Tuesday, May 12, 2015

The Right of Happiness

Throughout the Fences book we see very different views of happiness for each character. For Troy, happiness is a goal that you achieve once  you have everything that you want in life. Troy seemed to forget about his happiness after having children and having to be the man of the house & take care of everyone. Once he found this new girl things seem to change for him because he was stepping out of his zone he's been in for so long and see a different side of life with no responsibilities or worries, and for Troy that seems to be what happiness is for him. On the other hand, Rose is someone who believes happiness comes from your family and people around you. "...other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you"(Wilson 61). I also think that Rose had to settle for this happiness because she explained to troy how she invested everything into him to be able to have a stable family and how she knew Troy wasn't exactly the perfect man to invest in. This shows how much her family means to her and how she gets happiness from being with them and that's why she wants to keep them all in.

Our current society sees happiness as something that you have to go out into the world and find yourself to achieve. I believe that happiness is over glamorized. With social networks many people see pictures and these beautiful profiles of peoples everyday lives and assume that since they are smiling and experiencing new things in life, that they are happy. When in reality happiness should be something that is given to your throughout your life no matter your situation. It is okay to be sad or emotional at times. The reason why our society as seeing being sad as a bad thing is because most people aren't going to post pictures of all the sad times in their life. This is making happiness so over glamorized since all we are seeing is the good and not the bad.

People shouldn't have to look at others to gain happiness, people should be happy with the small and big things they have in their life. A quote that I found really useful is "Be happy. Not because everything is good, but because you can see the good in everything". This connects with our society because not everything in life is going to work out but being able to find the good in every situation is important because happiness is a right and not something that has to be earned. That quote also connects to Fences because I feel that once we start reading more, Rose and all of the other characters are going to be able to see  the good in the situation that they are in even though their lives may be harder than most, there is still so much good.

1 comment:

  1. I strongly agree with your points about Fences because I brought up the same points. The only thing that was a little bit different was that I said Troy is happy when he doesn't have to worry about all of the responsibilities in life but you are right when you say Troy finds happiness when he gets everything necessary in life. These two views we said do overlap in the book when he says, "It's just...She gives me a different idea...a different understanding about myself" (Wilson 68). This different understanding could be that it is possible for him to live without those responsibilities that he has with Rose which brings together our two views into one. I also agree with your views on society and how happiness is found by the individual. Overall both of our opinions on these subjects are very alike and you have brought tangential views into the light for me.

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