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Review Of Nancy Sherman's 'The Moral Logic Of Survivor Guilt'

720 Words3 Pages

Why to Forgive

A tragic loss is one to never be expected. The thought “What if” travels through the mind of the survivor. But can’t help feel guilty for the victim. What if the survivor had done something different? Would they still be here? Can the survivor’s guilt be forgiven? The narrator in the Seventh man feels this exact way. The Seventh Man knows he did all he could to save his friend and should learn to forgive himself for his failure he feels.
Survivor guilt is a very painful thing to experience. And because it is all just thoughts in the survivors head, it is hard to get rid of. Survivor guilt by definition is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives themselves to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event …show more content…

In paragraph 41, the narrator tells us how he is left feeling from the event, how it took him a long time to recover from the emotional shock. Causing him not to eat, attend school, and spent is days in bed. If the Seventh Man had forgiven himself sooner he would have not suffered the pain he was going through. Bad Luck plays just as important part. In “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” paragraph 9, Nancy Sherman,the writer, talks about what she has found in her research of Survivor guilt. “The classic scenario is not so much one of the good luck (as in survivor guilt) but of bad luck, typically having to do with accidents where again there is little or no culpability for the harms-they bring harm through their agency-but they are not morally responsible for what happened.” What Sherman has pointed fits perfectly with the Seventh’s Man situation. He may have been able to save K. if it wasn’t for his fear that had stopped him and no one can actually know if he would have made it in time to save him, or both lives swept away with the wave. However, like Sherman stated, he is not morally

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