Essay On What Influence Do Others Have On Who We Become

It is true that people’s lives are to some large extent shaped by those people they relate or associate with. This is so because what other people do or say to them becomes the references against which they check their actions and maybe try as much as possible to do according to that reference. It does not come as a surprise that people talk about peer influence affecting the decisions and the things that people do. It is therefore true that who we become depends so much on the influence that other people; especially those whom we consider our role models and those that we relate with. In this context, the question that has resonated well with me is “What influence do others have on who we become?” There are various characters that have helped me understand this notion and they include Macbeth in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth because he falls to other people’s influence and does the unspeakable. Maggie in the movie Million Dollar Baby positively influences Frankie’s life while in The Lord of the Flies, the two leaders Jack and Ralph are the cause of the animosity that exists among the boys.
When taking into account Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Macbeth is told by the witches that he will be made thane of Cawdor by the Scottish King Duncan. He is further told that he will someday become the king of Scotland. It is true that he someday ends up the king though through very cruel and unscrupulous means. He does not stop at anything in order to make this prophesy true. He relied on what the witches told him and went on to do everything within his reach including murdering the reigning king to become king himself. His actions are triggered predominantly by what the witches had said to him. He becomes a murderer and a king at the same time simply because he got influenced by a prophesy that he chooses to believe in. Lady Macbeth also pushes Macbeth to the wall and leads him in a plan to kill King Duncan something he went on to do.
In The Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Jack cause the other boys to be at loggerheads and therefore fight each other. At one point, Ralph accosts Jack for having been preoccupied in hunting rather than maintaining the signal fire. Jack goes on to call Ralph a coward and wants the boys to vote out Ralph, something that they do not agree to. This causes the two to rally their troops behind them. The worst happens when part of Ralph’s group members leave and join. The boys live like enemies simply because of their allegiance to either Ralph or Jack. All the time that they spend in the jungle, they go about fighting each other simply because Ralph and Jack influence them. They are aggressive towards each other simply because the two leaders negatively influence them.
In the movie Million Dollar Baby, Maggie becomes a very successful boxer all thanks to her own hard work and effort to impress Frankie. She therefore dictates her own success. In all that, Frankie becomes the sole beneficiary of all her hard work because due to her victories, he is no longer the marginally successful boxing trainer that he was known to be. He became successful through Maggie’s exemplary performance. Also, Maggie almost became like a daughter to him. His own daughter had rejected him and returned his letters unopened. The bond between Maggie and him became so strong despite the fact that she could no longer fight. Maggie influenced his life a great deal because through her, he achieved success as a professional trainer.
It is therefore true that other people act as an influence on what we do or who we become. Sometimes a person may not be seeing himself or herself engaging in bad practices in life but due to pressure from the people in their lives they go ahead and do them. It does not really mean that the influence is always negative but may also be positive. The prophesy may have been positive because it was a good thing for Macbeth to become a nobility through sheer hard work at the war front. But becoming a king by executing the reigning king was an absurd thing to do. He becomes a murderer and sets his own downfall all thanks to Lady Macbeth. On the other hand, Maggie helps Frankie become a successful trainer despite the fact that Frankie showed no interest in her at the very beginning. Ralph and Jack cause animosity among the boys leading to fights and counter fights that caused the death of some of them.