Personal response to texts

English Literature -- Physical and Moral Courage

The Guy Vanderhaeghe story illustrated a very important distinction between courage for the sake of meaningful principle and courage that is really just a function of pride and vanity without any purpose that is more principled or meaningful. The story also illustrates another concept that is very relevant to the evolving relationship between personal maturation and values.

At first, Joseph's description of his father as an "old fool" just "showing off" to impress a five-year-old seems harsh and unfounded. But as the story unfolds, it becomes relatively clear that Joseph was probably right about his father even if his conclusions are based more on his lifetime of experiences with his father and not just about his isolated observation of the situation being described. However, when the old man reacts to the accident the way he does, it becomes clear that Joseph was probably right all along. That is because the two most important and responsible reactions to the accident would have been for the old man to check out his horse more thoroughly to make sure it was uninjured and for him to check his own physical condition, particularly because of his age.

It would have been different if the old man genuinely perceived no pain but Joseph's description of the old man's grimace and shifting in the saddle indicate that he knew (or should have known) that might have been seriously injured. Instead of acknowledging that he had sustained some sort of injury, the old man fought through the obvious pain of a broken leg for no other reason than personal vanity and pride. Certainly, enduring great pain can be one element of courage, but that would only be the case where the purpose of enduring the pain served some meaningful purpose such as saving another person or even accomplishing some important mission or responsibility to others. Conversely, a person who endures great pain just to avoid embarrassment or to maintain his pride in front of others is not doing it as a function of anything particularly courageous. In the Vanderhaeghe story, the old man could have jeopardized his life and that of his horse just because he could not admit that he had injured himself.

The other element of courage illustrated by the story is particularly relevant to the stage of life of high school upperclassmen. By the time we are seventeen or eighteen years old, we are beginning to develop our own ideas about life and personal values. Sometimes, those ideas and values may not necessarily be the same as or even consistent with those of our parents. Joseph refers to the "difficulty of unlearning the things you were taught as a kid" and about his tendency to "backslide" in the "current" of his father's values, even as a middle-aged adult twenty years later. In Joseph's case, he has consciously rejected his father's definition of courage as something that necessarily (and maybe exclusively) relates to toughness, grit, and physical courage. Meanwhile, Joseph apparently agrees with his colleagues that courage is much more about moral values and convictions than it is about physical endurance which he regards as an impulse more appropriate for Neanderthals than for contemporary cerebral human beings.