Ap Test Essay Prompt 1

George Eliot believed that her generation lost the true meaning of leisure and filled it with their new thought of leisure.  She believes the older days of sitting around on your porch looking off into the distance the countryside is true leisure, not the leisure her society has, where they pay to get amused by things made for them.  She use a few literary devices to compare and contrast these two types of leisure such as imagery.

Old leisure was in a much simpler time.  A man can sit out and read a paper on his porch with the lazy breeze coming over the hill from the ocean.  He would be sitting their without the smell of factories or emissions, just the nature that surrounded him.  He appreciated the things he had and had no care for how they were made or got there.  Eliot told us all of this; she said a stress-free, natural, country life where you like objects as objects and not how they came to you.

A life where you are rushed and eager to get to the next thing that will amuse you for an hour or two isn't leisure.  Eliot describes her society as these kinds of people looking for that as leisure.  She says "Even idleness is eager now- eager for amusement" meaning people are never stress free, they are constantly looking for their next source of entertainment. They can't find the natural things amusing and are always making new things to entertain them for a period of time, caring only for the prestigious brands of big named entertainment companies.