Million Dollar Baby
In the novel Million Dollar Baby, the author F.X. Toole, developed the idea that an individual's perspective can affect an individual's beliefs. Maggie Fitzgerald- a 30-year old waitress who lives alone and barely gets by is strongly determined to become a professional boxer and this is why she seeks the help of Frankie Dunn, a boxing trainer and an owner of a gym. Initially, Frankie is unwilling to train her because she is female and too old to have any chance of achieving significant accomplishments in professional boxing. However we see Frankie's character change his outlook and put his values aside to train Maggie.
In the beginning of the story we first see Frankie's perspective on what he thinks of girl boxers. He is strongly against it, when Maggie approaches him and asks him to train her, he says, "...I don't train girls." He refused to train a girl for many reasons; the main one though, was because he didn't like seeing women get hit. "Girls getting busted up went against everything he believed in." He personally believed that girls shouldn't be fighting other girls, and so there was no way he was going to train one. Maggie kept showing up to the gym everyday and got Frankie to show her little tricks here and there. He wouldn't train her, but he would just help her out a little bit each day. Eventually she was able to convince Frankie to train her. His outlook before was that you can't train girls because he couldn't cuss, as well as having to schedule fights around periods and if a girl was pregnant she could have a miscarriage because of a fight. Maggie wrote a note saying she was in sound mind and body and gave Frankie permission to use any words he sees fit. Frankie surrendered and agreed to train her.
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