William Zinsser The Right To Failure Essay

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The American dream is the ideal that every U.S. citizen should be able to achieve success and prosperity through equal opportunities such as hard work, patience, determination, initiative. In William Zinsser’s essay “The Right to Fail,” the readers are presented with the idea that failure is a part of the pathway to life to be able to achieve the American dream. Like most people, this complicates what we see as the American dream. Do we all face failure at some point in life? Will we be able to pick ourselves back up after this point? Is there any way to avoid failure? What does failure even consist of? Zinsser provides his readers with the truths about this derogatory word known as failure. In paragraphs one through three, William Zinsser uses “dropout” and “fink” as terms to describe what today’s society defines as lazy and stupid. Contrary to this belief, Zinsser opens up the minds of the ignorant when he states “For the young, dropping out is often a way of dropping in.” This meaning that college or social standards might not be enough for the needs of a certain …show more content…

This is shown in paragraph six when William Zinsser tells his readers that “Failure isn’t fatal. Countless people have had a bout with it and come out stronger as a result.” This in particular complicates my idea of the American dream, for I was always told to never fail. To Zinsser, his belief of failure comes from the proof that biographies and “rebels” give him. He shows a great desire for challenging the ideas of those around him. In paragraph seven Zinsser wrote, “There is nothing accidental about the grip that this dropout continues to hold on the affections of an entire American generation.” William Zinsser is talking about a popular literary hero of the postwar time. The word dropout and failure is used over and over in this essay but the people who these words describe are completely far from society’s

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