Analysis Of Putting In A Good Word For Guilt By Ellen Goodman

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In the article “Putting in a Good Word for Guilt” (2003), Ellen Goodman speaks of guilt and that people must find the correct balance of guilt. A few of the points that she touched on hit me personally. The first of these being that the “desire to avoid feeling guilty makes us avoid the worst sort of behavior” (3).Then she goes on to explain how young children fight and their guilt is what makes them feel bad about what they did. Once they realize that they don’t like experiencing this feeling, they will try not act negatively again. When I was younger me and my little brother would get into fights where he would break my toys or take my saved Halloween candy causing me to pinch him or hurt him in another way. Since I was the oldest I would always be the one to get in trouble. …show more content…

Eventually I learned not to pinch him and to use my words as my mother taught me so I wouldn’t have to feel bad afterwards. I completely agree the point that guilt steers us away from sin as well as the point that God has distributed people's’ susceptibility to guilt at many different levels depending on the person. Goodman explains that “a large majority of men have brought along with them only a modest amount of it, or scarcely enough to worth mentioning”(1). This explains the importance of guilt to those who weren't born with much susceptibility to it in the first place, and how it is not something that these people should try to rid themselves of. Overall, I strongly agree with Goodman that guilt keeps people from performing negative actions and that everyone is born with a varying susceptibility to

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