Writing Sample

You'll find the study questions for next week in the previous post. Here is a writing sample from the first short assignment. This piece is a very good model to follow for a number of the major grading criteria. The best way to improve in each area is practice, but it should be helpful to have examples of what you're aiming for. So, take a look and compare your own work to see where you might improve.

People that have gone down in history as having a “great love for humanity” have usually attempted to save our race from something that hurt it. This “something” could vary from hunger, to poverty, to foreign or domestic enemies. In The Brothers Karamazov, the Inquisitor from the story Ivan tells believes he has a greater love for humanity than his prisoner, even though that prisoner may very well be Jesus Christ. The Inquisitor believes this because, just like other famous people from history, he has helped to save our race from something that hurt it greatly – our own freedom.

This is an excellent introduction. Notice how the author has managed, in a just few sentences, to draw the reader's attention, introduce the context of the story and characters, and identify briefly the key issue to be developed: the inquisitor's belief that freedom is harmful to humanity.

Throughout the monologue that the Inquisitor has outside the cell of the prisoner, he tries to show how dangerous limitless freedom is to humanity. He understands that through the gift of freedom, Jesus hoped to give man the ability to love and follow him freely, but he wonders how it did not occur to the prisoner what a terrible burden he was placing on man’s shoulders with this freedom. This freedom is very “seductive,” and seems at first to be a wonderful thing, a thing that all men have right to, but the Inquisitor believes it to be “tormenting” as well. The torment comes when man is left adrift in a sea of decisions and possibilities, with only the image and words of an unseen God to guide him. The Inquisitor says men in this situation will invariably start to question and reject this image and words because of this freedom they have.

Here we have an example of good reasoning: the Inquisitor understands that humans do desire freedom, but believes this desire is based on a mistaken belief about freedom. By emphasizing these points, the author has anticipated and answered the most obvious objection: the objection that humans want freedom, so they won't be happy without it. But if the desire is based on a mistake, that's not necessarily so. The Inquisitor's reasoning has been made clearer and, as a result, his argument stronger.

This is also an example of depth. Rather than repeating the Inquisitor's basic assertion that freedom is harmful, the author clearly explains why and how it is harmful: because it's very difficult to make decisions without any guidance.

Now, skipping ahead to a later part of this assignment--the critical reply:

The monologue from the Inquisitor to the prisoner is a really fascinating one. He truly believes that he has the greater love for humanity, and he expresses it very eloquently, but it is very hard to agree with him. The argument is somewhat similar to the one that parents make to their children when they forbid certain things because they know from their greater experience it will not be good for the child. They take away certain freedoms out of love for their children. This is the same kind of love that the Inquisitor has, except his is on a much greater scale, but the same principle cannot apply. After all, humans are not all children, and who is this Inquisitor to be the parent?

Here we have both depth and good reasoning. The author takes a simple analogy of parenting, but draws out in depth how the analogy fits the Inquisitor's case. But the author doesn't stop with the comparison to parenting. The author shows strong reasoning by clearly explaining the important difference between the two cases: it may be appropriate to protect children in this way, but not adults. Rather than just saying, "Taking away freedom is bad," the author makes a stronger case by identifying when taking away freedoms may or may not be appropriate.

No matter how verbose and interesting his speech is, it cannot hide the fact that he wants to take away man’s freedom. Freedom of choice may be one of the most tormenting things in life, but it one of the key traits that make up what it means to be human. It is not within the rights of any man to take away the freedom of another just because they think that they know better. It is also interesting that even after everything the Inquisitor says about how Jesus failed and the mistakes he made, the prisoner does not rail against him or make excuses. He simply looks with understanding in his eyes and kisses the Inquisitor.

In this final section, we find another great example of strong reasoning. The author clarifies that the Inquisitor is right about the difficulty of freedom, but wrong to think we can do without it, since it's part of human nature.

This is a much stronger criticism than simply saying that freedom is a good thing so he shouldn't take it away. If the Inquisitor is right in his belief that humans are naturally too weak to handle freedom, it wouldn't matter that freedom is a good thing--it would be out of our reach anyway. But if he's wrong about human nature, as the author has suggested, then the Inquisitor loses his justification for sparing us from freedom--anyone can, as a human being, potentially bear the burden of freedom.