Consider the following comments on pride.
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverb
Take pride in your work, for it is a portrait of who you are.
Anonymous
He that is proud eats up himself.
William Shakespeare
The same pride that will not let us beg is the pride that will not let us heal.
There is a quiet pride that keeps you upright, and a loud one that keeps you alone.
Write a reflective piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your thinking and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A reflective thesis is that pride wears two faces, the self respect that holds us upright and the vanity that cuts us off from others, and that the two are easily mistaken for each other. Open with a remembered moment, a refusal to apologise, or a refusal to ask for help, that shows pride in action. Then work the tension: pride can be the dignity that makes us refuse what is beneath us, or the armour that keeps us from the very people who could reach us. A useful structural move traces how a single act of pride can feel noble in the moment and lonely in hindsight. Caution: resist the simple verdict that pride is always a sin, since a person with no pride at all is too easily used.