Into The Wild Breaking Rules

Rules may be created to protect us, although when is it justified to break them? When do we draw the line and decide not to follow regulations? There are many reasons or excuses we have for going against rules. These reasons can range anywhere from an emergency to personal gain. Even though we have these “reasons” to breaking rules, we may face consequences for our actions. That exact issue sparks the question of why we would ever break the rules. We break rules because we think that the benefits outweigh the costs in the situation we are in. Our mind believes that it’s worth taking the consequences for the satisfaction we are achieving. In today’s society, people break rules for the very reason that they seem unreasonable, deter us

This may seem like a selfish reason, although it is unfortunately true. In the novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the main character, Chris McCandless, expresses his belief on hunting licenses by saying, “How I feed myself is none of the government’s business. F*** their stupid rules.” (Krakauer 6) From this excerpt, it is quite obvious with how Chris believes that this law is dumb and irrelevant since hunting is a way of survival. From his point of view, he sees the government having the intent of forbidding him from getting food until he’s licensed to do so. In the narrative Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, there is a moment in the book where Ender ignores his leader’s orders of not firing his weapon in battle. “Before anyone knew what was happening, he froze three of the soldiers… Ender could see from the way the commander looked at him that Bonzo hated him for rescuing him from total defeat… It didn't occur to them that little Ender had fired against orders.” (Card 74-75) He thought that the orders his leader gave him weren’t right for the situation and decided to break them. Ender believed that if he had followed the rules, him and his team would just be accepting defeat. Ender also has a very competitive nature to himself which also influenced his interpretation that the orders were foolish. These two situations show how people will break the rules if they

Ignoring certain regulations can lead to benefits and solutions to problems. That is why people will break rules in these kinds of positions. We see matters that need to be done for whatever reason and the only things that are stopping us are regulations. Alan Nicol states in his blog titled Sometimes Success Means we Break the Rules that, “It is right to break a rule in a time of an emergency... Sometimes it’s the right and best thing to do.” (Nicol) This sort of shows an example of what kind of situation society accepts as a justified reason for breaking the rules. In the Ender’s Game, Ender gets into a fight with another character named Bonzo and ends up hurting him badly. “‘Bonzo, don’t hurt me,’ he said. ‘Please.’... It was as if Ender had kicked a piece of furniture. Bonzo collapsed, fell to the side, and sprawled directly under the spray of streaming water from a shower.” (Card 162) The only reason the fight even started was because Bonzo initiated the first strike against Ender. Because of this, Ender struck back in response of personal defense. There are rules about not harming other students at the facility and both characters broke them. Ender’s life was in danger during that situation, which is why he decided to break the rules. If he had chosen not to fight back, it could’ve ended up much uglier for him. Sometimes, rules prevent us from doing the right thing