–Gifted Hands, The Ben Carson Story Essay, Research Paper
1. Ben Carson with Cecil Murphey–Gifted Hands, The Ben Carson Story
2. 230 pages
3.
The book is about a kid who grew up in a harsh area, in other words a “ghetto”. The books starts out when Ben is in fifth grade when he is failing all his classes because he couldn’t see anything without glasses that his family couldn’t afford. But after Ben got glasses he became the smartest student in all his classes. He was a very smart and good student until he reached the beginning of high school. When he entered the ninth grade year he began to be embarrassed of his social standing because people would “cap” on him and also because he wore old clothes. He was in this period until the middle of the 10th grade when his mom and the ROTC straightened him out. After that he graduated high school and attended college at Yale. While at Yale he had money problems and barely had enough money to survive. He graduated and married his wife Cookie and became a neurosurgeon. He his known as one of the top neurosurgeons if not the top neurosurgeon because he took difficult cases which all other neurosurgeons wouldn’t take the risk to do.
The message of this book is basically never give up and always try to do your best no matter what the situation and you should remember that God is with one and he should be the priority in ones life. Well for different people the message of this book could be considered important or unimportant. The ideas of this book are of importance to certain people and these certain people should consider it. There are expressions of the author shown through certain incidents like when mid-terms came during a year at Yale he was unprepared because of his procrastinating studying techniques but the night before the exam while reviewing his notes he prayed for god to help him do good on the test and he had a dream about the test and the answers were in front of him, this expressed his philosophy of god helping one if they ask.
The author never tried to convince me of a point of view but he gave different examples of situations and how he settled those situations. After reading this book I found some similarities of my daily life. After reading this book truthfully I can’t think of anything that changed my opinion towards something because of reading the book. But I have took into thought about things that I did in the past like making fun of people because of their appearance is wrong because I figured out what kind of economic situations the people I made fun could be in.
I think the author portrays the character exceptionally well even though he wrote the book. Though there also could be incidents that are left out that should be in the book but other than that I rate the book very well. In some situations the character came to life but in other situations they didn’t like dreaming about a test I knew I would fail because of not preparing for it but still passing because I dreamed of the answers felt a bit unrealistic.
The story was believable. The characters seemed very realistic and the situations were seemed very believable. For example, the mother never letting her kids fail and always pushing hoping their kids to do the best and sacrificing herself for them. Other incidents of other people making fun of people I see practically everyday among others.
A passage from the book that appealed to me was about how people tend to blame others of problems that they caused or outcomes, which are their own fault. This passage is:
“…I also want to say I believe that many of our pressing
racial problems will be taken care of when we who are
among the minorities will stand on our own feet and refuse
to look to anybody else to save us from our situations. The
culture in which we live stresses looking out for number
one. Without adopting such a self-centered value system,
we can demand the best of ourselves while we are
extending our hands to help others.”
This passage hit me in they way that it is very realistic. When seeing people blaming work assigned to them or because they are left out of something they blame it on other people by their saying racist. In some situations it can be true but in today’s society it’s used too much. I also felt the second part of the passage was very realistic to because now a days its all about self and not about all. It should be about all than self because I believe more comes out by helping others than just by helping yourself. Today’s society pushes one to be number one but it just shouldn’t be that way.
The books greatest strengths are it seems very truthful and it’s very interesting. For me once I picked up the book it was hard to put down truthfully. There was no single thing in the book that pleased more than Ben succeeding in life coming up from the slums to one of the most successful neurosurgeons in the U.S. and the world. The technique the author was being truthful. The book seemed very truthful and it drew myself into the book.