Freedom Writers

The term "Outsider" cannot be defined by any one characteristic or circumstance.The movie Freedom Writers displays every character as being an outsider in one way or another. For every person, they are an insider to some, but an outsider to everyone else. Mrs. Gruwel and Eva each show this to be true throughout many scenes in the movie.

Mrs. Gruwel has her own life with her husband where she didn't seem to feel like an outsider at all. She knew her place in life, but when she decided to become a teacher her world turned upside down. She seemed to fit in just fine with the teachers when she first started to teach, but this soon changed. She started to protest the way the school was handling situations, and this quickly made her an outsider. Suddenly the teachers wanted nothing to do with her, and even began to publicly fight with her and the activities she was partaking in. This is a scenario where she began an insider, having the same interests and race as the teachers around her, but her actions turned her into an outsider.

In an opposite chain of events, she immediately started out as an outsider to the school kids. Eva even stated that she hated Mrs. Gruwel, because she hates all white people. The students were laughing at her lesson plans and showing her absolutely no respect at all. This slowly began to change over the course of the movie, but only as she was able to teach her students that although they felt like they had it the worst, and the races around them weren't equal, in reality they were all fighting the same battles. As the students began to realize that, they began to accept Mrs. Gruwel and she was no longer the outsider to her students. Their classroom became the first to have a diverse group of children, who all treated each other like equals. They became a family, with not one outsider in the class.

Eva was a student who had a severe hate for other races, especially whites, and would have done anything to protect her own. Her upbringing put a bad taste in her mouth, and caused her to seclude herself to one group of individuals. She was a close insider to all of them, but an outsider to the rest of the world, just as she felt they were an outsider to her. She took this so far, that she almost let her "friend" get away with murder. This all changed, however, when Mrs. Gruwel was able to show the students that just because another person was of a different race, they shared all the same interests and hardships, and in reality are not outsiders at all. Eva finally did the right thing and convicted her friend of the murder, and stood up for a fellow class mate of another race. This is an act that she would have never done, prier to Mrs. Gruwel's class.

The scenarios causing the judgement in this movie are not present everywhere, but there will always be groups and people designated as the outsiders, no matter where you go. I have always seen those kids who sit by themselves in the lunchroom and have no friends to talk to, and they have always been the outsiders. I wish I could go back to High school, so that I could take a minute to talk to these kids and hear a little bit of their life stores. I would be willing to bet that those kids shared at least some of the same interests as me or my friends, and had some of the same hardships etc. They weren't outsiders at all, they just had personality traits which were different than most of the students in my school, but as a person, they deserved just as much respect as anyone else.

There will always be differences in people, as that is what makes us all so greatly unique, and makes every person an individual. This, however, does not make everyone an outcast. If it did, than every single person in this world would be an outsider, and there would be no insiders at all. It is your personality, how you choose to live your life, and how you treat others around you, that defines whether or not you or an outsider to anyone in particular. Not your skin, not the fact that you are quieter than others and therefore don't socialize well, and not the fact that you may not agree with every single thing your peers do. There is not one thing alone that can define an outsider, just as there is not one thing that defines an insider. If everyone were to look closer and dig deeper into the lives of their peers, it may be seen that everyone can be connected in one way or another, and not one single person is a complete outsider