Consider the following comments on generosity.
The gift that demands gratitude was never freely given.
It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Proverb
Public generosity is often private guilt wearing its best clothes.
A society that relies on charity has quietly agreed to call its failures kindness.
We praise the donor and forget to ask why anyone needed the donation.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A defensible thesis is that generosity is a real virtue that public life has learned to counterfeit, because giving can repair the world or it can disguise the very inequalities that make giving necessary. Open by granting the genuine good, that voluntary giving expresses a care for strangers no obligation could compel. Then press the complication: large scale charity often flatters the powerful and lets a society avoid the harder question of why so many depend on it. A useful third move separates generosity that transfers power from generosity that merely transfers comfort while leaving the structure intact. Caution: avoid the cynical reduction that treats all giving as vanity or laundering, which insults the ordinary person who gives quietly and expects nothing back.