There are many factors can influence a person’s action and his or her outlook of life. In this paper we will look at three stories and how there background and outlook on life influenced there actions, first we will look at "The Necklace", then  "The Lottery", " and An occurrence at old creek bridge", and finally The house on mango street"

 In the short story “The Necklace” by Guy Maupassant, the character’s background effected her outlook on life and her actions.  The opening line of the story shows this very clearly.  “She was one of those pretty and charming women, born as if by an error of destiny, into a family of clerks and copyist.  She wanted to marry a rich man but had no “dowry” and no way of getting known.  Her first major decision changed her life, the author says she “settled for a marriage with a minor clerk in the Ministry of Education”. This could be one of the possible reasons why the author says, “ She was unhappy as if she had gone through bankruptcy” She had not learned to be content with what she had.  So she always wanted more the apartment was not good enough, her husband everything.  She did nothing about it for example: “when she sat down to dinner she noticed the table cloth had not been washed for four days.” Her husband also contributed to her outlook, while she was sitting at the table he looked at the “boiled beef” and said, “ ah good old boiled beef I don’t know anything better” while she dreamed of all the fancy pastries she didn’t have. She was envious of her friends because of what they had.  “She suffered so much when she returned home…with sorrow, regret, despair, and misery.” The one-day her husband brought home an invitation to a dinner, she was got upset, because she had nothing to wear.  I think after a while of feeling sorry for herself, she used that to get what she wanted. She convinced her husband she could make a dress, and even conned him into given her the four hundred francs he was saving for a shot gun.  She most likely knew how to do this from doing the same thing to her father.  So her background, not under her control, seemed to set how she acted and what she wanted.  So lost the pearl necklace that her friend lent her and lied about it, didn’t take responsibility and confess up to it and her and her husband had to work for ten years to pay it off.  So it all snowballed from the fact that her outlook on life is I deserve better and more stuff. And She lost it all.

The next story, “The Lottery” brings a group of people’s actions that effect a whole town every June 27th, and it cost someone their life.  This tradition seemed to one that no one knew why it was done but just did it religiously.  Even the “Black box” which was falling apart, was never rebuilt, because it was older that the oldest in the town. But tradition seemed to rule this little town.  They would leave the black box in public or sometimes hit it.. “Sometimes in Mr. Grave’s Barn, another year under foot in the post office, and sometimes set on a self in the Martin Grocery Store” The mood of this meeting was that of both fun and horror.  For “Tessie” it was a nightmare.  For this tradition that was so old the towns people forgot the ritual and lost the original black box but, “still remembered to use stones.” 

The next story by Ambrose Bierce “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge.   Contrasts with the above story in that is was a one time deal.  The main character was “apparently about thirty-five years of age.”  He apparently was going to be hanged, yet he did not look like he did anything wrong “one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp.”  The author says “the military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of people, and gentlemen are not excluded”  The main character Peyton Farquhar, who was being hanged, had children “He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. “ the story says “he was a well-to-do planter, of an old highly-respected Alabama Family. “he was a slave owner” which tell us that during this time of the civil war, he was being hanged for supporting the south and being “a politician  he was however not in the military, the author does not say why he could be just that “circumstances of an imperious nature which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the south.”  This story brings out the point that the mind has a certain way of doing things, for example when the was falling to his death he thought of escaping and running away from his executors.  Perhaps that was a way of him telling himself that he wasn’t going to die. The mood of this story challenges our minds because we believe he is actually doing this stuff when in actually he is just a dead stick hanging by a rope.

The last story I want to talk about is by Sandra Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street” the background of the characters starts off by saying the family moved a lot. “We didn’t always live on Mango Street.  Three or four times they moved, “the first time because a pipe broke and the landlord wouldn’t fix it….”  There Mamma used to tell them they would get a house of there own someday where they didn’t have to move every year” a big house with plenty of washrooms.   when they finally moved to this house on mango street it was not a house, it had one “washroom” no back yard and two building on either side.  The character of this story, is changed by what her nun teacher says one day while seeing her out side.  The nun said Where do you live, when she pointed to the old third floor, one room shack, with bars (the father put on the windows to keep the little one from acting like birds) The nun said “ you like there?” it made her feel like nothing and she knew it wasn’t a house, but she did have a home.

So we see that our outlook and sometimes our background influence our actions, all humans are basic in nature we have greed and can be dishonest, we can be good and bad.  But ultimately it comes down to our personal choices effect others around us and ourselves.