This House -An Analysis of David Brooks “The Road to Character”
In David Brooks “The Road to Character”, there is a constant back and forth that occurs between Adam I and Adam II. Adam I is described as “the career-oriented, ambitious side of our nature” (Brooks,xi), while Adam II is described as the “serene character, a quiet but solid sense of right and wrong” (Brooks,xii). Brooks tries to show the distinctive characteristics that each one possesses by describing the lives of past americans. Each character goes through both Adam I and Adam II, every little thing that they do is looked at more thoroughly, however everyone sees it through different perspectives one character could be seen as more career oriented while others can be more about
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After reading this book he realized that a lot of it came back to his early childhood. His family was focused mostly on the career aspect of life, although Adam II always snuck in at times, Adam I was always there. The quote talks about how “we left this moral tradition”, but was it actually left or did it just grow to the point where it was more noticeable. As a little kid Jose spent a lot of time with his grandparents, he noticed that his grandpa was very hardworking but he lacked Adam II. There was a day in which Jose visited his grandpa’s work, he kept hearing the same thing over and over again,“I think this is right” or “No that's not correct, this is correct” It seemed as though everyone was after each other, they were too focused on who’s idea was better and who would get the raise. The lack of Adam II back in the day was mostly around the workplace. Although, it mostly revolved around work it was easy to notice, even in films that were made back in the day the man was always cold-hearted and always working. Nowadays there is a bigger lack of what's right and what's wrong. What the quote is trying to convey is that nowadays people act as though everyone in the past had an angel like personality when in fact it's always been there but nobody really payed attention until young kids started to act up more and talk