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Self-Image In 'All American Boys'

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Recommended: Bystander theory strengths and limitations

Nowadays during times of social media and influencers, self-image is a very crucial part of everyone's daily life. Making sure you look good and look like a good person is some of the top things in young, teenage minds. This can cause people to act differently than how they truly feel because of pressure from society to fit in. In the novel, All American Boys by Brenden Kiely and Jason Reynolds. One of the protagonists, Quinn, struggles with society when an incident with a police officer and one of Quinn's friends, Rashad, changes his world. During a trip to the convenience store, Rashad gets unlawfully detained by officer Paul Gulutzo. Officer Gulutzo claimed Rashad was stealing and refusing arrest. This event goes on the news and spreads …show more content…

His thoughts at the moment were clouded by selfish thoughts, “I wanted to move; my gut wanted me to rush to help Paul. But I knew enough to know that you stayed out of police business, plus Paul didn’t need my help because he was pummeling the guy. So I just stood there, sorta frozen, just watching, Transfixed”(Keily and Reynolds 24). Quinn badly wants to help Rashad, but it seems like he is held back by some feeling. This feeling is the bystander effect. He wants to help but can’t because he doesn’t want to be put in a difficult situation even if it is the right thing to do. So, he stood there, just watching, trying not to stand out and hiding away so as not to be seen by anyone he knew. His Selfishness can also be seen when he says, ““No one saw me,’ I said when I hit the ground. ‘If we get out of here right now, maybe nobody will, and we can all just pretend like we weren’t here. Like it didn’t happen’” (Kielly and Reynolds 24 ). Further on Quinn is thinking about the situation and tries to dissociate himself from the event. He tries to make excuses for himself so he doesn't feel as bad for doing anything to help Rashad. He is trying to validate being a bystander and trying to save his self-image instead of doing the right …show more content…

He finds that his previous thoughts are twisted and wrong. Quinn's safety is comforting for a little bit, but when he comes to terms which what he did he feels, “I had to squat down and touch the floor, feeling suddenly nauseous, nauseous at the idea that I could just walk away from everything that was happening to Rashad, everything that was happening to Paul, everything that was happening to everyone at school, everything that was happening to me, too. I could just walk away from it all like a ghost. What kind of a person did that make me, if I did?” (Kielly and Reynolds 99). Quinn is realizing the decision he made on the day of the incident wasn’t the right thing to do. Now, given the choice to leave he feels like he must stay in the situation and be the right person and stand up for Rashad. Even if it goes against his instinct toward his family, he is slowly realizing that bias toward family is stopping him from doing the right thing as a human being. Sick of his actions in the past he is questioning the type of person he wants to be seen as. A bystander or someone who stands up for the right thing even if it puts them out there. “Even if they didn’t know Rashad, even if, for some reason, they hated Rashad, they couldn’t just ignore what happened to him; they couldn’t walk away. They were probably afraid, too. Afraid of people like Paul. Afraid of cops in general. Hell, they were probably afraid of people like me.

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