The Seventh Man Sparknotes

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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

K. didn’t know. As clearly as I knew what I ought to be doing, I found myself running the other way—running full speed towards the dyke, alone. What made me do this, I’m sure, was fear, a fear so overpowering it took my voice away and set my legs to running on their own.” the narrator shares in paragraph 30 of, “The Seventh Man”. Fear
Following that, the seventh man fell victim to his own fictions-- subjective guilt.

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

exist.

In contrast, many believe that the seventh man should continue bearing guilt and regret for he is liable for not being able to save his friend. In the story, he had called out to K. when he noticed the typhoon was in the distance, but K. had not heard him. It is argued that instead of fleeing out of fear, the seventh man should have ran in to save K. And this is true, there are many better ways the seventh man could have handled the situation, however time moves in only one direction--forward. One will go through many instances where grief unleashes the idea that he or she should or could have done something differently, but reality is, there is nothing they can do to alter the course of events. The seventh man’s actions hold an unwavering permanence, thus mending is only accompanied by acceptance and forgiveness.
In essence, there are