Everyone has insecurities and sometimes it makes them hate themselves. When you are insecure and your soul is dying, you shouldn’t hide it to yourself. Seek help, ask for help, turn to get help and find someone who will always be there to help you. Don’t let your insecurities control you and make you forget who you really are and what you can accomplish. In 145th Street Short Stories , the author Walter Dean Myers explores the theme of insecurity using literary techniques such as conflict and flashbacks in the short stories, “Fighter” and “Kitty and Mack: A Love Story.”
In “Fighter,” Billy is insecure because of his failures in life. He believes that he is not able to accomplish anything because he is a failure. His insecurity holds him back,
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He loses his mind and tries to commit suicide. He goes on the roof to which his father pleads him to come down. His father asks him “Why, son, why?” and he replies with “I’m not your son.” He tells his father “Your son was a ballplayer, wasn’t he? He didn’t have any missing parts, did he?” Mack sits on the edge of the roof as “The pain sat between them even as the rain beat down.” This demonstrates that Mack doesn’t think that he’ll ever heal and become the person he was before. Mack believes that he had let everyone down by not being the successful person he was before. He feels as if he will never reach people’s expectations of him now because of the tragedy.
In conclusion, the author of 145th Street Short Stories by Walter Dean Myers uses conflict, flashbacks and irony to develop the theme of insecurity in “Fighter” and “Kitty and Mack: A Love Story.” Billy and Mack both suffer from internal conflicts that caused them to be insecure. Billy lets his failures in life to control him and hold him back in accomplishing things. Meanwhile Mack loathes himself because he believes that he won’t be able to be the man he once was. Myers is trying to demonstrate that people should beware that some people are deeply hurt and insecure insecure and should try to help them overcome it. However, insecure people should also help themselves and not let their insecurities control their life and make them forget who they can really be and
Weisel-Barth, J 2014 ‘Review of “The Stories We Tell”’, International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, Vol.9(2), p.162-166, DOI: 10.1080/15551024.2014.884526
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