violence essay

Essays About Violence: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Violence is a broad topic and can be sensitive for many; read our guide for help writing essays about violence.

The world has grown considerably more chaotic in recent decades, and with chaos comes violence. We have heard countless stories of police brutality, mass shootings, and injustices carried out by governments; these repeating occurrences show that the world is only becoming more violent.

Violence refers to the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy . From punching a friend due to disagreement to a massacre of innocent civilians, a broad range of actions can be considered violent. Many say that violence is intrinsic to humanity, but others promote peace and believe that we must do better to improve society.

If you are writing essays about violence, go over the essay example, and writing prompts featured below. 

Are you looking for more? Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

1. Videogames, Violence, and Vulgarity by Jared Lovins

2. street culture, schools, and the risk of youth violence by lorine hughes, ekaterina botchkovar, olena antonaccio, and anastasiia timmer, 3. violence in media: no problem or promotes violence in society by albert miles, 4. my experience of domestic violence by ruth stewart, 5. a few thoughts about violence by jason schmidt, writing prompts on essays about violence, 1. what is violence, 2. different types of violence, 3. can social media cause people to be violent, 4. is violence truly intrinsic to humankind, 5. causes of violence, 6. violence among the youth, 7. race-based violence.

“Parents allow themselves to be ignorant of the video games their children are playing. Players allow themselves to act recklessly when they believe that playing video games for ten, twenty, or even thirty hours on end won’t have an adverse effect on their mental and physical health. People allow themselves to act foolishly by blaming video games for much of the violence in the world when in truth they should be blaming themselves.”

Lovins discusses the widespread belief that video games cause violence and ” corrupt our society.” There is conflicting evidence on this issue; some studies prove this statement, while others show that playing violent video games may produce a calming effect. Lovins concludes that it is not the games themselves that make people violent; instead, some people’s mental health issues allow the games to inspire them to commit violence.

“The risk of violence was not higher (or lower) in schools with more pervasive street culture values. Higher concentrations of street culture values within schools did not increase the likelihood of violence above and beyond the effects of the street culture values of individual students. Our results also showed that attending schools with more pervasive street culture values did not magnify the risk of violence among individual students who had internalized these same values.”

In this essay, the authors discuss the results of their study regarding “street culture” and violence. Street culture promotes toughness and dominance by using “physical force and aggression,” so one would think that students who embrace street culture would be more violent; however, the research reveals that there is no higher risk of violent behavior in schools with more “street culture”-following students. 

“We have had a violent society before media was even around, and violence is just in our nature as human beings. Those who happen to stand against this are deceived by society, due to the fact that we live in a dangerous world, which will stay this way due to the inability to create proper reasoning.”

Miles writes about people blaming the media for violence in society. He believes that government media regulations, including age-based ratings, are sufficient. If these restrictions and guidelines are taken seriously, there should be no problem with violence. Miles also states that violence has existed as long as humankind has, so it is unreasonable to blame the media. 

“It was when I was in the bath, and I looked down at my body and there were no bruises on it. None at all. I was shocked; it was the first time I had lived in a non-bruised body in many years. I don’t know if any other women who got out of violent situations felt their moment. The point at which they realised it was over, they could now get on with recovering. I promised myself that I would never stay with a violent partner ever, ever again. I have kept that promise to myself.”

Stewart reflects on her time with an ex-boyfriend who was violent towards her. Even though he kept hitting her, she stayed because she was used to it; her mother and stepfather were both violent during her childhood. Thankfully, she decided to leave and freed herself from the torture. She promises never to get into a similar situation and gives tips on avoiding staying with a violent partner. 

“I went back and replayed the burglar scenario in my head. Suppose I’d had a gun. When would I have pulled it? When he ran out of the apartment? What were the chances I would have killed him in a panic, without ever knowing he was armed? Stupidly high. And for what? Because he tried to steal someone’s TV? No.”

In his essay, Schmidt recalls an instance in which a man pulled a gun on him, threatening him with violence. He chased a burglar down the street, but the burglar pulled a gun on him, leaving him stunned and confused enough to escape. Schmidt was so bothered by the incident that he got his own concealed carry permit; however, after reading statistics regarding gun accidents, he decided to reject violence outright and pursue peace. 

As stated previously, violence is quite a broad topic, so it can be challenging to understand fully. Define the word violence and briefly overview some of its probable causes, how it manifests itself, and its effects. You can also include statistics related to violence and your own opinions on if violence is a good or bad thing. 

There are many types of violence, such as domestic violence, gun violence, and war. List down the commonly occurring forms of violence and explain each of them briefly. How are they connected, if they are? To keep your essay exciting and readable, do not go too in-depth; you can reserve a more detailed discussion for future essays that are specifically about one type of violence.  

Social media is quite explicit and can show viewers almost anything, including violent content. Some sample essays above discuss the media’s effect on violence; based on this, is social media any different? Research this connection, if it exists, and decide whether social media can cause violence. Can social media-based pressure lead to violence? Answer this question in your essay citing data and interview research.

Many argue that humans are innately violent, and each of us has an “inner beast.” In your essay, discuss what makes people violent and whether you believe we have tendencies towards violence. Be sure to support your points with ample evidence; there are many sources you can find online. 

Violence arises from many common problems, whether it be depression, poverty, or greed. Discuss one or more causes of violence and how they are interconnected. Explain how these factors arise and how they manifest violence. With an understanding of the causes of violence, your essay can also propose solutions to help prevent future violence.

Youth violence is becoming a more severe problem. News of school shootings in the U.S. has set public discourse aflame, saying that more should be done to prevent them. For your essay, give a background of youth violence in the U.S. and focus on school shootings. What motivates these school shooters?  Give examples of children whose upbringing led them to commit violent acts in the future

Another issue in the U.S. today is race-based violence, most notably police brutality against African-Americans. Is there a race issue in policing in America? Or do they target offenders regardless of race? Can both be true at the same time? You decide, and make sure to explain your argument in detail. 

If you’d like to learn more, in this guide our writer explains how to write an argumentative essay .Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this Grammarly review .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Essay: VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

Man and society are born out of both: violence and gentle cooperation.” That is how Psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim defines a paradoxical but inescapable fact touching the whole history of “the children of Cain.” How the two forces are balanced in an individual helps determine his behavior, even his sanity. How they are balanced in society helps determine its political organization, the degree and condition of its civilization. In the U.S. today, it seems to many that violence is in the ascendant over cooperation, disruption over order, and anger over reason.

The greatest single source of this fear lies in the Negro riots that keep tearing at American cities. What is alarming about them is not merely the frustration and bitterness they proclaim, not merely the physical and psychological damage they cause, but also the fact that a few Negro leaders are deliberately trying to justify the riots with a violent and vengeful ideology. This in turn can all too easily be seen as just one aspect of a whole American panorama of violence.

The crime rate keeps rising, or seems to, especially in senseless killings and wanton attacks. Fear of the darkened city streets has become a fact of urban life. The memories of bizarre multiple murders linger in the mind—13 people dead in Austin from a sniper’s rifle, eight nurses in Chicago killed by a demented drifter. The recollection of the Kennedy assassination remains part of the scene. A burgeoning, largely uncontrolled traffic in guns has put firearms into some 50 million American homes, many of their owners insisting that the weapons are needed for self-defense. In the movies and on television, murder and torture seem to be turning Americans into parlor sadists. A recent trend on the stage is the “theater of cruelty,” and a growing number of books delve into the pornography of violence.

The rest of the world is ready to adjudge America as an excessively violent country in which brutal, irrational force can erupt any minute on a massive scale. This view is reinforced by the sheer driving energy of the U.S. It seems confirmed by the American folklore of violence—the Western and the gangster saga—which audiences all over the world worship as epic entertainment and as a safe refuge for dreams of lawless freedom. In a very different way, the view of America the Violent is also reinforced by the Vietnamese war, in which critics both at home and abroad profess to see a growing strain of American brutality.

Comparative Mayhem

Violence is so universal and elusive that sociology and psychology can only approximate a complex truth. Comparisons with other countries are illuminating but hardly conclusive. The U.S. has certainly experienced nothing like the massacre of 400,000 Communists in Indonesia; nor have Watts or Newark approached the lethal fury of an Indian or an Arab mob. But these are countries at vastly different levels of civilization. In the industrialized world, the U.S. undeniably ranks high in violence. The U.S. homicide rate stands at around five deaths for 100,000 people. This compares with .7 in England, 1.4 in Canada, 1.5 in France, 1.5 in Japan (but 32 in Mexico). Within the U.S., the rate varies widely, from about 11 per 100,000 in Georgia and Alabama to 6.1 in New York and .5 in Vermont. Not that homicide or any other statistics can tell the complete story.

The U.S. is in the grip of a semipermanent revolution, constantly undergoing social and economic changes that in Europe might send people to the barricades. Occasionally, Americans may still try to re-enact the two-fisted frontiersman, but the real source of much American violence is the swift pace of social change, which can be deeply disturbing to the less stable personalities in a society. Europe has usually experienced its revolutions spasmodically, at fairly long intervals, while in between it tends to defer to official authority far more than do Americans.

Measuring itself not against others but against its own past, the U.S. has good reason to believe that the country as a whole is growing less violent. The roots of violence in the American past are obvious: the Revolution, the Indian wars, slavery, the Civil War, that crucial and necessary test between two societies (when Fort Sumter was fired on, Emerson said: “Now we have a country again. Sometimes gunpowder smells good”). Race riots erupted almost as soon as the Negroes were emancipated, the worst being the New York draft riots of 1863. The Ku Klux Klan relied on raw violence to keep the Negroes from exercising the rights they had gained. In its way, frontier violence was also the result of social change: new, transplanted populations, new sources of wealth, new elites struggling for power. The wonder, perhaps, was not that the frontier was violent, but that its people tried so quickly to establish some sort of law.

Changing Pattern

In the cities, each wave of new immigration evoked violent reactions, many of which were instigated in the mid-1800s by the original Know-Nothings and their many later imitators. Immigrant groups themselves battled with one another, caught up in ethnic feuds. Above all, the American labor movement was the most violent in the world. From the 1870s to the 1930s, bloody battles between strikers and company cops or state militia were frequent. Labor leaders often deliberately used violence to dramatize the workers’ plight—and, in time, they succeeded. On the fringes of the movement were some odd secret organizations, including the Molly Maguires, a band of Pennsylvania miners who assassinated fellow workers and bosses alike in an attempt to win better pay and working conditions. The Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) sang the praises of violence and provided numerous labor saints and martyrs. The great gangs that appeared in Chicago, New York and elsewhere in the 1920s were also social symptoms: not merely the fiefdoms of “little Caesars” bent on money and power, but the expression of a moral vacuum in the U.S.

Against this background, violence on the American scene today is still alarming, but it scarcely suggests a disastrous deterioration. Public tolerance of violence seems lower than ever before in U.S. life, and public respect for law far higher. Above all, there is evidence to show that—some statistics to the contrary—violent crime in the U.S. is not really growing relative to the population. After massive researches, the President’s Crime Commission admits that crime trends cannot be conclusively proven out by available figures. According to FBI reckoning, crimes of violence have risen about 35% so far in the 1960s. But these figures fail to consider two important factors: population growth and changes in crime reporting. Experts believe that part of the apparent increase is caused by the fact that each year the police grow more thorough—and the poor are less reluctant—about reporting crime that previously went unrecorded. Says Sociologist Marvin Wolfgang, president of the American Society of Criminology: “Contrary to the rise in public fear, crimes of violence are not significantly increasing.”

But their pattern is changing. The incidence of murder and robbery relative to population has decreased by 30% in the past three decades. On the other hand, rape has tripled. Males are seven times more likely to commit violent crimes than women, but the women are catching up: in five years, arrests of women for crimes of violence rose 62% above 1960 v. 18% for men. From the newest figures, certain other patterns emerge. Despite widespread fear of strangers, most crimes of violence are committed by a member of the family or an acquaintance. The arrest rate for murder among Negroes is ten times that among whites, but most of the violent crimes committed by Negroes are against other Negroes. Violence is increasingly an urban phenomenon: 26 large cities containing less than one-fifth of the U.S. population account for more than half of all major crimes against the person. Poets sometimes have sociological insights, and Robert Lowell knew what he was talking about in his lines:

When Cain beat out his brother Abel’s brains

The Maker laid great cities in his soul.

Innate or Learned

Violence is not only an urban but overwhelmingly a lower-class phenomenon. In Atlanta, for example, neighborhoods with family incomes below $3,000 show a violent-crime rate eight times higher than among $9,000 families. In the middle class, violence is perhaps sublimated increasingly in sport or other pursuits. Says Sociologist Wolfgang: “The gun and fist have been substantially replaced by financial ability, by the capacity to manipulate others in complex organizations, and by intellectual talent. The thoughtful wit, the easy verbalizer, even the striving musician and artist are equivalents of male assertiveness, where broad shoulders and fighting fists were once the major symbols.”

What are the seeds of violence? Freud found “a powerful measure of desire for aggression” in human instincts. He added: “The very emphasis of the commandment ‘Thou shall not kill’ makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood, as it is perhaps also in ours.” Further, Freud held that man possesses a death instinct which, since it cannot be satisfied except in suicide, is instead turned outward as aggression against others. Dr. Fredric Wertham, noted crusader against violence, disagrees sharply and argues that violence is learned behavior, not a product of nature but of society: “The violent man is not the natural but the socially alienated man.”

The fact is that if violence is not innate, it is a basic component of human behavior. The German naturalist Konrad Lorenz believes that, unlike other carnivores, man did not at an early stage develop inhibitions against killing members of his own species—because he was too weak. As he developed weapons, he learned to kill, and he also learned moral restraints, but these never penetrated far enough. Writes Lorenz: “The deep emotional layers of our personality simply do not register the fact that the cocking of a forefinger to release a shot tears the entrails of another man.”

The yearning for nonviolence is as real as the yearning for love but, East or West, no religion has succeeded in establishing a society based on it. When trying to point to a really nonviolent community, anthropologists are usually forced to resort to the Arapesh of New Guinea or the Pygmies of the Ituri rain forest in the Congo. The human impulse to violence cannot be completely denied or suppressed. When that is tried, the result is often an inner violence in man that can burst out all the more fiercely later. At times the U.S. displays a kind of false prudery about violence to the point where, in the words of Psychiatrist Robert Coles, “almost anything related to forcefulness and the tensions between people is called violent.” While this attitude (including Dr. Wertham’s frequent blasts at anything from military toys to Batman) is plainly unrealistic, there is no denying that a gruesome violence on screens and in print is threatening to get out of hand. According to one theory, such vicarious experience of violence is healthy because it relieves the viewer’s own aggressions. But recent tests suggest the opposite.

Violence can be a simple, rational reaching for a goal, in its legal form of war or its illegal form of crime. It can often be irrational, as in a seemingly senseless killing or quarrel. But the distinction between irrational and rational violence is not easily drawn. Even the insane murderer kills to satisfy a need entirely real to him. Violence is often caused by “displaced aggression,” when anger is forced to aim at a substitute target. Every psychologist knows that a man might beat his child because he cannot beat his boss. And a man may even murder because he feels rejected or “alienated.” But what leads one man in such a situation to kill and another merely to get drunk is a question psychologists have never really answered. There is no doubt that violence has a cathartic effect, and the pressures that cause it must find an outlet of one kind or another. (Japan’s Matsushita Electric Co. has set up a dummy of the foreman that workers can beat up on a given day once a week, thereby presumably releasing their aggressions.)

But the aims of violence are usually mixed. Several violent codes combine a functional purpose with an emotional mystique. This was true of the aristocratic dueling code, which served to maintain a social hierarchy that became enshrouded in trappings of honor and death. It is true of the city gang, which functions as a rough and ready community but also includes a mystique in which violence is equated with courage and crime with merit. It is, finally, true of revolutionary ideology, which combines the brutal but often practical belief that only violence can pull down the existing order through a crude poetry about the purifying properties of blood and fire. “I believe in the cutting off of heads,” proclaimed Marat during the French Revolution, and his contemporary, the Marquis de Sade, preached, in the duller pages of his books, the virtue of murder as policy. Explains Brandeis University Sociologist Lewis Coser: “The act of violence commits a man symbolically to the revolutionary movement and breaks his ties with his previous life. He is, so to speak, reborn.” The late Frantz Fanon, a polemicist for anticolonial revolution, wrote: “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex.”

Cutting Edge

It is something resembling this revolutionary mystique that Stokely Carmichael and a few others are trying to impose on the Amerian Negro movement. Mixed with the anarchical slogans of “Burn, baby, burn!” and “Tear down the courthouses,” there is a calculated conviction that violence is above all else a language, and that this language, through fear, will persuade white society to give things to the Negro that it would not otherwise give. Says Lester Mc-Kinney, Washington head of S.N.C.C.: “In the minds of the people, history has proved that any meaningful social change has come through a bloody revolution.” Many Negro leaders point to the violent tactics of the labor movement in gaining its ends. Even Negro Sociologist Kenneth Clark, no advocate of black power, calls violence “the cutting edge of justice.” Social change for Negroes is moving faster than at any time in 100 years; for that very reason, Negroes were able to decide that things were still moving too slowly. The riots, as the President’s Crime Commission report puts it, are a way to “let America know.”

But the language of violence is crude and dangerous for those who use it. As Hannah Arendt notes, the Western tradition is full of violence and its legend seems to say, “whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide”; yet she also points out that neither wars nor revolutions are “ever completely determined by violence. Where violence rules absolutely, everything and everybody must fall silent.” Violence is not power. In the last analysis it is an admission of failure, a desire for a magical shortcut, an act of despair. Shameful though conditions in the Negro ghettos are, violence is not really the only language left in which to appeal for improvement.

Dealing with violence, the U.S. faces several tasks, none easy. One is to provide more intelligent, effective law enforcement and, through legislation, to do away with the dangerous unfettered sale of firearms. Another is nothing less than the elimination of the ghetto and what it stands for: an increasingly disaffected population. Though probably there will always be violence—out of anger or greed, love or madness—large-scale, socially significant violence is usually caused by authentic grievances, and the U.S. should be able to narrow if not eliminate these. But that leaves, finally, the individual flash or explosion of violence; and to deal with this, man must learn more about man—the mystery that can turn creative energy into brute force, a peaceful crowd into a mob, and an ineffectual weakling into a mass murderer.

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Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / Violence

Violence Essay Ideas

A violence essay addresses this highly damaging phenomenon, by analyzing its extent, its causes, the factors that aggravate it, as well as by looking for ways to increase awareness and find definitive solutions to this problem. Most of the time, such essays are focused on specific forms of violence, such as bullying, sexual violence, domestic violence, street violence, violence among incarcerated individuals, violence triggered by discrimination based on race, gender, religious confession, verbal and psychological abuse, especially with regard to children, and so on. Oftentimes, such essays contain first account evidence of abuse to portray the drama the victims are going through but also important statistics regarding the phenomenon or that assess the efficiency of counteracting measures.

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