Tom Godwin’s short story “The Cold Equations” elucidates the thematic tension law versus opinion; accordingly, the author shows bias towards law because he believes it overcomes opinion when being forced to make a decision. The Cold Equation begins by bringing the reader to a dangerous situation where there is a stowaway on this man’s EDS, spaceship, and he is forced to do the unthinkable, the law--kill it. Then when the man finally stands up and forces the stowaway out, he is shocked to see it is a girl named Marilyn, that is just trying to go and see her brother, making his job a lot harder. The driver of the EDS explains to her that he is carrying a serum to a planet to save six people with a fever and there is only enough fuel to take him to his destination and her added weight will cause him, her, and those six …show more content…
Marilyn then asked if she could call her brother to say goodbye but unfortunately her brother was out on his planet so she had to wait; in her spare time she wrote letters to her parents telling them everything she wanted them to hear. Later on, her brother came back but the reception time was almost up; so, they said their goodbyes and ended the phone call. After the phone call with her brother was over, she told the driver she was ready to leave the EDS; furthermore, the driver put her in the separate room and opened the top and she flew into space. To begin with, an example of the thematic tension is when the driver of the EDS realizes he has a girl stowaway and refuses to do the law right away and lets his opinions come into play. While explaining the drivers first thoughts when he saw the girl stowaway, the author uses imagery and says, “He would have taken the stowaway's identification disk and ordered him into the air lock. Had the stowaway refused to obey, he would have used the
In a galaxy far away, where an EDS ship has fuel limited to the exact weight of the cargo there is a stowaway on the ship. In order to calculate for fuel ,a math equation is used to determine the amount of fuel the ship needs to get safely to its destination. If there is an unwanted x added into the equation the ship will run out of fuel and crash. In the short story, The Cold Equations, written by Tom Godwin, a pilot must fly the emergency fever serum to the planet Woden in order to save the six people there dying of a fever, but he comes across a stowaway (x) that makes it impossible for him to deliver the serum to the people in time,
Every human is faced with a decision every second of the day, from the moment they wake up, to when they finally drift off to sleep, and every moment in between. For some the choice between doing good and doing bad is obvious, for others the choice might not be so clear. There are always obstacles that can make the choice hard, be it peer pressure or pressure that people put on themselves to be something different; the option to do the wrong thing is always hanging in front of them. Robert Louis Stevenson represents the archetypal theme of this idea in multiple ways in the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. During the Victorian Era, in which the story is set, there was a largely agreed upon fact that there was a certain way
In Cold Blood, a novel written by Truman Capote and published in 1966, is, though written like fiction, a true account of the murder of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. This evocative story illuminates new insights into the minds of criminals, and how society tends to act as a whole, and achieves its purpose by utilizing many of the techniques presented in Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In In Cold Blood, Capote uses symbols of escape and American values, and recurring themes of egotism and family to provide a new perspective on crime and illustrate an in-depth look at why people do the things they do.
Throughout the Non-fiction novel In Cold Blood Truman Capote convinces the reader the idea of death penalty as a punishment, seeing it as hypocritical. This is achieved through Capote’s ability to succeed to the reader’s credibility and emotions.
Huttman, Barbara. “A Crime of Compassion.” The Genre of Argument Ed. Irene Clark. Boston, MA: Christopher Klein, 1998.
Saunders explores this concept by presenting the reader with two characters: Jeff, a criminal, and Abnesti, the head scientist of the testing facility. Abnesti is introduced as a nonchalant, goal oriented scientist. To test the effectiveness of ED289/290, he threatens to use Darkenfloxx™ on the subjects’ former romantic partners. Darkenfloxx™ is a drug of torture. It floods the brain with an overwhelming amount of negative emotions. It is so potent in its effect that it is worse than if one were to “imagine the worst you have ever felt, times ten” (56). At first this is simply a bluff, yet when he is told to actually administer the drug, he recognizes the order merely as a slightly unpleasant turn of events. After Heather unexpectedly dies after only five minutes of Darkenfloxx™-inflicted torture, his excuse is, “This is science. In science we explore the unknown. It was unknown what five minutes on Darkenfloxx would do to Heather. Now we know” (72). As well as serving as the story’s main antagonist, Abnesti is symbolic of scientific progress in general. The Darkenfloxx™ incident, especially, paints him as an unsympathetic man with a stubborn moral code, but his definition of morality emphasizes the “group”—or society at large—over the individual prisoners whom he experiments on. Despite this, Abnesti is not altogether evil. He reminds Jeff, “When a certain
Unger’s main example, titled The Envelope, is a case that forces the reader to re-evaluate their initial reactions when compared to other examples such as The Vintage Sedan. In the case of The Envelope, a person, who is not financially well off, receives a letter in the mail from UNICEF asking for one hundred dollars that will go to save thirty children in poorer nations. Instead of putting a minimal amount of energy and resources into writing the cheque, they choose to disregard it and throw it in the trash (25). In The Vintage Sedan, a person has just recently restored a classic luxury sedan that they can only barely afford. This person encounters a wounded man on the road who caused the injury himself by recklessly trespassing over barbed wire fencing. Now the owner of the sedan is faced with ...
The ‘Trolley Car Problem’ has sparked heated debates amongst numerous philosophical and jurisprudential minds for centuries. The ‘Trolley Car’ debate challenges one’s pre-conceived conceptions about morals, ethics and the intertwined relationship between law and morality. Many jurisprudential thinkers have thoroughly engaged with this debate and have consequentially put forward various ideologies in an attempt to answer the aforementioned problem. The purpose of this paper is to substantiate why the act of saving the young, innocent girl and resultantly killing the five prisoners is morally permissible. In justifying this choice, this paper will, first, broadly delve into the doctrine of utilitarianism, and more specifically focus on a branch
In the short story “The Cold Equations” written by Tom Godwin he conspired willingness and wanting, this happens when the little girl named Marilyn Lee Cross gets on the jet and isn't supposed to. The pilot discovers her and isn't willing to help her because there was 6 other men on the ship and their lives were way more important than the little girl's life. First off, the pilot of the ship is driving a ship in which they give an exact amount of fuel to get to there destination. “Everybody wants me dead and I didn't do anything. I didn't hurt anyone—I only wanted to see my brother." "It's not the way you think—it isn't that way, at all," he said. "Nobody wants it this way; nobody would ever let it be this way if it was humanly possible to change it."
JAne is now 19, and she gets a job as a reporter. She, then, sees a picture of two survivors of the Titanic in the newspaper, after all these years. Jane starts to recognize Mimi and Thad as the two survivors. As soon as she recognized it, she begged and begged her boss to do it. Finally, he said yes. She goes to them and now she is confirmed that it is truly Mimi and Thad. Then, they decide to go into Tesla’s time machine. When they went in it, it sent them a couple of years into the future. To everyone else, it seems that Mimi and Thad had been gone for many years, but for them it was just minutes. Jane then tells her that her husband is dead. Mimi, Thad, and Jane then take the train
(7) H. L., Hart, The Concept of Law, ch. VIII, and D., Lyons, Ethics and the rule of law, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 78 ff,
Our group selected our play presentation on “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin. This play is about a girl named Marilyn who was ejected from the Stardust aircraft. Our group selected this play so we could create an exciting, interesting, and suspenseful alternative ending. We titled our alternative ending, The Slightly Warmer Equation because of the happier and lighter storyline that our play has in comparison to “The Cold Equations” dark and dreadful storyline. The reason we did this was so that we could convey to the audience that Marilyn was getting closer to solving her own life equation and living happily ever after. The main conflict in the play is that Marilyn has floated onto the Octagon spacecraft belonging to aliens. She is then discovered
She continues in this sequel to talk about the abuse she faced and the dysfunction that surrounded her life as a child and as a teen, and the ‘empty space’ in which she lived in as a result. She talks about the multiple personalities she was exhibiting, the rebellious “Willie” and the kind “Carol”; as well as hearing noises and her sensory problems. In this book, the author puts more emphasis on the “consciousness” and “awareness” and how important that was for her therapeutic process. She could not just be on “auto-pilot” and act normal; the road to recovery was filled with self-awareness and the need to process all the pieces of the puzzle—often with the guidance and assistance of her therapist. She had a need to analyze the abstract concept of emotions as well as feelings and thoughts. Connecting with others who go through what she did was also integral to her
sensing that "these two extremes are made so to encompass life as to be a
Dyzenhaus, David, Sophia Moreau, and Arthur Ripstein. "R.V. Labaye." Law and morality: readings in legal philosophy. 3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. 336-341. Print.