Trust is Key Though I may not have the quintessential wisdom from old age I do have experience dealing with trust and the many ways it can screw with someone’s mind. Like most children I was forced to trust the judgment from my parents since they were all I knew from my birth. Neither of my parents went to college, but tried to groom me into a college prepared student. That didn’t go so well. I had no idea what I was doing, and neither did they. The school I went to did no college preparation what so ever, and my parents saw nothing wrong with that. So finally when I graduated I had no idea what I was going to do or how to even proceed. My parents led me to believe that I could go wherever I wanted, so I did. I went to Rhode Island College, and after one semester my parents said that there was no way I was going there and that I needed to come home and pick somewhere else to go. I had invested a lot into that college, and they tore it away. They told me that they have picked a new college for me to go to and I’d be starting in a few weeks. It was culinary school, and though I didn’t mind the classes I hated the outcome. So then I went to Suffolk Community College, with no help from them, and no support in order to start a career path that actually interests me. What I have learned through my limited experiences with life and trust is to be very wary of who you trust, and always trust yourself. Trust needs to be a two way road, and though you cannot get through life only trusting yourself, there needs to be a line where you can distinguish between trusting others or only yourself. The Road by Cormac McCarthy, “The Right to Remain” by Melanie Marnich, “Straightway” by Mark Wisniewski, and “Autobiography of Eve” by Ansel Elkins all deal with trust with their characters, and how they need to trust themselves or the people they’re with. In “Autobiography of Eve”, by Ansel Elkins, Eve needs to rely on herself to get out into an unknown world. “I stood alone in terror at the threshold between Paradise and Earth” (Elkins, line 7-8). Here Eve is by herself, she has no one to trust, but that only helps her to move to an unknown land because she is forced to trust herself and no one else. She knows that she is the only one who she can trust and embraces it, and listens to herself. “There I heard a mysterious echo: my own voice singing to me from across the forbidden side” (Lines 9-12). She trusts in herself to do what she needs to do: get out of Paradise to get to Earth, and with her own life she trusts herself only. “I leapt to freedom” (Lines 16-17). In order to get the courage to leap from Paradise, Eve needs to trust herself, and just like with myself, change is scary and when I had no one to trust I had to trust myself, just like Eve has to. Sometimes I had people to have faith in, and when I did things were easier to figure out. When I was in Rhode Island College my best friend, Nick, was always there for me. He’d drive me around, or come visit me on campus often just so we could hang out and not be alone. People don’t always have someone to lean on, but when they do they should take advantage of it and appreciate that person. Mark Wisniewski’s “Straightway” features a man Tre, who has to trust in his two friends in order to turn a thousand dollars into enough to leave the state and start a new life. Bark trusts Tre with his truck, even knowing that Tre cannot drive, but he trusts him in order to do the job they need to do. “Bark, I say, you know I can’t drive. Sure you can, he says. Just start it, put it in gear, and steer is so you don’t hit nothing” (Wisniewski, 301). To bet on the horses to win more money all three members of the group need to trust in each other, and more specifically in Bark to pick the right horses in the right races in order to win enough money to put their past behind them. At the same time Bark needs to trust himself because everything rides on his choice of horses in order to get enough money for the trio to live on (pages 306-307). Part of trusting is mistrusting. I mistrusted my parents when they told me that I could go to college, and again when they told me they found a college for me to go to, without my thoughts on the matter. In “The Right to Remain” by Melanie Marnich the mother, Amy, and son, Josh, mistrust the father, Peter for good reason. He is cheating on his wife, Amy, and Josh figures it out and together with Amy they plan to tell Peter and fix things. Josh lost trust in Peter a long time ago, and shows it by giving him one more chance, but in reality there is no chance because Josh knows Peter is cheating on his mother. “Yeah there is. And I already know it. Because I called the phone company and got your cell phone records. But I want you to say it. Say it and I’ll stop” (Marnich, Page 179). Amy had no reason to mistrust Peter until Josh mentioned that he is cheating on her. Her trust was shattered, much like mine when I was told I can no longer continue my educational path in Rhode Island. “The thing is, I had no idea. He’s the one who figured it out. Not me. I believed every late night. He’s pretty smart, though, isn’t he?” (Page 180). Amy’s mistrust extends to her mistrust of cellphones. Amy sees through Peter’s ruse of using a cellphone in order to cheat on her. “Cell phones changed the rules. Accessibility doesn’t preclude guilt. As a matter of fact, it’s the perfect cover” (Page 179). Just like me, it’s hard to trust family, especially when there’s evidence that mistrust is present. As I said before: trust is a two way street. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road trust is evident in both the boy and man. They need to trust one another, but also themselves in order to survive a post-apocalyptic world. The man constantly asks the boy to trust him, and though sometimes it goes wrong, it normally goes right. As the relationships between the two evolve, their trust becomes less on themselves and more on each other. Anytime the man finds a house he needs to ask the boy to trust him that it’s fine to go inside. “The boy didn’t want him to go upstairs. We have to take a look. Okay. Okay? Just like that?” (McCarthy, Pages 210 – 211). Even though the man lied to the boy, the boy trusted him when he shot the bowman with the flare gun. “Did you kill him? No. Is that the truth? Yes. Okay.” (Page 270). Trust between the boy and man is tested over and over throughout the novel. When the man trusted the boy with the lamp and the oil it was misplaced because the boy did not screw the lamp back together and the gas leaked (Page 176). When the boy contracts food poisoning he needs to trust the man in order to get over it. The boy and man need to trust each other and work together in order to survive the terrible world they’re in (Page 247). The boy trusts the man, “I believe you. Okay. I always believe you,” even when the boy is almost killed, and his life is in the man’s hands. The last time the man asks the boy to trust him is just before the man dies. He wants to boy to trust that he’ll survive, and that he will find people. Which he does, “I’m really scared Papa. I know. But you’ll be okay. I know you are” (Page 279) As with my life, trust is a very important aspect to have. As seen in “Autobiography of Eve,” you need to trust yourself, especially when there is no one else. I had to trust my friends like the trio did in “Straightway.” Survival, in both the urban world and in a post-apocalyptic one is dependent on trust, as shown in The Road. Finally I had quite a bit of mistrust, just like Amy and Josh in “The Right to Remain.” Overall I learned that trust is the key to any relationship, including the relationship with myself. I needed to trust my friends and family, even when they hurt me. In the future trust will be even more viable when I can compare it to my past experiences and judge how well someone can be trusted and what I am capable of doing myself.