The Grand Inquisitor

“We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.” - Lech Walesa. Freedom - the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Such a small definition for a word with so much meaning. This miniscule word has inspired people and even started wars.This topic is rarely regarded; even though we would certainly know if someone took our freedom from us.

The complete and utter lack of freedom in 1984 by George Orwell is a major theme which the entire plot revolves around. Not only is this the key problem the main character Winston faces, but the entire society in which this book is set is also doomed to slavery under the Party. One of the Party’s slogans,“Freedom is Slavery” (Orwell, 14), shows the backwards viewpoint of freedom that the people believe in. This reality affects Winston’s interactions with everyone, ultimately sending him into madness.

There is humanly no possible way to merely or easily define what “freedom” truthfully is, as every distinct person and each social order has opposing restrictions for what this belief is. Bureaucrats and social researchers, for example, have vastly diverse philosophies of what institutes freedom. This primeval belief has been ingrained into mankind since the beginning of time. Century after century mankind has fought in numerous wars for this concept of “Freedom”.

The Inquisitor’s Tale is about three children, Jeanne, Jacob, William, and their dog, Gwenforte. These children are capable of performing extraordinary miracles, along with their saint dog. Jeanne is a peasant girl that has seizures, or fits, that allow her to see the future. She was accused of performing witchcraft, and was taken from her family to be killed. Jacob, a Jewish boy, had his home destroyed because of a fire started by some Christian boys. His parents were killed in the process. With a plant and a prayer, he can heal any wound within seconds. William is a tall African-American boy who dwarfs the average man in France. William can break a stone bench with his bare hand! Lastly, Gwenforte, the saint dog, rose from her grave after Jeanne’s parents killed her by accident. Some people called them saints, and others believed they were performing acts of the devil. Once the King of France found out about the children and their supposedly “holy greyhound,” he declared war on them. They became outlaws, running from the king and his knights.

Freedom comes at a cost, and so some say it is not free, but what really is free in this world. Too many people today expect free things, but liberty, the right to bear arms and the right to come and go as you please do come at a cost.

Freedom is the power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or necessity. It is essential to live, and is a right people have been fighting for centuries. America was founded on the principles of freedom and have faced many trials to achieve it. From the first settlement until now, people have been writing their rights to freedom in the works to appeal to the masses. After the “Era of Good Feelings” and the “Jacksonian presidency”, white males had so much freedom and power. Up to ninety percent of white men had the ability to vote and were well represented which expanded there liberties and freedom especially economically. However it limited liberties to the rest. In the 19th century, Economic

• Freedom: The power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that. It is the power to act deliberately on our own responsibility.

In the beginning of the Inquisitor’s Tale, Jeanne was a baby in her crib with Gwenforte watching her sleep. As Jeanne was sleep, a snake snuck into her room and tried to attack her. Gwenforte saw the snake and growled at it to give it a warning. The snake didn’t care about Gwenforte’s warning and went towards Jeanne in her crib. Gwenforte covered Jeanne hay to hide her from the snake and prevented her from not witnessing the scene that was about to happen. Gwenforte jumped on the snake and bit it while it was still down. The snake slowly died, while blood covered the whole room as the parents walked in from working. Jeanne parents saw the blood around the room, and they thought Gwenforte had killed Jeanne while she was sleeping. The parents

“We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.” - Lech Walesa. Freedom - the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Such a small definition for a word with so much meaning. This miniscule word has inspired people and even started wars.This topic is rarely regarded; even though we would certainly know if someone took our freedom from us.

The common definition of the word freedom stated by the google dictionary is the power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. The majority of our society says that we are in fact not free because we are controlled in one way or another by laws or hindered by racism. In my eyes the declaration of independence holds the answer to the question “what does it mean to be free” america’s founding fathers wrote this in 1776 and in it they put the rights on which our freedom exists. The declaration of independence which contains the freedoms on which America was founded upon holds the answer to the question what does it mean

Assuming that the unattainable concept of what we call freedom can somehow be minimized to a level of human comprehension, than it is made self-apparent that the definition of the word is merely an ugly contradiction of itself. The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition for the word "freedom" reads as follows: "The power to act, say or think as one wants without hindering or restraint." This meaning of the word as we know it has been forever lost to the way that society has been constructed, for the selfish purposes of control. Even in the United States of America, the advertised success story and posterchild for freedom, we know only strict parameters under which we can exercise such choice.

And a century earlier, prior to US independence, Thomas Paine, an English politician, activist and philosopher, preached the importance of resisting the corrupt British Throne. Paine yearned to live in the supposed” free democracy” Martin Luther King was born into 200 years later. All of these movements were peaceful and the leaders respectfully served their corporal sentences, to increase societal awareness, in a positive manner, promoting the old adage, sacrifice one to save the

Freedom is a state of mind and being in which a person has no barriers to hold them back. These barriers can be financial, emotional, mental or physical. I think that if someone didn’t have these barriers, they don’t necessarily achieve freedom, but they have the chance to. To go beyond this though, freedom needs to first be achieved within. When someone is free in their heart and their mind, I think they’ve achieved true freedom. In short, freedom is the freedom from restraints and the freedom to do what they please.

Throughout the course of time, freedom and independence have been something either granted or needed to be achieved. In the passages of Invictus, The Declaration of Independence, The Crisis-Number 1, and The Myth of Prometheus it is discovered that whoever intends to gain freedom or independence must either work for it, or sacrifice for it. Throughout the lines of the documents and stories, it is easy to tell that achieving freedom is something easier said then done. While most people needed to sacrifice for freedom, the independence was always worth the struggle.

What freedom means to me is that people risk their lives to allow us to have freedom. When people think freedom is free, they tend to get the feeling that they can do whatever they want whenever they want, without following the law. Freedom is the right to do something within the law or the authorities. Freedom allows you to be able to vote, slaves are free in most places, women did not have many rights ,not a lot education, and religious freedom. Religious freedom is the right to believe in what you believe in.