Many people in today’s society believe that people should strive to be happy all of the time. They think that no matter the situation, people need to do everything in their power to feel happy. In Heinrich Böll’s My Sad Face, we see an oppressive government attempting to make a society happy through implementing a law requiring people to be happy. My opinion is that this concept, even if it is not literally implemented, is paralleled within our society on a daily basis.
In today’s society, we hear all the time about people need to be happy. The expectation for most college students is that you will attend college to earn a degree and then enter the workforce. From personal experience, I can attest to my parent’s expectations that the degree I am working towards will lead me to happiness. They believe that my degree in mathematics and secondary education will give me the tools that I need to be happy. Despite these beliefs, there have been many times where I have been attending college, working towards my degree, and I have been unhappy. When I return home my parents expect me to tell them about the exciting and happy times that I am having at college. My response to this is to tell them about all of the great times without talking about any of the bad times. This is paralleled in My Sad Face when the main character cannot express his emotions on this particular day. Instead, he is arrested for
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showing a “sad face.” I feel like people nowadays have to censor their lives a bit when they are talking about their lives. Perhaps it is just a opinion of mine, but I think that people have to hide what they are really feeling in order to meet the expectations of society. I think that the social pressures placed upon people require them to make a “happy” appearance. No one wants to be around an unhappy person. Thus, the social thing to do is to put on a mask and to hide the problems and the fears that people face, even though removing the mask may help a person in the long run. Even though, the Another area within society that leads people to living an unhappy life is the sense of inequality. The inequality in life can lead people to believe they have been placed at a lower status or have no worth. This is seen all of the time in situations that people view their surroundings as unfriendly. Sometimes, it is due to racial, gender, or ethnicity differences. In My Sad Face, the officer that first talks to the main character first addresses him as comrade. When the main character does not respond back with the same address, the officer becomes infuriated because of the main character’s lack of respect. The officer is trying to promote equality within the society when he says, “What d’you mean, ‘Sir’? We’re all comrades.” However, it is obvious that the society is not equal throughout due to the physical abuse that the officers and the citizens place upon the main character as he was being taken to prison. As a person who has been blessed to have been given so many great opportunities for me to be successful in life, it is difficult for me to find times where I have found inequalities in my own life. However, that is not to say that I do not recognize the inequalities within our society. Frankly, our society favors the straight, white male. It has been that way since the beginning of the countries foundation. Many minority groups have not been given an equal chance to succeed in life simply because of their background or attributes. I think that the story trying to show that the community is one that is equal shows us how society can display that façade. They think that if people are all equal it will mean that people are happy. Now, being an athlete, I can attest that this idea is ridiculous. It is human nature for people to want to be better than other people. It is a mindset that people have that shows to them that they have some sort of ability that makes them unique. In some way, shape, or form, they are better than someone at a particular thing. I’ve never heard a competitive person say, “I want to be the same as someone.” The ability of accomplishing a goal or doing something better than someone else gives people that feeling of happiness. A society that promotes equality between everyone is a nice idea. However, it will never happen due to human nature. The story was written in first-person narration.
Throughout the story, the main character is telling us what is going on. One of the literary devices used in My Sad Face is the use of in medias res. The story begins as the main character has been released from prison and is spending some time by himself by the water. Another literary device that is used in the story is irony. The main character is being arrested for having a sad face when it is required to have a happy one. It is ironic because of the fact that the main character was arrested before for having a happy
face. A third literary device that was used is imagery. When the narrator is describing the walk to the police station, he says “Here and there as we walked… partake of the Wednesday beer.” The narrator is telling us about an instance where happiness in this society may actually be real because people do take pleasure with privileges. True happiness within this society though is extremely hard to find outside of the beer drinking. In conclusion, people’s happiness in our society is unable to truly be shown throughout our communities. Mainly due to the idea that everyone needs to strive to be happy, people tend to hide and suppress their insecurities and unhappiness. They do not want to be seen as inadequate people. Inequality, regardless of the source, can hinder people’s happiness. However, a society that believes everyone has to be equal will never exist because of the innate desire to be the best in what one does. Any one who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves.
Sharon Begley, author of “Happiness: Enough Already,” proclaims that dejection is not an unacceptable state of mind and there are experts that endorses gloomy feelings. This reading explicates that even though every-one should be happy there is no need to ignore sadness, as both emotions share key parts in everyone’s life. Sharon Begley and her team of specialists provides the information on why sadness is supplemental to a person’s life.
In contrast to Aristotle, Roko Belic’s documentary “Happy” provides a fresh perspective that takes place far more recently. The film sets out to similar goals of Aristotle in defining the nature of happiness and exploring what makes different people happy in general. Unlike Aristotle, however, the film’s main argument refers to makes people happier. In this case, the film argues that merely “doing what you love” is what leads to happiness (Belic). The argument itself appears oddly self-serving, considering that message is what underlines the foundation of happiness, yet there is a subliminal message that a simpler lifestyle is what leads to what the film is trying to convince you of. The message itself is obviously addressed to Americans, considering
Even after the competitive race to get into desirable colleges has subsided, students are still finding themselves relying on the pressures of success to motivate them and push them forward. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s article “Bright-Sided”, Ehrenreich explains a mindset shared by those in the market economy that is also internalized by students in college and even workers in the workforce, “If optimism is key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure” (Ehrenreich 538). Through Ehrenreich’s proposed positive thinking concept, the stress and pressures that young adults place on themselves are self-imposed and intertwined with their logic and reasoning, but those pressures are initially driven into their mindset by society. People in current society are brought up to believe that they as individuals must take responsibility for their own success; students think that if they use positive thinking, they will get exactly where they want to be, and if they fail, it is because they did not work hard enough. It is exactly this ideology that leads to students presenting “signs of depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation” (Alicia Kruisselbrink Flatt, The College
Society pressure themselves to be happy; they often ask questions like, “does that make you happy?” What they fail to understand is that sometimes doing the right thing, for the moment, might not seem to bring happiness in one’s life, but after trekking the ups and downs of life, happiness might be waiting on the other side. From time to time people also judge good and bad through happiness. “If something is good, we feel good. If something is
People push being happy on society as a total must in life; sadness is not an option. However, the research that has conducted to the study of happiness speaks otherwise. In this essay Sharon Begley's article "Happiness: Enough Already" critiques and analyzes societies need to be happy and the motivational affects it has on life. Begley believes that individuals do not always have to be happy, and being sad is okay and even good for us. She brings in the research of other professionals to build her claim that extreme constant happiness is not good for people. I strongly agree that we need to experience sadness to build motivation in life and character all around.
The struggle between happiness and society shows a society where true happiness has been forfeited to form a perfect order.
Oliver Burkeman, author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and column writer for The Guardian, explores the human need to seek for happiness and its connection to the Museum of Failures in his article Happiness is a Glass Half Empty. Burkeman’s purpose to writing this essay is to give readers a new view on how to seek happiness – embrace negativity and expect the worst. Burkeman’s use of a friendly, almost informal tone to help relate to his readers is a brilliant attempt to catch his reader’s attention and hold it, therefore enabling the delivery of logic seem almost effortless.
The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.
In The Twilight Zone’s “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” and Aldous Huxley's “Brave New World” it is apparent that happiness comes from stability and the ability to get what one wants with little effort, however, the price for this happiness is a loss of individuality and strong emotions, making ignorance truly bliss.
Though everyone has their own definition of happiness and how it may be achieved, many still fall victim to society’s overwhelming standards and high expectations of how one should live. Throughout life, many that seek power may claim to have the answers one yearns for in order to gain the trust and loyalty they need to rule. However, by letting the ideas of the superior classes in society influence the course of actions one takes to achieve happiness, one automatically forfeits their natural right for the pursuit of happiness because how some may view happiness is not necessarily what one may want out of life. Various authors have portrayed this sense of absolute power through their writing as a way to bring awareness about the lack of control
Many people value the tangible over the complex. However, viewing the world solely through this definite lens is an oversimplification. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We explores this flaw in a society founded solely upon its government’s definition of the “ultimate happiness.” To reach utopia, it eliminates inefficiency, crime, and despondency, by promoting state-led happiness. Despite these admirable goals, the One State’s methods sacrifice freedom, individualism, and, ironically, happiness itself, ultimately failing its mission. Zamyatin explores the emotionless routine within the One State to assert that happiness cannot exist when controlled and rationalized.
It seems as though the majority of college students these days aren’t looking to further their education because it’s what they really want, they do it to please their parents, to be accepted by society, or because there’s nothing else for them to do (Bird, 372). These expectations have led to students being unhappy and stressed, and have pushed them into a school or a job that they don’t particularly care for.
MLA: Wallis, Claudia, et al. “The New Science of Happiness.” Time. 17 Jan. 2005. Academic Search Premier. Yale University Library. 11 Jan. 2006.
In the book, The How of Happiness, author and researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky sets her book apart from other self-awareness books by being the first to utilize empirical studies. She uses data gained through scientific method to provide support for her hypothesis. This hypothesis consists mainly of the idea that we have the ability to overcome genetic predisposition and circumstantial barriers to happiness by how we think and what we do. She emphasizes that being happier benefits ourselves, our family and our community. “The How of Happiness is science, and the happiness-increasing strategies that [she] and other social psychologists have developed are its key supporting players” (3).
My parents sensed my troubles and we moved. Adjusting to a new high school took time. It was not easy making new friends and I continued to be lost. These incidents weighed heavily on my mind. My anguished heart refused to see beyond my own woes. A recent disturbing incident changed my purview of life.