Candeception—pretendingthatsomethingistruewhenitisnot—sometimeshavegoodresults? SAT Essay Think carully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. There are two kinds of pretending. There is the bad kind, as when a person falsely promises to be your friend. But there is also a good kind, where the pretense eventually turns into the real thing. For example, when you are not feeling particularly friendly, the best thing you can do, very often, is to act in a friendly manner. In a few minutes, you may really be feeling friendlier. Adapted from a book by C. S. Lewis Assignment: Can deception—pretending that something is true when it is not—sometimes have good results? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations. Deception is not necessarily lying and dishonest behaviors that are desinged for sheer personal gain and embeded with malicious motives. In fact, deception is justified in some apt situations. In the Mahabharata, the greatest ancient war of India, the righteous Pandavas were at war with their evil cousins, the Kauravas. It seemed unlikely that good would win over evil this time; the Kauravas were employing unfair advantages to the maximum. They weren’t playing fair – they had a much larger and stronger army than the Pandavas, possessed weapons of greater strength, and had ferocious demons and giants at their command. They were evil to the extent of slaying helpless soldiers during the battle rest-time at night. In short, if things continued as they were, the Pandavas would be doomed. Unless they played fire with fire, they would lose the war. Bheeshmapitama, the strongest and most skilled among the Kauravas’ warriors, posed the biggest threat to the Pandavas. So they came up with a cunning strategy. They killed an elephant having the same name as Bheeshmapitama’s son and then sent a messenger to inform him about ‘his son’s death’. When he got the message, Bheeshmapitama grew suspicious since his son was a formidable warrior. The others assured him that the message was a ploy to weaken him emotionally; however, Bheeshmapitama had to be sure. So he turned to Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandava brothers, who always spoke the truth since he was the son of Dharma (God of Truth and Righteousness). Over the din of the battlield, Yudhisthira replied “Yes. Ashwathama, the elephant, is dead.” But while enunciating “the elephant”, Yudhisthira deliberately lowered his volume a little so that he would not be heard. Bheeshmapitama was immediately stunned by the news of ‘his son’s death’. Seizing the opportunity, the Pandavas felled him with a thousand arrows. Had he not been slain, the Pandavas would have been deated right in the early stages of the battle. They used subtle deception to avoid certain deat at the hands of their malicious brethren. Clearly, deception was justified here.

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