CHAPTER 13 / ESSAY WRITING PRACTICE 495
Sample Essays: Practice Essay 9
Consider carefully the issue discussed in the following passage, then write an essay that answers the
question posed in the assignment.We employ many devices to maintain or create peace among countries—trade
agreements, cultural exchanges, treaties. But nothing unites humanity as well as a
common foe. Mutual fear of nature or of foreign ideologies is perhaps the greatest
diplomacy we know.Assignment: What is the most significant means of bringing people together in peace?Write
an essay in which you answer this question and discuss your point of view on this
issue. Support your position logically with examples from literature, the arts, history,
politics, science and technology, current events, or your experience or observation.Sample: 5 points out of 6
Nothing unifies humanity as well as a common foe. This thought can be said to explain the triumph of the Allied
forces in WWII, the French and American Revolution, and other great triumphs in western history. However, this
uplifting thought has a dark corollary, because the common foe is usually another segment of humanity.
The great modern historian, T. Ruiz, at UCLA writes and lectures extensively on the middle ages. He explains
western history not as a progression from barbarism to high civilization, but as a continuing series of clashes
of man against man, advancing only in the increasing number of victims resulting from more powerful
weaponry. In all these clashes the victors (who after all write the history of the event) see and explain their suc-
cess as due to unified humanity against the common foe.
To take a sweeping view of western history after the fall of the Roman Empire, we see a European Society
for hundreds of years without borders, without governments, without kings, without commerce, without land
ownership, somewhat of an empty slate by modern political and economic terms. As the world changed from a
medieval world to a modern world, we can observe some changes which came about by the unification against
a common foe. The rise of the nation state was made possible by the emergence of the “king” who united his
subjects by invention of a common foe (e.g. “France”). Witchcraft, antisemitism and other concepts of “other-
ness,” can be argued to be offshoots of the movement toward nation states. And these evils are caused by the in-
vention of a common foe.
The nation state, antisemitism, witchcraft all came about as inventions of the modern era. The Crusades, to
expel the Arabs from Europe, the fallout from which we are still experiencing, is perhaps nothing but a politi-
cal example of the successful search for a common enemy. Political, of course, because they occurred in the era
when the king realized that religion was too important to be left to the Pope.
As history marches on, we have the modern success of genocide as the ultimate success possible from the
unification against the common enemy. The lesson perhaps is that when humanity unifies against a common
enemy, make sure you’re not the enemy.
Evaluation:This essay effectively argues for the perspective that “nothing unifies humanity as well as a common
foe.” The author demonstrates a solid understanding of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and gives many
examples of “common foes.” The author shows a strong facility with language and uses appropriate historical vo-
cabulary. The essay does not receive the highest possible score, however, because it focuses too much on conflict
rather than peace, as the question suggests.