Parental Expectations Part 3 Essay

*Throughout the school year, I'll probably be posting essays on my blog. This will be for convenience purposes only, as I won't have to email documents to people like Molly, Taylor, and Joe for their opinion on papers.*

*The following is the first Part 3 essay I've written for english this year. Let me know what you think please!*

Although they may or may not admit to it, parents have expectations for their children. These expectations can play a large role in the way children will grow up. Parents can try to mold their child’s way of thinking and their interests as much as they want, but in the end, children are born with their own expectations for themselves. In both passage I and II, individuality is shown to prevail over parental expectations.

The first passage is an excerpt from “Learn a Trade,” by John Updike. The reading tells the story of a father who wishes for his children to be more interested in fields of work that are more reliable and solid, rather than the risky, hit-or-miss field of art. The author uses irony to show the relatively low power that parental expectations have on their children, as the father in the story is himself an artist. Furthermore, he too had a father that wanted his son to learn a trade. Fegley ignored his father’s wishes when he was young, but when he grew older realized that he and his father were more similar than he thought when he began to place the same expectations on his own children. “Yet the older that Fegley himself grew, the more it seemed his father had been essentially right.” The story shows not one, but two generations in which children express their individuality by doing what they feel is right for themselves, even if their parents don’t agree with their decision.

While the children’s individuality in the first passage is shown through irony, Kenneth Koch uses a simile to illustrate the same point. “C. Loth Inc., there you are like Balboa the conqueror of those who want to buy office furniture or bar fixtures in nineteen forty in Cincinnati, Ohio!” The simile suggests that the business that the father ran was greatly successful and it would be a safe decision for the son to take it over when he came of age. The narrator also says, “I can see the virtues now that could come from being in you. A sense of balance, compromise and acceptance…” Clearly, the narrator of the poem realized the strength of the business. However, he still went into the Psychoanalysis field. If the business of his fathers was so strong, and he himself recognized it, his individuality must have been equally or more strong if he didn’t decide to take over the business. Koch also uses a flashback to get his point across in his poem. A reader can tell that the narrator was telling the story as he was looking back at it when he tells about his future. The narrator says, “Harvard was far away. World War Two was distant. Psychoanalysis was extremely expensive.” The child always knew that the type of work his father was a part of wasn’t for him. Even though his father told his co-workers that his son would one day take over, the narrator knew he would not, and therefore never did.

Both of these are examples of how strong a sense of a child’s individuality can be. Children are born with their own thoughts, beliefs, and interests, and they would not be successful if they let their parent’s expectations for them dictate their future. All of Fegley’s children were successful artists, and the narrator of the poem lived a successful life, being a World War 2 veteran as well as a graduate of Harvard. Parental expectations didn’t play much of a role in these lives, but they were still highly accomplished individuals.

*After reading the paper, Mrs. Hartely gave it back to me with next to zero revisions on it. One comma was missing. Other than that, the only other marks on the page were the words, "Great, solid 6." Hoorah.*