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Interacting with others and personal circumstances often play an important

role in shaping the personality and behaviour of an individual. In fact, the

influence can be great, with just the use of words alone. The experiences that

people have; make an impact on their opinions for each other. Mayda Del Valle

and Eric Darby are portraying how experiences influence the behaviours and

opinions of the people. People, regardless of their intensions, influence

behaviours of others around them, giving different perspectives of the world

creating a sadistic phase of conduct.

´Mornings with swollen eyes are/ becoming routine /and we simply wanting to

be /loved ´(Valle line 12). Mayda Del Valle has experienced a lot in her life and

has been able to shape up her opinions, her mind has been set, she thinks of

men in a negative manner but she still has hopes alive for the man who will

adore her truly. Her lyrics tell us about the experiences that she·s had with

´the boys she loved,µ and she·s not has had a good time with them.

´Then you go down the block to where those two kids are packing up/ their

peanut butter/ enterprise cause someone/ told them they would failµ (Darby

line 65).In the poem scratch and dent dreams by Eric Darby, he talks about the

children on the side of the street selling ice- cream and later giving up because
they were told to give up for the reason that wasn·t the job that would make

them successful.

"We are not your mothers

/and are not meant to be

it is not our responsibility to /raise you into /respectful beings" (Valle, line 1)

as stated by Mayda Del Valle, the boys she has been with are not the real men

she had wanted. They approached her as if she was their mother with all the

solution to their problems. At the same time, they approached her with a hope

that she would act as a resolution to their problems. Apart from being a

problem solver, the boys wanted her to provide them with a comfort zone in a

motherly and an affectionate way. However, she didn·t need a boy, she needed

a man to comfort her with all the respect and right of what a lover should get

and not what a mother gets; she wanted to be treated like a lover, instead of a

mother. They do not know how to treat her with respect and dignity, in the end

not allowing her to understand herself as a woman who has been given what

she had expected, and what she needs to have.

´I·m happy going to sleep /after just a goodnight/ kiss,

and I believe/ that beauty can be as simple as two kids,

crew cut and pig tales, handing me a scoop of /peanut butter ice cream/

that·s so good, you·d think it was a dream."(Darby line 80).Darby here says that

he is content with a simple life, by just getting a goodnight kiss from his

spouse, and claims life to be simple just like the innocent kids. He refers "
you'd think it was a dream," to his spectators, who believe what he says is

wrong, and who are not happy with these small, and simple things of life that

make a person content, in addition to that, they measure happiness by money.

He has his own opinions about life, he has shaped them up with his own

thoughts and ideas .He has a different aspect of what life is, he has a different

ideology all together; he sees life as very simple and thinks that people make it

difficult for themselves in greed.

To recapitulate, Darby, the poet of ´Scratch and dent dreams,µ and Valle, the

poet of ´To all the boys I loved,µ endows with a creative notion to their readers.

This creative notion revolves around the ideology of how the opinion of an

individual depends on the environment around them. The poem creates a

direct impact on the audience, by supporting an argument, on the impact of

one·s environment with their respective behavioural actions. At the same time

their personal instances also play a vital role in shaping up their attitude and

opinions. It also includes various evidences that further portray the arguments

on references proven above. The poet has been successful in delivering the

basis of the opinions made and rejected by various individuals.

 !"#
Del Valle, Mayda. "To All the Boys I've loved before." `

. KateJB2, 30
Aug. 2008. Web. 7 July 2010.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9tlQMSovCk>.

Darby, Eric. "Scratch and Dent Dreams." `

. Eric Darby, 6 Feb. 2007.

Web. 7 July 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfTa4B7wQ_8