Could someone score/comment on my practice SAT essay?

Nothings
Mon, 19 Jan 2015 02:23:27 +0000

Prompt: Can acting in one’s own self interest make the world a better place?

Avaricious acts generally do not make the world a better place, to the contrary, selfishness results almost always in corruption, destruction, and unhappiness. Several examples from literary works delineate the greed-driven downward spiral of an individual’s society.
For example, in Orwell’s Animal Farm, the degeneration of Animal Farm is brought about by the seizing of power by the intellectually superior pigs, namely Napoleon. Napoleon, compared to the eloquent and verbose Snowball, is reticent and militaristic. He drives Snowball away through the use of trained savage dogs in order to claim the accolade for the construction of the windmill. This continuing self-gratification in the book and the debasement of all the other animals on the farm in the face of the pig elite’s oppression clearly depict the dangerous pitfalls of greed; an entire community is split into the have's and have not's, with the majority living indigently. Even the hardworking and loyal Boxer is cruelly repaid for his blood and tears by being sent to be processed into glue. Thus, Napoleon’s greed acts as his and the farm’s fatal flaw as his selfish desires demand the tearing down of others for the raising of himself.
Similar to Napoleon’s actions, Lady Ashely Brett’s self-centered whims in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises depict the heartbreak and sorrow that can arise from cupidity. Unlike Napoleon’s greed for money, power, and alcohol, Brett desires romance. She’s beautiful, intelligent, witty, rich—yet her life is empty. Her desires are easily met, but nothing is able to fill the void. This cupidity leads to tension and contention during her vacation with four others to the bull-fight fiesta in Pamplona. She falls in lust with a nineteen year old bull-fighter, and Jake, who loves her, destroys himself emotionally in order to help her fulfill her desires. A fight later breaks out between the various men she’s involved with, and it leaves the group of “friends” in a state of acrimony and distrust. Her greed drives Cohn, former boxer, to brutally attack Brett’s bullfighter, completely out of character for the deferential Jew. In the aftermath of this, Cohn is left in his room, lachrymose and without a friend in the world. Brett’s cupidity acts as the destructive catalyst that shatters any chance at happiness she had—her miserable cycle of discontent is perpetuated by her own lack of control.
Through the analysis of the actions of Napoleon from Animal Farm and Brett from The Sun Also Rises, the horrible effects of greed, of various types, are exemplified. If one acts for oneself, then the logical upshot of such actions is a detraction from others and a subsequent self-infliction—greediness is a sharp sword that cuts both ways.