Style vs. Rules

Style can be referred to when talking about music, clothes, literature, and almost everything else in the world.  Style is a way of expressing yourself and setting yourself apart from others.

When reading poetry by Emily Dickinson, a few unusual techniques stood out quickly in almost all of her pieces that we read.  She utilizes dashes, irregular capitalization, and inverted syntax frequently, as well leaves her poems unnamed, which all add to the style and character of her poems.  However, at the time that she wrote these pieces, it was unheard of to break the equivalent of writing "rules", or what had become the norm.  Nevertheless, these rules didn't keep her from writing the way she thought was best to express her feelings and thoughts.

The fact that she wrote differently from the famous poets of her time is what sets her apart nowadays in the minds of anyone who has studied other pieces from that same time.  During Emily's life, only a few of her pieces were published, of which the publishers changed drastically in order to fit the "mold" for proper poetry.  This is why she wasn't known for being an outstanding poet until a while after she died, when in 1955 her poems were finally published without being altered. If her poetry had been just like every other poem in the mid-1800s, people today probably wouldn't know about her poetry; they'd miss out on all of the pieces about death and immortality that Dickinson so beautifully wrote.

This shows that if you want to leave a lasting impact on your community, state, country, or even the world, you can't just act like everyone else.  Although it may be more comfortable for you to just blend into society and never stand out, you probably won't leave a very strong impact on those around you.  What I'm trying to say is that you should dress however you like, voice your opinion even if it's the complete opposite of what everyone else is saying, get involved in things that interest you, and DO NOT be afraid to be different from the "rules" that society makes about how you should look and act.

Do you think that Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi would have accomplished the profound things they did without strongly asserting their beliefs?  Let me make the answer clear: No.