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The Seventh Man By Haruki Murakami

679 Words3 Pages

“... I could have come to the end of my life unsaved, still screaming in the dark, afraid,” from The Seventh Man by Haruki Murakami. The Seventh Man witnessed his best friend in the whole world dying and never forgave himself for letting K. go until he completely let go of all the guilt he had built up. What The Seventh Man was experiencing is known as survivor 's guilt; survivor 's guilt is when a person blames oneself for someone they knew or saw get hurt or killed in a traumatic event. Rightfully, The Seventh Man felt guilt, but he needs to forgive himself for not saving K. If The Seventh Man didn’t forgive himself and lived in guilt for the rest of his life the wave would have taken both K’s and The Seventh Man’s life. The foremost reason The Seventh Man should forgive himself is that K.’s death was not his fault. In the type of survivor 's guilt The Seventh Man has he has created delusions that he could have saved his friend K. “Hurry K.! Get out of there! The wave is coming!” This line shows that The Seventh Man did everything he could in the moment, however, in reality K. was too entranced in the beach to have …show more content…

Although, in The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt, Nancy Sherman says, “To not feel guilt is to numb the those pulls.” She means that people have an obligation to one another to help them in life threatening events. If we can’t save one another but don 't feel guilty, then we have numbed the human morals to salvage life. Some readers would say that it is healthy and moral for the Seventh Man to feel guilty his whole life because he didn’t save his friend, however, it is not moral to blame oneself for an event that was uncontrollable. The wave would have taken more than K.’s life if The Seventh Man had not have gotten over his survivor 's guilt. Meaning, The Seventh Man would have had no emotions or spirit basically being an empty body. By saying it is okay that K. died and he tried his best to save him The Seventh Man is opening up for emotional

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