Cowardice

 

            Come on Clive. Really? Write down the sound a bird makes instead of help a woman getting beat up by a shady looking guy in the middle of the forest? It’s kind of pathetic if you ask me. He needed to go down that hill and help out the woman in need. Especially considering he felt “that there was not really so much physical difference between him and his thirty-year-old self” (88). His cowardice does not shock me though. I feel like characters wimping out in the face of adversity is a fairly common theme in movies and books. Take the movie Saving Private Ryan for example. Toward the end of the film, during a major battle scene, the young inexperienced private Upham tries to deliver much needed ammunition to his fellow soldiers. But as he walks up the stairs to the building his comrades are in, he hears a brawl going on in the building. He hears a German soldier and one of his fellow American soldiers engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat. Upham freezes up on the stairs, unable to move into the room and help his buddy. In the end, the German soldier wins the battle and excruciatingly kills the American soldier. He then walks down the stairs, sees Upham harmlessly cowering in fear, and moves on without hurting him. Upham’s failure to act closely resembles Clive’s failure to act. Although we do not know what happened to the girl and the shady guy, it would seem that it did not end well for the girl. Both Clive’s and Upham’s failure to act in the face of adversity show their cowardice and selfishness. Deep down, the reason each did not act certainly centered on the fact that they did not want to hurt themselves in the process. I find it hard to read/watch such cowardice knowing that others could have been helped.