Robert Peace Research Paper

Robert Peace “From rags to riches” One of the strongest people’s aberration is that all of us were born equal, that there is no difference between us. There are millions of people still believe, that the baby which was born in Sudan amount the tents and destitution is equal to the baby that was born in Manhattan with mommy and daddy who is working on the Wall-street. They have equal rights to live, but is it the thing that makes us equal? Is it truly doesn’t matter who your parents are or in what place on the Earth you were born? The short and tragic life of Robert Peace demonstrates, that the environment where you were born affect greatly on your future life. In my opinion, since the day you were brought into life you get your ceiling - you can’t jump higher. You can’t run off your roots. I finished the book a few days ago, but I still feel the only one thing-vexation.
“Pull your past out and build the new bright future.
Don’t look back moving forward” – saying movies and books to us. But it’s wrong. Our past is the foundation for our future. Robert’s foundation were Jackie-the woman, the good one, who loved Robert so much, who tried to do everything for him and for his education- and Skeet, Robert’s father, who hasn’t so much passion toward Rob, but who still loved him a lot. They were loveable parents, but what they could give to him? Jackie must care of the whole family and Skeet went to jail, so, at this point of view, Rob hasn’t so much support and, what is more important, he hasn’t the role model. He has friends and they absolutely cared about him, but he was much smarter than they and more ambitiously, so he could give them much more then they could gave him. In conclusion he was
alone.
It is such a pity, but I think that we can’t just cross out our past and we can see it using Robert’s example. Yes, he was smart, yes, he was good at sports, yes it wasn’t hard for him to make friends but it wasn’t enough for his situation. The question is “was it possible for Rob to get out of this drug-alcohol-criminal environment?” One more interesting thing is that Rob didn’t have passion for the things that really matter. He went to Yale-The Ivy League University, the place where everyone would love to get education-but how he felt about this? From the book I didn’t get that he is really happy about the college. He was glad but he wasn’t in raptures over it. The same with with his major. Molecular biology was the roughest course at the University but was it Rob’s vocation? Did he really love it and could dedicate his life to this subject? He spoke about his traveling with more passion. He spoke about traveling with love. Rob treated Rio like “a second home for me, the place where I want to just lay on the beach and smoke. It is like paradise” (Hobbs 225). However, we can’t say that Rob was lazy or irresponsible. He perfectly understood that he doesn’t have the right not to work, to hang out with his friend and have fun all the time. Hobbs writes, that “as Rob turned eleven and fifth grade began older, he aggressively assumed the role of husband to his mother” (Hobbs 57). As he grown up, he has to take care of his family, he had not to disappoint his mother, who sacrificed her life for her son. But, unfortunately, he did. He had a job, he earned some money but he didn’t move forward. He was selling drugs, he was selling houses, he worked at the airport carrying passengers’ luggage, but, how Jackie said, “You don’t even need a high school diploma to do this job” (Hobbs 288). And once again: he wasn’t even trying to achieve something in his real profession – biology. So, it proves that he chose not his calling, but one more challenge. Is it worth it? You pass it, you get your diploma, you are cool. What’s next? So what we have: the talented, brilliant boy with the bright future, but with the dark past. Is he still had a chance? Is it possible get to the top from the bottom by yourself, without the valuable help? Probably it depends. Depends on person or on the environment, depends how deep your bottom is. We just know, that Robert Peace couldn’t get out. However, he lived his life gaudily. As gaudily as someone had written a book about him. The best lesson we can grasp is that you have to decide for yourself, what is good and what is bad, what can lead us up and what can break us down. And we have to always try because you never know how high your ceiling is.

Hobbs, Jeff. The short and tragic life of Robert Peace. New York: Scribnes, 2014