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I Beat The Odds Comparison

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There is nothing more inspiring and heart-warming than a story of an individual who has achieved his/her dreams amidst unfathomable challenges, personal disabilities, lack, and turmoil. This is exactly what the story of Michael Oher is about. I Beat the Odds is a truly moving and beautiful book that centres on the life of NFL athlete and Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Michael Oher. The autobiography was soon turned into a film entitled, The Blind Side. The two materials however present a number of differences including details about the life of Oher as well as his education. While both materials have their unique differences, the life story of Oher offers both the readers and the viewers with his grit and genuineness. More than these, both …show more content…

In the prologue of his book, Oher explains this best when he writes, “Obviously, the movie-makers have to make artistic choices to tell the story in the best way, but some details, just aren’t true” (Oher 6). Nonetheless, both materials remain inspiring and moving. This is because in both materials, Oher became a symbol of poverty and race. More than this, his character stands as a critique to the country’s education system and how it class and race prevents one to truly excel not only in school but in life as well. In the first chapter of the book for example, Oher gave his readers a glimpse of his life in poverty while growing up. In fact, he opens this chapter by noting that the very first lesson he learned is this, “You’re not poor if you know where your next meal is coming from” (Oher 10). He continues by stating that there are two types of people – the ones who had food and those “who had to scrounge.” Oher was in the second group. In this chapter, the author alternately shares that as child, his life was far from normal. He came from Hurt Village, a housing project that he described as a place with busted screens and broken windows and air that smelled “greasy and dirty.” I was, according to Oher, “the kind of place that depressed you instantly” (Oher

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Poverty is the extent to which an individual does without resources. These resources can be financial, emotional, mental, relational, knowledge of hidden rules, and spiritual. In order to for a person to leave poverty, it is necessary that the individual can be confronted and concern with his current state of life. Flannery O Connor gives us a good example of how poverty (or lack of resources) affects the humans’ decisions. In her story Parker´s Back, Flannery O Connor uses the theme of “poverty” by the description and mannerism of her characters, but also by using a casual-register story structure.

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In the essay On the Meaning of Plumbing and Poverty, author Melanie Scheller touches on the idea of identity in terms of the poor as well as the treatment they receive. Scheller herself grew up living with her widowed mother and six children in whatever broken-down home they could afford (Scheller 320) . She begins this essay by tying her observance of an elderly woman that goes to the bathroom and flushes the toilet routinely to her growing up without an indoor plumbing system, because during her childhood those that did not have these facilities were considered poor. Basically, if you were poor then you were worthless and would not have a future. Throughout her essay, Scheller tells her stories of having to share a small home with many people, being judged by assumptions, and being

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That through heart, determination, and favorable chances, you can make it in this world. These two films should be looked at in a different way as well as being heartfelt stories, they should be viewed as triumphs of the human spirit, that class does not define a person. That through hard work anything is possible, do not let chances slip away. Social class disparity is very apparent in both films, but also how they can be overcome, and how everyone has a chance at making it in this

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A hardship that many people have to endure is poverty. The characters in the short stories, Angela’s Ashes, by Frank Mccourt and The Street, by Ann Petry, both experience living in impoverished conditions. In the story The Street, Petry shows the life of a single mother who lives through the struggles of being poor. In another story portraying poverty, Angela’s Ashes, the author uses kids to paint the image of indigence. These kids are burdened with the task of caring for themselves.

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Carelessly, the working middle and the high class people always forget about what the poor working class has to do in life to survive. In a passage from the novel, The Working Poor Invisible In America, David Shipler compares the poor working class wages to the amount of food they are able to buy. Shipler is able to creatively inform the audience using description, exemplification, and cause and effect what the life a poor working class citizen does everyday.     David Shipler shapes an image in the minds of all of his readers with his selective word choice. As a result of not having the money to pay for food, parents are forced to let their children starve, and as a result those children start looking “listless”.

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The story shows how you should always be thankful for what you have because it could be gone within a second. Growing up underprivileged definitely teaches you things that you would not have learned or viewed in that way if you were middle class/upper class. Growing up poor can have a huge effect upon yourself, but you learn, develop and become

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She begins by talking about her college experience of how her own professors and fellow students believed and “always portrayed the poor as shiftless, mindless, lazy, dishonest, and unworthy” (Paragraph 5). This experience shocked her because she never grew up materialistic. She brings up the fact that she is the person with the strong and good values that she has today because she grew up in a poor family. In culture, the poor are always being stereotyped.

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In the passage “What is poverty?”, the author Jo Goodwin Parker, describes a variety of things that she considers to portray the poverty in which she lives in. She seems to do this through her use of first-person point of view to deliver a view of poverty created by a focused use of rhetorical questions, metaphors, imagery, and repetition to fill her audience with a sense of empathy towards the poor. The author’s use of first person point of view creates the effect of knowing exactly what she is feeling. “The baby and I suffered on. I have to decide every day if I can bear to put my cracked hands into the cold water and strong soap.”

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