Or-Death Situations In Nancy Sherman's The Moral Logic Of Survivor Guilt

People are put in life-or-death situations all the time, whether they choose to be or not. Some people choose to go war, knowing that they are risking their lives. Others do not know that they are getting into life-or-death situations, maybe if they get stuck in a large storm that was not expected. Regardless, people are often put in life-or-death situations. In these situations, because need to take actions and make hard choices. People should not be held accountable for their actions when they are in life-or-death situations.

First, events that happen in life-or-death situations are often out of people’s control, and should therefore people should not be held accountable for events that happen in these situations. In the story The Seventh

In the essay called The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt, the author Nancy Sherman describes how things happen to soldiers, and surviving soldiers feel guilt for having lived when others did not. In the text, a situation was described including Captain John Prior and a private named Joseph Mayek. The text states “fighting vehicle misfired, blowing off most of the face of Private Joseph Mayek” (156). This was clearly a life-or-death situation, because when someone gets their face blown off, their life is threatened. The text then states “...traces to a faulty replacement battery that the commander in charge had authorized” (156). That commander was Captain John Prior. He had taken the action to replace the battery with a faulty battery. The text then says, “Mayek, who was 20, died” (156). Although it is a great tragedy that he died so young, Captain John Prior should not be held accountable for causing the death of Joseph Mayek.. He was unaware that he was putting Mayek in a life-or-death situation because he would not have put the battery in if he knew it was