ipl-logo

The Seventh Man Theme

484 Words2 Pages

. In reality, accidents will happen. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do to prevent these accidents, they are unavoidable in the moment. If you are involved in an accident, a loved one may feel guilty even if they had nothing to do with what happened. These loved ones may feel irrational guilt for something they didn’t do. But that’s the point. They feel guilty for something they didn’t do, this feeling is similar to the narrator in “The Seventh Man”.
The story “The Seventh Man” is about the bond between two best friends during a natural disaster, the two boys go down to the beach and K. (one of the boys) gets taken away by one of the tsunamis waves. The rest of the story is how the narrator deals with K.’s death. The hard thing to understand is, why does the narrator feel guilty for something that he didn’t do? “The guilt begins an endless loop of counterfactuals- thoughts or should have done otherwise, though in fact you did nothing wrong.” (Sherman pg.153) This is an example of how the narrator is feeling after losing K. …show more content…

For instance, you make someone feel bad about themselves by calling them mean names or doing something rude, then later on you feel bad about it but you can’t forgive yourself? This is the same thing the narrator is feeling, but he can’t forgive himself about something he couldn’t control. "You're happy that you're alive, but then again, you're sad because you know certain people died, you know children died. You wish, you know, why not me instead of them? You just feel bad." (Eric Hunter, CNN) This is an example of real-life survivors guilt, Eric is feeling the same way the narrator does in “The Seventh

Show More
Related
1511 Words | 7 Pages

Guilt is a powerful and complex emotion that can have a profound impact on one's mental health and wellbeing. In Robertson Davies' novel "Fifth Business," guilt is a central theme that is explored through the experiences of the protagonist, Dunstan Ramsay, and other key characters. Throughout the novel, guilt is shown to have the power to consume one's sanity, govern one's emotions, and demolish one's life. In this essay, I will examine the theme of guilt in "Fifth Business," and explore how the novel portrays the destructive effects of this emotion.

Read More
260 Words | 2 Pages

If they are sitting in a dark, dreary, dreadful room they will have to think about what they have done wrong. I like to think about this as an analogy.

Read More
849 Words | 4 Pages

“The feeling of guilt is your conscience calling your attention to the higher road, and your heart wishing you had taken it.” The poem “I Can Stand Him no Longer” by Raphael Dumas and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe are pieces of literature that develop the thematic topic of guilt using literary devices such as metaphors, connotations, similes and etc. Both stories are about a person who commits a deed that he is later guilty of doing. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a man commits a murder of an old neighbor and tries to hide the crime. However, he later finds himself guilty of doing so and accepts his crime in front of the police.

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

A person needs to make peace with themself. For example, Eddie felt guilty knowing he left something in the burning building when he was in the war. He knew for a fact something was in there, but he did not know what. He had the guilt of letting something in there burn to death. He had the chance to save it, but before he knew it, he was back home in a hospital bed.

Read More
1003 Words | 5 Pages

If one does not learn to forgive in life, they shall bear the guilt and shame of their faults. Eddie now understood the gravity of his mistake, “He tried to smile, as if it were a medicine the little girl needed. She smiled back, but this only made him fall apart. […] the bad dreams he’d suffered, he’d deserved every one.” (Albom 188).

Read More
806 Words | 4 Pages

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner shows that guilt will destroy any life, no matter what a person tries to do to fix it. The Kite Runner demonstrates that guilt will destroy any life. No matter what someone has done it can stick with them for their entire life and ruin themselves. For example, in the novel, Amir

Read More
623 Words | 3 Pages

Being in a deadly accident and you're the one to survive it, your going to have a guilty feeling about it. Most people have a feeling where they feel guilty about being the one to survive and not being able to have any others survive with them, they would have rather had everyone survive the situation instead of just them. They would most likely feel this type of way called survivor’s guilt. Survivor’s guilt is what some people feel after being in a life or death situation that they had survived. Some of us may believe that people shouldn’t feel survivor’s guilt, however others think that they should feel survivor’s guilt.

Read More
1498 Words | 6 Pages

In the novel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni, relinquishing guilt is a process that happens along with characters’ maturation, as they go through stages of avoidance, attempts to be good and confession of past sins. A first action taken in order to relinquish overwhelming emotion of guilt is avoidance. An act of avoiding sins is an impetuous but a natural response. After committing a despicable act, the first instinctively triggered emotion is fear. Fear obscures one’s conscience and causes a person to be cowardly and selfish.

Read More
840 Words | 4 Pages

Guilt has the potential to crumble even the most powerful of mortals. The Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth reveals the consequence of immoral action: guilt. William Shakespeare portrays the idea that the downfall of one may transpire as a result of this regret. Throughout the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are negatively affected as they are overwhelmed by the realization that they have violated their moral standards; this causes their guilt. The two attempt to conceal the remorse they experience, but despite this, their misdeeds take their toll.

Read More
577 Words | 3 Pages

To start, Nancy Sherman says that people take too much responsibility for what happens under their watch even though they could not have kept it from happening. She says, “One feels guilty despite the fact that he knows he has done nothing wrong”(Sherman 154). Sherman is saying that people cannot forgive themselves for anything that happens in life-or-death situations, even if it wasn't their fault. Nevertheless, they should not feel guilty,

Read More
826 Words | 4 Pages

I can only imagine how terrified he’ll be, I am a monster for doing this to him. But I have my reason.” (75). Although A feels guilt for his actions, he still feels justified for his actions, like since what he did was in the name of love that makes everything

Read More
1020 Words | 5 Pages

This emotion causes people to do all sorts of things that they might regret later on as portrayed in Louisa May Alcott’s Novel, “Little Women”. After Josephine ignored her sister Amy for burning her book, both sisters felt awful for what they did. Theodore Laurence implored Margaret for forgiveness because he pulled a harsh prank that hurt her. Mr. Laurence regretted not having a good relationship with his son because of a silly fight that drifted the family apart. This feeling of regret teaches a person to learn, grow and flourish into a stable, patient

Read More
1233 Words | 5 Pages

The responsibility which the characters feel here comes from an impulse of their

Read More
1707 Words | 7 Pages

In “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” by Nancy Sherman, one has done no wrong, but still has guilt, even in situations that are unexpected, as this happens way too much, and that those who have done wrongdoing should be feeling guilty. She states, “We often take responsibility in a way that goes beyond what we can reasonably be held responsible for. And we feel the guilt that comes with that sense of responsibility. Nietzsche is the modern philosopher who well understood this phenomenon: “Das schlechte Gewissen,” (literally, “bad conscience”)-his term for the consciousness of guilt where one has done no wrong, doesn’t grow in the soil where we would most expect it, he argued, such as in prisons where there are actually “guilty” parties who should feel remorse for wrongdoing”(Sherman 154). Illustrating, this proves that we take the responsibility for actions that we did not do, and should not feel any remorse, but that the people who have done wrongdoing, should have this feeling of guilt.

Read More
1222 Words | 5 Pages

and we end up feeling bad about it. We then end up fearing that we will be punished. Freud says we feel guilty because we end up being afraid of losing that person’s love. He ends up calling this the fear of the superego. Freud says, “the sense of guilt is at bottom topographical variety of anxiety” (99).

Read More

More about The Seventh Man Theme

Related Topics

Open Document