<p>Assignment: Is it more important to avoid hurting people’s feelings or to tell the truth? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations</p>
<p>When i was in junior high school, the biggest problem students faced was “gossiping” and sharing secrets. one of my classmates approached me and said," John is a coward". At the time John was one of my close crony. I was stuck in the position to tell him or conceal what I heard. In the end I told him. John was irate and wanted to settle the lies between my classmate. They fought and my classmate was injured badly. Let this serve as an example to conceal lies and avoid hurting people’s feelings. People should hide the truth to protect the feelings of others.
One of the most memorable scenes in Sophocles’ “Oedipus” is when Oedipus is getting the truth out to Tiresias. However Tiresias is adamant and will not speak the truth to protect Oedipus’s feelings. The dispute between the two goes on until Tiresias cannot stand but give the truth. It turns out Oedipus had sex with his mother and killed his father. On top of that he is the reason for the plague. This is the reason for the downfall of Oedipus. He cannot handle the truth and his wife/ mother dies. The truth is powerful and is able to ruin the Oedipus family. Sophocles maybe implying the message that the truth can destroy humans as shown in “Oedipus”.
Another example would be Elia kazan’s on the waterfront. It is around the 1950s in New York with inequality on the water docks. Terry Malloy is recently employed on the docks. Many of the previous workers have either been killed or banished for trying to speak the truth. At one point of the movie Terry Malloy threatens to speak the truth which leads to the death of his brother. Angered by the murder, terry shows up to court to speak the truth. As a result the Mafia leader, Johnny friendly brutally beats him up. Elia kazan’s subliminal message was heroes play a price. Terry was trying to be a hero by speaking the truth and in the end he was brutally attacked.
Some may argue that concealing the truth is unethical but just look at what happened to Terry Malloy and Oedipus. The two are epitomes of why we should conceal the truth. Many of us can benefit from not telling the truth but this does not mean to keep queit in a precarious situation. We should just be careful of the truth as it could lead to negative things. As Kendrick Lamar stated in one of his songs,“The tongue is mighty powerful”.</p>