2011—Question 3 (Open)
Justice—Sample Essays
Sample GG
For this assignment I chose “A raisin in The Sun.” In this Book the plot is a not so wealthy African American family living in the 1920’s or 30’s. The Father is the only working one in the house. He has lots of stress try to bring justice to his family and to everyone else. During this time was part of segregation, so you can only imagine what he had to put up with. The father maintans justice till he can’t take it or thinks he can’t take it anymore, he starts betraying his family, becomes a drunk, a lazy one at that. Then towards the end he brings justice back and stronger than ever befor . He not only does this at home but at his work as well.
Sample D
In Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison’s work Beloved, Morrison recounts the tale of how a mother Sethe killed her infant daughter Beloved out of the ultimate motherly love because of a perceived injustice “in a search for justice.” Although Seth’s actions are morally questionable to some, the fact that she carried them out to protect her daughter from the same injustice she remembered from back at Sweet Home cannot be contested.
Although the actions of Sethe in the work as a whole are multifaceted, Sethe is a fairly simple character to understand. Since Sethe’s escape to 124 Bluestone Road from Sweet Home and subseque4stly killing her 3rd child, Beloved, Sethe has lived a hard life working as a cook and seamstress and her perspective of justice is very simple. To Sethe, the just action is the loving action. Alll Sethe does from killin Beloved to sheltering her daughter Denver is because she is trying so desperately to do the right thing through thick and unconditional love. This view of love and justice is juxtaposed to Baby Sugg’ idea of loving yourself and Paul D’s line of living only a little so you had some left. Sethe killed her daughter, her Beloved, to protect her from injustice unimaginable to most. Sethe’s memory of having Schoolteacher say “list her human characteristics on one side and animal on the other” to his nephews and subsequently perform the mammary rape to her to take her milk, her life for her child, was why she killed Beloved. She wanted to ensure that the man who entered the yard of 124 Bluestone Road could never hurt her Beloved like she was hurt.
Sethe is clearly conflicted I the novel by the repercussions of her actions and by the opinion some people have of her, and thus she is bitter to a certain extent and she even says things like, “ain’t a house in the country that ain’t packed to the rafters with some dead Negro’s rage.” Although Sethe is bitter, her search for justice was successful and did come at a price. Her search for justice for Beloved caused her daughter Denver to pay for a past not her own, for Paul D’s love to be unrequited as Beloved slowly took his place in Sethe’s life, and even Baby Sugg’s death after Sethe’s actions went against everything she preached as a communal matriarch in the clearing. At this high loss, Sethe’s search for justice was successful as Beloved was saved and her quest for justice ultimately led to her deliverance by the community from Beloved, her past.
The novel as a whole really isn’t about just one antebellum African-American family’s struggles. Sethe’s search for justice is really about echoing the struggles felt by all African-Americans after the Great Migration. Each Black person had to struggle to find justice in a society where justice for them was rarely ever found. Sethe’s search for justice for her daughter Beloved echoes Morrison’s message that the search for justice is relative to time and circumstance. While Sethe’s action of killing her daughter seems extreme, this search for justice in what was a white man’s world echoes the struggles of all Blacks and the characters in the novel as a whole.
Sample A
In today’s society, justice is almost exclusively viewed as an obligation of those who have chosen to become civil servants; however, John Steinbeck in his novel The Grapes of Wrath portrays justice through the eyes of Tom Joad, as an inalienable human right, and it is often that the injustices that are committed against Tom and his family are carried out by the supposed guardians of that justice. As he progresses through the novel Tom realizes that justice is no concrete set of laws and regulations, but instead ultimately a facet of the human character, and that the purpose of that justice is to establish equality, not to be used as a device to subdue the weak by the strong.
Throughout The Grapes of Wrath, Tom struggles with one question of what is in the fact true justice – even at the beginning, when he first comes in contact with Rev. Casey. Tom maintains that he would “do what [he] done again” after committing the murder that landed him in the MacAlester penitentiary: as is obvious in this case, Tom’s perception of justice differs significantly from the law’s. this personal sense of justice overruling the established norm later manifests itself Tom’s decision to aid Floyd Knowles, who is being picked upon by a local sheriff under the employ of a corrupt plantation owner – regardless of the danger to himself, Tom maintains that he “doesn’t want to go” – his sense of personal justice overrides even his basic need for self-preservation. And again, at the climax of the novel, Tom again forsakes his own well-being in protest of the injustices committed against Rev. Casey, brutally beating his attackers before being driven off himself; in this way, the reader, through Tom, come to see justice as a character value that cannot be imposed upon the human being by seemingly any outside source.
In conjunction with Tom’s view that justice is the responsibility of the individual and not of the organization, Tom’s final realization of justice results from his absolute departure from what his society established as justice; Tom remarks that he “will be everywhere” after he is forced to leave upon his disfigurement from defending Rev. Casey – Tome, in essence, becomes the embodiment of the justice he has so long been pursuing. He further remarks that he, as this justice, will be there when both there are instances of police abusing justice to persecute the innocent and when those innocent are no longer under the thumb of any higher authority – in this way Tom’[s justice is the justice of equality, rather than the justice of persecution as defined by the law enforcement organs he comes in contact with. In the scope of the novel as a whole, this sense of equality sheds light on Steinbeck’s greatest message – the individual is greater than the collective; were Tom to merely forsake his personal beliefs about justice, he would become the “beat bitch” he so desperately avoided becoming. In this way, Steinbeck demonstrates that Tom’s ability to transcend the restrictions of mass justice as prescribed by the higher authorities is the ultimate demonstration of that individual overturning the organization
Tom Joad’s, and indeed the entire Joad family’s, in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath search for, and eventual attainment of, the truth behind justice ultimately drive him to become the embodiment of that sense of equality, which demonstrates further Steinbeck’s central individualistic assertions that in order to truly be free, one must be willing to sacrifice the entirety of one’s life in pursuit of that personal justice. In essence, Tom’s search for justice ultimately ends with him being empty-handed, and therefore he has to become the source of that justice he sought.
Sample J
Justice is getting what is deserved. When someone has achieved justice, they feel as if a weight as been lifted and the world has been put in its right order. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince Hamlet searches for justice about his father, King Hamlet’s, mysterious death. Hamlet’s delusions or actual sightings of his father’s Ghost drive him to avenge King Hamlet’s death as he relentlessly accuses Claudius until their deaths at the end of the play.
Hamlet believes the only way to avenge his father’s death is follow the Ghost’s advice and kill Claudius. He sees it as an eye for an eye. Since Claudius (supposedly) murdered King Hamlet, Hamlet must murder Claudius. His understanding of justice comes from the Ghost, not himself. He vows the follow his orders and to not tell anyone. Hamlet’s view is too drastic and morbid and delusional. He does not question the Ghost and simply follows the orders, which most likely are his own desires in disguise.
While Hamlet eventually does kill Claudius in a duel, that is not where his justice comes from. When Hamlet hides in the Church, he overhears Claudius’ confession to poisoning King Hamlet. The full truth has been revealed, and Hamlet was the first to know. He gets to complete his search for justice much later after he accidently kills a friend of the family, Polonius and causes Oephelia to drown herself. During the duel, Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother unknowingly drinks the poisoned wine. Thus, Hamlet does avenge his father’s death, but the kingdom is turned inside out. King Hamlet and King Claudius are dead. The heir, Hamlet (prince) is dead. The queen is dead. In his search for justice, Hamlet’s home falls apart. “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.” His justice brings about more problems of rot and decay than it attempts to solve. So, his search for justice is completed but not successful for nothing is in the right order. The heir to the kingdom that Denmark is sworn enemies with takes over Denmark.
As he persistently pursues justice for his father’s death. Hamlet adds more to the decay in his kingdom. Any chance of the kingdom returning to its height during King Hamlet’s days is gone. The multiple unexcusable and unexplainable deaths deep adding up, proving how corrupt and morbid Hamlet’s search for justice was.
Sample KKK
Life “is a search for justice.” Some people find it, others spend their whole life looking for it, and some never find it at all. In the novel, “The Scarlet Letter,” Arthur Dimsdale is perplexed by a desire for atonement. He is the illegitimate lover of heroine, Hester Prynne, who bears the scarlet letter over her breast, and he desires to reveal his sin but is to afraid to do so.
Arthur Dimmsdale , in the eyes of the Puritan society in which he lives, is the epitome of perfection. He was an Oxford graduate, a good looking man, and a very popular, young, Puritan minister. As such, his desire for justice was not received easy in the novel. After Hester was publicly condemned and forced to wear the letter on her clothing, the only thing Dimmsdale wanted was to reveal his sin as well. He gave public sermons begging Hester to reveal him as her lover, and reached about what a sinner he himself was. The people, however, only took this as a further sign of his holiness.
Dimmsdale turned to physically beating himself because of his desire for justice to be brought unto him, and such a desire started to literally eat him alive. At the end of the novel, Dimmsdale stands with Hester and their daughter, Pearl, on a platform, and reveals his sin. In doing so, he frees himself from the one burden he truly had in his life, and when Pearl kisses him on the chest, he dies. Hypothetically speaking, there is speculation as to the degree to which his search for justice was successful as he simply died after his sin was revealed. However, one must realize that Dimmsdale endured agonizing pain while he was alive because justice had not been brought.
Dimmesdale’s experiences illustrate the significance of the work as a whole because the author desired to reveal the corruption with Puritan society.
Sample G
Although well-known for its humorous satire, Catch-22 explores deep complexities of the human condition. The protagonist of the novel, Yossarian, responds significantly to the idea of justice and how his forced service in the air force is unjust and undeserved.
Put simply, Yossarian’s understanding of justice is that he has served his required number of missions for his country and deserves to go home. He is presented as paranoid, as he claims the other side is “out to get him,” yet his ideas hold merit in that the other side is indeed trying to kill him. Yossarian thinks it is just to protect himself, and since he has done his duty, fair and square, feels no remorse in moving the attack assignments of his squadron’s shoulders in the middle of the night.
Yossarian’s attempts to secure justice are not successful overall, as he remains stuck serving in the air force. Still, he secures little victories that rob the institution of his skills as a bombardier such as taking month-long hiatuses into the hospital or slipping soap into meals to make the camp sick and postpone potentially terminating action.
The significance of Yossarian’s quest for justice lies in the more poignant scenes of the novel. The tragedy of Snowden’s death and Nately’s demise reverberates deeply in Yossarian. Both die sudden and unexpected deaths, and Yossarian is angry at the injustice of their termination. Even though Yossarian does what he thinks is required for Snowden, cleaning and wrapping his wound, there is still another one – a direct parallel to there always being more missions – and Snowden dies. Nately dies soon after finally finding happiness with his whore; Yossarian later walks the streets and can’t bring himself to help a woman in need, as he has lost hope in justice and fairness in the world. Yossarian’s unresolved search for justice overall illuminates the injustice of authoritarian institutions exercising unwarranted power. He is stuck under the power of ridiculous man with no means of escape; he therefore has no choice but to run away from the squadron at the end of the novel to have any chance of escaping ulitarian institutionalism and finding justice.