Friendship Limits the Damage

Friendship can either limit damage or not limit damage depending on the type of friends, and friendship that one has and one is in respectively. This therefore means that if a person is in a friendship which affects him positively, then it can be able to limit the damage. On the other hand, if one is in a friendship which does not affect him positively, then, the friendship cannot be able to limit the damage (Birney, & Johnstone, 39). The type of friends that a person has also matter, this consequently means that if a person has friends who often indulge in criminal affairs, then the friendship might not be able to limit the damage. This type of friends might corrupt the behaviour of a person and thus increasing the damage. This paper is therefore going to look at Earle Birney’s poem ‘David’ and Anthony De Sa’s Kicking the Sky, in a bid to explain if friendship either limits damage or causes more damage (De, 52).

According to Earle Birney’s poem ‘David’, friendship limits the damage. This is so because, judging from the poem, the relationship between Bobbie and David was so strong that they did each and everything on a daily basis together. This made their bond to grow even stronger, thus each and everything that they did was done out of the bond that they had. In most cases, they taught each other how to do different things thus being able to learn new things from each other. For instance, David taught Bobbie, “How time on a knife edges can pass without guessing of fragments” (Birney, & Johnstone, 40). The duo hiked together and they were destined to climb more mountains as they could in order to fulfil their dreams. Moreover, had it not been David’s death, they could have climbed to the peak of the mountain. When Bobbie reached at the glistening edge of the giant Assiniboine, he turned and shouted, that was when David stumbled and fell down fifty feet down the ledge. On seeing that, Bobbie quickly moved towards his friend and in as much as he knew he could not be able to help David, he tried to motivate him. This was when he tried telling him that by midnight he would come with ropes and they would pull him out of the place. This showed how caring Bobbie was for his friend, and would do anything in order to make sure that his friend remains alive. David finally died after he lost a lot of blood, but he made it clear to Bobbie that it was not his fault that David was hurt. This consequently meant that Bobbie was doing all he could in order to limit the damage.

According to Anthony De Sa’s Kicking the Sky, friendship can increase the damage. This is majorly because of the type of friends that Anthony had. Anthony had friends who were thieves, in an area which was high dominated by sexually starved women (De, 54). This area was therefore not good at all particularly for young kids who had visited the area and they were free from their parents. Anthony’s friends made him to indulge in criminal activities in order to be able to survive the tough life in the city. This made his life worse as he was going against the law, and was therefore making his life unbearable. Therefore Anthony’s friends corrupted his behaviours, thus the friendship increased the damage.

Work Cited

Birney, Earle, and Jim Johnstone. The Essential Earle Birney. , 2014. Internet resource.

De, Sa A. Kicking the Sky: A Novel. , 2014. Print.