The Seventh Man Sparknotes

Insert Title Here Our mental wounds will cease to heal if we continually tear back into them. Haruki Murakami’s short story, “The Seventh Man” renders the feelings of grief and remorse through a man’s recollection of his past. The seventh man shares his narrative of the devastating typhoon which ended the life of his closest friend, K. In spite of his lack of success to save K., he should forgive himself for his actions as he is not morally responsible for the outcome of the event, fear is overwhelming, and time is linear.

To start, the seventh man should absolve himself from his actions because fear and instinctive reactions are often times out of one’s control. “I told myself to run over to K., grab hold of him, and get out of there. It was the only thing to do. I knew that the wave was coming, and

In the editorial on war survivor’s syndrome, “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt,” by Nancy Sherman, Sherman states in paragraph 5, “We often take responsibility in a way that goes beyond what we can reasonably be held responsible for.” In war, a soldier may watch his comrade two feet away from him lose his life. Later, he will begin to feel as though it is his fault because he feels he should have stood there instead of his partner. That form of self-blame is unreasonable as life threatening situations are random and the soldier failed to realize that he did not kill his partner, the enemy did. Similarly, the seventh man holds himself accountable for K.’s death, yet it was K.’s misfortune in the typhoon that had led to his demise. Therefore, Sherman also wrote in paragraph 15, “...soldiers impose moral order on the chaos and awful randomness of war’s violence.” Like the soldiers, the seventh man fixed his own ethicalities onto the tragedy, causing the event to haunt him. His fictions prove that he should forgive himself, because he engulfed himself in guilt that should not