The Seventh Man

The seventh man should forgive himself for his failure to save K.’s life. In the novel “the seventh man”, the seventh man is a child during a typhoon. He and his best friend ,K., go down to the water during the eye of the storm to investigate the shoreline. When they reached the beach, there were lots of unfamiliar and fascinating items washed up on the shore. The boys were so focused on the treasures that, consequently, they did not notice the waves creeping up the shore. Our narrator, the seventh man, noticed a huge wave moving quickly and maliciously in from the horizon. As he runs to shelter behind the breakwall, he yells for K. to run away from the water. However, K. is still entranced by the debris at the shoreline and doesn’t hear him. The seventh man knows that he should go back for K., but he is transfixed by the horror of it all and only springs into action to run behind the breakwall. K. finally realizes what is going on and tries to run away; but, it is too late. K. is sucked away from the beach in a thunderous torrent of water. In the next wave that attacks the shoreline, the seventh man sees K.’s body; grinning horrendously and wickedly at him. He is traumatized and feels responsible about K.’s death until the day he finally learns to forgive himself. He spends many long years being tortured by his guilt at K.’s death. He needed to let go of the pain that he carried for all those long and terrible years. Maybe he could have saved K., maybe he couldn’t have; but

The narrator for the seventh man should forgive himself for not being able to save K because he did everything he could do to try to save him but he would not listen. In the story the seventh man a huge typhoon strikes the beach with a big boom while the narrator and his friend K were investigating the previous damage from the past wind and rain. The narrator heard the big booms and tried to warn his friend K but he just couldn't K was too interested in whatever he was looking at that he did not hear the yelling or the loud booms.

The narrator of “The Seventh Man” should seek forgiveness in himself. Not only is forgiving yourself an essential thing that keeps our lives going, but in his circumstances, there wasn’t much more to do to help his friend.

The narratorś backstory is tragic. To simplify it, his home town was undergoing a typhoon, he and his best friend K had decided to travel down to the beach while they had been in the eye of the storm. While they were scavenging the beach the narrator described it as “ strange “. “I do recall that my voice sounded strange to me, as though it belonged to someone else”( Murakami 137). As he had watched a wave start to form his first instinct was to run.

It is simple to argue that the Seventh Man should not forgive himself for failing to save K. One may assert that the narrator could have physically warned K. by giving him a slight shove or patting him on the back. Although this is logical, if one were to literally put him or herself in the Seventh Man’s situation, he or she would recognize the overwhelming amount of thoughts running through his head in the moment. In “The Key to Disaster Survival? Friends and Neighbors,” Shankar Vedantam reports about a 2004

“ ‘It just barely missed me, but in my place it swallowed everything that mattered most to me and swept it off to another world. It took years to find it again and to recover from the experience-precious years that can never be replaced.’ ”(Murakami 133) In the story, “The Seventh Man”, the narrator feels prodigious amounts of guilt for the loss of his friend K.. As a result, he spends his entire life remorsing about the loss of K., rather than living. The Seventh Man did not live… he existed. He existed for countless years, and did not learn to move on and live till many years later. What had happened was not his fault.

In “The Key to Disaster Survival? Friends and Neighbors,” Shankar Vedantam reports about a 2004 tsunami in which fishing boats were distributed. He says, “Fishermen who used to work together now became competitors. Trust broke down. Fights broke out.” (Vedantam 3). This situation accurately describes how one might change when trying to save or help oneself. People tend to forget about others and fend for themselves first. Consequently, the Seventh Man might have wanted to help, but he knew his life was at stake.

    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

Should the narrator of “The Seventh Man’ forgive himself for his failure of saving K?

The seventh man should forgive himself because if K was alive he wouldn't want the seventh man to be mad and hate himself. K would want the Seventh Man to forgive himself for his mistake. The Seventh Man did yell for K to move but K did not hear him and as a result he was eaten by a wave. Perhaps the seventh man should have tried to grab K, but he was really far out at the beach and he was probably worried that he would end up getting eaten by the wave just like K was another reason the Seventh Man should forgive himself is because he didn't create the wave to get K.

Survivor guilt is when someone feels guilty for surviving a traumatic event when somebody else didn’t. The story The Seventh Man was told by a narrator whose friend was killed by a wave from a tsunami. The narrator was at the beach with his friend K, during the eye of a tsunami when all of a sudden, the waves resume. The narrator attempts to get K’s attention, but he fails to do so. The fear begins to take over when he starts running to safety, K unfortunately didn't realize the wave until it was too late and he was engulfed. Ever since that day, the narrator has lived his whole life blaming himself for the death of his friend K.. If the narrator would have tried any harder to save K he would have died as well, which is why he should forgive himself for his failure in doing so.

In life, accidents happen. Some can be more drastic than others but everyone fails or makes a mistake at some point in their lifetime. In the story “The Seventh Man”, the narrator fails to save his friend from drowning in the ocean during a horrible hurricane and he obviously feel guilty for failing to save his friends life. Although he will never be able to entirely forget about what happened on the terrible day, the seventh man should forgive himself for failing to save his friends life.

The general topic of forgiveness has received a magnitude of attention and research on a conceptual level in recent years. Hall and Fincham consistently noted, however, that self-forgiveness had little to no empirical study or research documented and believe this is a critical piece to an individual’s overall emotional health. In an effort to stimulate additional research on the