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The Moral Logic Of Survivor Guilt By Haruki Murakami

870 Words4 Pages

The Most Valuable Qualities of a Survival Situation What is most valuable in a survival situation? Prompt 2: The definition of survival is not just the ability to survive, but the ability to overcome. The mental aspect of surviving is overcoming the results that happen after an individual survives. It can either be seen through guilt or self-forgiveness in an individual. This scenario is explained multiple times throughout the Survival unit. In the short stories, “The Seventh Man” by Haruki Murakami and “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt,” by Nancy Sherman, both authors claim that overcoming the fear or guilt and having self-forgiveness are most valuable in a survival situation. One aspect author Haruki Murakami of “The Seventh Man'' focuses …show more content…

Sherman describes situations in which people in charge, for example - generals and captains - in this case, feel guilty when losing one of their people. One captain, Captain Bonenberger, as described in this text, felt responsible for losing a close specialist even though Bonenberger had absolutely had no choice to even save him; they were in different places. Another captain, Captain Prior, feels that he should be responsible for the death of Mayek, when the vehicle they were testing misfired. Sherman describes this guilt or responsibility as a sense of “fittingness” because “it gets right certain moral features of a soldier’s world… [they] have duties to care and bring each other safely home ( Sherman 154, 156, 157 ).” The reader understands that it is “fitting” to feel this sense of responsibility, feeling how they should be somewhat responsible, that - as Sherman describes - “a zero-sum game” - where surviving can have a cost. But it is also important to overcome and forgive oneself, certainly when one did nothing wrong. It should not be where “not feel[ing] the guilt is to be numb to those pulls ( Sherman 155 ). ” It should be the part of moral repair that helps one who has survived in such a situation, to feel that “what duties to others need to make room for, even in a soldier’s life of service and sacrifice, are duties to self, of self-forgiveness and self-empathy. These are a part of full moral repair ( Sherman 157

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