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Are Individuals Controled By Nature Or Nurture?

Decent Essays

There are many psychological arguments for whether it is nature or nurture that controls an individual. If one is controlled by nature it means that the traits with which they inherit and have no control over are the ones controlling them. If one is controlled by nurture it means that the way in which they were brought up has control over them. Perry Smith was the son of a white man and a drunken Cherokee woman, “it was from her that he had inherited his coloring - the iodine skin, the dark, moist eyes, the black hair, which he kept brilliantined and was plentiful enough to provide him with sideburns and a slippery spray of bangs. His mother's donation was apparent; that of his father, a freckled, ginger-haired Irishman, was less so.” (page 9) He was raised in a children’s shelter that was ran by nuns and priests. While Perry was living with his father he wasn’t allowed to go to school. When Perry was a young child his mother took him and his siblings away from their father, and in the next years he was taken away from his father, and his mother became a different person. Perry’s mother had let liquor get the best of her, and she was never again like she was before. Perry Smith’s life is a prime example on how nurture controls more of an individual than nature.
Perry Smith while talking about his childhood said, “Priests and nuns have had their chance with me. I’m still wearing the scars to prove it.” (page 183) In this quote he is referring to his time in a children’s

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