Mistakes In The Seventh Man By Haruki Murakami

    In “The Seventh Man” the narrator loses a friend that he felt he could have saved. The man and his friend K were down by the ocean while they were in the eye of a huge storm. K was looking at stuff thrown on the beach by the storm, the man was watching for big waves and high winds. The man soon felt the wind start to kick up and saw a big wave getting closer to the shore. He yelled for K, but K wasn’t listening he was almost in his own world. The man started to run, but stopped and yelled for K again this time K heard him and started running but it was too late the wave crashed over K onto the shore. The wave took K out into the cold ocean water. They never found K’s body after that. The man couldn’t forgive himself for what happened to K and liced his life in fear of losing or hurting people.

I feel that after anyone commits a crime, no matter the circumstances, guilt will eventually take over someone’s conscience and end up destroying one’s life if they do not confess or try to fix the situation. In the end, the person most always feels so guilty that they would rather be the person who was affected by the deed than the one who did it so that they wouldn’t feel so accountable.

The Seventh Man was unsuccessful in saving his childhood friend, K. In spite of his lack of success, he should not have to live with

    Primarily, K’s personality is described as kind, shy, yet artistic. K had such a kind personality, I feel that he would have wanted the seventh man to forgive himself, and live a long/happy life. Such kindness should have been considered when the seventh man thought of the event.

The narrator of “The Seventh Man,” by Haruki Murakami, struggles with the guilt of not being able to save his best friend from a horrendous wave for most of his life. His sleep is ridden with nightmares, and he chooses to never find love, so his future partner wouldn’t have to deal the constant burden of the Seventh Man’s fears. Although the Seventh Man feels strongly at fault for the death of his best friend, K, he should not blame himself for the tragic events that occured, because there was no way to prevent what happened.

A handful of people will agree that the Seventh Man left K. intentionally and let him die. For example, (evidence). Thus, what killed K. was the “wave like a huge snake with its held wanted him to die” (138). Furthermore, it was impossible for the narrator to save K. because he was “ten yards” away from him. Therefore, if he tried to run up to him and save him both of them could’ve died. In addition, although, the narrator failed on saving K., he was traumatized and had a difficulty moving on with his life. For example, “I was burning with fever, and my mind was clouded… been asleep for three days… vomited several times, and had bouts of delirium… in my dreams, K. would hop out of his capsule in the wave and grab my waist to drag me inside him...I never married… never went to swim in a pool… wouldn’t go near deep rivers or lakes…” (139-141). Others might conclude that the seventh man deserves everything he’s been through. However, this proves that the Seventh Man was miserable and couldn’t live life to the fullest because of the

{ Page 141 Paragraph 48 The Seventh Man}. This shows why survivors should not feel survivor's guilt. This proves why survivors of life and death situations shouldn’t feel guilty about the people who didn’t survive. Another reason why survivors of life and death situations should not feel guilty is because survivor's guilt can keep you from healing. The Seventh Man would not visit his family for in more than forty years.

It’s in human nature to feel guilty for doing someone wrong. Remorse puts guilt in the person's eyes and makes them motivated to forgive. “ARIEL: Gonzalo./ His tears run down his beard like winter's drops

The Seventh Man, is a story about a man who does not have a given name. In the story he is joined by his friend “K”. “K” can be described by the seventh man as{134} “ small, frail, with a pale complexion and he has a face almost pretty enough to be a girls.” K also had a speech impediment which made people think he was retarded when in reality he wasn’t. The stories natural disaster that occurs is a typhoon. Typhoons are hurricanes that originate in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. They

Imagine yourself as a child. More specifically, a young boy. Life as a child seems simple enough. While you are young you have care givers who try to make sure that everything is done for you. But there is still the matter of growing up. When you are young, adults cherish your innocence. Everyone just wants to protect you from the dangers of the world. You are a symbol of hope, with the whole world ahead of you. What if the innocence that all of your loved ones cherish, no longer exists? All the “cute” “corky” things you did was just acting, in a feeble attempt to bring back the child you once were. Something so precious was taken from you, and all you can think of doing is blaming yourself. The guilt consumes you the more you

It is not always strenuous to acknowledge when a mistake is made for some, in fact it can be seen as a challenge. Especially for adults and adolescents confessing when a mistake is made is nearly impossible. Yet everyone male, female, young and old make mistakes. It is natural for a person to make multitudinous mistakes throughout their lifetime. In the book Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat the main character, Sophie Caco, has a laborious time confessing to her selfish mistakes leading to her being torn between her self love and love with her husband.. For someone to admit to his or her mistakes to themselves may feel as if he or she was irrational.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” This quote by Mahatma Gandhi describes the character it takes to forgive an individual of wrongdoing. Forgiveness results in multiple positive outcomes for both the forgiver and the the person being forgiven. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Keating’s “I Forgave the Man Who Shot Me” and Bettencourt's “Triumph of the Heart” discuss the importance of forgiveness in terms of moving on, freeing someone of guilt and finding happiness.

Ordinarily, the way one feels guilt, views it, uses it, defines what kind of a person they are. Some people don’t feel it, no matter how insidious their actions might be. Yet, some feel it regardless of the fact that they did nothing to cause the incident itself. Some feel it because they did something wrong and, often that one mistake defines how they choose to live the remainder of their lives.

Imagine yourself sitting at the edge of the hospital listening to the beeping noise of the heart monitor, when all of the sudden it stops. Her hands went cold, and she had unfortunately passed away. Your mom and you just got into a car crash you survived but sadly she did not. Survivor guilt is when something traumatic happens and the survivors tend to wonder how and why they survived the tragedy when others did not. The two types of survivor guilt is subjective and objective/rational. Subjective guilt occurs when you couldn’t do anything about a tragic situation, while objective guilt is caused by something you did but later then regretted it. Many of the people affected are soldiers, however it is not limited to war veterans. Others often experience a natural disaster or a car crash. People who have been involved in traumatic experiences should feel survivor guilt whether it's subjective or objective guilt, because it helps show what kind of person they are while also taking responsibility for if they purposely put themselves in danger.

I can speak from experience the guilt and the weight of leaving a situation unresolved is something that haunts me to this day. We lost my brother in law back in 1996 to a car accident. None of us ever said we were sorry or made everything right again. Once he passed away it was too late to make it right for any of us. To carry the guilt and emotions that I carry everyday hurts very badly. We could have fixed the problem. However, no one did because