Growing up is how we develop throughout our lives, and there are certain characters and people that we get used to as we grow. There are those responsibilities that we take up as we grow too. In “High Noon,” Fred Zimmerman creates a film that shows how people grow up differently and shows the existence of courage and lack of it among the people of Hadleyville, Kansas.
In his film, he covers how the longtime marshal and the people of Hadleyville are faced by adversity of a returning enemy Frank Miller. Growing up is the manner through which we have learned to handle situations. As it was shown, the townspeople were not going to help Kane as he was going to face his adversary, because they had grown up cowardly, they could not stand and face this gang. This is not how Kane was raised and he states, “to flee is to face lying a coward in my grave. ” Amy hates violence because she has grown up the Quaker way, but when push comes to shove, she tries her way out to help out someone she loves.
She has also grown to know that a wife sticks to the husband. No one grows up with everything given to them the easy way, and that is what Harvey is trying to get in this whole mess. He insists that he should be allowed to handle this situation so that he can be able to grow his way through the whole process to become the marshal. There is a personal responsibility that one has to take up when growing up. Just like Frank Miller, he had taken it upon himself to live a criminal life and to defend his criminal life. Kane also ensured that he protects what he had believed in when growing up which is the way to justice.
Frank arrives in time and meets his gang as was planned, and this forces Kane to hide and he picks the gang through a certain skill that he had learned. In order to pull out such levels of skill as was pulled by Kane, one must have grown up witty. This is proven through the fact that he had developed into the level of the town marshal, and even as he was leaving none of his peers could be able to take up the role outright. At the center of this war is one Helen Ramerez, who has acted as a mistress to the three parties in this war.
She was the girlfriend to the Deputy Marshal Harvey and also a lover to Frank Miller. She also had a stint with Kane, and these are the some of the reasons that Miller and Harvey cannot stand seeing Kane move out of the town to start a new life. Through this, we are to see that growth is quite multidimensional and heavily developed. It is made up of those things that we encounter daily and those things that are built in us.
Growth is a topic that Zimmerman looks at from the basic terms that are understandable. The events in the movie show that people start growth from what they are taught and what they believe. Amy is what she is because she was taught, and Kane is what he believes in. It is a fact that many people have failed to understand, that discipline is a thing that enables life. The essence of discipline is created by decisions that are well thought out but not as a matter of reacting to basic instinct. In “The Road Less Traveled” by Scott Peck he writes about the benefits of discipline and also the disadvantages of lack of discipline.
Everything that can be thought out on this topic has been covered by the author. He has such a knack of looking at the sense of discipline from childhood to adulthood. He has been able to identify three facts as the building blocks of the discipline and they include balancing, responsibility and delayed gratification. Discipline is that instinct that makes one to desire to pursue material and spiritual satisfaction. There is something important about delaying gratification so that one can be able to gain something much bigger in future and Scott Peck talks about when he says, “it is the only decent way to live” (Peck 19). Many people live by being satisfied through the instant and basic gratification, though this is not the best way to live.
For one to be able to gain the real gratification, they have to go through a series of pain and learning so that they can be able to grow better in life. It is not obvious though that we can be able to find growth if we can be able to delay gratification. One has to have personal responsibility and be able to find means through which they can be able to develop spiritually. When it comes to responsibility, Peck has been able to determine what is important to say to oneself, which to most may be difficult: “This is my problem and it is upon me to solve it” (Peck 32).
One can be able to grow and learn from mistakes through learning to take responsibility upon themselves for those acts that they have committed and learn from them. This is the same in how we grow in our homes, because if one has parents who are not ready to take responsibility for the wrongs that they have committed, then the children too will be ready and willing to act just like the role model parents. This is a problem that is witnessed as one transcend from childhood to adulthood. There is need to have a balancing act when it comes to growing through delaying gratification and taking responsibility.
It is very important that individuals not only rely on taking responsibility and delayed gratification as means to growth, but they also need to find a proper balancing act. The basic idea that Scott offers when it comes to balancing is “giving up things in life” (Peck 66). One does not just need to delay anger but to find out how they can be able to handle the levels of anger that they have to succumb to. One has to use judgment rather than instinct in anger management, and this can only be possible if they can decide to give up those things that make them angry.
This is how sacrifice is designed. This example of anger is what Peck has deeply relied upon in putting across his concept of delayed gratitude and taking responsibility. In the reading, Scott has been able to show the road to emotional and spiritual growth through a high level of description, through offering the steps that people can be able to use rather than starting just straight away. In the spiritual journey, delaying one’s gratitude is just a step that he has started with. Then he moves on to note that people need to identify the mistakes that they have committed and taking responsibility for the mistakes. The best way that he has been able to teach this is when he has been able to show the need for balance through the example of anger.
This shows that the means of emotional discipline is a road that one has to learn about when is already walking along and moving towards a certain set goal.
Bibliography:
“High Noon (2000). ” YouTube. YouTube. Web.
21 Mar. 2015. Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978. Print.
