=七月流火=小组第2次小组作业 ISSUE48 by lghscu

lghscuUID: 2552043

TOPIC: ISSUE48 - "The study of history places too much emphasis on individuals. The most significant events and trends in history were made possible not by the famous few, but by groups of people whose identities have long been forgotten."
WORDS: 646

TIME: 00:55:00
DATE: 2009-8-30 21:00:06

Does the study of history pay less attention to groups of people with identies being forgotten? Does they play a pivotal role in most significant events and trends? The author believes so. However, I partly disagree with the assertion in that it is both the individuals and common groups of people that have contributions to these important events and trends in my view.

To begin with, the preeminent individuals play pivotal roles in the great things due to the fact that these people often have great ideas which are crucial to events and impetus to trends in society. In the realm of politics, For example, it is Franklin Roosevelt who put up with New Deal pulling the United States out the economic crisis of 1929-1933. Without Roosevelt, perhaps there would be no New Deal, which is significant to the recovery of United States' economy. In the realm of art, it is Goethe who wrote the two-part dramatic poem, called Faust, one of the peaks of the world literature. We would not believe that another person or another group of people could write the same eminent book rather than Goethe. Goethe is Goethe, not repaceable by others. In the realm of science and technology, take the Wright Brothers into consideration. They first equiped a plane with an engineer, making the dream of flying come into reality for the first time. Although a multitude of people had tried the same thing, but they ended up with failing. World was changing due to the accomplishment of Wright Brother. Could we imagine what the world would be like without them? The distinguished individuals, coming with great ideas, brought us into a new world with significant events and trends.

In addition, the contribution of the common groups of people aslo is remarkable in the development of our society. New Deal was successful due to the fact that a large number of groups of people nameless and faceless supported and followed and even sacrificed for the New Deal's coming into being. Without their actions of taking New Deal into practice, Franklin Roosevelt would not success and would not make the significant recovery possible. Similarly, as we know, the premitive characters all come from real life. In another word, Goethe's success is also based on the common people, who are the original objects corresponding to the charaters in Faust. If Faust has no relation with the groups of people Goethe living with, Faust would become a fiction, not a book reflecting the life at the time and would not possbilely be a great one. In short, the common groups of people, although not prominent as those excellent individuals, actually were indispensable in the important events and trends happening in the history.

Finally, emphasis played on the eminent individuals is deserved because of the two facets discussed below. Firstly, in history there were so many people, parcipating the historical events, that historians could be unable to write down everyone of them, which is a mission impossible. Secondly, people are interested in those differente from our common people, in that to some extent these people owned a large amount of excellent qualities which are conducive to our growing and to making us more competent. For example, Franklin Roosevelt’s innovative ideas would help people to recognize that we common people could aslo possiblely put up with new ideas if we try to do so. Therefore, due to the work of historians and the interests of common people in those prominent individuals, the study of history places more attention to those ones.

To sum up, when a considerable amount of emphasis is placed on those individuals, we would keep the fact in mind that distinguished individuals made a large deal of contributions to the progress of our society, while the groups of people also played a pivotal role in promoting the significant events and trends in history.