Society and culture are constantly evolving leaving the people to either conform or be left behind. With the human mind ever evolving, technology advancing more and more each day, and the new trend changing weekly the United States sets a fast pace for everyone to keep up with. In “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner, Miss Emily Grierson is a who lived in the old South where women grew up, got married, and spent the rest of their lives taking care of their families. However, Miss Emily’s father drove off any man that had interest in her, and after he died time seemed to stand still for her in that small town. The short story “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, describes Goodman Brown’s encounter with the devil on his trip into the forest. In Brown’s village conformity it the only way of life, but his encounter changes him. It is up to society to decide if conformity will make or break existence as shown with Miss Emily who resists any sort of change, or Goodman Brown whose village’s ways did more damage than good.
Conformity exists all across the world and differs in every society. In the United States it can differ not just as a country as a whole, but down to each different region. Throughout the evolution of society people have been expected to ‘change with the times’, but there has always been those outcasts or rebels of each generation. American society has seen every different trend, belief, political view, and prejudice imaginable. The people have witnessed integration between whites and African Americans, women entering the workforce and fighting for their rights, machinery replace human labor, and wars that half the country have defended and the other half protested. With every change there have been both...
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...may conform to the most popular fashion, what her family expects of her, the popular friends to have, and the ‘right’ way to live altogether, and another child will grow up without fear of change, without the care of what others think, and with the only focus on what she wants out of life. Just because one follows the path paved for her and the other paves her own that does not mean one has a better chance than the other. Culture tells the people to conform, but there is nothing stopping a person from holding onto his own beliefs and plans for life.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Lit. Ed. Laurie G. Kiszner, Stephen R. Mandell. Belmont, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2012. 121-25. Print.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” Lit. Ed. Laurie G. Kiszner, Stephen R. Mandell. Belmont, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2012. 320-25. Print.
Conformity can be very crucial, infact a lot of people eventually start hurting themselves or doing drugs just because they don't feel themselves anymore.Why can't society change? why can't that one kid that always follows everyone in the back can turn into the kid that just hangs with the people they really wanna hang with?We need to embrace ourselves so we can stop all this conformity from consuming us.Tupac was a nonconformist, he always did what made him happy and always told the truth.
Pursuing a personal desire and choosing to conform to societal expectations is a challenging decision to make. A person must decide if their personal desire is worth risking the shame and judgment of others or is conforming the route to take because it is easier. When pursuing a personal desire one must ask itself if it is worth the hardship to accomplish one's desire or if it is best left alone and repressed, in hopes of finding comfort in conformity. John Laroche from The Orchid Thief expresses his personal desire without a care for conformity or societal expectations. Nevertheless, Laroche never stopped being strange as he grew up with fascinations of many objects such as orchids, turtles, old mirrors and fish tanks.
In society, it's difficult to go against the norm. Individuals are compelled to act a specific way, or look a specific way in order to be accepted. For instance, teenagers may encounter pressure from their peers to partake in specific exercises that may not be moral, since they feel the need to fit in. This weight of conformity isn't just present in reality; it can be found in literature as well. The story "St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell depicts that in order to conform to society, individuals abandon their selflessness and compassion and become selfish and apathetic.
In the United States, a country created out of rebellion, society seemingly celebrates the idea of uniqueness, individuality, and nonconformity. However, in Brave New World and 1984 , conformity is strictly and, sometimes, brutally enforced. However, in reality, is nonconformity really respected or are there more structures in place than we are willing to acknowledge to encourage conformity, even in the United States of 2017? While we seemingly celebrate individuality, in reality, we do many things to discourage nonconformity.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive. Although the society that we are living in is different than the one the Emerson's essay, the idea of fitting in still exists today. Although society and our minds make us think a certain way, we should always trust our better judgment instead of just conforming to society.
The definition of conformity is the compliance with social standards and laws in a particular culture, environment, society and time. If this occurs the individual changes their attitudes, beliefs or actions to align more holistically with those in the surrounding groups and environment, as a result of real or perceived group pressure. This is ultimately a direct result of the power which a group has over the individual. There are two types of conformity, normative conformity, and informational conformity. The motivation behind normative conformity is the desire to be liked and accepted in society. This is most widely known as peer pressure. For example, a student begins smoking because their peers
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown illustrates vividly how society and culture can very much influence a person’s sense of identity and belonging, or in the case of Young Goodman Brown the lack thereof. Being a Puritan man in a society that scorned the ways of witches and the devil, Young Goodman Brown grew up with a very pious outlook on life. Yet when it occurs to him to look at life a little bit differently, Young Goodman Brown receives more than he has bargained for. The journey he embarks on sheds a whole new light on his society that not only creates a struggle between himself and his fellow men but also one within himself.
Conformity and Its Meaning This assignment focuses upon conformity and what it means to us. Conformity is defined by Zimbardo (1992) as "A tendency for people to adopt behaviour, values and attitudes of other members of a reference group". Why people conform is a topic of much debate. People don't always conform for the same reason's, in 1958 Kelman identified three main forms of conformity, each of which could produce conforming behaviour but in different ways.
As a person one might find that we follow a specific routine on the day to day basis. Sudden changes to these routines feels weird and out of place. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” based in a fictional town called Jefferson taking place during the twentieth century. The time period is indeed an important factor because southern tradition was above all of the highest importance. This short story gives the audience details of life during that time in which they followed the values of southern tradition and the importance to never stray away from those traditions. The context of the story is laced with subliminal messages of humanities resistance to change.
Conformity, or going along with the crowd, is a unique phenomenon that manifests itself in our thoughts and behaviors. It’s quite simple to identify countless examples of the power of conformity in virtually all aspects of social life. Conformity influences our opinions and relationships with others, often to a higher extent than we realize. It is posited that people generally conform to the group in order to fit in and avoid rejection or because they truly believe the group is more knowledgeable than they are. After analyzing numerous studies and experiments on the nature of conformity, one will find that the motive of social acceptance is the greatest driver of conformity.
Throughout my life I learned to adapt and conform to behaviors that were different form my family’s upbringing. My family initially viewed conformity as a negative thing, but were able to eventually learn to embrace parts of the American culture and have conformed to some aspects of today’s society. The desire to be
Young Goodman Brown is a newlywed Puritan who leaves his wife, Faith on what he terms “an errand,” which the reader later learns to be a meeting with the devil. Brown believes he can face and resist the devil. Initially, his wife, Faith, begs him to stay, and Brown patronizingly soothes her only to discover her as one of the devil’s converts. Ultimately, Brown holds Faith most culpable for his disillusion with the supposed elect of his community.
Conformity and Obedience in Society The desire to be accepted and belong to a group is an undeniable human need. But how does this need affect an individual? Social psychologists have conducted numerous experiments and concluded that, through various forms of social influence, groups can change their members’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In her essay “Group Minds,” Doris Lessing discusses our paradoxical ability to call ourselves individuals and our inability to realize that groups define and influence us.
The main character in William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily, is a representation of the Old South. While she is still alive, the townspeople have a certain respect for her because she has been there so long; they do not feel a need to change what has always been. Nevertheless, once she dies what is left of her, such as her house, is a disgrace to the town. “Only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores... Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” 119). In the same way, the people of the South followed tradition in their lifestyles. The Southerners were brought up with certain ideas and actions engrained in their minds, and they did not realize the shame behind what they did. After the transition to New Southern ways, however, the Southerners easily saw the disgrace behind these traditions.
Unfortunately, this struggle for conformity often extends beyond a personal level. It is not uncommon for society to chastise a person for being different, in one particular way or another. This chastising could range from polite disapproval, to snide comments, to harmful, oppressive tactics such as bullying and harassment. This causes more people to conform to society for the fear of being labeled a