As if being stranded on earth was bad enough, imagine being stuck on Mars with limited supplies and you were pronounced dead. What if you just gave up, and stopped trying to rescue yourself? One always runs into hopeless situations where they must remain calm, never give up, and continue to work towards a better future. By examining Mark Weir’s novel The Martian, one can see that perseverance, optimism, and empathy are human traits which will make our society prosper. These traits illustrate hope in mankind in the society of the story.
Perseverance is a key human trait that will make society prosper. To continue to pursue a course of action, with a purpose or goal in mind, despite the onslaught of endless challenges, obstacles, or discouragements,
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Optimism is to be cheerful, have hope, and confidence. In the most hopeless situations, optimism gives hope, and makes the impossible seem somewhat possible. Humans are social creatures and require interaction, Watney was able to bide his time by keeping himself busy, but when he finished he started to feel depressed. After Watney fully established his farm on Mars he started to feel homesick and tried to cheer himself up. He declared himself, “The best botanist on the planet", and the man who colonised Mars," They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially ‘colonised’ it. So, technically, I colonised Mars. In your face Neil Armstrong!”(Weir 146-147). This quote demonstrates that Watney is a very optimistic individual, even when he is stuck on Mars, and is possibly going to die. Instead of being depressed and giving up hope, he is optimistic. On a higher level, one can see that in this example, Watney represents society and humanity. If society is optimistic, it will give hope to any situation, and makes society prosper. This is because optimism allows for every situation to seem possible, allows tolerance, allows humans to bond and connect with each other, and provokes happiness. Instead of seeing failure, optimistic people see it as a new opportunity. The irony of Mark Watney being stuck on Mars, was that he was mostly cheerful and happy. One can see …show more content…
Empathy is to be able to understand and act according to the feelings of another. In Andy Weir’s The Martian, the main protagonist is saved by the collective effort of millions of empathetic humans. This can be observed when the fictional NASA spends millions to save Watney, he asks himself, “Why bother … They did it because every human has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by those who do. And because of that, I had billions of people on my side”(Weir 368-369). As Watney stated, humans have a basic instinct to help each other out, which is empathy, and they worked to save Watney, because of empathy, they understood how he felt and worked so diligently to save him because they could put themselves in his shoes. Empathy bonded society together, and it was the combined effort of many to save his life. Proving that, if humans work together, almost anything is possible, and society will prosper. By examining the empathy exhibited by society, towards Watney, one can see that humans are not cruel emotionless beasts, and if humans work together, society is given hope and man will
Empathy is the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. In English class this year, we’ve learned about the Holocaust and how the Jews were affected. Reading the book Night, by Elie Wiesel showed us a close up to lives of the Jews and more specifically his life. We talked about the bystander effect and not doing something is the worst thing you can do. An example could be the story we read on Kitty Genovese, who was killed while like almost thirty watched.
It becomes clear that perseverance fuels progress that leads to transformation. Despite obstacles and failures, one must maintain unwavering confidence that one can overcome obstacles and succeed. Therefore,
All of this text has a strong and powerful pathos and it's done by sharing the values that the speaker and the audience both have. The text powerful as it is, it wouldn’t be as strong if it wasn’t said by President Nixon. The usage of pathos made the entire text of making the readers react if the mission wasn’t successful was a perfect answer for the people. President Nixon who said this gave the world an inspiring answer and William didn’t hesitate on writing about this for it was truly a shockingly amazing speech he recreated the feeling that Nixon was hoping to get because he didn’t want our nation to suffer and instead to celebrate how they died for a great cause. Williams emphasizes key points that Nixon gave out by using the rhetorical
While reading his book, Night, in multiple instances he describes moments when he’s shocked when witnessing how cruel and unsympathetic humans can be to one another. He mentions in his interview that before being taken into the
Walt Whitman wrote, “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” This quote is the definition of empathy. Empathy is an emotion that so many rarely express. And since so many people hardly demonstrate this, it causes conflict, misunderstanding, and often the shedding of innocents’ blood. Author Harper Lees, To Kill A Mockingbird touches on this by bringing to life the characters’ in her novel.
People want to believe that they will survive no matter what and having hope helps with that. These quotes are good examples of hope pushing people till the end. From the quotes, Hope has proven to be a splendid tool to help those in need. Hope can help people through the toughest challenges in life.
First, the Kitty Genovese Article Reflection answers the essential question that empathy can create a stronger, more just society because if Kitty Genovese´s community had at least a little empathy, she would have never died and their society would be more united and they would have saved a person’s life. The Kitty Genovese story is about how a young woman was walking home after work, late at night, and she was stabbed to death while her neighbors just watched and listened to her cries for help. In the article reflection, I had to write about why her neighbors did not
I can relate to Arnold and how he feels that having hope is nothing but a waste of time. It is hard to stay hopeful during tough situations, but I have found that having hope has impacted my life in a positive way. When you stay hopeful, it is much easier to stay courageous. It provides everything around you with a positive environment, and can even make you work harder to turn your dreams into a reality. You can’t achieve anything if you don’t have hope to guide you to
Empathy -- to step outside of one’s emotions and submerge within another’s. To the chagrin of the global community, there is a prominent deficit of that inherent attribute. Arguably, a growing population has fallen as victims to passive, unconscious emotions and fail to see the importance of radiating empathy within their everyday lives. Yet through the sea of indifference lies literature that teaches the significance of empathy, one being Harper Lee’s unforgettable novel: To Kill a Mockingbird.
Empathy is one of the things that bonds us as human beings; being able to feel for somebody else’s problems when they clearly do not affect us at all is why valuing literature is so important.
The will to survive in an extreme environment motivates individuals to endeavor and carry on, regardless of the deprivation and hindrance they face. The novels Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand convey this very same notion, as both individuals, Pi and Louie Zamperini possessed the will to endure through their drastic conditions. Between both these texts, there are a multitude of resemblances and distinctions that reflect both the extreme environment and mental challenges they survived through in their will to survive. For one, both characters, Pi and Louie have physical states that mirror.
ABSTRACT: Discussed from a posthumanistic perspective this paper argues for the existence and acceptance of empathy in a posthuman world. The discussion revolves around Olamina who possesses the hyper empathy syndrome to bring all humans together in a dystopian world. This paper also examines how empathy is rooted in vulnerability of different life forms. All human beings are interconnected and there is a kinship between all.
Optimism is hopefulness for the future, and, like me, most people get their optimism from their roots, or how they were brought up as a child. My parents would always remind me from a young age that being pessimistic will not help you achieve your goal, so you might as well be optimistic and try. They have always taught me from a young age, and never denied or doubted, that with optimism comes opportunity, and that optimism is, in fact, the key to success. Over the years, I’ve learned that the more optimistic you are, the more creative you can be. With optimistic attitude, one can generate new ideas and create possibilities to move forward faster and more efficiently than at normal times, due to an open mind.
Perseverance is the determination to push through the trials and tribulations fate has thrown to test strength. Throughout my life I truly believe I was tested through adversities and my triumphs made me perceive the difference I could make not only to my community, but also to the people I have crossed paths with. Hard work also plays a role in my life as a willpower to pursue higher dreams and to not settle for mediocracy. Being born and raised in a third world country, me and my family didn’t always have everything we wanted nor the opportunity to change our circumstances. Nevertheless, we had each other and we were more than content.
In the English class this year we have studied empathy through short stories, Articles, and Novels like the story by Elie Wiesel. Empathy can create a stronger and more just society by others starting to see themselves in someone else 's situation and making others treat others fairly. This will be portrayed through the assignments, “The Lottery”, Kitty Genovese article, and Holocaust photo reflection. To start of with I will be using an assignment called “The Lottery” which was about a small town that did a lottery once a year killing the winner to use as sacrifice for the corn to grow. It showed that people did not have empathy for each other.