Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Conformity or rebellion
Essay about high school dropouts
Essay about high school dropouts
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Conformity or rebellion
In each day students are not only challenged with the studies of classwork but the social conflicts of societies ever changing fashions. The peer pressures of grade school can be provoking to the point of conforming to certain behaviors; this can have either an optimistic or pessimistic outcome on the well-being of any student. Adolescents attending grade school must take a stand to decide who and what they want to become in life. Every decision that is made in each moment will affect the outcome of one’s life. Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. (McLeod) Therefore, being conformed shaped and molded by certain behaviors in society and choosing to rebel against the peer pressures of humane will define what type of character a man will have.
In the story Eveline, in the text Literature and the Writing Process, author James Joyce, writes intensely on the dreadful and painful decisions that a young woman faces concerning her desire for a better life, her duty to her family, and her fear of leaving home. (15) In the current theme for this semester, conformity and rebellion are found here in the text. Here we find a young woman that’s raised in and a home where her mother and brother have passed away and her father isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. She is forced to step up to the plate to help her father. Her promise to her mother about staying was important because it would have been so easy for her to rebel against her father’s will. Who would have loved to stay? Her father was abusive at times and would disapprove of many of Eveline decisions, especially about the love of her life Frank. This was a gentleman who she fell in love with. He would’ve pr...
... middle of paper ...
...d himself and will find himself surrounded by a fortress. It’s a fortress of character, personality, power and greatness. There, a man will have peace, love and liberty.” Standing for what’s right and what type of man one can become is phenomenal. Not becoming conformed to the immoral behaviors in life can take someone the distance. One must be full of rebellion and take a stand for what’s right and not be tossed to and fro like a jellyfish in the sea with no backbone.
Works Cited
McLeod, Saul. “What is Conformity?” Simply Psychology. N.p. 2007.Web. June 2011
James Joyce, Eveline , Literature and the Writing Process 10th Ed. Pearson, 2007. Print.
“11 facts about High School Dropout Rates.” DoSomething. National Center for education Statistics. N.p. Web.
F. Mathew. “What is Peer Pressure?” wisegeek. Conjecture Corporation. 11 Feb. 2014. Web.
13. Feb.14
Conformity means a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. As a teenager, the pressure to conform to the societal “norm” plays a major role in shaping one’s character. Whether this means doing what social groups want or expect you to do or changing who you are to fit in. During class, we watched films such as Mean Girls, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Breakfast Club which demonstrate how the pressure to conform into society can change who you are. In the movies we have seen, conformity was most common during high school.
It is very common to see conformity among young people, especially when large groups of young people are constantly around each other. School is one example where conformity is rampant. For some reason people tend to gravitate towards what others are doing. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, the characters are no different from any other young person in that they tend to conform. Ishiguro shows this conformity to prove that conformity stems from the want to fit in and pure ignorance. At Hailsham, the students conform just to fit in with the rest of the students, but they also conform because they do not know any better.
author Alexander Robbins states: “From the age of five children increasingly exclude peers who don’t conform to group norms. Children learn this quickly. A popular Indiana eighth grader told me ‘I have to be the same as everybody else, or people won’t like me anymore’” (150). The human brain is wired such that children will end friendships with kids that they find different. Robbins finds this behavior to be undesirable saying that it is not only unappealing, but it is a cop-out. In agreement with Robbins, parents across the world, organizations, and teen movies tell society that conformity is bad and that children should not conform to the group, rather they should stand alone and be individuals. However, Solomon Asch’s study may have discovered why this is. He concluded that: “The investigations described in this series are concerned with the independence and lack of independence in the face of group pressure” (1). Asch determines that in the face of pressure people are more apt to conform.
In society, it's difficult to go against the norm. Individuals are compelled to act a specific way, or look a specific way in order to be accepted. For instance, teenagers may encounter pressure from their peers to partake in specific exercises that may not be moral, since they feel the need to fit in. This weight of conformity isn't just present in reality; it can be found in literature as well. The story "St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell depicts that in order to conform to society, individuals abandon their selflessness and compassion and become selfish and apathetic.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive. Although the society that we are living in is different than the one the Emerson's essay, the idea of fitting in still exists today. Although society and our minds make us think a certain way, we should always trust our better judgment instead of just conforming to society.
The youth of the 1950s were built off of their rebellious personalities, their sense of morality, and the metaphorical phrase of being rebirthed. This is best shown in the film Rebel Without a Cause, where teens are seen running away from their parents and getting involved in stuff they shouldn’t be. The reasons why teens were depicted as rebels against conformity was because of how youth culture formed, such as the growth of cars, being involved with love, and forming gangs within their group of friends. When comparing 50s kids to today’s kids, it can be seen that the generation’s culture is drastically different. The biggest goal for parents today are to wipe out the source of rebellious thoughts, and keep strict conformity amongst their family so it would not cause society’s downfall.
Pursuing a personal desire and choosing to conform to societal expectations is a challenging decision to make. A person must decide if their personal desire is worth risking the shame and judgment of others or is conforming the route to take because it is easier. When pursuing a personal desire one must ask itself if it is worth the hardship to accomplish one's desire or if it is best left alone and repressed, in hopes of finding comfort in conformity. John Laroche from The Orchid Thief expresses his personal desire without a care for conformity or societal expectations. Nevertheless, Laroche never stopped being strange as he grew up with fascinations of many objects such as orchids, turtles, old mirrors and fish tanks.
How do the actions and words of a society affect the way people act? In Never Let Me Go, author Kazuo Ishiguro depicts a society in which individuality is threatened by the pressure to conform through methods such as peer pressure and social expectations. Without a doubt, peer pressure is most commonly found in schools today just as social expectations are suffocating the middle class’ desire to become their own unique person.
"Eveline" is the story of a young teenager facing a dilemma where she has to choose between living with her father or escaping with Frank, a sailor which she has been courting for some time. The story is one of fifteen stories written by James Joyce in a collection called "Dubliners". These stories follow a certain pattern that Joyce uses to express his ideas: "Joyce's focus in Dubliners is almost exclusively on the middle-class Catholics known to himself and his family"(the Gale Group). Joyce's early life, family background, and his catholic background appear in the way he writes these stories. "Where Joyce usually relates his stories to events in his life, there are some stories which are actually events that took place in his life" (Joyce, Stanislaus). James Joyce in his letter to Grant Richard writes:
Conformity and Obedience in Society The desire to be accepted and belong to a group is an undeniable human need. But how does this need affect an individual? Social psychologists have conducted numerous experiments and concluded that, through various forms of social influence, groups can change their members’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In her essay “Group Minds,” Doris Lessing discusses our paradoxical ability to call ourselves individuals and our inability to realize that groups define and influence us.
¨ Show people who you are on the inside, not the copy of someone else that’s on the outside ¨ No one has heard this quote before, but it is telling everyone to be themselves and not be ashamed who they really are not the copy you have made over the years. People in our generation tend to believe that kids and teens are not being true to themselves and just wanting to be one within the crowd.
Conformity is defined as the compliance with social standards and laws in a particular culture, environment, society and time. If this occurs the individual changes their attitudes, beliefs or actions to align more holistically with those in the surrounding groups and environment, as a result of real or perceived group pressure. This is ultimately a direct result of the power which a group has over the individual. There are two types of conformity, normative conformity, and informational conformity. Normative conformity is motivated by the desire to be liked and accepted in society. This is most widely known as peer pressure. For example, a student begins smoking because their peers are smoking,
In the story “Eveline”, Joyce’s main character Eveline has ambitions to escaper her life in Ireland. For the main part of the story she is waiting in front of a window ready to leave for a new life with her lover Frank. “She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape” (29). This illustrates the theme of escape by showing her dissatisfaction with her life in Ireland. She is reluctant due to a promise made to her mother to stay and take care of her family. Being an independent person she longs to leave Ireland however, she decides to stay at the end of the story with complete awareness of her decision. “NO! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy” (34). She could leave her father and live a happy life instead she lives this displeasing life. Eveline is overwhelmed by her unending struggle with her will to leave.
James Joyce is widely considered to be one of the best authors of the 20th century. One of James Joyce’s most celebrated short stories is “Eveline.” This short story explores the theme of order and hazard and takes a critical look at life in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century. Furthermore, the themes that underlie “Eveline” were not only relevant for the time the story was wrote in, but are just as relevant today.
1. "'High school dropout crisis' continues in U.S., study says." CNN U.S.. Cable News Network, 5 May 2009. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. .