**This essay was completed after reading several in class texts which the bibliographies are included at the end. This paper is relating all of these texts through the theme of success.
Success: In the Eye of the Beholder
Success is a universal theme. We see this all around us -- in other people, in music, and definitely in our literature. There are many ways by which to define success. In each of four pieces of literature, success is introduced from a different point of view. In The Pact, success was achieved by three inner city men. They made a pact together to get through medical school and become doctors. Their success was not measured by becoming doctors but by the fact that they had made something better of themselves than ending up on the streets. In "The Challenger Disaster", Richard P. Feynman makes it clear that the mistake that led to this disaster was not just a fuel line o-ring, but the assumption of continued success that NASA had enjoyed.
English: Frontispiece and first page of chapter on...
This was a frontispiece of Voltaire's Candide, or ...
Space Shuttle Challenger's smoke plume after the i...In "Candide", the character Candide felt that his success would only come with rejoining the love of his life. Though he was successful in the end, he realized that he no longer wanted this woman, who had turned ugly. His success now meant nothing to him although he had been very successful in the process of getting to his goal. In Frankenstein, Victor successfully recreates human life, but soon realizes that his success is not admired by other men, and eventually his "success" ruins his own life. Success is presented in different manners by different authors, which allows readers to get a broad understanding of different aspects of success.
In "The Pact", the success that the three doctors achieved represents much more than becoming a doctor. The three authors had...