Blog 10

In the movie Finding Forrester, there is a main character Jamal who is involved in plagiarism issue in his school.  Plagiarism is lying with the original writers of ideas or sentences; therefore, discussing on plagiarism should be done when someone submitted the papers that include other’s writing.  Simply copying others’ writing by oneself is not plagiarism; however, when they submit others’ writing as their own paper, it should be a problem.  I would defend Jamal against charges of plagiarism because he did not fully understand plagiarism rules.  He was involved in plagiarism in his school; however, it can be legal if Forrester give permission to Jamal.  One of the reasons that plagiarism rules are existed is to protect originators and respect their efforts.  Therefore, if Jamal received Forrester’s permission, he can liberally use the writings.  The fact that Jamal was once involved in plagiarism should be a matter to the decision that Jamal was a good writer.  In my opinion, a writer should have great skills and ability to write wonderful book; however, a writer also should keep the writing rules and should not use other writers’ work in a wrong way.  To be a good writer, he should respect others’ work as their own and use them with care.  In the movie, Jamal took a paper that he wrote out of apartment even though Forrester told him not to bring anything out of the apartment.  I do not think Jamal understand the intention of Forrester because he finally took the paper from the apartment to his school.  Jamal did not consider that his paper contains a part of Forrester’s writing and it makes him get into trouble.  The final scene of the movie showed that Jamal miss two free throws in a row in the basketball game.  I think Jamal missed them on purpose because he watched Claire and his professor before he shot. It seemed like he wanted to tell them something with his eyes.  In this sense, he missed two free throws intentionally.