Exploring The Theme Of Adversity In Lambs And Freedom Writers

Adversity affects millions of people all over the world. Four texts that explore this theme are the song ‘Changes’ by Tupac Shakur, the film ‘Freedom Writers’ directed by Richard LaGravenese, the short film ‘Lambs’ written and directed by Sam Kelly, and ‘Nobel Lecture’ by Malala Yousafzai. This report will examine how adversity affects people and solutions that are offered by the authors and directors of these texts. Ultimately, adversity is everyone’s responsibility.

The song 'Changes', by Tupac portrays how we need to make a change and how society treats the black people very differently to the white community. “I'm tired of being poor and, even worse, I'm black” that one phrase proves that the conditions are so bad that he thinks that

Ms. Gruwell, the teacher who was given the class she had never expected she’ll get – the class 306, the lowest class in the whole year. 306 had students who were separated because of their ethnicities, races, and color. Those were the students who experienced racism, poverty, and social injustice. Ms. Gruwell made each one of them write in the diary everyday and tell their story through the diary, and through that diary they all revealed their story. Every student's story had so much in common, most of them went through abuse, violence, poverty and molestation. In that period of time many and many people went through and experienced the same thing as the room 306 students, This film shows how badly people from the 1980’s were treated and how bad the standards of the society was. The same students towards the end of the movie proved that they can also get good grades if they were taught correctly, all the teachers in the school had given up on them because they came from a family where racism was experienced. Ms. Gruwell didn’t – she didn’t give up, she fought with the dean, the principal and the board of trustees for them. Why? Because she believed that they had potential, they could be changed into better people if they were given a chance to and Ms. Gruwell gave them a chance to change themself and prove everyone wrong and they did

Almost every country has been through that racism timeline, New zealand is one of them. New zealand has suffered a lot since the british people colonized new zealand till now. They are still suffering, especially Maori people, childrens from a gang member family are forced to do some unspeakable bad things. All that because they are from a family where only one or two people in the family are in a gang, the short film ‘lamb' shows a guy picking up his little cousin brother from his primary school and his little cousin sister. There's a scene in the movie where the main character Jimmy wasn’t allowed to eat the morning breakfast that gets served every morning because his “focus” was on the food and not towards the teacher. Which, I think shows how the teacher picked on him and especially him, that makes me wonder if she picked on him because he’s a troubled kid? This short film is connected to freedom writers by many ways because some parts of it are so similar to the freedom writers movie. The teacher being rude towards the student just because of his family background etc. In lambs it shows how the kids have to suffer because they live in a house where the male members are in a gang, they are forced to do some unspeakable things just because they live in a house with gang members. This is exactly some things that 2pac was