The Medical College - Page 68
Laws are useful as a set of guidelines, rules,
or
agreements, accepted by a group of people who
wish
to live interdependently. They save time for
people
who otherwise would have to continuously be
deciding
upon the methods to use in everyday social
interac-
tions. More controversial, but also inevitable,
is the
fact that they also uphold a moral code that is
agreed
upon, ideally by the majority. Without any laws,
we
would, in fact, be less free to move about in
more
important endeavors because we would be
constantly
battling each other for time and space. Imagine
an
interstate highway with no traffic regulations,
for
example. Or imagine trying to maintain
possession of
one's home if there were no laws to say that it
was
your home between the time you left for work
and the
time you returned from work. As an effort to
change
the nature of a human being, laws are, indeed,
proba-
bly useless. But, as an effort to change the
nature of
our social lives, they are clearly invaluable
and mean
the difference between living in civilization
and living
in chaos.
Part 1
Explanation of First Response: 5
The paper focuses on the statement and
addresses each
of the three writing tasks. In the first
paragraph the writer
begins the explanation of the statement by
noting that it
is qualified with the word "probably," an
explanation
that is completed with a paraphrase of the
quotation. The
second paragraph presents specific situations in
which
laws do, in fact, serve good purposes. The
final para-
graph balances the extremes, exploring those
things
about laws that make them useful for people
living
together in social situations, which is a
pragmatic posi-
tion, but arguing that laws probably do not
change
human beings.
This is a tightly reasoned essay that makes
good use
of concrete examples. The writing is clear, and
the sen-
tences are nicely paced. Paragraph two is
potentially a
strong one, with its example of the elderly
woman's
purse; but it would benefit from a bringing
together of
ideas at the end, a sentence to clinch the
paragraph.
With fuller development of this paragraph and a
brief
expansion of the idea in paragraph one that,
to
Demonax, laws do not serve their intended
purpose, the
essay would receive a 6 rather than a
5.
Part 2, Essay
With the thought of the concept of freedom
comes
naturally the question, from what? Freedom does
not
exist without the possibility, really the
latent presence of
restraint. What Gibran says is that an increase
in one
freedom would necessarily imply a restraint on
another.
This is because an increase in a person's
freedom
always means also an increase in his domain of
respon-
sibility. For example, as an infant, a person
could be
seen as either totally free or totally without
freedom. An
infant is totally free from responsibility and
obligation,
yet totally dependent on and restrained by his
caretakers.
What Gibran understands is that, the greater
one's realm
of existence and the broader one's scope of
knowledge,
the greater also is one's realm and scope of
responsibil-
ity. As you commit an act, the act becomes a
part of you,
a fetter perhaps, and certainly a history or
past to which
you are then forever confined and from which
you never
will be free.
From this point of view, there are certainly no
possi-
ble examples of a freedom that implies no
restraints,
for existence itself implies a certain
restraint. Even a
freedom to die would imply a restraint from the
oppor-
tunity to live. The point is that one thing or
act at a
point in the realm of time and space forbids
the exis-
tence of another at that point. With every act
and
thought then, we redefine our own existence;
with defi-
nition comes restraint, and with restraint
comes the
inhibition of some freedom.
What Gibran is apparently trying to do is to
point
beyond an immediate goal of freedom to the new
exis-
tence beyond it. For example, once a person is
free of the
yoke of his parents and family, that freedom
puts a new
and greater yoke, that of responsibility on his
shoulders
throughout the remainder of his life. Gibran is
not argu-
ing against freedom, however, but is suggesting
a more
mature, wiser view of freedom than that of
freedom as an
end in itself. As one's vision expands, one
will have
greater and greater freedoms. But with that
vision will
also come knowledge and with knowledge will
come
responsibility. And so, as we seek to broaden
our scope
of existence, we also seek to make our burden a
bit heav-
ier. And this becomes a good
thing.
Part 2
Explanation of Second Response: 4
The paper addresses all three objectives, and
it does
an especially nice job with one and three.
Paragraph
one focuses sharply on the explanation of the
quotation.
This is perhaps the most difficult of the tasks
for this
quotation because of its seeming paradox. The
paragraph
also provides the example of the infant, who
could be
considered either totally free or totally
without freedom.
Paragraph two does not confront the second task
as
directly as does paragraph one. Though there is
a clear
attempt here to explore the possibility of a
freedom that
would not imply a burden or an obstacle to a
greater
freedom, the paragraph stops short of providing
a spe-
cific situation that illustrates the point. If
there were a
more direct confrontation of the second task,
this essay
would receive a higher rating. Paragraph three
recon-
ciles the extremes and examines the
implications of the
statement.
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