Rihla 16

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February 4, 2012

Isaac Pastrana

Student,

UIC College Prep

World History, B5, Held



Dear Baldassare Castiglione,

As I understand that you think a "man" should have certain qualities. I get the sense that you think a man should be well rounded and I agree with you. I man should be loyal, bold, strong, and have knowledge. I also agree that every man should please his lady and show her love. I must say that there are some ideas of yours that I do not agree with. I do not agree with the fact that EVERY man has to be a musician, weapons master, artist, and a dancer.

Look, I know that I was not present at the time when you wrote this. I know that the period of time I am in is way different than yours, but I was wondering why you THOUGHT men should act and behave this way. I would think that maybe you were made to write it by a wealthy family. Being a courtier yourself perhaps you were writing down the way that you were living your life. Whatever the case may be, I think that you wrote The Courtier because you wanted to make sure that men were well rounded people that could serve their nation.

While I have you here, I wanted to see how you felt in regards to love and hate while being a prince. Do you think that the way to lead a nation is through fear? Or do you thin that a prince should tend to everyone's needs and create a "lovely" land. I personally think that a leader, or in this case a prince, should lead his nation with fear and not care about being hated or love. The only thing he should care about is the prosperity of his nation. Some people are going to hate him for it, but at the end of the day someone has to take charge and enforce the rules. The reason I ask you this is because my world history teacher Ms. Held recently gave us two passages to analyze from your time period. The first passage was from your book The Courtier and the second passage was from The Prince written by Machiavelli. The Prince sets a layout of how a prince should rule and behave. The big question that the book shows is if a prince should rule with fear or love.

The person that I think ruled with hate and love was Adolfo Hitler. Hitler led Germany with much love, but made everyone else hate him. His techniques of fear were out of hand, but they did make Hitler seem like a bigger man. His techniques got him hatred from certain people and love from others. At the end of the day, Hitler was just doing what he thought was best for his country.

Sincerely yours,

Isaac Pastrana

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