Knowledge and Individual Power

940 Words4 Pages
Knowledge and Individual Power “Knowledge is power” a quote made famous by Francis Bacon. Does knowledge give an individual power or is it the other way around? My claim is that an individual’s power gives them knowledge through clarity, insight and strength as demonstrated in Sherman Alexie’s piece titled Superman and Me. Superman and Me is a story about a poor young Indian boy named Sherman Alexie, who drew from his own individual power to acquire knowledge that he would later use in life to inspire others to become better than who they thought they were perceived to be. He states, “I was never taught how to write poetry, short stories, and novels. Writing was something beyond Indians. I cannot recall a single time a guest teacher visited the reservation”. In the story he sits in front of a class of Indian children and describes how the kids look at him with “bright eyes and arrogant wonder”. Alexie’s story symbolizes hope for his people through his knowledge of power. One of my claims are that clarity and insight is instrumental to obtaining knowledge. Clarity means seeing things clearly through understanding. Insight gives you an intuitive understanding of the nature of something. With one you will acquire the other. One cannot obtain knowledge without first understanding it. Alexia describes his father as an avid reader, encouraging his love for reading, he then decided to love books too. This was a great example of a patho; one that would help him gain clarity and insight needed to acquire his knowledge. He states, “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books too”. Every individual needs a stepping-stone to learning and understanding their potential, and this was it for young Sherman. Furthermore, Alexie describes when he first started reading his father’s books. “The words themselves were mostly
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