If They Are Loyal, They Are True
Throughout one’s life, many friends come and go. They will have arguments and disagreements from time to time, whether it be about something trivial or something that is life changing. However, friends will also share advice and secrets, and trust that they are not going to be told. Friends will help you when you fail, and support you when you are having a difficult time. People may grow away from each other or grow closer as they get older.
There are some who find other’s shortcomings and are unable to look over them, but there will also be people who are able to look over mistakes and accept everyone as they are. Those are the true friends. The ones who like a person just the way they are and accept them, faults and all. A true friendship was shown in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon. In the book Flowers for Algernon, a mentally challenged man named Charlie Gordon has a low IQ, and receives a wonderful opportunity to have an operation done that will triple his IQ. An example from the book was when Charlie had gone back to his old job after his intelligence had soared and plummeted, within a six month period.
“One of the new men who came to work there after I went away made a nasty crack… but Joe Carp came over and grabbed him by the shirt and said leave him alone or I’ll break your neck.” (Keyes 224) Joe Carp showed loyalty to Charlie by defending him from the new person working there rather than letting the man be rude to Charlie and not intervening. Joe Carp demonstrated loyalty and friendship to Charlie, regardless of the fact that his IQ was low again. A true and loyal friendship was also displayed in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.
In Harry Potter everyone in the school is avoiding Harry because they fear that Harry is the “Heir of Slytherin” due to the fact that he can speak “Parsel Tongue” or the language of the snake. His friends, Ron and Hermione, stay by his side the whole time. “‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ Justin shouted, and before Harry could say anything, he stormed out of the hall. Snape too was looking at Harry in an unexpected way. A shrewd and calculating look… ‘Come on’, said Ron. ‘Move, come ON.
‘” (Rowling 138) This shows that even though other people felt that Harry was dangerous and loathsome, Ron and Hermione were loyal and stuck with him to the end. Loyalty and friendship can be shown in family too. In The Chronicles of Narnia- the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the kids Lucy, Edmund, Suzan, and Peter, were loyal to each other by protecting one another, and forgiving the others for their mistakes. Even after Edmund betrayed his brother and sisters by giving important information to the White Queen, his brother and sisters helped rescue him, forgave him, and did not give him a difficult time for his mistake. If no one forgave one another for their faults, then no one would have any friends, and everyone would be enemies.
An important part of friendship is to accept others mistakes and forgive them. Bravery and loyalty are required for defending what you believe in, and for defending your friends. In The Diary of Anne Frank both of those traits are shown by the people who helped many Jewish people who were hiding from the Nazis’, including the Frank family. Even though the penalty was often death if they were discovered, the Franks friends helped conceal them for twenty five months, along with another family. Meanwhile, other people were not even brave enough to offer a ride to the unlucky Frank family as they trudged through the pouring rain to go into hiding.
“We got sympathetic looks from people on their way to work. You could see by their faces how sorry they were that they couldn’t offer us a lift; the gaudy yellow star spoke for itself.” (Frank 16) The Franks friends were loyal to them and showed it by risking their lives to help them, even when others would not. Many people have friends, but they are not always loyal. A true friend will fight for you even when you feel like you cannot.
When I was younger, I moved to Sydney, Australia and lived there for a year. I went to a private school there named Redlands. Every day, we would have a snack break in the morning, and later we would have lunch. There was a playground outside, where all of the kids loved to play. One day, during the snack break, my friend Rebecca and I were wandering around the play ground.
We were talking about nothing in particular, when we saw a boy from our class named Alexander being bullied by other boys in our class. Rebecca and I did not know him very well, but he had seemed fairly nice in the past, so we decided that we were not going to sit by and watch him be bullied. We climbed up and stood on either side of Alexander. We told the boys to stop being rude and to leave him alone. The boys tried to talk back, but Rebecca and I did not stand down. Eventually, we grabbed Alexander by the arms and dragged him off saying, “Come on.
You are playing with us.” Whenever we saw the bullies we gave them “the evil eye”, and Alexander was our friend from that point on. On Easter, he even bought both of us gigantic chocolate bunnies that had even more candy inside of them! Even though we did not know Alexander very well back then, we were his friends by sticking up for him, and in the end, he was a great friend in return. Throughout our lives many friends come and go, but only the true friends last. Those that are loyal and the kind are the ones whose friendships really matter.
It is important to forgive mistakes, accept others’ faults, and to treat everyone with respect, no matter who they are, or whether other people like them or not. All that matters is how people treat one another, especially their friends.
