NCHS AP English Language

Author Catherine Samson/Dani Lewis

People will do almost anything, even things they would never do independently, for success and acceptance. There is a natural human desire to feel like in. This can be easily observed amongst teenagers. Supposed there is a new student at school. He is a straight-A student, great athlete, active in his community, and an all-around good guy. However, at this new school he does not feel like he fits in. It is widely known around the school that to be cool you have to smoke. Logically, this new student must smoke if he wants to be accepted by his new group of peers, his new society. Smoking brings the acceptance he wants, but it also brings other negative consequences which will affect the rest of his life. One of these negative effects is becoming a pawn at the hands of his peers playing the game of acceptance. This student was willing to do anything to have a feeling of success among his peers; this tests the assumption that people will do anything for success and acceptance on a smaller scale. To determine whether Beckwith is a pawn or not requires one to test our theory on his story to learn is he acted to gain acceptance and success. Beckwith did kill Medgar Evans but his reasons for killing him are what will convict him of being a pawn. Beckwith lived in a society where you had to be a wealthy, white man to survive socially. The society taught that if you were African-American you had no chance of success. Beckwith was caught between the two societal groups; he was a poor white man. Naturally, he wanted to thrive and be accepted in his society, but he was not wealthy. Beckwith believed to be more accepted he needed to separate himself further from the blacks to make himself appear closer to the wealthy, white men. To create this separation, he contemptuously fought against the black man by killing an NAACP organizer. He may have gained the acceptance he wanted but he had to pay a large price for committing the murder. Like the new student at school, Beckwith had become a pawn at the hands of the wealthy white man. He sacrificed himself in order to gain success in his society and earn the feeling of acceptance among the superiors of society. It may seem as though the means through which Beckwith achieved his goal were illogically and in explicable. Although, one must understand that humans are generally not morally mature enough to make decisions that contradict what society and culture have taught them.

posted by NCHS AP English Language III @ 1:52 PM