Many Facets of Human Nature

Throughout the year, I have studied many books where a certain side of human nature has been showcased.  There has been self-reliance (The Power of One, The Fountainhead, Things Fall Apart), superiority complex( The Yellow Wallpaper,A Room of One's Own, The Awakening,A Thousand Splendid Suns[male characters]), greed(Dr.Faustus, The Picture of Dorian Gray), guilt(Oedipus the King), and revenge(Hamlet).  Self-reliance is normally a good.  It helps people work out their problems by themselves, but another term for self-reliance is autonomy which can cause a problem when it comes time to asks for very much needed help. In The Fountainhead and Things Fall Apart both main characters were very self-reliant, but neither were very well liked due to this independence from others, which complicated their lives.  How ever, in The Power of One, Peekay's self-reliance was a benefit for him because it allowed him to get ahead in life, but he wasn't so independent that he did not know when to ask for help.  It has only been in the past fifty years that women have had rights and were finally believe to be equal to men.  This inability to see that there is no difference between men and women is in actuality a superiority complex held by men that they are better then others.  In The Yellow Wallpaper,A Room of One's Own, The Awakening, and A Thousand Splendid Suns all of the females characters were treated differently from males and males treated them as inferior to them.  Some were well meaning and did not see that the way they were treating women was wrong, but they still believed themselves to be superior.  Dr. Faustus and Dorian Gray were both greedy men.  Dr. Faustus was so greedy for knowlege  that he was willing to sell his soul for this knowlege.  Dorian was so greedy to retain his beauty, that he was willing to lose his humanity.  Greed plays a large part in the business world.  Greedy Businessmen make choices that help them but cause pain and hardship for others.  Bernie Madoff was so greedy for mony that he created the largest Ponzy scheme in the world.  This affected thousands of people and ultimatly cost him his son.  Guilt drives people to do crazy things.  Oedipus felt so guilty when the prophesy came true.  He felt that the only way to alieviate this guilt was to gouge out his eyeballs and then exile himself.  Revenge..what to say about revenge.  Its probably one of the nastiest facet of human nature because revenge does not make a person feel better and it will more than likly harm many other people besides the target of revenge.  Hamlet allowed his need for revenge to not only cost him of his life but of nearly every major character in the play.  He essentially weakened Denmark and make it ripe for being conquered.  His need allowed for the suffering of his entire country.  Human nature is extremly complex beacause humans are complex.  It is nearly impossible to see every aspect of a human but you can catch glimpses of a facet such as the ones I listed above.