Final Exam Essay

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Final Exam Essay
Does everyone have the same chance to recover from the hardships in their life? Everyone has the same chance to do everything, it just depends on your amount of self-determination. Some people may be born in a better home, but could end up living a life of using drugs, whereas, another person could be born with drug addicted parents and end up living in New York City in a penthouse. The first one ended up living a life of using drugs because they had no self- determination and did nothing with their life. Whereas, the other person saw the life that is possible for them to live and chose to get an education and live a better life.
An example of a person that overcame the hardships of their life and made a better one is Lily Owens, a character from Secret Life of Bees. Throughout the book she overcame the hardships of not having a mother, an abusive father, and growing up in a house with black women in a time of segregation. Lily did not know what had really happened to her mother so all she grew up with was an abusive father. Lily used her self-determination and began a journey to find out what happened to her mother. Although life threw a lot of different obstacles at her while on this journey, she recovered from all of them by using her self determination. In this instance she was sitting out in a peach field looking at a couple of her mother’s belongings. When T-Ray came out he thought that she was out there with a boy, when that wasn’t the case. He would punish her by making her kneel on grits, he also yelled at her and called her names. “‘I expect this out of boys, Lily- you can’t blame them- but I expect more out of you. You act no better than a slut.’ He poured a mound of grits the size of an anthill on...

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...as accomplished what he set out to do, and more” (Wilson, para. 5).
Self-determination is one of the most important things when it comes to overcoming the hardships that life has to throw at you. Everyone has the same opportunity to overcome these, it is just whether or not you chose to get up and do something with your life. Lily overcame an abusive father to find out the truth about her mother. Jeannette who had terrible parents who cared more about their unrealistic dreams to take care of her used self-determination to become a journalist in New York City. Even if you drop out of school at the age of 16, move away from your family and go to a state that you are not familiar with, using self-determination Jim Carrey was able to become a very successful and famous actor. You can overcome anything in your life as long as you have the self-determination to do so.

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