"Be your own person"?

Question

I have to write about any literature (novels, bible stories, kids books, anything!) I've read with the theme of "be your own person".

If you know of/have read any (preferably high school reading level or lower) literature with this theme, please, please say so!

Answer 1

the first ones that comes to mind for me are

"The Perks Of Being A Wallflower"

or

"A Seperate Peace"  

Answer 2

Two very famous women who "broke the mold" to go their own way were Shirley Temple Black and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Shirley Temple Black was a curly headed cutsey child star who went on to become an ambassador of the United States.

A brief bio is here:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000073/bio

This is a book about her:

http://www.amazon.com/Shirley-Temple-Bla...

You can probably find other things -- newspaper/magazine articles, other books, etc. either on line or in the library.

Eleanor Roosevelt was married to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She was a very strong women in her own right and very influential during his presidency. After his death and she left the White House became even more so as a spokesperson for the U.N. Many disliked her because of her strong views.

A brief bio is here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstl...

Here is a book of her autobiography and there are many others as well:

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Elea...

Answer 3

Basically they just want you to write about choices and the impact they have on your character and what you achieve. That leaves just about everything open. You'll think of something.

Answer 4

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Here's a brief summary from Wikipedia:

Thoreau regarded his sojourn at Walden as a noble experiment with a threefold purpose. First, he was escaping the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution by returning to a simpler, agrarian lifestyle. (However, he never intended the experiment to be permanent, explicitly advised that he did not expect all his readers to follow his example, and never wrote against technology or industry as such.) Second, he was simplifying his life and reducing his expenditures, increasing the amount of leisure time in which he could work on his writings (most of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers was written at Walden). Much of the book is devoted to stirring up awareness of how one's life is lived, materially and otherwise, and how one might choose to live it more deliberately -- possibly differently. Third, he was putting into practice the Transcendentalist belief that one can best transcend normality and experience the Ideal, or the Divine, through nature.