You Can’t Change The World

Countless individuals in American history have noticed flaws in society and decided not conform to social norms. In order to remain nonconformists, these individuals face pressures of society. Thus, single persons to remain nonconformists and create because society kills their individualism. This idea that one person cannot win a battle against society is ingrained in the foundation of America. The strength of the American societal mob is the major reason for the rarity of rapid social change. When individuals refuse to conform to social norms, society forces them to change.

Throughout history of American literature, the protagonist is often a character that refuses to conform to certain flawed aspects of society. For instance, in Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Holden lives his life differently than many of his peers. Holden refuses to give effort in school and is “failing in five classes”(Salinger 13). When his English teacher attempts to guide him, Holden says that his teacher “wouldn’t understand” that the reason for his lagging work ethic was the fact that all of his peers “were phonies” (Salinger 13). Since he believes that everyone has a poor character, Holden refuses to excel in his classes. Holden shuts out any guidance from his teacher because he does not want to conform to the character of his peers in the institution. Similarly, Hester Prynne, from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, acts as “an offender” against the “Puritanical code of law” (Hawthorne 79). Following her passionate sentiments, Hester does not abide religious codes that govern the society. She commits the crime of adultery acting against the laws in the small puritan village. On a more passive level, Nick Carraway, from The Great Ga...

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...cept him for his radical ideas. The nonconformists’ ideas do not have the power to change society. Each individual either becomes forced to conform or forced to leave society. This is because the strength of the united American society is too powerful to fight.

In American history, no nonconformist has the power change society. The societal mob is everlasting and forces all of its members to conform. In writing their historical pieces of literature, these authors mean to show the challenges nonconformists face as individual. It is because of this force that shuts down ideas of nonconformists that society “recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other” (Emerson 26). Society itself is flawed because it shuts down individuals that believe change is necessary. Until the ever powerful mob can be split, no single individual will ever be able to change the world.