Summary Of The Seventh Man By Nancy Sheman

Molly Dickinson
1/25/17
1st hour
The Innocent Who Plead Guilty

“Subjective guilt, associated with this sense of responsibility, is thought to be irrational because one feels guilty despite the fact that he knows he has done nothing wrong,” (Sherman 154). Many people, especially war veterans understand that they are guilty for a situation they couldn’t have controlled. This situation happened to the narrator in the “The Seventh Man” when his friend died and the narrator couldn’t let go of his remorse for forty years. The narrator of “The Seventh Man” should forgive himself for his failure to save K. because it was not his fault that K. was oblivious to hear him.
The narrator was the friend of K. when K. was still alive. “We were like brothers...”

Survival guilt is simply feeling awful for not saving the life of a friend, but you were able to spare your own. However, you weren’t able to save the life of your friend. “In war, standing here rather than there can save your life but cost a buddy his. It’s flukish luck, but you feel responsible. The guilt begins an endless loop of counterfactuals- thoughts that you could have or should have done otherwise, though in fact you did nothing wrong” (Sherman 153). The narrator felt responsible for K.’s actions, even though he could not have influenced him to come behind the breakwall for protection. “They are family members, their own children, of sorts, who have been entrusted to them. To fall short of unconditional care is experienced as a kind of perfidy, a failure to be faithful” (Sherman 155). This is how the narrator felt, as though K. was like another brother to him, and because K. was so frail, he thought that it was his duty to always watch out for K. Soldiers who have high rankings often feel this way, as though the ones below them they must salvage. The narrator had a sense of parenting, to make sure that K. was always cared

Others would reply to the question this way when they find out that the narrator did find K. trapped inside of the wave, reaching to grab the narrator and pull him into the new world that he would call home. “K. was looking straight at me, smiling at me. There, right in front of me, so close that I could have reached out and touched him…” (Murakami 139). Nevertheless, the narrator found forty years later that K. was not trying to pull him into the wave to go to his new home, K. was unconscious, and the narrator lost consciousness right after he saw K. in the wave. “The intense look of hatred I thought I saw on his face had been nothing but a reflection of the profound terror that had taken control of me for the moment” (Murakami 143). The quote presents that it was all a moment of shock for the narrator, and that K. was long gone from being saved; therefore, nothing could have saved