Cheaper By The Dozen Character Analysis

John C. Maxwell once said, “To achieve any worthy goal, you must take risks.” Maxwell was trying to get at the point that if someone has a goal that they want to accomplish in life, and the goal does not have any risks to take along the way, or if you do not have the right mindset, then the goal is not worth trying to accomplish. Ernestine in the book, Cheaper by the Dozen, had to have the right mindset to achieve her goal.
In the book Cheaper by the Dozen written by Frank B. Gilbreth jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, there are multiple times in the book when a member of the Gilbreth family was trying to be successful. One instance of this is when Dad had brought home a beautiful white typewriter. All of the kids wanted to be the first to learn the touch system. Dad told the kids, “The first thing you have to do is to memorize that keyboard. QWERTYUIOP. Those are the letters in the top line. Memorize them. Get to know them forward and backward. Get to know them so you can say them with your eyes closed…” (Gilbreth 43). The following day, Dad colored the kids’ fingers with chalk so they could learn the right color habit. “The little fingers were colored blue, the index fingers red, and so forth. Corresponding colors were placed on the key zones of the diagrams” (Gilbreth 44). After two days the children learned the color habit well. Since

Whenever Ernestine made mistakes in her typing, and Dad brought a pencil down to her head, she became a better typer because of failing so many times and being punished for it. Ernestine “embraced the prospect of failure” and kept pressing on to become better at typing. Since she never gave up, she was successful in the