<p>Hi there. I am an international student. This was my first essay. Please grade it out of 12 and also tell the areas which I need to improve. Thanks :)</p>
<p>Prompt: Is deception ever justified?</p>
<p>In our society deception is often regarded as an immoral act, the use of which is strongly discoureged as it often involves tricking others. But often there are cases in which using deception not only prevents disastorous losses but also prevents hurting the feelings of others. There are several examples in both history and literature that support my viewpoint.
For example in 1676, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb used deception to resist an enemy attack and saved his kingdom. The empire at this time was very unstable and at the same time there was an imminent threat from the Afghan army. Aurangzeb didn't enough resources to fight against the Afghan army. So he sent one of his spies to collect information about the weak points of the Afghan army. Once he got them, he was able to defeat the Afghanis by targeting that points and thus saved his kingdom and lives of many of his soldiers. We can see if Aurengzeb had not used deception, he would not have been able to resist the Afghan attack.
Another example is in the novel "Chain of Commands". This novel is about a family cosisting of 3 members : A husband, wife and their child. The husband goes to a war and dies fighting.At several times the child is shown asking his mother about his father. His mother instead of telling him about his father's death, tells him that his father has gone to a long trip to Africa and will bring some animals with him on his return. This makes the child very happy as he is very much fond of animals. Here again we can see the mother uses deception. Firstly she makes the child happy by telling him about the animals his father is going to bring, secondly she avoids telling him about his father's death by telling that his father has gone to Africa so that child would not be hurt emotionally. So this is another case in which the use of deception was justified.
The conclusion is that if deception is used for protecting someone or something like in the case of Aurangzeb or it is used to avoid hurting someone's feelings as in the case of the child in the novel "Chain of Commands" then it's use is justified. Otherwise if it is used to trick someone and gain some unfair advantage then ofcourse it is not justified at all.</p>