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Jenni Zackeo
Ms.Wenick
Honors English Foundations I
January 6, 2017
Emotions: Are they the reason people change?
People are constantly changing. Everyone is being influenced by a million different

things, all things that affect them in one way or another. Take your best friend from elementary
school for example. Think about how you remembered them then. Think of them now. They are
different right? But was it really them that changed or could it have been you? People change for
a whole host of reasons and the transformations these people go through are intriguing and
life-changing. Fear could have an effect on our identity, nobody is ever the same after a
traumatizing experience, but so could the lack of fear or even feeling guilty. Guilt and fear are
the two most powerful emotions, they make people feel empathetic and compassionate.
Everyone is afraid of something, just as everyone is guilty of something. No one is perfect or
capable of blocking these feelings and therefore everyone has been altered by these emotions.
Fear, the absence of fear, and a sense of guilt are all capable of significantly changing a person,
for better or for worse.
Fear may seem like one of the worst emotions, but in reality it is fascinating. As people
become more frightened, their perspective changes. Pavel Friedman, a Jewish poet, who died at
the young age of 23, wrote an inspiring poem while being held in a concentration camp. In this
poem, titled The Butterfly, Friedman writes about a symbolic creature. The poet wrote, That
butterfly was the last one. / Butterflies don't live in here, / in this ghetto (Friedman, 15-17). The
butterfly represents hope. Friedman was implying that hope doesnt live in the ghetto, a place of

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restriction and danger. The hope was replaced with fear and this fear was responsible for
changing Friedman. The loss of hope caused him to give up. Throughout this poem you can see
the change of character in the young man. In the very beginning of the poem he speaks about a
butterfly, describing it as, So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow. / Perhaps if the sun's tears
would sing / against a white stone... (Friedman, 2-4). The butterfly is beautiful and bright. This
is just as many people describe hope to be, a bright light amidst all the darkness. By the end of
the poem he wrote about never seeing another butterfly. Never seeing that glimpse of hope again.
The fear in the camp was so strong it caused him to lose all motivation and hope, changing him
for the worse.
What is more powerful than fear? The lack of it. Being fearless is difficult to imagine as
fearlessness doesnt exist the way people think it does. Fearlessness doesnt necessarily mean
having no fears, it just means having less fears than most. Everyone is afraid of something, it
doesnt matter who they are. The best experiences come from being fearless. Its frightening to
break out of the norms, the mold society has made for us, and it takes a fearless person to
break out of this shell. These fearless people are really the only people who experience life to
the fullest. Julio Noboa Polanco wrote about breaking this shell in his poem Identity. The two
characters in the poem are the flower and the weed. He depicts the flower to be, always
watered, fed, guarded, admired, / but harnessed to a pot of dirt (Polanco, 2-3). These flowers are
all the same, they face no hardships but cant be themselves. They are trapped in their pot. The
pot represents society and the rules that have been created to fit in. The weed on the other hand is
described, To have broken through the surface of stone, / to live, to feel exposed to the madness
/ of the vast, eternal sky. / To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea, / carrying my soul, my

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seed, / beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of the bizarre (Polanco, 7-12). The weed
is living its life and gathering these experiences. These life changing experiences let them see the
world through a new set of eyes. But to become the weed, fearlessness must be acquired. The
fear of not being accepted cant be present. People are always judged by others either in a
positive or negative way. There is no way around it. To avoid negative gossip, most people hide
in the safe little bubble society has created. This bubble protects them from peers scrutiny by
keeping a short leash on creative minds. Fearless people dont care what others think, they break
out of their shell and show the world their true identity. They show the world who they really
are, not how people perceive them to be. Polanco wrote that he would rather be the fearless
weed, I'd rather be unseen, and if / then shunned by everyone, / than to be a pleasant-smelling
flower (Polanco, 13-15). This shows that the weed wasnt afraid of not being accepted. That he
would rather live his life to the fullest and be an outcast than to be trapped in societys distorted
bubble and be preferred. This lack of fear allows new experiences to occur, allowing the world to
be seen in a different way.
In the same way, Tupac Shakur, poet and rapper, wrote about a similar feeling in his
poem A Rose That Grew from the Concrete. This poem has a different point of view than
Polancos but it still has the same message, sometimes shattering the social norms is the only
way to change your life for the better. Shakur starts the poem by asking, Did you hear about the
rose that grew / from a crack in the concrete? (Shakur, 1-2). The concrete is the barrier put up
by society. Everyone stays inside this barrier because they are afraid of what people will think of
them if they dont. One particular rose broke through this barrier proving it was fearless, proving
that anything is possible. Shakur also writes, Proving nature's law is wrong it / learned to walk

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without having feet. / Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, / it learned to breathe fresh air
(Shakur, 3-6) Natures law represents societys law. The single rose, a single person, is capable
of proving that it is possible to survive without being like everyone else. Both Julio Noboa
Polanco and Tupac Shakur showed that fearlessness can change a person for the better in their
poems. They showed that the lack of fear towards societys judgement can change one's life as
they are the people capable of shattering all the stereotypes and really living. These are the
people who are allowed to experience their life the way they want to.
Guilt comes in many forms and is capable of reconstructing an identity. The first form
comes from telling a little white lie. Something that doesnt really matter and the dreadful feeling
goes away quickly. The second form of guilt is the one that makes people change. In The
Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, Madame Loisel undergoes a dramatic transformation after
being guilt stricken with the second type of guilt. In the short story Madame Loisel borrows a
diamond necklace from a friend to go to a ball. She ends up losing the necklace and her and her
husband take out many loans to replace it. She is overwhelmed with guilt from all the debt she
has put herself and her loved ones in. She turns her life around and becomes a hardworking wife,
repaying her family and friends and gaining back the life she had prior to her incident. This
transformation took place entirely out of guilt. In the beginning of the story Maupassant wrote,
She suffered endlessly, feeling she was entitled to all the delicacies and luxuries of life
(Maupassant, 1). Originally Madame Loisel was greedy and felt that she was better than what
she could afford. She also took advantage of her husband. On page 3 Maupassant wrote, She
thought for a moment, computing the cost, and also wondering what amount she could ask for
without an immediate refusal and an alarmed exclamation from the thrifty clerk (Maupassant,

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3). She was manipulative and didnt care about the effect her actions would have on her husband.
Madame Loisel started out as a greedy and careless women who thought she deserved it all. On
page 6 the guilt of losing the necklace set in. Maupassant wrote about how she was unable to
cope with the feeling, She waited all day, in the same state of blank despair from before this
frightful disaster (Maupassant, 6). Madame Loisel was so guilty she couldnt even function.
This is the first thing guilt does to people, it disables them. After the initial shock passed,
Madame Loisel underwent her change. The author wrote that Madame Loisel, washed the
dishes, staining her rosy nails on greasy pots and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen,
the shirts and the dishcloths, which she hung to dry on a line; she carried the garbage down to the
street every morning, and carried up the water, stopping at each landing to catch her breath. And,
dressed like a commoner, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer's, the butcher's, her basket on her
arm, bargaining, insulted, fighting over every miserable halfpenny (Maupassant, 8). Due to the
guilt, Madame Loisel became a hard working wife to help pay off the necklace. She underwent
this drastic change that was cultivated out of guilt. Guilt is an extremely powerful factor in
changing a person as it forces those who feel it to walk a mile in another man's shoes.
Overall, people change all the time. It is just the way life is. People change because they
are scared or they might change because they are not. People change because they feel
responsible; they feel guilty. The bottom line is that change is natural. We cannot prevent it nor
can we rush it. The gradual process alters identities everyday. An identity is fragile, carefully
sculpted after many years of experiences. In order to change people must have motivation. Pavel
Friedman was motivated by fear, and the flowers and weeds are fearless. Madame Loisel was
guilty and became an entirely different person. Our emotions have declared war against our

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identities, tearing them apart and rewriting them from scratch. Emotions cause us to change now,
they caused us to change in the past, and they will cause changes for centuries to come. We may
be able to hide our emotions but we will never be able to prevent them.

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MLA Works Cited

de Maupassant, Guy. The Necklace. Literature, edited by Allen, Janet, 1st ed., McDougal
Littel, 2008, 1-7
Friedman, Pavel. The Butterfly. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust,
http://hmd.org.uk/resources/poetry/butterfly-pavel-Friedmann . 5 January 2017
Noboa Polanco, Julio. Identity. Bread Loaf Poetry Exchange,
http://breadloafpoetryexchange.pbworks.com/w/page/39725748/Identity%20by%20Julio
%20Noboa%20Polanco . 5 January 2017
Shakur, Tupac. The Rose that Grew From the Concrete. Bread Loaf Poetry Exchange,
http://breadloafpoetryexchange.pbworks.com/w/page/39725748/Identity%20by%20Julio
%20Noboa%20Polanco . 5 January 2017
Klau, Sue, and Jim Klau. "Pavel Friedmann." Butterflies - Coloring The Memories | No
Butterflies in the Ghetto | Pavel Friedmann. Butterflies, n.d. Web.
<http://parpar.reform.org.il/en-us/no-butterflies-in-the-ghetto/pavel-fridman.asp>. 05 Jan.
2017