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Altruism In The Road

428 Words2 Pages
Struggling to survive in the harsh setting of The Road, being altruistic is not always possible and in some instances the characters find it necessary to focus on their own well-being. Many instances occur in which the characters exhibit this behavior. Early in the novel the man apologizes to his son, “I’m sorry, he said. But we have nothing to give him. We have no way to help him. I’m sorry for what happened to him but we cant fix it.” (50), enforcing the principle that taking care of his son and himself is their main priority. As the son begs and pleads to help the stranger his father reminds him that they themselves have very little to eat. As it is evident that the man is crippled, he has little chance of survival and the father knows that
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Because the son has been so starved, he is willing to do anything to gain some sort of food and increase his lifespan. This can further be explained when the father exclaims “Don’t you recognize me? I’m your father”, this insinuates that the son shouldn’t be harming his father, this explains that to this boy family relationships should be important to his self identity. Nevertheless, with this desperation for food and therefore survival, the son can’t focus on anyone else’s needs, he instead has to neglect all others, including his father despite the assumption he most likely gave every part of his own being to keep his son safe and protected. Another example of food being more important than family is when the main character, Eliezer,

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Kindness: the Ultimate Help-All In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, many characters come into play. Some pass through in a couple chapters, while others stay and lend their minds to close scrutiny. Many of these characters come from different worlds. Billy helped Reuven get through his stint at the hospital while waiting for an operation that would hopefully fix his blindness. Mr. Malter, Reuven’s father, guided Danny in expanding his reading horizons and seeking out interesting material.

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He got two times the amount of bread due to his father being dead. His father died a hard death and his biggest fear had come. He became a selfish person because he had been helping other people and doing things for other people all of his life.

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“He was right, I thought deep down, not daring to admit it to myself. Too late to save your old father…You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup… It was only a fraction of a second, but it left me feeling guilty.” At the end, he is able to regather himself and care for his father until his final days; Although, still under the burden of tremendous stress and guilt for wishing death upon his

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Altruism is always an admirable trait, but as with any other trait, if altruism is taken to an extreme, it can result in consequences such as giving away so many resources that one would be unable to provide for himself and being unwilling to risk harming others. This theme is portrayed in the short novel Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, by means of the main protagonist and tragic hero, Ethan Frome. Due to his tragic flaw of selflessness, Ethan fails to muster up the courage to stand up for himself, which dooms him into the final demise, in which he and Mattie Silver cripple themselves in a sledding crash. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, Ethan possesses the tragic flaw of excessive selflessness.

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Despite all the horrors that they face, the small family shares a deep connection. This allows for meaning and value in their lives amid all the suffering and pain. The existence of this relationship makes the struggle worthwhile. Many of the days the man and boy spend together they are working toward a common goal, the man teaching the boy about many things and the kid teaching his father to not leave the other good guys behind. For example, he coerces his father into giving food to an old, nearly blind man.

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He assesses the damage to his mother’s vehicle. The protagonist had earlier rebelled against morals and standards, but he now wants to return to normalcy. At the

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The character feels an almost bittersweet sensation here due to his father not being there for him in times when he needs him. It is a tragedy that even though he is relieved that his health is in satisfactory condition, his father is not because of his own choices of an unsatisfactory

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Throughout the book, those people begin to lose faith in those things that had helped keep them alive: their faith, their loved ones, and themselves. Often, we find ourselves facing events in our lives that force us to redefine ourselves. Such circumstances try to break the heart of the human nature in us. It is at that time, the humanity in us either shatters apart, or it transforms into a strong bundle of compassion.

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The family pair struggles to maintain enough food for themselves, but despite that the boy still tries to give up his food in order to help others. Not only did he insist in helping a man as rude as Ely, but wanted to help the lost kid on the road. “We could get him and take him with us…. I’d give that little boy half of my food”( McCarthy 86). This displays the naturally generous and unselfish characteristics of the boy.

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While the people doing the helping know that they’re being nice, they don’t know that people like this writer are out there who see them and appreciate them for what they are. Once again, the helper is naive to the person watching them and has no idea that they really are appreciated. From these two passages we can learn that helping people is a good thing and has its benefits, even if the person that you’re helping doesn’t know you’re there. The man who shovelled his sidewalk for the students was unseen by them as they flocked to school, but he didn’t mind as he was content with watching their success from his window. The woman who wrote the second passage talked about her appreciation for people like the man in the first

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Then he realizes that he was not going to stay with his money when he die. At the end, he helped his employee with a monetary situation. Further, he went to his nephew’s Christmas dinner. Significantly, this novel helps people retrain the meaning of being humble and kind with others. Something that is very important about this novel is that it teaches a lesson of helping others, because you are not going to stay with your money when you die.

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It is the grandmother’s selfishness that leads to the death of her family. The short story “A good Man is Hard to Find” teaches us that nothing good come from being selfish. Being selfish has plenty of consequences. One of them is that when you are selfish you or your loved once suffer. In the short story by O’Connor, the grandmother’s selfishness leads to the death of her family.

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The example of wanting to be hit by a car led to a driver who was a neighbor. Sedaris describes the event, “He had outfitted his tires with chains and stopped a few feet from our sister’s body,” (Sedaris 90). The sister explained to the driver that they were locked out of the house. This is an exceptional emotional appeal to convey to his audience that the event was traumatic to the children.

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His idiosyncrasy remains loving and understanding, even when his younger son returned home after many of been away with not a penny to his name. The young son showed disobedience to all the goodness his father had offered to him. The young son showed traits such as selfishness as well as being ungrateful. He had no worth for his father’s property nor did he want to work alongside his father on the family farm.

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