The Pact Analysis

The Pact Analysis

Friendship is the support for most great inspiration. Friendship creates peer pressure, both positive and negative, and it is nearly unavoidable in everyday life. The author’s of The Pact were raised in the streets of Newark, New Jersey. They were faced with many dangerous decisions. Despite many tremendous distractions, they were able to apply knowledge gained from friendship and experience to help them through their lives to propel them to where they are today.

As a child, I felt that having friends was the most significant cause in who I am today. Throughout my life I have had many friends who have influenced me in numerous ways, but now most of them have become distant acquaintances. Although the majority of these people have very little communication with me now, only a few childhood friends continue to still be a part of my life now. The most frequent is my first and best friend, Matt.

Somehow this name creates a pattern that continues to show up all over my life. It seems that all of the closest friends that I have had in my life have this name. The communication between Matt and I was amazing and our connection was extraordinary. Matt and I were ten years old and we spoke to each other in a language that only we knew. The language was created out of personal words or phrases that we created to describe situations.

Our understanding of life was endorsed by rare bonds, and close family relationships. The two of us became undividable when we first met in kindergarten. Matt’s parents were older in age than my parents. I thought his father to be a strict family figure, because of his experience as a retired PA State Policemen, and his hat that he wore proudly all the time displaying in large words “Vietnam Veteran”. His mom was very opposite in comparison with his father. She was pleasant and she seemed to take on situations with ease.

Matt was a full year older than me, he was the last child in a family of four. His siblings were twofold his age, and I feel this significantly impacted the two of us. Much like Sam, Rameck, and George, the authors of The Pact, I was able to see and understand at a young age much of what could become of me by observing and learning what much of what my family, Matt’s family, and many of the neighbors around me had to teach. George, one of the authors of The Pact, tells how h...

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... my old school that had now been taken away from me in my new school. Students wore more fashionable clothes, and their attitude was different from what I was used to. They were more arrogant and I didn’t know why. This new atmosphere was challenging, and because I hadn’t grown up in the area, I became lost. I remained alone, only talking to Matt over the internet, but after a couple years we simply grew distant. I was without a stable friendship, and because of this I was almost easily manipulated. George, one of the authors of The Pact, explains this situation by stating “[i]n my experience, friends have more influence on one another’s lives than most anyone else does especially in those teenage years when kids are trying to discover who they really are” (107). I, like the author’s of The Pact, gave in to peer pressure and in time learned many lessons.

In order to be successful in life, you need to have positive influences, whether it is friends, nature, or family. Everyone at some point in time will suffer from not having these influences. The reality is that no matter what the circumstances, with the right attitude and determination, you can succeed and be successful.