<p>(Hi, please help me out and grade my essay. I'm about a month away from my SATs and judging from what other CC posters have said about my previous essays and with their scores generally ranging only about 8 or so, I guess I need more help with the essay)</p>
<p>The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem to lightly; it Is dearness only that gives everything its value.
- Thomas Paine</p>
<p>Prompt: Do people tend to value most that which they work hardest to obtain?</p>
<p>Today, America is the most prosperous nation in the world. Americans have food on their plates, beautiful homes to live in, and most importantly, pride in their hearts the pride of being an American, the pride of living in a country with not the longest history but certainly the most illustrious. Superficially, the Declaration of Independence was signed with ink, but beyond that, Americas liberty was sealed with the sweat, tears and blood of the numerous men who had given their lives for the American cause.</p>
<p>How much we value something is directly related to how much we have given to obtain it. In the case of America, the efforts of the Revolutionaries, the Industrialists and the Capitalists have yielded the nation whose citizens take much pride in belonging to the foremost country in the world. There are two main reasons why we assign more value to that which we work hard to earn. Firstly, the amount of time and the resources expended on achieving something instill within us an attachment and value for the object of our pursuit. Second, the mentality that what we crave to obtain and eventually do obtain cannot be for nothing leads to the mind subconsciously creating value for the object to make sure that it does not get reduced to such a state when it indeed is for nothing.</p>
<p>In Nikolai Gogols The Overcoat, the protagonist works hard, saving for an extended period of time to purchase an exquisite overcoat. However, when the overcoat is stolen from him, he descends into a state of embittered melancholy. Gogols fictional protagonist exemplifies the conjecture that even with something as simple as an overcoat, if one has spent much time and resources to obtain that object, its value would be greatly enhanced in the eye of its beholder, in this case, even reducing Gogols protagonist to a bitter state.</p>
<p>We can also say that the desire to ensure ones efforts are not for nothing is in itself a reason why effort is positively correlated to value. Willie Chandran is the protagonist of V.S. Naipauls Half A Life. Despising his fathers lowly life, he works hard to seek an education in Britain. However once there, he becomes disillusioned with British society, and an internal conflict develops within him as we visibly see Chandrans feelings vacillating between his pride at obtaining his education in London, hence achieving what he had striven for, and his disillusionment with his new environment, which he attempts to bury to no avail. In Chandrans example, we see mans willingness to bury any weaknesses he sees in the objects he strives hard to obtain, in order to sustain its value in his eyes.</p>
<p>Humans are often made out to be more complex creatures than they really are. In reality, like the lion that roars after capturing its prey, humans take pride in what they have worked hard to obtain. In forgotten corners of Uganda and Peru, it may be a pair of new sneakers while amidst the opulence of Beverly Hills, it may be a multi-million dollar home. But what is common is the notion of a prize, the culmination of all of ones efforts. In human eyes that is the only meaning of value.</p>