Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Feeling like an outsider essays
Essay on being an outsider
Experiences as an outsider
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Feeling like an outsider essays
Everyone at some point in time has felt left out or felt like an outsider. People don't take the time to get to know someone. The very first second you see someone you judge them based on what they are wearing, their hair, their body shape or anything else you can think of. People who wear different clothes or have different hair are judged more easily because people don't like change and difference. People like to be around people who are like them and won't take the time to actually sit down and get to know someone. Outsiders are misjudged everyday by people who are willing to judge someone based on what they look like or who they may be friends with. In schools people are judged by everyone which makes the environment at school very tense.
The so called “popular” people of schools have a one track mindset and that's that everyone they are friends with should dress the same and like the same people. Most people aren't open to change so when they see people complete opposite of themselves their first instinct is judgment. Outsiders in high schools aren't given the opportunity by some people to show what they are like on the inside because of the judgments people automatically make. Furthermore, there are people who would like to talk to people that may be different, but are too afraid of what their friends might think. The outsiders in high schools don't deserve some of the treatment they get from fellow classmates. People may be different, but that doesn't mean that someone isn't a caring and kind hearted person and everyone should be given the opportunity to prove that. In society women are also commonly misjudged.Since women are viewed as smaller and weaker than males women are tuned out when it comes to things men would usually do. Women are judged by men based on their strength abilities and size when women can do mostly anything men can do. As well as sports, men's sports are vastly more popular than women's. People believe that women can't compare and compete with men when women's sports are equal as hard as men’s. If women weren't judged for their abilities and women and men were presented equal than the world would be a better place In the story “The Metamorphosis” the main character Gregor wakes up one morning and discovers that he has turned into a venomous bug. Throughout the story he becomes more bug like, he gets smaller, he can climb walls and his vision gets blurry. His family is scared of him and run the other way whenever he goes near them. His sister on the other hand shows compassion towards him at the beginning of the story, but later doesn't want anything to do with him. His family is judging him based on what he's turned into, his appearance. They don't realize that he's the same person he was just in a different form. If they wouldn't have judged him as quickly as they did, they would have seen that. In the end of the story he ends up being all alone until he finally dies. The story is a metaphor of his life, how he felt every day and that no one would listen to him or hear him out. His life was empty. The people in his life were too lazy to care about the type of person he was on the inside, they just focused on the judgments on the outside.
The article "Let`s Really Reform Our Schools" by Anita Garland discuss the trouble faced by American High Schools. According to her, students are more concerned about their looks than learning, and this results in poor academic performance. She states that there is a need for American High Schools to be completely restructured. The worst students must be kicked out of the schools because they are troublemakers, and they distract others, which includes their fellow students, teachers, and administrators. Troublemakers lack fear of suspension from school, and suspension from school doesn’t improve their behavior. Troublemakers do not care about punishments at all. After all, they don’t want to be in the school, and they are not learning anything
The surface of an avocado, like the Greasers in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, appears dark, thick- skinned, and tough. However, once you peel the outside of the avocado, deep inside you will find a golden heart just as you will in a young male character named Ponyboy in Hinton’s book and in the movie based on her book. Ponyboy gives the impression that he is a tough hoodlum. However, when you peel away the stereotypes others use to label his group of friends, you will find that he is a gold-hearted person. Although the movie and the book, both entitled The Outsiders, contain several similarities, they have many differences as well.
I feel as though the novel The outsiders has many themes, but the most important one is belonging. The greasers are a group of poor, low class youth that don’t have much and live on the wrong side of town. They are always held accountable for their actions. On the other hand, the Socs are a bunch of high class youth that are very privileged and aren’t held accountable for their immature actions.
People in the must-be-seen-as box need attention and feel like they are being watched and judged. They need to be thought well of and will work hard to fit in because they think people around them judge them.
...ntinue too. People fear outsiders because the fear of otherization and the unknown scares people and “turns them off” from those who are different, and causes people to form stereotypes from events that have happened throughout the past.
Life is scarier than we think it is. We are always surprised by the unexpected and we don’t know what awaits us around the corner. The Greasers have been overwhelmed with the unexpected nevertheless they are ready, waiting anxiously for those miscalculations to occur. The most imperative and dominant themes that concoct S.E.Hinton’s The Outsiders are courage, social class and the importance of family and support.
Is everyone an outsider? We have been looking the concept of outsiders but are we also outsiders? “Othello”, by William Shakespeare, explores the idea of an outsider from the very beginning of the play. Equally so, “The Boat People-Big Trial” is a short story written by Herb Wharton and follows the concept of outsiders as it is about the Europeans coming to Australia and misjudging the Aboriginals again. The quote written by Meshell Ndegeocello “any ideas of ‘other’ are complicated, and otherness is relative to personal ideas of ‘normal’”, shows that to certain people ‘other’ can be totally different and non-conforming whereas to another group of people ‘otherness ‘ may be normal for them. People often get portrayed differently because of personal opinions and as a result derogatory and demeaning terms may be used. Therefore everyone is an outsider even though they may not know it. Both successfully explore the context of otherness as it relates to outsiders.
Society is filled with outcasts. Everywhere one looks, there is someone who is different and has been labeled as an outcast by the others around them. People fear disturbance of their regular lives, so they do their best to keep them free of people who could do just that. An example of this in our society is shown in people of color. Whites label people who do not look the same as them as and treat them as if they are less important as they are. The white people in our society, many times unconsciously, degrade people of color because they fear the intuition that they could cause in their everyday lives. Society creates outcasts when people are different from the “norm.”
Schools are supposed to be second homes. It goes without saying that students should feel safe, comfortable, and happy at school. They're all there for the same reason. They're all stuck in the same boat of studying for the same diploma exams and going to the same assemblies.
As clever as human beings are, we still rely on social groups for survival. We evolved to live in cooperative societies, and for most of human history we depended on those groups for our lives. Like hunger or thirst, our need for acceptance emerged as a mechanism for survival. But when we don't have that, we tend to become disconnected from society, which ultimately leads to social rejection. Being socially rejected can also be the reason why people commit horrific acts. In the novel Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult shows that being socially ostracized can affect someone's life significantly.
There are not very many individuals today who are unconscious of the viciousness in schools. As school
Albert Camus states that “In our society any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death” (Camus, 18). In the book The Outsider, Meursault defies local convention by not showing the sadness that is expected of him at his mother’s funeral. Ultimately, his life is dependant on this very decision of whether or not to show emotion. In the society that Meursault lives in, one is expected to conform to their standards and social norms. Anyone who deviates from these norms is considered an outcast and destined to die at the hands of society. Meursault was expected to show outwards signs of grief whether it was real or not. Even if the grief is artificial, most people will play to the audience and show signs of grief to minimize the risk of losing their life. Meursault’s was conflicted between following society’s rules and being true to himself. The nurse at his mother's funeral warned him that “if yougo slowly, you risk getting sun-stroke. But if you go too fast, you perspire and then in the church you catch a chill. She was right. There was no way out” (Camus, 22). The nurse’s admonition is consistent with his internal struggle. To Meursault, walking too fast is similar to conforming to society and walking too slow means following his own path. There is no middle ground to the situation, no happy median and no suitable compromise. Meursault faces the challenge of whether or not to conform on three main levels; physical, emotional and spiritual. He has the constant battle between following his physical self; his id, and doing what is right. Meursault also has to decide whether or not to be true to his emotions and decide if lying during his trial is a suitable course of action. Finally h...
In ”Revenge of the Geeks” ,an example can be found in this quote:“...Taylor Swift’s classmates left the lunch table as soon as she sat down because they disdained her taste for country music. Last year, the Grammy winner was the nation’s top-selling recording artist.” pg. 201. In other words, Taylor Swift was excluded from her friend group because they didn’t share the same interests. Similarly, in the poem “Sonnet, With Bird” it states “...I traveled to London to promote my first internationally published book. A Native American in England!” pg. 214. This shows that even Native Americans who travel the world can still feel like a foreigner at times. Lastly, from my own personal experience, I have a family member who always was an outcast during their teen years, but then when they matured as an adult they become very successful with their created business and they didn’t rely on being popular to boost their activity. On the other hand, some may think that kids who were outsiders choose to be by their actions and that people can only be an outsider if they want to be. In “Revenge of the Geeks” an 8th grader says “The smart thing repels girls.” pg. 226. He talks about how his intellectual abilities prevent him from attracting girls. However, many cannot control how they are and can’t control how they’re labeled, and will continuously be called an
In today's society, our natural reaction is to put people into a specific class that we feel they fit into upon our first impression. When we were in high school, they were called clicks. There were your jocks and your cheerleaders, who were usually the most popular students. Along with stoners, nerds, and then the people who really didn't fit into any crowd, they were just there. When we were in high school, all of us wanted to be in the "cool crowd". As described in When I was growing Up by Nellie Wong, "I discovered the rich white girls...imported cotton dresses...and thought that I too should have what these lucky girls had..." In stereotyping people, we perhaps have ruined some great minds.
Unfortunately, this struggle for conformity often extends beyond a personal level. It is not uncommon for society to chastise a person for being different, in one particular way or another. This chastising could range from polite disapproval, to snide comments, to harmful, oppressive tactics such as bullying and harassment. This causes more people to conform to society for the fear of being labeled a