.
Parents want what is best for their children, but sometimes they expect too much and children can feel trapped. The only way kids feel they can escape from the pressure is to gain independence through rebelling. The short story “Brother Dear”, by Bernice Friesen suggests the idea that when individuals pursue independence by rebelling against expectations set out for them, they can become estranged from loved ones and feel like they have let them down; however, despite the pressure an individual may feel they can often remain optimistic about their situation. Greg grows up with a lot of pressure from his family to do well in life, the only way he feels he can escape this pressure is rebelling against what they want.
On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, the most expensive hurricane in American history, made landfall in Louisiana with winds of one hundred and twenty-seven miles per hour (“Hurricane Katrina Statistics Fast Facts”). The sheer magnitude of the amount of lives and property lost was enormous, and it was triggered simply by warm ocean waters near the Bahamas ("How Hurricane Katrina Formed"). Nature was indifferent to whether the raging winds and rain would die off in the ocean or wipe out cities; it only follows the rules of physics. A multitude of American authors has attempted to give accounts and interpretations of their encounters with the disinterested machine that is nature. Two authors, Stephen Crane and Henry David Thoreau, had rather contrasting and conflicting interpretations of their own interactions with nature. Crane’s work, “The Open Boat,” is story based on his experience as a survivor
In the novel, The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson, the author capitalizes upon society’s expectation of a character to emphasize the struggle to achieving his goals. Ian, one of the central characters in the plot line, is heavily impacted by these expectations, which hold a substantial influence upon his decision’s regarding his future. To teenagers an expectation: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future, is nothing but a restriction upon them. Ian believes he is contained within these expectations; to the point where he does not wish to follow this given path. In a time of adolescence, teenagers are compelled by the strong desire to denounce that which is expected of them; Ian is no exception to this. Societies expectations create a negative influence upon Ian’s struggles to achieve his goals. These effects are due to the following expectations: to leave Struan for a superior education, to obtain the opportunity to become successful; to strive for a medical career, since he excels at the trade already; and to settle into a happy relationship, to raise a family.
Being a woman in Afghanistan is extremely hard and challenging. Women face many hardships and restrictions compared to men during their lifetime. These hardships include women having a lack of education, Not allowed outside without being fully clothed head to toe and not being able to play a sport or step foot into a sporting center or club.
I was raised in an encouraging household where both of my parents greatly valued education. Although they were high school graduates, neither could afford to attend college; a combination of family and financial woes ultimately halted their path. As a result, my parents frequently reminded me that getting a good education meant better opportunities for my future. To my parents, that seemed to be the overarching goal: a better life for me than the one they had. My parents wanted me to excel and supported me financially and emotionally of which the former was something their parents were not able to provide. Their desire to facilitate a change in my destiny is one of many essential events that contributed to my world view.
There was always going to be pressure on me in one form or another, whether it be from my Mom, a teacher, or even my friends. But, I learned that letting these expectations compromise who I was; letting them get in my way by making me doubt myself, was never good. And I’m not writing this to say expectations are a bad thing. Expectations from others or myself are healthy, they provide us standards to hold ourselves to and present us with attainable goals. However, letting these expectations define you in moments in which you have to step to the plate and “swing” in life is never a good thing.
My parents have always pushed me to be better than they were. They knew that if I wanted to be successful I needed to go to college. In highschool, they always made me put my education before anything else. My parents didn’t go to college so they would always tell me to not make that mistake because their lives could have been easier if they would of just invested a few more years into their education. They would also tell me about all the opportunities that missed out on because they decided not to further their education.
My story began on a cool summer’s night twenty short years ago. From my earliest memory, I recall my father’s disdain for pursuing education. “Quit school and get a job” was his motto. My mother, in contrast, valued education, but she would never put pressure on anyone: a sixty-five was passing, and there was no motivation to do better. As a child, my uncle was my major role-model. He was a living example of how one could strive for greatness with a proper education and hard work. At this tender age of seven, I knew little about how I would achieve my goals, but I knew that education and hard work were going to be valuable. However, all of my youthful fantasies for broader horizons vanished like smoke when school began.
Looking back at my past, I recall my mother and father’s relationship as if it were yesterday. I am only four years old, small and curious; I tended to walk around my home aimlessly. I would climb book shelves like a mountain explorer venturing through the Himalayans, draw on walls to open windows to my own imagination, or run laps around the living room rug because to me I was an Olympic track star competing for her gold medal; however my parents did not enjoy my rambunctious imagination. My parents never punished me for it but would blame each other for horrible parenting skills; at the time I did not understand their fights, but instead was curious about why they would fight.
This Passage is significant in many ways. O’Brien has a vague yet vivid memory of throwing a grenade and killing a young Vietnamese soldier in the midst of war and what really struck him was the corpse of the young man. He is dejected because of what he has done, and was even speaking in the third person and constructing fantasies as to what the man must have been like before he was killed. Weaving the story of the young man’s life into something similar as his own. The way O’Brien achieves this is through certain literary techniques. One is being Imagery. On the top of page 127 he says “The nose was undamaged. The skin on the right cheek was smooth and fine-grained and hairless. Frail-looking, delicately boned” (O’Brien 127). On the top of page 128 he also says “Along the trail there were small blue flowers shaped like bells. The young man 's head was wrenched sideways, not quite facing the flowers, and even in the shade a single blade of sunlight sparkled against the buckle of his ammunition belt. The left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips. The wounds at his neck had not yet clotted, which made him seem animate even in death, the blood still spreading out across his shirt.” (O’Brien 128). O’Brien uses words like
My parents applauded my academic success, but hardly knew the price I paid for it. I vividly remember one night when my mother couldn't fall asleep. She kept going to bed and getting up again. Every -, time I heard her get up, I'd turn off my light so she wouldn't catch me still awake. By 5 o'clock that morning, I was so sleepy that I didn't hear her footsteps as she shuffled down the hallway. When she saw the light under my door, she came in and demanded to know why I wasn't sleeping.