<p>Hi,
I’ve practiced writing essays before, and I’ve looked at different examples, but it’s difficult to tell if my writing is up to par or not.
It’ll be great if somebody could give a few opinions.</p>
<p>Prompt:
Akira Kurosawa’s film masterpiece Rashomon portrays several people who have witnessed a death. As each observer recounts the event as he or she witnessed it, we come to realize that each person’s story varies greatly from every other account. Watching the movie, we reflect that the truth of an experience and perhaps all truth is different for each person.</p>
<p>Assignment: What is your opinion of the claim that truth is not objective, but rather is determined by each individual? In an essay, support your position by discussing an example (or examples) from literature, the arts, science and technology, history, current events, or your own experience or observation. </p>
<p>Essay:
People’s views of an event change depending on the situation they came from and the opinions they carry into the situation. It should be impossible to interpret an event differently, as it only plays out in one way physically, and as long as the conditions remain the same for each person, each person should see the event the same. However, how people interpret the event differs based on what people focus on and choose to care about. Also, the vaules and viewpoints that people carry into the event change the interpertation of the event. </p>
<pre><code> People can turn an objective event into an subjective one by only focusing on various aspects of the event, which leads to a varying interpretation even if the source is unchanged. In documentary filmmaking, many hours of footage are shot, but only the footage that helps support a certain viewpoint is chosen for the final product, leading to a intepretaion that fills the needs of the filmmaker. This technique was used by journalists in the late 19th century to potray the Maine explosion. Tensions were high between Spain and the US because of the rebillion of Cuba, so any large event could have caused a war. When the Maine exploded around Cuba, Spanish authorities chose to launch an investigation focusing on the technical aspects of the explosion, claiming the event was due to a malfunction and supporting the viewpoint that Spain was innocent. American journalists, on the other hand, focused on the political and emotional traits surrounding the event. This sort of yellow journalism claimed that Spanirds hated the Americans, and were willing to take risks to destroy American property. This claim was that Spain, trying to keep a hold of Cuba, had seen the American battleship as an interference. This intepretaion, though not true, was based on the situation and former opinions of the American people, and war took place. In this case, potraying only certain traits and playing off opinions lead to a certain subjective viewpoint.
People can take different truths from the same event without changing the event based on their moral or logical intepretaion. In the book Catch-22, the character Milo arranges bombing runs and sabatoges defenses of both the Germans and Americans during WWII in order to preserve his produce company. The main character, Yossarin, finds this disagreeable. In this case, the event was considered in its full, but the two characters anylyzed it differently; Milo saw it as a matter of profit, while Yossarin saw it as a matter of morals. The differing vaules of the two characters to begin with lead to a different lesson learned. Milo saw it as a lesson in arranging and organization, and Yossaring saw it as a lesson in human nature. It is impossible to travel back in time and change an event; nevertheless, people can intepert the event differently based on their opinions and vaules. People can focus on various aspects of and event that are important to them, turning the intepretaion into their possesion. They can see the same event in a different light, making their opinion of the event skewed. In this way, even if an event is objective, all intepretations are subjective.
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<p>Thanks.</p>