In Barbara Asher’s essay “On Compassion” the two women were both compelled by different motives; one was fear and the other was compassion. The first woman with her child waiting at the street crossing was terrified of the scraggly looking African American man starring at her child. So out of terror Asher says the women was “…bearing the dollar like a cross” which means she was holding it away from and her child as if trying to tell the man to stay back without speaking. Also the woman tightly gripped the handle of her stroller, going into defense mode. This brings the readers to believe that this was a racial issue and quite stereotypical, just a middle class woman walking with her blonde haired baby when approached by a different colored
man of lower class. The owner of the shop, “a moody French woman”, gives out of pure, humble compassion. The author describes the coffee shop as being a middle class shop with overpriced pastries. Which means homeless looking people don’t generally just stroll in everyday as if it was a soup kitchen. The owner could have just ran the gentleman out, but she did not. She handed him a hot steaming drink and a paper sack and sent him on his way. What people say is compassion isn’t always compassion, it just depends on the circumstance.
She uses a string full of rhetorical questions throughout her article, as well, to make us contemplate whether people do deeds out of compassion, fear, or something else. She uses rhetorical questions such as “Was it fear or compassion that motivated that gift?”(6), “...what compels this woman to feed this man? Pity? Care? Compassion? Or does she simply want to rid her shop of his troublesome presence?”(9), and “Could it be that the homeless, like those ancients, are reminding us of our common humanity?”(14). These questions make the audience think and contemplate why these people did these acts of kindness. Ascher includes some of these rhetorical questions at the end of both of the narratives to force the readers to quickly analyze the situation and decide what the motivation was. As a result, I can conclude that one woman did it out of fear while the other did it out of compassion; therefore, this proves that people are not born compassionate, but they develop the quality later on in life. This is more effective instead of just expressing how she personally feels about each
In the short story “Nightingale” Tobias Wolff creates an alternate reality to emphasize men’s confusion in the world and what they have to sacrifice to become what society believes is the perfect man. As Dr. Booth drives to try and find the academy he remembers “as a boy, he himself [wants] nothing more than a chance to dream” (1349). This dreaming stops the moment he attends the academy. He remembers the academy and how the clock’s “hands frozen” and the judgment he faced as he was made to become one of the world’s robotic soldiers (1347).Dr. Booth loses his internal life and imagination the second he chooses to take the path that society has chosen for the men of the world. He gives in to the pressure of what a man is supposed to be and adheres
Forgiveness is to stop feeling angry, to stop blaming someone for the way they made a person feel, and stop feeling victims of whatever wickedness was directed towards them. Is forgiveness necessary? Can everyone be forgiven despite the circumstances? If forgiveness depends on the situation, then is it necessary at all? Does forgiveness allow someone to continue their life in peace? Is forgiving someone who causes physical pain to someone, as a pose to forgiving someone who murdered a member of the family the same? If someone can forgive one of these acts so easily can the other be forgiven just as easy? Forgiveness allows for someone to come to terms with what they have experienced. In the case of murder forgiveness is necessary because it allows for someone to be at peace with themselves knowing they no longer have to live with hatred. It also allows someone to begin a new life with new gained experience and different perspectives on life. Forgiveness is necessary from a moral perspective because it allows someone to get rid of hatred and find peace within him or herself to move on with their lives.
Barbra Huttmann’s purpose in writing her story in A Crime of Compassion is to convince people that no matter their beliefs, it is sometimes more humane to let someone die if they are suffering. This was the case with a cancer patient of hers named Mac. She communicates this directly by saying, “Until there is legislation making it a criminal act to code a patient has requested the right to die, we will all of us risk of the same face as Mac” (Huttmann 422).
According to Arianna Huffington in the article “Empathy: What We Need Now”, during hardships and instability of society, empathy is needed to find solutions to those issues. Huffington writes about how empathy is needed in our country in order to produce a positive social change. She begins by giving an example of a movement that Martin Luther King created and how empathy was a part of this movement. King as well spoke of how empathy is the sign of living. To become involved in the situations of humanity in order to improve it, displays that empathy is the core of a human’s existence. After reading this article, I do agree with Huffington about how individuals need to fully understand and put themselves within the situation to fully comprehend the issue to solve.
In the featured article, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” the author, Judith Butler, writes about her views on what it means to be considered human in society. Butler describes to us the importance of connecting with others helps us obtain the faculties to feel, and become intimate through our will to become vulnerable. Butler contends that with the power of vulnerability, the rolls pertaining to humanity, grief, and violence, are what allows us to be acknowledged as worthy.
One of the symbols used in this short story is the hat that Julian’s mother and the black woman on the bus wear. Ironically, these hats represent both women sharing the same rights and equalities; both races ride the same bus, sitting in the same seats; and both like the same fashions. Another symbol is the penny that Julian’s mother gives to the little black boy, representing th...
Virginia Held brings up many criticisms of traditional ethical theories in her essay. The ethics of care can be considered as a suitable substitution for other widely accepted ethical theories such as Kantian ethics. The ethics of care recognizes the importance of interpersonal relationships, especially those within the family unit. All people need care at some point during their life, be it at birth or old age. Caring for people that can not provide sufficient care for themselves is a fundamental part of a moral society. Ethical theories based on the importance of a rational and independent individual excludes the importance of interpersonal reliance.
“Oh, Great Spirit, keep me from judging another man until I’ve walked in his moccasins.”-Jane Elliot. Jane Elliot was a third grade teacher who experimented on her class by separating them into brown eyes and blue eyes and then telling them one group was better than the other. The better eye colored group was discriminating, prejudiced, and judgemental against the opposite eye color. After observing the vicious outcome, Jane Elliot came to the conclusion that you have to use compassion to understand what people are going through. During the 1930’s, whites were still being prejudice against others, and blacks were still getting segregated and discriminated against. For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird the blacks live much farther
whatever it takes to keep them alive. That is not moral, that is legal. But
In “Black Men in Public Spaces” the author talks about multiply situation where he was treated different for being an African American. Staples said,” I entered a jewelry store on the city’s affluent near North side. The proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash” (161.) Then there is “Right Place, Wrong Face, which is focused on and African American man that is wrongly accused of a crime because of his race. White said, “I was searched, stripped of my backpack, put on my knees, handcuffed, and told to be quieted when I tried to ask questions” (229.) The two articles have many similarities. Both articles have two educated African America men who get treated different because of their race. Staples and White both have situations where they are being stereotyped by society because there black
Simon Wiesenthal life and legends were extraordinary, he has expired people in many ways and was an iconic figure in modern Jewish history. Szyman Wiesenthal (was his real named and later named Simon) was born on December 31 in Buczacz, Galicia (which is now a part of Ukraine) in 1908. When Wiesenthal's father was killed in World War I, Mrs. Wiesenthal took her family to Vienna for a brief period, returning to Buczacz when she remarried. The young Wiesenthal graduated from the Humanistic Gymnasium (a high school) in 1928 and applied for admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov. Turned away because of quota restrictions on Jewish students, he went instead to the Technical University
Title Compassion fatigue According to Taylor (2008) the definition of nurse comes from the meaning of the Latin word nutrix, which means “to nourish”. Nursing has a focus on caring for every patient physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually. To meet the needs of every patient, nurses must take on many roles, but the main role is care giver (Taylor, 2008, p.14). Caring for another person requires many traits, and the most common is compassion.
Statements like ‘I don’t see color’ and ‘I accept you despite your race’ conveys a major implication. These statements imply that color is a problem. I believe there is no problem with color, but there is people who have a problem with color. Walker’s encounter with a WASP-looking Jewish student that invalidates her racial identity by asking if she is “really black and Jewish” (25) and “how can that be possible” (25) makes her question if her biracial identity is a problem and if “[she] is possible” (25). Ralina Joseph, author of "Performing the Twenty-first Century Tragic Mulatto: Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self" believes the conflict that arises from the farce of “colorblindness is the reality of tragic, mixed-race blackness.”(Joesph). According to Joesph, Walker’s invocation of Movement Child, and the tragic mulatto becomes the means through which she “demonstrates the impossibility of the racial ideology of colorblindness” (Joseph). I agree with this. Walker’s biracial experiences prove that society has yet to move past race. I can only imagine Walker walking into different classrooms and everyone looking at her trying to analyze what other race she is mixed with; this other race not being the norm, which leads to the social exclusion Walker faces.
Elizabeth Anscombe argued that the taking of an innocent life as a means to an end is always murder. In her understanding of morality, it was intention, not outcomes, which determined the moral value of behavior. In so reasoning, she found it reprehensible that one would make the argument that any ends could justify the using of a human life as a tool for accomplishing a goal. She does not argue for pacifism or an abstention from killing, as Anscombe writes, “. . . one human being deliberately to kill another is not inevitably wrong.” Instead, she asked that the focus be removed from the outcome all together. The means by which an outcome is reached holds the only moral significance. That is to say, if someone were to have her own person