Pay It Forward; An Honour System

March 26th 2012

Pay It Forward; An Honour System In the movie Pay it Forward the young boy Trevor McKinney believes that everyone is capable of good. He believes that if an individual receives helps from someone they will be grateful. However, he has created a system where rather than reimbursing the individual who helped you, you help three other people. Hoping that over time this will grow larger and everyone will be getting help and helping others. He states that “it has to be something really big, something they can’t do for themselves (Leder).” Trevor helps a drug addicted homeless man named Jerry to get cleaned up and buys him clothes so he can get a job interview. He expects Jerry to help out three other people rather than paying him back. This is quite challenging for Jerry and at first he returns to his life as an addict, which causes Trevor to believe his system has flaws. He perseveres and helps his mom to make a new friend and stop drinking. His mom pays it forward by forgiving her mother and allowing her back into her life. The grandmother pays it forward in an amusing way by helping a criminal to escape from the police by allowing him to hide in her car. Now we may think that the chain would stop here, which it may have, however the grandmother used reverse psychology and told the criminal that he was not capable of paying it forward. This motivated the criminal to prove her wrong and therefore he carried the chain forward by insisting that a girl having an asthma attack went before him in the emergency room. The chain continued to spread after this. Trevor’s theory is based on the honour system, assuming that human beings will want to do right by each other. This is a hard concept to adhere to but Trevor truly believes that all humans regardless of their life choices and situations deserve equal