In William Faulkner’s short story “Uncle Willy”, he reminds us that our behavior will have an influence around others, shown when Uncle Willy isn’t exactly the responsible and righteous guy. However he’s nice and caring, portrayed when he always gives a prize to the winning team in his town’s baseball match. There’s nothing wrong with Uncle Willy, he is nice and fun, but he also lives an unhealthy life style and is really irresponsible. Our every actions are an influence to those around us and if we have a bad behavior, everybody, especially the young, will copy you. This leads to other people having a bad behavior and is a really horrible domino effect. We need to be aware of our actions and be responsible for what we do in our lives.
First of all, most of us have seen people smoke before. These kind of people in our society is growing by numbers day by day. Even though we have scientific evidence smoking is bad for you, why do people still do it? One person might smoke and convince his or her friend that smoking is fine. His or her friend might try and since smoking is addicting, then most likely the friend will be convinced. However social media is constantly portraying these bad behavior as something trendy, so other people will start to do it. One person’s action might affect thousands around them and if the reaction is bad, then this wound will not heal quickly. Not being responsible for our actions and thinking about the people around you will cause a bad domino effect in your community.
Secondly, people constantly say that parents should be a good example of a human being to their children. However, a child could learn from basically anyone and so if the child learns something bad, then the child most likely have a tendency to act it out.. The young will learn from our actions during our daily lives. The people around us will affect our growth, and if the people around us is giving off bad examples, then it will influence other people to do wrong. We need to be good examples for our younger generations.
Last, I want to address the problem of lying and scandals in our day to day lives. Lying on social media is really common, especially in our age. But humans can’t be born evil so why do we see a uprising of lies on news and online? It’s because of the internets influence. I’m not saying the internet is bad for us, I’m saying that the internet is really free, so anyone could post anything on the internet. Posting normal things like entertainment or blogs about vacation is good, it lets us obtain new knowledge about the world. However, the people that post fake news to cause distress and harm in our society is not just posting something fake; that person is causing others to realize “We can post fake things like that and nobody will ever know!” This is bad influence to others by one individual or group to spread lies and hate throughout a normal community. Even online, people can still be affected by irresponsible behavior.
All in all, William Faulkner’s “Uncle Willy” teaches us an important lesson ; to mind our actions and be aware that other people will be influenced by us, especially the younger generations. We need to take action and make it so we don’t have to worry about our community getting ruined or for other people to be unsuccessful. Hopefully we all can be responsible and set a good example for the people around us.