The Right to Fail

“The Right to Fail” William Zinsser pages 352-356

1) Zinsser’s thesis would be “For the young, dropping out is often a way of dropping in” he supports this thesis by giving examples of people who have not succeeded educationally but have still reached some type of success through other things

2) He defends his thesis by saying that failure isn’t fatal, that the people that do only come out stronger than the ones that haven’t. He cites the hero, Holden Caulfield, of The Catcher in the Rye when comparing Thomas P.F. Hoving’s many dropouts to his.

3) In paragraphs 9-12 Zinsser begins to explain further of what “the right to fail” really means. He uses real life examples of people who have actually dropped out of high school or have failed a multiple amount of times but have still managed to reach the same amount of success of people who haven’t dropped out high school, went to college, etc. “I’m not urging everyone to go out there and fail just for the sheer therapy of it, or to quit college just to coddle some vague discontent. Obviously it’s better to succeed than to flop and in general a long education is better that a short one.” Here he clarifies that by saying its okay to fail doesn’t mean we should all fail that we should all try to succeeded but if we do fail it not the end of the world. In paragraph 10 he uses Fred Zinnemann as example someone who has directed some of Hollywood’s most honorable movies but has failed first in order to get to his current position. Zinneman said to a reporter “I don’t feel any obligation to be successful.” “Success can be dangerous ----- you feel you know it all. I’ve learned a great deal from my failures.” This shows that failure isn’t a bad thing. That you can learn for your mistakes in order for history not to repeat itself. I think what Zinsser what trying to say is that failure is another process of learning and shouldn’t always be looked at as a bad thing. That from a bad thing, a number of good things can come. Success being one of them.
4) Paragraphs 13-15 show that the maverick have a role in American society when saying “Obviously the colleges don’t have more than partial answer ----- otherwise the young would not be so disaffected with an education they consider vapid. Obviously business does not have the answer ----- otherwise the young would not be so scornful of its call to be an organization man” showing that they still have a play in society. Zinsser restates his thesis when saying “Maybe we are learning again to cherish this right of every person to succeed on his own terms and to fail as often as necessary along the way.”