Tradition Roles Essay, Research Paper
Tradition plays an important role in a person’s life as it influences his/her actions and the way he/she thinks. Tradition instinctively shos one how to act, for tradition is merely a routine; something that is done continuously between different time intervals, whether it be a day or years.
Tradition helps with one’s desicions, or how he/she reacts to different situations. In the poem, We Who Carry The Endless Seasons, the daughters of the island are expected to marry within the islands. “…a boy from the islands…and from a good family too..like shadows attached to our feet we cannot walk away.” (Cerenio, 16-21) The author mentions that she feels attatched to this tradition. Her tradition is to marry a boy from a good family and of course, from the islands or others may think negatively of her family for not following the tradition. In the telephone man, Jack has been raised by a racist father. His father’s beliefs have become a tradition in the household. “I wonder if my dad would mind if I stopped hating niggers for awhile.” (Crutcher) The father has influenced Jack so much that Jack doesn’t know the appropriate term for ‘African Americans,’ and he questions whether or not his father would mind if he didn’t hate African Americans. The prejudice in this family is common, and without knowing it, Jack is greatly
Tradition also decides on apropos behavior and expectations from certain genders. In The Changeling, the mother dissaproves of her daugher dressing as a boy, while that is the only way to catch a father’s attention. “To return invisible, as myself, to the real world of her kitchen.” (Cortez, 29) The mother reacted to the child as though she was disgusted with her for not acting like a girl. The mother also refusd to let her daughter eat with the family as a boy. Tradition didn’t allow the girl to want to and dress as a boy. Tradition also made her father ignore her, but look up when she resembled a boy. “…I got a carpenter’s bench for my eigth birthday…I watched, trying to discover the life hidden inside tools.” (Maginnes, 7-12) The boy of the poem, Jobs, is expected to work and play with the carpenter’s bench and to build things at an early age of eight.. Tradition has it made so that the eight year old boy receives an appropriate gift of a carpenter’s bench, not of a doll, an appropriate gift for a young girl.
Tradition is a routine or something that a person grows up with. It is something that is done continually within time intervals. It influences the ways a person may think and also shows through the ways people act upon certain situtations.