The White Snake: Altruism

2449 Words5 Pages

Mario A. Sánchez
Mrs. Díaz
Sociology
11 October 2016
The White Snake: An Analysis of What Constitutes as Altruism Altruism, or altruistic behavior, can be defined as the action of someone who goes out of his or her way to provide some type of help to someone completely unrelated to that person without expecting anything in return. It’s a matter of morality rather than rational choice. The concept could be seen as sort of a mirror or opposite to reciprocity, which is the idea that if you provide some form of help to certain person or group of people, the person or people that received the help owe you something in return. Not to be confused with social reciprocity, which is “the back-and-forth of social interaction”(ASBC). A lot of times it …show more content…

In The White Snake, the protagonist, after being accused of stealing the Queen’s ring was afraid for his life. He was worried because they were going to execute him and he didn’t have any justifiable way to prove his innocence. We have to consider that by the time he was told he was going to be executed, he had already ate the white snake, he already had the ability to listen and speak to animals. He surely must have realized that there were more to these animals than meets the eye and that the animals were able to showcase the same type of personality, emotion and pain that any other human could. We know this because the protagonist helped the ravens, the ants, and the fish precisely for this reason, he realized that they suffered and pleaded for their life just like any human would. So knowing this, when we go back to the courtyard where the protagonist was sitting when he saw the ducks talking by a brook, when the protagonist realized the duck had accidentally ate the Queen’s ring it is said that “the servant at once seized her by the neck, carried her to the kitchen, and said to the cook, here is a fine duck, pray, kill her”(Grimm, Wilhelm). This action was anything but …show more content…

“The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement.” American
Sociological Review, vol. 25, no. 2, 1960, p. 161. doi:10.2307/2092623.

Grimm, Wilhelm et al. The Original Folk &Amp; Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: the
Complete First Edition.

“History of Blood Banking | Community Blood Center.” History of Blood Banking |
Community Blood Center, http://givingblood.org/about-blood/history-of-blood-banking.aspx.

“Learn How to Get Involved.” The Autism Society of BaltimoreChesapeake ASBC, http://www.baltimoreautismsociety.org/glossary/term/social-reciprocity/. Marsh, Abigail. “Transcript of ‘Why Some People Are More Altruistic than Others.’” Abigail
Marsh: Why Some People Are More Altruistic than Others, Ted Talks.

“Merriam-Webster.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/altruism. Packer, C. “Reciprocal Altruism in Papio Anubis.” Nature, vol. 265, no. 5593, Mar. 1977, pp.
441–443. doi:10.1038/265441a0.

Schino, Gabriele, and Filippo Aureli. “A Few Misunderstandings about Reciprocal
Altruism.” Communicative &Amp; Integrative Biology, Landes Bioscience, 2010, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3038063/.

Trivers, Robert L. “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism.” The Quarterly Review of

Open Document