Consequences Of Being Good People Essay

The short story is set at a park by a lake. “They were up on a picnic table at that park by the lake, by the edge of the lake, with part of a downed tree in the shallows half hidden by the bank.”1 The downed tree sets the mood to be sad and dark. We also learn that the main characters Lane A. Dean, Jr. and his girlfriend Sheri Fisher are sitting very still on the picnic table2, which tells us that the atmosphere is quite intense. It does not say for how long they sit by the lake, but it says that the right sides of their faces get shaded so it can be assumed that they sit there for a while.3

   In "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor, the masked truth is reflected unequivocally through the reality in the story, its equal counterpart. For every good or evil thing, there is an antagonist or opposing force. Each character has a duplicate personality mirrored in someone else in the story.

A famous philosopher Socrates once said, 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' With that idea, the question 'Are Human Beings Intrinsically Evil?' has been asked by philosophers for many years. It is known as one of the unanswerable questions. Determinists have come to the conclusion that we are governed by the laws of science, that there is nothing we can do about ourselves being evil because we naturally are. Evil is simply the act of causing pain. In this essay I will argue that human beings are born with a natural reaction to 'fear and chaos' to be instinctively evil.

Director and actor Spike Lee presents his "truth" about race relations in his movie Do the Right Thing. The film exhibits the spectacle of black discrimination and racial altercations. Through serious, angry, and loud sounds, Lee stays true to the ethnicity of his characters, all of which reflect their own individualism. Lee uses insulting diction and intense scenes to show how severe racism can lead to violence.

In On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, Mary Anne Warren discusses a few arguments against abortion, namely bringing into play whether the fetus is actually a person, or “not a member of the moral community”. She

Abortions were widely used in the early eighteen hundreds and kept secret due public scrutineer. Not only were they considered against the law in some places but were risky due to high risk of infection from unsterile equipment used to perform the actions.” Without today’s current technology, maternal and infant mortality rates during childbirth were extraordinarily high. “(National abortion Federation, 2016) as time contained states changed and modified their laws to accommodate political agendas, these opposed to legal abortion had begun to fight absent any stated funded abortion clines. Then there was Roe v. Wade this was the first major Supreme Court battle based on abortion laws and ethics. Roe v. Wade decision of the courts said that they “considered the constitutionality of a Texas statute made it a crime to obtain an abortion except when it was necessary to save the life of the mother”. (Harris, 2014) There was another Supreme Court case that changed the views of the courts based on how they judge the frame work of decision on the trimester model. The ethics involved in this are not just solely left to the mother of the potential life but in the network of people

In her essay “Abortion, Intimacy, and the Duty to Gestate,” Margaret Olivia Little examines whether it should be permissible for the state to force the intimacy of gestation on a woman against her consent. Little concludes that “mandating gestation against a woman’s consent is itself a harm - a liberty harm” (p. 303). She reaches this conclusion after examining the deficiencies in the current methods used to examine and evaluate the issues of abortion. Their focus on the definition of a “person” and the point in time when the fetus becomes a distinct person entitled to the benefits and protections of the law fails to capture “the subtleties and ambivalences that suffuse the issue” (p. 295). Public debate on the right to life and the right

The question of ethics is also raised, and adds to the consistently hot topic of abortion. Consider this from the Baptist Press. "A couple of

In the notorious pro-choice court case, Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court stated that the definition of privacy is, “broad enough to include a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy”, and this “right”, the court believed, was founded upon the “concept of personal liberty.” However, the aborting of children is not a liberty nor is it a duty that God has given to any of the four jurisdictions of authority. On the contrary, God has given each jurisdiction the duty to defend the life of the unborn. Life has always been properly considered, in the United States, as a God-given unalienable liberty that no man can take from the innocent. Tragically, in one hundred and ninety-seven years, the definition of liberty from time time of

David Foster Wallace’s “Good People,” is a very touching, powerful story about a young, unwed, Christian couple facing an extremely difficult decision and the moral and religious implications that may result. As the story begins, we are allowed into the head of Lane Dean, a college student, as he sits on a park bench with his girlfriend, Sheri. Lane and Sheri find themselves faced with an unplanned pregnancy, which causes them to battle with several moral and religious dilemmas. Both of them are devout Christians who have built their moral beliefs upon God and their religious upbringing. Although torn Sheri schedules an abortion, which weighs on Lane deeply. Lane, frozen in fear and not having the courage to freely talk to Sheri about

Every year, as many as a million lives are aborted; lives that could potentially have been your neighbor, your friend, or even your son or daughter. Abortion is the surgical process of killing a baby by various means; and has been in effect since the Supreme Court ruling on Roe V. Wade in 1973 which legalized it nationwide. It was, at first, endorsed as being a woman’s right, but has more recently been viewed by most as the murder of an innocent child. Besides this shift in views, abortion has caused diverse effects on our culture and nation, as well as the death of upwards of 56 million children according to Life News. Our society has been deeply impacted by the effects of abortion and the loss of millions of innocent lives, and Christian

In the United States, per year, twenty million unsafe abortions and sixty-eight thousand deaths from them occur, (Odyssey) while the average death risk for a safe abortion is less than .01 percent. An illegal and unsafe abortion should never result as the last resort, but it tends to because of a lack of access to safe ones. Morals, usually drawn from religious beliefs, tend to play a part in one’s opinion towards abortion. More than three fourths of Americans consider themselves as Christians. This means that more than three fourths of Americans believe that it is morally wrong to undergo an abortion and a person should not hold the right to take someone else’s life away. While a moral belief, based on religion, is something all people are free to have,

In her short story, Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor employs all the elements of humor, irony and, paradox intermingled within the system of Christian belief in evil and redemption. This is no more evident than in the character of Joy, the daughter, who had lost a leg in a hunting accident at the age of 12 and who now has a wooden leg in his place. Throughout the story, it becomes increasingly clear that Joy’s physical affliction is closely paralleled by a spiritual one as well. As the narrative unfolds, the great lengths Joy has gone to recreate her inner self, her soul, are revealed in painstaking detail. It appears she has succeeded in fashioning her own soul into a spirit that is as

Abortion is dividing America. Without a common understanding of abortion, this issue will always be divisive in America. Throughout the history of America, abortion has been an issue that has generally separated people into two camps, those in favor of abortion and those against abortion. However, these two groups, more often than not, have not approached their understanding of this issue from the same perspective. Generally speaking, those in favor of abortion see the issue of the personal rights of women. However, those against abortion, view the issue of the rights of the child. As a result, these two perspectives will never gain unity or a common understanding of abortion. The purpose of this paper is to not only give a clear understanding of both sides of the issue, but to argue that this issue will never be a unifying issue in American culture.

Abortion has been around since a lot of years in every inhabited corner of the globe. It has always been accepted as a means to prevent the suffering of both woman and potential child. It has been practiced widely in every society for many reasons including famine, war, poverty, overpopulation, or simply because a woman felt she was not ready for a child (Whitney 40). No one ever questioned a woman’s right to this procedure till the 1800’s. During this era of change people began to turn their attention in a new direction, the fetus. They began to protest abortion as cruel, inhumane, and murderous. Abortionists who were once revered and depended upon were scorned and threatened. Though abortions still happened with regularity, they were kept silent and seen as a matter of shame. “Over the next hundred years, public sentiment for fetus continued to rise until the inevitable happened in America during the early 40’s; Abortion was made illegal.” (Cohen 17). The pro-life supporters had succeeded in saving the lives of innocent babies who would have been slaughtered for the convenience of selfish, ignorant and irresponsible women. This new law had made women actually settle down and raise families or give birth to beautiful children. We all know that, it has been proven time to time throughout history that the human spirit will not allow prohibition. Something inside us feels the need to strike out at that, which restrains us and holds us from the