第一时间发布：11年11月13日托福作文范文

[anti-both]

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? One can learn a lot about a person from the type of friends this person has.

Many people argue that people with the same or similar traits are usually more likely to be associated with each other. From this perspective, it seems plausible that we can judge a person by looking at what kind of friends he or she has. However, from my personal  observation, such a belief may not be impeccable.

True, people with similar concerns tend to be more closely related to each other. On a higher level, this fact is also true with countries. Back to the Cold War, countries with similar social system fell into two major categories: the capitalist west led by US and the socialist east led by USSR. By looking at a country’s alliances, people could easily know what kind of country it was. On a lower level, people with similar social status or interests are more inclined to hang out together because their ways of life are subjected to similar factors (such as money and time) they share: housewives may become acquainted with housewives in the supermarkets; millionaires knows their kindred spirits in a luxurious golf club. However, I still challenge the idea that we can really know about people by what kind of friends they have.

In the first place, the personalities of a person can be multifaceted and it is too simple to appraise him or her based on the friends he or she has. On different occasions, a person can behave totally differently; a seemingly serious person may act casually privately and vice versa and thus have totally different kinds of friends. Take my uncle Jeff for example. My uncle Jeff is a professor in a top university and he has a lot of friends in academic circle. From this fact, many people may judge that Jeff is a martinet, like many of the cynics living in the ivory tower. However, privately, he is a big fan of comic books and also has bunch of “fanzine” friends who are usually dressed in costumes.

Secondly, people with different social status may also end up being close friends for various  reasons. Thus, the information about them we get by looking at their friends may not be accurate . In the famous sitcom “Friends”, 6 people of different social background and distinctive characteristics become closely related. We may never know who Joey Tribbiani, a broke actor, is by looking at his friend Ross Geller, a paleontologist. Thus, it is somewhat naïve to say that knowing a person’s friends can help us really know a person.

I concede that great minds and humble minds both think alike but it is also true that “the great” can sometimes be “humble” and the belief that knowing a person’s friends is knowing a person is not tenable.