Literature

Failing expectations is found through out literature from long ago to today. Two examples are Dimmesdale from the "Scarlet Letter" and Siddhartha from "Siddhartha". Dimmesdale, as I mentioned in the side bar, failed at being a "pure priest" and fathering a child. He goes farther from expectations when he lets Hester take care of Pearl by herself. Then in "Siddhartha" Siddhartha failed his father's expectations and did not follow his fathers path of a priest. Siddhartha went his own way to find his "peace". What other literature examples do you know of?

Recent Development

Expectations are something we hold people to, my friend has learned this first hand. A friend of mine had this boyfriend who failed expectations many times over. She expected him to be the nice guy who wanted a steady relationship and who was going to treat her right. He failed and made her mad and distraught, along with me and her father. This guy was going to church and all and was going to take care of my friend. He took advantage of her love, got her to skip school to be with him, and went against their commitment to each other and convinced her to have sex with him, if she really loved him, she would do it with him. The next day, he treated her like trash and like she never a real part of his life... Failing expectations is sometimes are harmless but other times it is harmful. Anyone have any examples of such? Please omit names and dates for privacy sake.

Simplest Failure of Expectations

Failing expectations can be a very complex situation. Then it can be a very simple misconception. One common misconception is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Sometimes there is not a pot of gold, but a port-a-jon, as in the picture at the bottom of the page. There, in reality, is not an end to a rainbow since they are circular in nature. Another simple version is when society creates something that ends up viewed as bad. This is seen with Superman and Kryptonite, Superman can not be around Kryptonite because it weakens him, hence he tries to avoid it. One would expect that the song Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down (link in sidebar) would be about avoiding the Kryptonite. One expectation that is wrong, the singer wants to be with his Kryptonite, his weakness, probably a girlfriend, wife, or even can be viewed as a daughter, someone he would not want to lose in his life. What are some simple expectations that are misconceptions or even society induced expectations you have seen?