The Strickland Case
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Selfishness as used by Mrs. McAndrew is a term of moral evaluation in that it refers to a selfishness in interpersonal relations so that Strickland is seen as a man who does not serve his wife's needs while expecting her to serve his. The specific impetus for her statement in the novel is the fact that Strickland has left for Tahiti and has abandoned his wife and their children--he is selfish for pursuing his own desires while leaving them behind to fend for themselves. Such abandonment is a moral issue because marriage is an agreement in which each party accepts certain responsibilities, and Strickland has abandoned those responsibilities and broken his word to his wife, to the state, and to God. The reaction of the narrator toward this explanation shows that he thinks it is a simplistic explanation and that in truth it explains nothing. He wants to know more about the underlying motivations driving this man, but even after he meets him, he knows little more than he did before, or at least comprehends no more about the reasons for Strickland's actions. Mrs. McAndrew is selective in her outrage, for while she admits that the wife took the husband too much for granted, she sees no relationship between that fact and his departure, though it would certainly be a relevant issue. Her moral explanation is thus lessened for the narrator by the fact that he sees that both husband and wife may have their faults, so the idea that the husband alone is selfish explains nothing to
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deciding the nature of Strickland's personal view of and relation to the universe.
The origin of responsibility is examined in detail by Nietzsche. He begins with a consideration of the development of the human being:
The task of breeding an animal with the right to make promises evidently embraces and presupposes as a preparatory task that one first makes men to a certain degree necessary, uniform, like along like, regular, and consequently calculable (Nietzsche 58-59).
Man has performed a major task upon himself throughout his existence, and this labor is what Nietzsche calls "morality of mores." Man has been made calculable through this massive effort. Nietzsche says we should place ourselves at the end of this process, at the point where the process should bear fruit. What we find then is the sovereign individual, the individual liberated from morality of custom, an autonomous and supramoral individual. This is the individual who has the right to make promises:
This emancipated individual, with the actual right to make promises, this master of a free will, this sovereign man--how should he not be aware of his superiority over all those who lack the right to make promises and stand as their own guarantors, of how muc
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1351
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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