Essay Explanation

STUDENT DRAFTS (10/7/11) FOR FEEDBACK, SCORING, ETC.:











Here is the essay that the following students were assigned on October 5, 2011.

Students will write complete, well-planned essay response (on own paper) to following prompt: Using your own experience, examples from current events or history, or relevant information you know, to write a well-argued, complete essay. Defend, challenge, or qualify the following view: '“The whole effort of the culture of the last hundred years has been directed toward teaching us to understand the economic motive as the irrational road to death, and to seek salvation in the rational and the planned. Orwell marks a turn in thought; he asks us to consider whether the triumph of certain forces of the mind, in their naked pride and excess, may not produce a state of things far worse than any we have ever known.”'

(Lionel Trilling, reviewing ‘1984’)

In the quotations, it is basically saying that for the past hundred years we have learned to think of economical motives as irrational and that irrationality is useless to life; That you should seek to be rational and to plan things out. Orwell believes in the opposite version of this cultural method. He believes that thinking for yourself, the way it is writher it is rational or not, may not be worse then being rational and planned. Basically you are supposed to defend, challenge, or qualify the view of Orwell’s belief in irrationality that you have seen portrayed in ‘1984’ in a well-argued essay. You could add some support to your essay using your own experience, examples from current events or history, or relevant information you know, in order to write this essay. Some examples may include communism, war, and religion as discussed in class by the substitute.

This is simply my explanation of what I thought the prompt meant. Writher the explanation is right or wrong is unknown. If you feel that you truly understand the prompt, feel free to post you explanation on this page or in a class discussion.

--Roselande