The Road To Character By David Brooks: What Makes A Person Character

What makes a persons character ? Does the society tell them how to live or is it the environment that builds someones character. there are many attributes that can make ups a persons character. The individual though, can make their own based off things like their values, traits, morals, and qualities. Society and environment does play a big role in this though, telling you how you should act, telling you who you should be, but can this role play from the society and environment actually affect your own morals and qualities that make up our character. In the book, The Road to Character by David Brooks, he talks about how the culture can impact our character and change our values and traits based off what the culture says people should be. In

In the beginning of the book Brooks doesn't state exactly what the point of the book is, but makes sure

The main point being that people, even himself, sometimes builds there character off of what society says it should be. this leads him to his argument and main idea, that there are two virtues that people have which are, résumé virtue and eulogy virtue. Résumé virtue is career based side of nature that builds character and eulogy virtue is the right or wrong based character, to be the best you can be. He describes these two virtues by using the book of Genesis as his central metaphor. The Book of Genesis shows two different descriptions of Adam; Adam I and Adam II. Adam I has the characteristic of the résumé virtue, making it known that he wants to be on top of everyone, meaning he has the highest status of power and is victorious in everything he does. As for Adam II he has a sincere heart, knowing what is good and bad and makes his best efforts to be the best person he can. He uses this metaphor of Adam to show us the two sides of characteristics people have to show us how todays popular culture can make the balance between this two uneven. In todays culture we learn that being number one and getting ahead of others is how we become successful, but thats only in the career aspect of life. We see little attention of how one can do this spiritually and morally. After Brooks teaches us about the metaphor of Adam, he gives stories of figures that demonstrate these