Throughout her life, Arlene Blum has overcome many challenges, and has achieved many things much greater than a typical person. Growing up as a Jewish female in a poor family situation was tough, but it helped develop her into the person that she is today. The challenges that she faced during her childhood gave her skills, determination, and many other attributes that have helped her excel later on in life. Because of her difficult childhood, Arlene strives for achievement in both mountaineering and in chemistry.
Facing challenges as a child, such as learning to get around obstacles helped her develop skills that she would need later. When she was a child, Arlene badly wanted to learn to play an instrument. When she asked her grandparents they replied with a solid “No”, despite her pleading. She learned to play the piano anyway. She went to her neighbor’s house every day after school and practiced compulsively, without her family’s permission, her “thrill of learning a new skill was intensified by the delicious thrill of doing something forbidden” (p. 35). There were many things that she wasn’t allowed to do when she was a child because she was female, Jewish, poor, and her grandparents were very strict. She took these seemingly pointless regulations as challenges and she learned to find ways around them. Another example of this is when she wanted to learn to swim. Her grandmother didn’t want her to; she said that “Public schools are dangerous, you could get a disease... And what does a Jewish girl have doing at the Young Men’s Christian Association?”(p. 141). But Arlene was determined. She first persuaded her mother that swimming would be good for her health. Then she convinced her grandfather that it would help her make her make new friends. Then she finally succeeds in getting her Grandmother to give in. She used the skill of persuasion along with many others that she developed when she was child, in many situations when she was older. If she didn’t learn these skills so well when she was young, she wouldn’t have had so much success in her life.
When Arlene was young many people didn’t believe that she would go far in life, which gave her the determination to do her best, simply to prove them wrong. One hot summer day Arlene retreated from the sun to play under the porch with her dolls. Her aunts were sitting on the porch talking about Arlene, not knowing that she was sitting underneath them able to hear every word that they say. When Arlene hears her name she listens and hears her aunt say “Arlene… that child will amount to no good…” (p.1) Arlene remembered those words and they hurt her for a long time, but they also gave her determination: “She is wrong. I’ll show her. I’ll show them all.” Arlene is determined throughout high school to do well in school and she does, earning a scholarship, which is a ticket to success and to much needed time away from her family.
During college Arlene discovers a new passion, which was first initiated when her friend took her to hike Mt. Adams. She happily accepted her friend, John Hall’s, invitation, excited at the opportunity to hike a mountain. She was out of shape and the hiking was difficult for her but she loved it anyways: “This place is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”(p. 3). Later she learned that the only reason that she was invited was to keep Mike (John’s friend who gets altitude sickness and couldn’t make it to the top) company; as John told her “I thought that by ten thousand feet you’d have had enough and be ready to come down. That way, Mike would have company”(p. 3). Arlene disregarded John’s ignorance and kept hiking, that was when she fell in love with the mountains. She climbed many more mountains, her successfulness in climbing these difficult peaks was made possible by motivation to prove that she, and females everywhere can do just as well as men. Arlene fought many battles throughout her life, from sexism, climbing many of the most difficult and dangerous mountains in the world, to proving that chemicals in children’s pajamas cause cancer. But if it weren’t for Arlene’s difficult childhood, which gave her motivation to prove that she could succeed, along with the skills she needed to overcome her challenges, she wouldn’t have won the many of the battles that she fought during her life.
