<p>I am using a prompt from the New SAT princeton review book, but I took 20 min instead of 25 so I think it should be the same as SAT II Writing. Please grade on the 6 point scale, just a number is fine but suggestions would be good too. Thanks a million</p>
<p>Prompt: Existentialist Jean Paul Satre believed in personal freedom, holding that man is free to "write the script" for his own life: he can blame no one else if his life is a "poor performance." On the other hand, William Blake and others in the Romantic movement felt that the expectations and restraints of society severely limit a person: they believed that schooling, organized religion, and other social institutions imprison a person's mind and spirit.
Assignment: What is your opinion of the claim that there is no such thing as free choice; to some degree, we are always bound by the rules of society? In an essay, support your position by discussing an example (or examples) from literature, the arts, science, history, current events, or your own experience or observation.
(Whew!)
My Response:
In the question of free will among the human race, I must stand beside Romantic William Blake in my belief that we are all impacted by society to some degree. A striking example of this can be found in Nathaniel Hawthore's The Scarlet Letter upon consideration of the main character, Hester Prynne.
In Hawthorne's novel, Hester Prynee is a woman in the early American colony of Boston. She is a member of the Puritan society, which teaches its citizens to live austere lives and strictly adhere to the rules of God, which are also the laws of the colony. In a moment of passion, Hester breaks these bonds of society by having a secret affair with none other than the town minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. In her love for him, Hester tried to excercise free will and to escape from the laws that forbade adultery, but she is henceforth constrained even more harshly by them as punishment.
After the town discovers her sin, Hester is condemned to wearing the scarlet letter, a symbol of ignominy, for the rest of her life. Her freedoms are even more limited than those of the average Puritan, as she is ostracized from society and eschewed wherever she goes. As long as she exists within or near Boston, she lacks the freedom to live in peace and can never be free from her burden of shame. For Hester in the Puritan society, she lacked the freedom to make her own choices in the first place, and when she momentarily broke free of society's rules, she only lost more freedoms in the end.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's story about Hester Prynne is only one of countless examples in which individual humans have limited capacities to express their freedoms and escape societal constraints. Whether it be in early colonial America or the modern world, our unlimited expression of free will has always been precluded by society's rules.</p>
<p><em>Thanks to anyone who read this far!! Please let me know what you think!</em></p>