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Russell Leonard

Mrs. Davenport

English 9 honors

21 march 2017

Ambition in amputee athletes

Ambition is the want and need for better and greater things in someone's life. This feeling

drives people to their dreams. In pokemon, I loved playing it as a kid and would dream about

how cool it would be to have it incorporated in real life and the cool things Id do. As Pokemon

Go was announced most people thought, finally i can catch pokemon like in all my dreams when

i was five. As everyone learned that they had to walk around most people were immediately

turned away from the game. Although, the ambitious few that had those dreams went to the

gyms and, poke stops.

Even though ambition can be a bad thing like in Macbeth where it drives him to kill the

king and his best friend, it is still the main force of drive for civilization. Through ambition the

U.S. was established and founded as a free country. Its what set the rush west and for land in the

1880s and the gold rush later. Its what set marchs into washington for rights and forced racism

out of the south.

In, A Separate Peace, Gene shows ambition when he becomes one of the best students

in the school of Devon. Just like Hugh Herr whos the best in his field of work in biophysics is a

paraplegic athlete himself, Hugh Herr uses his own made legs to climb up rock faces and run

marathons. This show great ambition in how he kept doing sports even though he was physically

disabled.
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The MIT overview of Hugh Herr explains his role in amputee research. Hugh Herr helps

other amputees complete their own dreams as someone who is born without limbs or later lost.

For example, a woman who had lost her leg in the Boston marathon attack, was given a

hydraulic leg and samba danced almost as she had done with her biological leg. These

prothstetics that Hugh Herr is making gives almost super human powers to those without legs.

As most people see amputees in a weak unhealthy depression for their lives, as they are

missing a whole part of themselves. Most see it wrong. An article written in the 1980s shows

amputees with almost nothing left and the plastic club like article hanging from them. This

article's main purpose was to inform of the skiing and snowboard amputee community. I believe

that if there was a revision now to this article, there would be drastic changes in ability and tone

of the article. This which is due to the fact of how ambitious the athletic amputee community is.

In conclusion, ambition is extremely positive. It allows the amputee to become world

class athletes maybe even better than the healthy athletes. It allows for the child dreamers to be

who they want to be. It is what allows for freedom and rights too what is equal and what is

believed in with certain communities.

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Citations

Rago, Joseph. The Weekend Interview With Hugh Herr: The Liberating Age of Bionics.Wall

Street Journal, Dow Jones and Company Inc, 12 July 2013, www.wsj.com/articles/.

Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

Knowles, John, and Donna Reardon. A Separate Peace. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Macbeth

Sem, Arthur. The Double Amputee Who Designs Better Limbs. NPR, NPR, 10 Aug. 2011,

www.npr.org/2011/08/10/137552538/the-double-amputee-who-designs-better-limbs.

Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.

Riley, Richard. The Amputee Athlete. Clinical Prosthetics, Spenco Medical Corporation, 3

Apr. 1987, www.oandplibrary.org/cpo/pdf/1987_03_109.pdf. Accessed 26 Mar. 2017.