Dissenting Action

Kate Chopin's The Awakening is a great example of how everyone should be given equal opportunities to an extent. Obviously not everyone can have the exact same opportunities because of different economic statuses that can't be controlled, but uncontrollable statuses should not affect opportunities. In the past, it was a very common occurrence for the white male to be chosen in the case of two equally qualified candidates. Since then, affirmative action was instated to help correct this action. In my opinion thought, it did not fix the error, it only made it happen in a different way. With affirmative action, the minority would likely be chosen instead. This could help adjust for more white men being chosen in the past to give minorities a boost at first, but it still doesn't seem right to me.
Recently though, Affirmative Action is being overturned in supreme court cases. For example, Michigan banned affirmative action last year, but the case made it to the supreme court where it was upheld and decided that affirmative action was as bad as choosing whites over other races because it was still racial profiling. In my opinion, the better way of handling the issue is with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which protects U.S. employees from being discriminated upon by their race/sex/religion etc. This act was passed in 1965, but affirmative action has still taken place for a while even though it goes against Equal Opportunity. It makes sense that they need to make up for wrongdoings in the past, but it still seems like rejecting whites in favor of others to get subsidies isn't right.This issue of equal opportunity is seen in The Awakening where the protagonist, Edna, ultimately chooses to kill herself because she realizes she will never get the opportunity to fulfill her dreams. The ending is controversial because some believe that her never achieving her goals was not a good way to end it. However, I agree with Chopin's decision to end the book the way she did because it showed how the society that existed when she wrote it would not let her ever break free no matter how hard she tried.

The Freedom of Choice

In modern developed countries, we take it for granted that we have the right to make our own choices. For example, women now have the ability to choose their role in society. Women can still choose to stay at home and just take care of family, but they can also enter the working force. This is not the result of any legislature. Instead, it is the result of a societal change. In the past, it was assumed that all women would stay at home to manage the household. That is the society seen in A Thousand Splendid Suns. To go against the stiff mold set would be to go against all of society, which would be impossible.

In Part I of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, a woman is forced to marry against her will. In the past in the United States, and presently in some other countries, arranged marriages are/were common. As countries develop though, the freedom of choice grows and it becomes more socially accepted for the people to pick their own spouses. As we see in A Thousand Splendid Suns, forcing someone to make a choice they oppose causes them to resent the result. Jalil forces his daughter, Mariam, to marry off to Rasheed. Mariam opposes the marriage, but is forced to agree to it. The marriage is thus built on top of lies, so it makes everyone anger. In democracies, which are becoming much more common around the world over time, the majority make the choices to an extent. Since the majority are taking some power, it makes sense that now the majority are being given more social rights to choose. People expect that everyone should have a say, so parents no longer impose the marriage onto their children. A stigma has arisen around forcing people to do things because it defies someone's natural rights.

The most contemporary application of the freedom of choice is abortion. I don't expect abortion to be made illegal because it is the choice of the mother before her child has been born, and the United States is a developed country. It is run through a democracy where every person has the choice to vote how the country will be run. It would be ironic if abortion were made illegal because of this. In my opinion, it is best the abortion remains legal because the mothers didn't always have the choice of whether to create the baby, as rape is not an entirely rare occurrence. We can't completely take away women's right to choose whether or not to have a baby by banning abortions. However, it is a tricky topic because you could also argue that you can't take away the babies choice to live. I think that ultimately the mother's choice will win because their decisions can be more obviously discerned than the unborn babies'.