Has there ever been a time in your life where you had to experience a tragedy. The Seventh Man did. The seventh man was only ten years old on a september afternoon when a typhoon hit his home town of Providence of S. During the eye of the storm, he and his friend named K went down to the beach. A wave hit and killed K but the seventh man was able to escape. For the rest of the seventh man’s life, he had to deal with survivor's guilt until he was able to forgive himself. Should the seventh man forgive himself of his failures? Yes, The seventh man should forgive himself of all responsibility of K’s death. First and foremost you must understand what the seventh man is going through. What he is going through is called survivor guilt. Survivor’s guilt is really common with soldiers that are returning from war with a feeling of guilt because they are coming home alive while their buddies aren’t. “Survivor’s guilt being perhaps the kind most familiar to us. In war, standing here rather than there can save your life but not your buddies. It’s flukish luck, but you feel responsible” (para 2, The Moral Logic of Survivor's Guilt). Survivor’s guilt mostly happens when there’s an accident where there is little to no culpability with the death of that person or people like what happened with the seventh man. “I knew that I could have saved K. if I had tried. I probably could have run over and dragged him out of the reach of the wave “ (para 41 The Seventh Man). The seventh …show more content…
Having guilt to go with all the emotions swilling around your head makes it even worse. The seventh man should forgive himself of all culpability of the accident that took his best friend’s life. Forgiving yourself can also be tough but the seventh man forgave himself by going back to where it all started. If you have guilt the first thing you need to do is forgive yourself or you might have to face the consequences from your
Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness spoke to me about the question of forgiveness and repentance. Simon Wiesenthal was a Holocaust prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He experienced many brutal and uneasy experiences that no human being should experience in their lifetime and bear to live with it. Death, suffering, and despair were common to Simon Wiesenthal that he questioned his own religious faith because he asks why would his God allow the Holocaust happen to his people to be slaughter and not do anything to save them. During Simon Wiesenthal time as a Jewish Holocaust, Simon was invited to a military hospital where a dying Nazi SS officer wanted to have a conversation. The Nazi SS officer told Simon his story of his life and confesses to Simon of his horrific war crimes. Ultimately, the SS officer wanted forgiveness for what he done to Simon’s Jewish people. Simon Wiesenthal could not respond to his request, because he did not know what to do with a war criminal that participate in mass genocide to Simon’s people. Simon Wiesenthal lives throughout his life on asking the same crucial question, “What would I have done?” (Wiesenthal 98). If the readers would be on the exact situation as Simon was
Forgiveness is not an action that should be taken for granted. Nor should it be easily accepted without a second thought. It was strong of Simon to refuse to give Karl an answer to his request. “Possibly, there are circumstances in which forgiving is a temptation, a promise of relief that might be morally dubious. Indeed, the refusal to forgive may represent the more demanding moral accomplishment” (Brudholm 2). Simon did not give into the temptation to give a dying man the easy answer he sought and say that he forgave him without thinking it over. Karl assumed that he would be forgiven, even though he did not express much remorse about what he had done. Because he did not automatically tell Karl that he forgave him, Simon never had ...
...ace. Vain repentance will be too late. Repentance helps only when he has the possibility to reform his actions. His grief will be useless.
Even though the seventh man was responsible for the lost of his best friend he also brightened K’s life in many ways. The seventh man had the mentality that K hated him for killing him when really K was okay with dying. He lived a happy life and the seventh man realized that after studying K’s paintings. I think the seventh man should forgive himself as even though he cost his friend’s life, he also made his life better by being a part of it. Forgiving yourself after one mistake is hard for everyone, but realizing what we’ve done for others can wash those terrors away like the ocean with
Moral repair is a word of many meanings. One may say it's "restoring or creating trust and hope in a shared sense of value and responsibility". Others will say "Moral repair is the process of moving from the situation of loss and damage to a situation where some degree of stability in moral relations is regained." Others will have different perspectives on the true meaning of moral repair and whether someone has achieved it. In Haruki Murakami’s short story “The Seventh Man”, the narrator speaks of a tragic event that took the life of a close childhood friend leaving the narrator with a weight of guilt and need for moral repair. Murakami illustrates the narrator’s internal self battle and struggles throughout the story which gives the reader
In the short story The 7th Man, the narrator's best friend dies. He is swept away by a typhoon wave. Although the 7th man could’ve saved him, he didn’t. This man shouldn’t feel guilty for not saving his friend. He was surviving and didn’t know exactly what to do in that instant.
Although, grief work theories are often applied to deaths, they can also be applied to other sorts of loss that an individual faces. For instance, in 2012, I had just bought a new black Trek bike. Three days later, I stepped outside only to find my broken bike lock and my bike nowhere in sight. All of a sudden, I began verbally abusing everyone and was unable to control it. The police’s in ability to assist me fuelled my anger and frustration. As a result of this monetary loss, I never rode a bike after that ,despite being an avid cyclist. I lost interest rapidly and avoided any events that involved the use of a bicycle. To this day, I hope that somehow I will have my bike restored to me and I will revive my passion for cycling.
The feeling the seventh man felt wasn't at all a rare exotic feeling it's a common thing felt by many people in society today, in fact survivor's guilt is considered to be the main way people cope with traumatic events in which a loved one was lost. “When a person survives a traumatic incident in which others died, especially loved ones, it's common to feel guilty for living” (Elizabeth Landau,CNN Article). So the seventh man wasn't wrong feeling at fault for the fate of his fellow friend, rather it was expected from him after the event.
Although he feels guilty, K’s death is not the seventh man’s fault. The text states, “...I found myself
The act of forgiving a murder is out of the question for most people. Simon is confronted with this very dilemma in The Sunflower. Karl, a dying Nazi, is asking forgiveness from a Jew, the narrator. The narrator leaves the dying Nazi with no answer, leaving him with an agonizing thought of whether he did or did not do the right thing. Due to the fact both Karl and the narrator’s psychological well-being is affected by not only wartime but other extenuating factors, the narrator should grant Karl forgiveness, as this dying man is an individual who is genuinely repenting for the crimes he has committed. Forgiveness will allow Karl to die with piece of mind while the narrator will continue life with a stable and clear conscience.
Imagine blaming yourself for the death of someone close, the guilt weighing down on your shoulders… You know it wasn’t your fault but you can’t shake the feeling that you could’ve done something to avert the situation. Drowning in disbelief that you survived yet they didn’t. This is known as survivors guilt. In the story “The Seventh Man” the narrator undergoes survivors guilt when he was unable to save his best friend K.. The narrator of “The Seventh Man” should forgive himself for his failure to save K., if he tried any harder to save K he might've died as well. It wasn’t his fault that K. was unable to hear him, therefore the narrator of “The Seventh Man” shouldn’t be at fault nor accuse himself.
Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus unfolds the story about his father Vladek Spiegleman, and his life during the WWII. Since Vladek and Art are both the narrators of the story, the story not only focuses on Vladek's survival, but also the writing process and the organization of the book itself. Through these two narrators, the book explores various themes such as identity, perspective, survival and guilt. More specifically, Maus suggests that surviving an atrocity results in survivor’s guilt, which wrecks one’s everyday life and their relationships with those around them. It accomplishes this through symbolism and through characterization of Vladek and Anja.
The story “The Seventh Man,” by Haruki Murakami was about a little boy that lived with his family in a small town when a typhoon hits. After all the fury of the powerful winds had calmed, the man’s dad told him that it was ok for him to walk along the beach because they were in the eye of the storm. His dad told him that when he felt or saw the first sight of wind to go right home. The man’s best friend was named K. The two boys met on the beach together, looking at all of the remains from the storm. They were so mesmerized that they forgot about the wind, so when the big waves started to come in it was too late. The man yelled for K. and tried to get him to run, but K. was swallowed up by a wave. The man stood looking for him, and was the second wave crest rolled over, he saw K. inside of it. After this terrible event, the man still can not stop blaming himself for not being able to save him. The narrator of “The Seventh Man” should forgive his actions because some people, depending on the situation, that have gone through a bad experience like that think they could have done more, when they could not.
When events like terrorist attacks or natural disasters occur, at least a few people are often left alone. Someone, or everyone, in their family has died and they have to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move on. As they struggle to continue with their life they often feel survivor guilt. Survivor guilt is when people who survive an event like 9/11 or the holocaust, where other people died, feel guilty, even though they had no control over what was happening. Many people argue about if people should or should not feel survivor guilt. Some people believe survivors of life threatening situations should feel survivor guilt. Others feel they should not. Survivors of life and death situations should feel survivor guilt.
One thing that communities have been able to realize from returning war veterans is that it can be extremely hard for them to return to where they have left off. This is not necessarily because they have no place to return, but because of the emotional reality of the differences between their self’s and the outside community. While their families and friends may be experiencing a miracle and the weight of relief has been lifted from their shoulders, the veterans they welcome home with open arms are likely struggling with emotions. High on this list of emotions is guilt, Survivor’s guilt to be more precise (Sherman, 2011).