<p>Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
We often hear that we can learn much about someone or something just by casual
observation. We are not required to look beneath the surface or to question how something
seems. In fact, we are urged to trust our impressions, often our first impressions, of how a
person or a situation seems to be. Yet appearances can be misleading. What “seems” isn’
t always what is.
Is the way something seems to be not always the same as it actually is? 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>Here is mine:</p>
<p>We are, in most of times, deceived by the cover. However, the appearance may blind our eyes from seeing the truth. The actuality is not always in accordance with the seem-to-be. In the Great Expectation, the Great Gatsby and Harry Potter, we can all find characters whose real personalities are not the same as the first glance.</p>
<p>In Charles Dickson’s novel the Great Expectation, Pip encounters an escaped convict in the graveyard. The convict, who is called Abel Magwitch, is ugly and filthy. He just looks like a vulgar old villain who threatens little Pip to help him escape. When Magwitch is caught again, he doesn’t confess that it is Pip that helps him. After a few decades, Abel Magwitch has eventually prospered in New South Wales and become extremely wealthy. It is shock not only to Pip but to everyone that it is this convict whom Pip helped that turns out to be his benefactor. Although vulgar and low-class, Abel Magwitch has a grateful heart which makes him the most “gentle” man in the story. Abel Magwitch’s real quality is exactly contrary to his first debut.</p>
<p>Ugly appearance can have inner beauty; beautiful appearance can also hide an ugly heart. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan is a flower-like women who captives everyone around her. She has innocent smile, bright eyes, charming cheeks and sweet voice. However, it is such an attractive and effervescent young woman that flirts with Gatsby. She is so shallow that money and fame utterly blind her eyes. After she knocks down Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson, she runs away with Tom. Jay Gatsby dies for her guilt. She is even nonchalant with Gatsby’s death which indeed ought to be hers. It is such a charming figure that masks her apathetic and shallow personality.</p>
<p>The first appearance gives us so strong an impression that we can hardly reveal the true essence of an individual. That is why we didn’t figure out that Professor Snape in Harry Potter is a deadly great man until he is about to die. The “seem-to-be” blinds our eyes from seeing the truth. Just as a saying goes: Don’t judge a book by its cover. It is artificial for us to judge an individual merely by his or her “cover”. As what counts for a book is its content, what matters most is an individual’s actual personality.</p>