3:10 to Yuma

This movie did have nature vs. nurture in it, but somehow I can't support my view with the movie. The man who was to be put on the train to Yuma was supposed to be a very bad man, but he really wasn't. However, he basically raised himself. His mother left him at a train station reading nothing but the Bible for three days. That doesn't sound like a very good upbringing.

Then the boy never listened to his father. He had a mouth on him and had a huge ego. He also loved to hurt his father by putting him down, but he was raised with care. In the end, his nurturing did win; he wanted to stay and help the man that had helped him, his father.

I think in this movie nature wins the arguement. I can't seem to spin it to make the nurture come out on top.

Dead Teen Walking

The article "Dead Teen Walking" connects to White Fang because of some of the issues brought up in the article. For example, Nature vs. Nurture, is brought up in both White Fang and the article. Some people in the article state that if a child is mature enough to murder then they are mature enough to be punished for it. Others, thought that since most of the children on death row were subject to child abuse then it wasn't completely their fault and should be cut some slack. That is another thing that White Fang and "Dead Teen Walking" have in common. They both mention abuse being a major cause of destructive behavior. In White Fang, Beauty Smith was abused as a child and he then in turn abused White Fang. The children on death row were abused and in return they "killed."

I am completely against putting children on death row, expecially if they were abused in their home. Yes, adults are abused and committ crimes too, but they have been out of the household for a while and away from that environment. However, a child/teen, the abuse happened yesterday. Also, teens have hormones running haywire in their systems, add that to peer pressure, hecktic lives and you have a destination of disaster. I'm not saying that these are excuses for them to get away with their crimes, but for me it does get them out of the death penality.

Reading White Fang did not influence my opinion on this matter at all. I'm a very stubborn person and once my mind is made up, it stays that way. I never thought that the U.S. did have children on death row, but I thought that that was a good thing. I also thought that children being put to death in third world contries was insane so I never wanted it to happen here.

What Makes Us Moral

After reading the Time Magazine article "What Makes Us Moral" it did not change my oppinion one bit. Of course, that could be because I am bullheaded, but my oppinion didn't change. The article did list facts for both sides of the arguement, but to me the facts for nurture stood out the most.

For example, when the preschooler was told no food in the classroom the student followed the rules. When the teacher lifted the rule the student was happy to eat in class. However, when the teacher said it was okay to push another student off a chair, the student hesitated. The student said, "No, the teacher shouldn't say that." The student has morality embeded in them; it was taught to them, it was nurture. Just like in White Fang the grey cub knew love from his mother and father, and Scott, but when it was taken away from him he grew angry. At the end of the book White Fang was happy and lovey with the puppies; it was embeded in him.

Humans are normally taught from birth about morality. It is proved with the dilemmas given to the people while they were in an fMRI. Also with the tests of 'I feel your pain.' In the book Lord of the Flies when the kids first got to the island the moralities were still intact.

White Fang vs. The Lord of the Flies

I enjoyed White Fang the most because I thought it had a better story line, better descriptions and I agreed with the author more. In Lord of the Flies I didn't really care for children killing eachother, that just didn't appeal to me. Also, there were more exciting and guessing parts in White Fang. For example, the what's going to happen next question, I asked way more while reading White Fang then with Lord of the Flies. In White Fang the author agues that it is nurture not nature, which I agree with. I believe that the envioronment that one is brought up in will tell whether there will be evil or not and how much.