The Prince

I choose paper #99 to be the better of the two papers that I had the opportunity to read. I thought #99 was very well structured and had some great interpretations of the points Machiavelli was trying to illustrate. The author of this piece also writes with passion, something that I feel is very important. "Not only were the ideals emulated, but the men who achieved greatness were revered." By using the powerful verb emulated, and adjective revered, we can get a true sense of what they are implying. This paper not only has a good thesis, but good supporting paragraphs that reiterate the message the author wished to proclaim. That is where I made my decision about which paper was better, #99 did a better job supporting itself.

I felt that although paper #93 did an overall good job, the paper lacked some things. First off, it lacked thought by the individual writing it. All they talked about was Machiavelli's view, but did not really build on them with interpretation, which in some cases can be more useful. I felt all they discussed were the aspects of Machiavelli being a guide for princes, and not so much about the Roman culture and why they needed a different pace. There were also not enough quotes from the book, I only found one. This means that most of the ideas on this paper are not quoted rite, and therefore resemble plagiarism although not on purpose.

Another point I wanted to make about the paper was the focus. There was a good comparison with the characteristics of a good ruler in the eyes of Machiavelli to the current situation in Iraq. "The same characteristics is often true in American politics where a candidate makes campaign promises, where he or she may not intend to keep, or once in office, find they are unable to do so, but it no longer matters." However, this is not the only example of a new-age reference in this paper. This leads us to our next problem, because they spend too much time talking