The Cost of Pursuing Power

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Power is essential to maintaining order and instilling rules within society, relationships and almost all aspects of life. With the appropriate control of power, individuals are able to attain anything that they desire. Once power is obtained, maintaining power and control is also important. Often once power is obtained, individuals believe that they don’t need to focus on the upkeep of maintaining power, this is what often leads to one’s downfall. Although power often comes with success, there are also downfalls to having power. Power can be dangerous and can lead to greed. Power can ruin relationships and often causes conflict as individuals tend to struggle with the shift in power or the new imbalance of power. Power has the ability to demonstrate one’s true morality and ethics. The pursuit of power has its costs.

The topic of power is portrayed in many books and is used to demonstrate what a person will do when given power. Essential books that deal with power are Machiavelli’s The Prince, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravits. The Prince and The Art of War are not books of fiction but books of strategy on gaining power on how to maintain it. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a book of fiction where Duddy strives to acquire power in any means necessary. Relevant in each book are themes that relate to power and how one can pursue it, these themes are: morals, ethics and fortune.

The Prince was written in 1513 as a means to tutor a Prince. The book was intended for Lorenzo de’Medici, who was the aspiring prince at the time, of Florence, Italy. It describes methods an aspiring prince can use to acquire a throne, as well as methods for an existing prince to keep their re...

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...ursues power by doing criminal activities like Duddy then it will not worth anything in the end. It will cost everything including friendship and one’s life. In the end a man with land will be nobody.

Works Cited

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. London, UK: Createspace, 2010. Print.

Richler, Mordecai. the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. New York: Penguin, 1973. Print.

Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2005. Print.

Wilson, Patricia A. . "The effects of politics and power on the organizational commitment of federal executives | Journal of Management | Find Articles at BNET." Find Articles at BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 June 2010. .

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