Ambition Speech Final Draft-4

Sankaran 1 Neha Sankaran Miles Period 6 20 February 2019 Ambition For… In our lives, there are many things that may drive us to take action towards a goal. Whether it be something internal, like satisfaction or revenge, or something external, like peer pressure, when you boil it all down and take a more general look, the amount of ambition a person has, is really what drives for the completion of a goal. Personally, most acts I, as well as many others, do, are out of ambition, ranging from waking up early in the mornings, to going to sleep late at night, it’s all for a purpose. Let us take a closer look and see how ambition is displayed positively and negatively amongst different characters and people throughout different settings and situations. Through looking at the stories of Shabana Basij-Rasikh, an Afghani woman with great ambition for women's education, and William Shakespeare’s ​Macbeth’s Macbeth, with ambition for self-power, we are able to see how ambition diversifies. To start out, what is ambition? Ambition is defined as a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. To sum it up, ambition is the drive to do, and Shabana Basij-Rasikh’s story is a great example of it. In Afghanistan, the Taliban serves as a major obstacle especially for girls trying to receive an education; women attempting to gain an unofficial education often face extreme threats, the most extreme example being death. Could you even imagine how terrifying that is? We are so privileged. And yet despite these awful circumstances, Shabana, as well as her family, are able to fight with confidence, and their

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encouragement and ambition, is really what fueled her to persist in a prized education, and today, help many other girls receive the education that they too deserve. Now let’s take a look at another form ambition may take on, in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Not only does Macbeth’s personal dreams take part in his ambition, but his wife, Lady Macbeth’s, taunting and deceptively swaying speeches of her own goals, also played a major role in many of Macbeth’s selfish decisions throughout the play. Macbeth always dreamt of having the crown, however, he never thought to actually act on his goals by betraying those around him in order to get there. It was not until Lady Macbeth used a tactic of manipulation when Macbeth finally took action by ridding those who were hindering his path to total power. In fact, Macbeth’s ambition had become so great that he immorally rose himself to the throne, but would live his life to pay the price including holding painfully heavy burdens on his conscious. Tying ambition back to Shabana, she dreams big, and that is why today, she is a global ambassador for 10x10, a global campaign founded to educate women. She also co-founded SOLA, the first and perhaps only boarding school for girls in Afghanistan. Ambition is what pushed and still pushes Shabana to advocate her goal and have a large and positive impact on the education of many other girls. Today, there are more than three million girls in Afghanistan, in school, and Shabana’s influences are a factor of the fact. In closing, ambition may not be something we feel or choose, but it is something that takes a major part in each and every decision we make. It can be seen in almost every example, fiction or nonfiction, and truly it is ambition that writes your story. How will ambition write yours?

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Works Cited Basij-Rasikh, Shabana. “Dare to Educate Afghan Girls.” ​Ted​. Ted, Dec. 2012. <​www.ted.com/talks/shabana_basij_rasikh_dare_to_educate_afghan_girls/transcript#t-34 2663​> Basij-Rasikh, Shabana. “Our Founder.” ​SOLA​, 2008, ​www.sola-afghanistan.org/our-founder​. Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Oxford University Press, 2015.