Is this essay a 8+? Please grade.

714nD1
Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:47:30 +0000

Assignment:Are we free to make out own choices in life, or are our decisions always limited by the rules of the society. 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.

*People are somehow free to make their own choices in life. But all these choices are limited by the rules of society. If one flouts these limitations, one becomes an object of disdain and scorn, slander and disparagement.

Cogitation over this topic, I recall Hassan, a character from Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”. Hassan, could not go to school, or live the life of a normal child. He was bound to forgo any educational pursuits and dedicate his time and energy to drudgery. This was because of his being a Hazara. The Afghan society of that time, despised and belittled Hazaras. Thus, the latter were always subject to discrimination. Moreover, there was no choice they could make. Society had stigmatized their race concurrently leaving them no option of leading a better life. Consequently, Hassan was rendered incapable of “making his choice”. He was severely limited.

There is no doubt that society plays a major effect in everybody’s choices. As an animal adapts itself to different habitats, a person will often avoid choosing something against the main flow of the opinions and beliefs that comprise a society. This happens because both, an animatl and a person are not solely able to alter their environment; they are simly a brick constituting a tall building.

While society usually “chooses for us”, this is not always the case. Most of the time one can make one’s decisions, provided that they don’t blatantly contradict social rules. One example is Myrtle Wilson Wilson from F. Scott Fritzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”. Myrtle chooses to cheat on her husband because it was perfectly normal in her sense and there was no stiff social barricade thwarting these relations. Living in a society of loose morality, she could not help but join in adultery. Though Myrtle’s actions were silently approved by her society, there were, of course other boundaries. This is an instance of a person’s decision-making without defying other major social limits.

Lastly, I recall my aunt’s painstaking efforts to run an atheistic school in Southern Turkey. It was her dream to offer and alternate methodology to all those students. A woman of great wisdom, she tirelessly kindled sparks of free thought in a place where one’s thoughts and limited perspective were predetermined by the society. Eventually she failed. Not only was she mocked, but she also was threatened and blackmailed a couple of times, until she gave up her intentions and was forced to follow and obsequiously agree to the flawed ideology that ruled the society.

Society and the rules it sets are incontrovertibly limiting and molding the way we act, choose and live. It takes more than the modest endeavor of a person to alter these rules. Everyone is affected by the society, but in worse cases, severely limited.*