We each have personal opinions and thoughts that we like to discuss and compare with others. Whether on trivial or crucial matters, this discussion, enabled by freedom of speech, allows us to search for truth.
“The Saturday Evening Post” commissioned the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Booth Tarkington in 1943 to write an essay to accompany Norman Rockwell’s painting “Freedom of Speech.”
In his short essay, “Freedom of Speech,”  Tarkington highlights the true value of the freedom of speech by creating a story of a conversation in 1912, long before this painting was created.
Rockwell’s painting depicts a working-class man standing in a meeting room among well-dressed gentlemen. Though rugged and dirty, this man’s posture represents one who is speaking his mind and standing for what he believes in. His difference in class from those around him does not deter him from declaring his thoughts and opinions: His are just as important as others’….