The Prince

2 Pages 613 Words

Response to “The Prince”
My outlook was completely changed about the life of a prince after reading this piece. I predicted that it would be the same old story of the courageous and fearless prince; instead, I found it to be completely opposite. Basically throughout this whole paper, Machiavelli writes about any ruler wishing to stay in power must “learn how not to be good”. He wrote about it from a completely different perspective than what I had expected. He talks about ignoring morality at certain times so that a “prince” can remain a prince. When people think of the fairy tale prince, they usually think of someone who has strong morals and is courageous and trustworthy; yet Machiavelli writes that a prince “should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands”. He praised Cesare Borgia and Hannibal because they were cruel, and he insists that it is necessary for a prince to be cruel at times. According to him, mercy, faithfulness, humanness, forthrightness, and religion are all qualities that a prince must appear to have. He says that it “is not necessary for a prince to have all the above qualities, but it is very necessary for him to appear to have them.” He claims that people perceives one another as what one seems to be, only a few people perceive one as they really are. I agree with him here. Apparently because he had figured this out, he is able to write about how a prince should act.
There are two particular examples that stood out in the story that I want to use to explain how he sees the life that a prince should live. These two examples are the main points that I took away with me, maybe because they even have some personal significance in my life. The first example jumped out at me when he wrote, “For men forget more quickly the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.” This stuck with me because this phrase is so true. People remember if something they inherited is stole...