3.5-5 Double-spaced Pages

Use MLA style for quotations

Follow ALL formatting instructions from the syllabus

Provide a title for essay that reflects your thesis

Submit a serious draft for scheduled peer workshop (or lose one full grade)

Background:

In his 2005 inaugural address, George W. Bush used the word "freedom," "free," or "liberty" no fewer than 49 times, stating, for example, that it was America's duty to  "spread freedom" around the world, meaning, in part, to continue Operation Iraqi Freedom. Following 9/11, we often heard it said that those who attacked New York and Washington did so because "they hated our freedom."  More than sixty years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously spoke of four freedoms guaranteed to man: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want (meaning poverty).  Swarthmore University psychology professor Barry Schwartz argues that while "freedom" and "choice" seem synonymous, a world that presents us with infinite choices actually confines us, makes us less, not more free.  Exploring these differing definitions of freedom, one is left wondering if there is any meaning at all to the term.  Certainly, we should make sense of it before killing for it or dying for it.

George Lakoff, a U.C. Berkeley linguist and professor, discusses the complexity of defining this word generally, while specifically arguing that progressives and conservatives define it in ways that are entirely incompatible, calling it a "contested concept," one for which, beyond its most basic denotations, every individual has his or her own definitions, for they are based on one's values.  

What to Do

This brings us to your essay assignment. Discover how your experience has taught (and continues to teach) you about what freedom is and what it isn't.

To what degree have you been free in the past, are truly free, and/or believe you will be free, and why.  Ask yourself where your freedom ends and others' begins. Defining this concept for yourself should lead you to a clearer understanding of what is important to you. 

Use narrative, definition, and description to explore your "freedom" and the moments in your life that best illustrate your developing sense of it.  Use Alice Walker's "Beauty: The Other Dancer Is the Self," Malcolm X's piece, or any of the other readings as models and for inspiration but remember this isn't an essay in which you analyze others' experience; you must turn the camera on you.

• Use the first person "I" in your essay.
• Expand your sense of organization to fit the purpose of this essay to fit the demands of the assignment.
• Free yourself from the 5 paragraph prison
• Show And Tell
• Use personal illustrations
• You may use metaphor, symbol, or other figurative language. 
• You MUST write specifically and honestly. 
• You must consider your audience, which for the purposes of this essay you can think of as the class.