ESSAY SAMPLES, Essays on Religion
Sample Essay
Words 1,520
Homer’s gods (187) also send messages to their mortal counterparts, adopting and then abandoning them at various times. The relationship that Homer, therefore, sees between man and god is a capricious one. The ancient Greeks created a polytheistic religion that during the Hellenic age offered a diversity of religious practice (Martin 217). The traditional cults of the oldest Greek religions remained popular, but new cults responded to new political and social conditions. The new Hellenistic cults encompassed a shared concern, focusing on the relationship between the individual and what appeared to be the controlling, unpredictable power of chance. It is there that Plato took a different position than that of Homer. The chaotic course of Greek history following the Peloponnesian War made the unpredictable aspects of human existence appear more popular than ever (Martin 218). (more…)
ESSAY SAMPLES
Sample Essay
Words 3,094
It is easy to read history backward, to see the signs of what will come once the end is already known. When he looks at the portraits that Vincent Van Gogh painted of himself in the winter of 1887-88 and in the winter and fall of 1889 – the year before he would take his own life – we see in his own depiction of his face a sense of looking despair. But how much of this is actually in these portraits? If he had not died the next year but had lived on for a decade, marrying and having children and grandchildren toast the public recognition that would only come after his death, would we not see instead anguish something more like irony? (Zemel 81). It is, of course, impossible to know, for we view the past through the lens of the present and in that lens Van Gogh is the archetypical misunderstood artist, driven in the end beyond madness to the point at which self-annihilation called with its sweet siren song. (more…)
ESSAY SAMPLES, Essays on Politics
Sample Essay
Words 2,906
The Kurdish people are a people who have been conquered, oppressed and murdered since the first mention of the Kurds in 226 B.C. While the United States has not been in the business of conquering the Kurds, as most powerful nations have been throughout history, United States policy, or lack thereof, concerning the Kurds in Northern Iraq, has been a series of denials, promises, and broken promises. Policies, where the Kurds are concerned, have been a bipartisan debacle, which began at least in 1972 with a report that alleged Iraqi atrocities against the Kurds. Since that time, Presidents, including Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton have completely ignored the Kurdish plight or recognized it, but done nothing, or promised to help only to turn away. (more…)
ESSAY SAMPLES, Essays on Politics
Sample Essay
Words 1,316
Many of us would like to think that we are free.
But we would be mistaken.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s defense of personal freedom, which is of course also a defense of existentialism, is certainly encouraging to read at this moment in history because it suggests that even when we feel overwhelmed by the tides of history we remain (or can choose to remain) our own selves. We can be the masters of our fate. Any attempt to lay the responsibility for our own lives on the shoulders of others is laziness on our part or wickedness. At least if we believe Sartre. And – at least while we are reading him – it is difficult not to. (more…)
ESSAY SAMPLES, Essays on Social Issues
Sample Essay
Words 1,052
As the title indicates, this paper is on the American families, in this case, minorities. That is to say the opportunities available to them in the period after the Second World War. Moreover, the problems they have been facing in getting what is due to them. This paper analyzes the evolving situation and how things have changed since the time of the birth of the civil rights movement. (more…)
