<p>I know no one *ever *sees posts like this (no sarcasm, nope, no way) but I’m taking the SATs on Saturday and I’d really appreciate a look at this essay. The prompt is from the Princeton Review 11 Practice Tests book. (On the actual paper, I wrote until there were left three lines blank on the second page, if that means anything.) Thank you!</p>
<p>Prompt: Do we need knowledge of the past to fully understand the present?</p>
<p>An awareness of the past is essential in understanding the present. An analysis of history provides crucial insight into the universal problems people face today. The novel Invisible Man and Supreme Court Justice John Marshall demonstrate the importance of reviewing the past. </p>
<p>Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man provides a portrayal of a man who refused to take into account the mishaps of his own past. The narrator, an unnamed African American man living in a segregated South in the late 1920s, is easily influenced by his superiors. He refers to himself as an “Invisible Man,” one without an independent belief system, for this reason. His inclination to please everyone produces disastrous results after he is expelled from his black college for driving a white benefactor through an area of town that did not reflect well on the African-American race. With little hope for opportunity in the bigoted that society that comprised the Southern United States, the Invisible Man moves to Harlem, the metropolis for the black community as well as a beacon of hope for a tolerant society. However, the narrator discovers that all is not as it meets the eye; after making an impassioned speech in front of a family that was being evicted, the Invisible Man attracts the interest of a subversive organization known as the Brotherhood. The goal of this society is to relieve the socially oppressed of the burdens placed on them by the racial majority. However, the Invisible Man’s refusal to hold the past in regard leads to his downfall as a member of the Brotherhood. Though he is accepted and lauded among the Brothers as an eloquent and articulate orator, the narrator relinquishes his own values for the ones instilled in him by the Brotherhood through judicious training. He soon learns of the selfish goals of the organization, which plans to incite a riot in Harlem that would display its ascendancy, but is unable to stop the turbulent demonstrations. A reluctance to look to his own history led to the narrator’s own demise.</p>
<p>Historically, the inception of judicial review under the Supreme Court of John Marshall illustrates the significance of history through precedent. In 1803, Justice Marshall ruled on the case Marbury v. Madison, declaring an order executed by the President of the United States unconstitutional. In doing so, Justice Marshall implemented a radical idea, that the Supreme Court had the ability to influence the other branches of government by checking the validity of legislation. This paved the way for legal precedent, which is utilized by courts to this day to ensure that current cases have a basis in decisions that were created in the past. Justice Marshall thus demonstrated looking to the past to determine the future.</p>
<p>Historically and literally, the past has shown to influence the present. Without viewing what is behind oneself, one will never be able to face what is ahead.</p>