- Prejudice in Oliver Goldsmith’s views was about countries being lesser or above one another, but in our society it is about race and the color of someones skin.
- Goldsmith doesn’t include himself in that group of prejudice people because he doesn’t belong to just one country; he is a citizen of the world. Being one of those “sauntering tribes” means he is a nomad mentally and isn’t planted in one location. Therefore, he sets the tone because he cannot wreek judgement on the other countries.
- His attitude towards his own country was he thought they were neither above nor below the rest, but rather equal with the rest of the world.
- When Goldsmith wrote about being regarded with a jealous eye looking at him with astonished expressions of how he could have those views on life and no love or patriotism for the country that raised him. The patriotic gentlemen were so appaulled that he would say such a thing to their own country, even though they had been doing it to every other nation on earth.
- I have never considered myself a citizen of the world in the sense that I will grow up and roam from country to country with no real place to go. Though I do consider myself one in the sense of not just loving my own nation but trying to apreciate the different ways and cultures of all countries. I try never to let prejudice into my life, because there is nothing good to come of excluding others or putting them down.
- To make his statement clearer and the essay more appealing, Goldsmith uses rhetorical approaches. There is irony throughout the essay when he turned the conversation around on all of the men critizising the other nations and said the bad part of their own and the good of the others. He made the analogy of a twisting vine wrapping itself around a sturdy oak to be someone boasting of national merrit when he/she has no merrit of his/her own that makes sense that there isn’t any reason for it to wrap around the tree. A metaphor is used in para. 8 calls those prejudice people the “bastard sprouts of a heavenly plant” that makes a visual picture about how the evil is consuming the good. The rhetorical question in para. 9 helped Goldsmith prove his point about how you can do both.
- If I was in Goldsmith’s place I would probably have the same argument that he had (using shorter and fewer words). I wouldn’t be able to walk away from people talking like that without saying a word. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do. People have to know that prejudice is wrong in order to correct it.
- Goldsmith implies that pride and prejudice is natural to an extent, but you must know where to draw the line. Most people have a problem with that part. We don’t criticize countries now as much, but we do criticize races. There are several national prejudices that are still going on. People don’t understand that those jokes they make are hurtful to one another. The majority of the prejudices that I know of are in a humorous matter but there are some full out prejudice people today.
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