The Boys on the Boat by Daniel James Brown is an example of how someone’s past has a major influence on their future. Basing one’s decisions off of past experiences is often smart because then a person can better predict the outcome of the situation, but when a person’s past experiences turn out to be no longer applicable or relevant it is a problem. This is because people often become fixated on previous experiences in their lives and then base their entire personalities around in. This defence mechanism is the most comfortable thing for people to do because they do not want to relive specific events in the past especially those that hurt them. Joe Rantz the person that the Boys in the Boat focuses on is an example of a person who is extremely motived by his past experiences. Joe grew up in a broken household where he was abandoned many times; this resulted in him because immensely independent with the inability to trust others. The lack of trust …show more content…
Joe had a troubled childhood where he had no one who he felt that he could truly rely on and this caused him to develop the attitude that he was the only one that could determine his own happiness; this notion was also backed up by his absent father “Son, if there’s one thing I’ve figured out about life, it’s that if you want to be happy, you have to learn how to be happy on your own.” (58) Joe grew up not trusting anyone and not having anyone to rely on which is why he was so untrusting of his teammates when he first came to Washington university. The complete lack of trust that Joe felt for his. Because Joe only knew one thing when he was growing up he bases all of his decisions off of his only outlook of like. It took many major events for Joe to abandoned his previous notions of other people and learn to truly trust