While the book How to Be Good may not have been my favorite, I do think that it is relevant to everyone, especially those of us who are freshman this year. The book illustrates that fact that everyone has a different interpretation of what is good and what is bad, and that is very true.
At home, all of my friends, and to some extent most of the kids at my school, had pretty similar viewpoints on what was “good” and what was “bad”. If a story went around that a girl had had sex with some random guy she met at a party, most people would see that as a bad thing, and that’s what I am used to. Here, however, some of the people I have met have had very different ideas of what is good and bad. I have already heard quite a few stories like that, and to them it seem to be perfectly normal.
At SMU there are people from all over the country and all over the world, so it’s totally understandable that people will have different beliefs as to what is acceptable or not. I think that this book was chosen to help us realize that just because someone does something we consider “bad” does not mean that they are a bad person, just like Katie. I think the purpose of this reading was to teach us to keep our minds open to the people we meet, and to base our feeling about them on who they are rather than what they do.
1 comment:
Well, I don't know. I think you are being too tolerant. If you came here with the idea that random sex at a party was bad, why can't you continue to judge that as unacceptable? But I agree with your point that if someone does something unacceptable (to your standards), that doesn't make them a bad person, just a person who acted badly. And maybe the book suggests that Katie having an affair did't make her a bad person, just a person who acted badly for a while because of emotional needs.
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