A person is shaped by their past because the events that they had go through made them realize what is important to them. A person’s past doesn’t define who they are but it does what the person chooses to be. The past serves to us as reminders and lessons we may or may not choose to learn from. In the book Whirligig, Brent has been shaped by his past, but he doesn’t let it define who he is now. He had a traumatic event happen in his life but moved on and has changed for the better. “But something had changed. He felt oddly buoyant. He discovered as well that a new view lay before his mind’s eye” (Fleischman 132).
We still see a lot of people still trying to live in their past and dragging it with them. Think about the beauty pageant mom who