SAT Essay Help: Sample Essay 2

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Prompt:

When we witness an injustice or the violation of a principle, anger can give us the courage to act, not react. Productive anger can be a guide to appropriate, powerful, and healing action. All the political and social movements of our time are rooted in anger, including the struggle against apartheid, the fight for civil rights, and many environmental and animal protection initiatives. The founders of these movements experienced healthy anger against conditions they considered to be unjust and unacceptable.

—Adapted from The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Anger,

by JANE MIDDELTON-MOZ, LISA TENER, AND PEACO TODD

(Health Communications, 2004)

Assignment:

Can anger be used for positive results? Organize and compose an essay that establishes your viewpoint on this issue. Substantiate it with examples and evidence derived from what you have read, studied, experienced, or observed.

Essay:

Anger can produce positive results. The lives of some very famous people indicate that it can promote creativity. In some cases, that could mean better problem solving. In others, great works of art can be made.

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) has been described as more responsible than anyone else for creating the modern world. In his research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, he invented the phonograph, made the electric lightbulb, and started the motion picture industry. But his success wasn't because of his education. It was because of his mother. Mrs. Edison was angered by the way her son was treated by his teacher so she took him out of school and taught him herself. He became a famous inventor—all because of his mother's decision.

Pablo Picasso is another example of someone who had positive results from his anger. In 1937 he painted a mural for the Worlds Fair in Paris. It depicts the aftermath of the German bombing of Guernica, a city in his native Spain. Picasso was so angry about the bombing that he used it as the subject of his painting, even though he once said art should never be political. Guernica shows the violence and brutality of war, and it is still considered one of the most powerful anti-war paintings in the history of art. As Picasso said, "Art enables us to see the truth."

These two examples clearly show that anger can produce the result of creativity. Whether in the form of a better solution to a problem, or an expressive work of art, anger can be a positive force.