Sunday, November 15, 2009

The Right Track

What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?

Although it may seem like young people don’t play much of a role in the society today, they will in the future. This is why in the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, old man Warner mentioned young folks. He brought them up because he saw the importance of their existence in the society. The old man might be wrong about how his society doesn't need changes, but his concept on the significance of young folks is correct. Whatever is done now is what young people will learn from, and that is why he was trying to be a good role model.

Old man Warner understood the importance of young people in the society, but he dealt with it in the wrong way. Like a typical parent, old man Warner pushed his expectations on young people. Setting a good example and leading the young generation on the right track is necessary, but the impact of elders on children only goes so far. At some point, children needs to learn to go on with life on their own, and eventually they will start to have their own opinion. They take the old concept, add new ideas to it, and then they reproduce a whole new society. The more the elders restrain young people from expanding their ideal world, the greater the violence would be when they finally demand revolution. People now lay out a train track for the younger generation to follow, but the younger generation is building their own at the same time. Ultimately, the one that will end up having to make the decisions are the young people, so pushing expectations on young people the way old man Warner did is not the best approach to making a better future.

4 comments:

  1. First of all, this was a good one. It took me awhile to find a way to attack it. Also please, please check over your post before posting, I see a lot of grammatical errors and inconsistency. Anyway, moving away from the physical aspect, let's talk about your argument.

    First of all, there is no wrong way to go about doing things like creating a future, there is only your way and my way. Whether old man Warner's ways are wrong or not is something that is impossible to prove with logic. To begin with what's right and what's wrong are two of the many things in the world that cannot be proven with anything besides your opinion.

    Another thing, it was a good thing that old man Warner pushed expectations onto the young people. In fact, all young kids look for expectations. Because expectations are what set a standard for the kind of choices that individual makes. Because everyone has expectations placed on them, they have a standard which they can base their decisions. If a parent doesn't expect anything from their kid, that's the say as saying that the parent cares nothing at all for the child. Because the old man cares, he pushes what he thinks is the truth onto other people. It is a lot harder to create something out of absolutely nothing than it is to make something based off an already existing thing.

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  2. First of all, thank you for posting a comment longer than my actual response. Thank you for the compliment, and thank you for being so persistent on having to find a way to attack my post. My apologies for the grammatical mistakes. I was in a rush to see what you would have to say about my response, after having read the critical responses you wrote for others.

    First of all, I’d like to ask you, do you think its ‘right’ to take drugs and skip school? If you had to categorize the above in to right and wrong categories, which would you put them in? This blog is for the sake of writing your heart out, not harassing others. I was writing from a very broad point of view. If you want to go around disagreeing with ever single thing said, then everything in the world can be debated upon.

    Also, having expectations and pushing someone with your expectation is a different thing. Having expectations of someone is having trust in someone, and pushing your expectation on someone is being full of yourself and being obsessed with your own theory. My parents dont push me with any expectations, and in contrast of what you say, I tend to work harder, becaue I feel like I’m receiving the freedom I want; therefore I should respect them by paying them back with my hard work.

    As well, I never said anything suggesting, “It is a lot harder to create something out of absolutely nothing than it is to make something based off an already existing thing.” I mentioned how setting a good example and leading younger generation on the right track is a necessary. True, it would be hard to work with absolutely nothing, but that is not the case here. I advise you read the response carefully before making your comments.

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  3. Sigh...you make me feel like a jerk for writing that, though I guess I kinda am for writing it. I can tell you for certain I don't feel that way. I can also tell you for certain that I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this, or how I feel about everything else for that matter. Sorry I didn't mean to offend you with my comment there. Almost every single one of my comments is completely different, because I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the topic. I guess you could say that I'm still looking for an opinion. If you know me well enough IRL you can tell that I don't really have any personality to begin with. Sorry about that. Though I can say one thing for certain; I liked reading your comment and your post.

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  4. Sotes,
    I wasn't trying to make you feel bad. I understand you have your point of view, but I just wanted you to know I was writing a response, not an essay. But thank you. To be honest, I liked reading your comment too, because it really got me thinking. And in real life, your not someone that doesnt have a personality. You have your beliefs, but you also take in other's opinion, and thats probably why it causes conflict inside you. Your starting good debate, though. I read the other blog, and they ARE inactive. You're the one thats making our blog as intresing as it is :)

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