Question

In your perspective, what would be the best ethical theory to analyze the case study "my family's honor? Please elaborate on why you think this way

My family’s Honor

My name is Charles, but my friends and family call me Chuck. I am the fifth child in a family of 7, three older sisters and an older brother before me, and a sister one a year younger and a brother 5 years younger than her. Due to the age difference between my sister and my little brother, jokes were told in family gatherings referring to my little brother as an “accident” or as “Ramses” making reference to a popular name brand of condoms implying that my mother had gotten pregnant because the Ramses Condoms were somehow damaged. At that time in my life, roughly 15 years old, I did not find these jokes or comments funny at all. Nevertheless, we had grown to know my little brother as Ramses for lack of a better nickname and he hated it even though I do not think he understood what it meant.

One warm summer afternoon, my little brother came home very angry. For days to follow, he did not want to talk about what was making him upset and seemed absent and sad. As the week came to an end, he was still obviously upset to the point that he refused to go to a football game that we had been planning to go for weeks. I did not understand what the problem was, but what I was about to find out, would make me reevaluate the meaning of the word “honor.”

A few weeks before this incident, a young Down Syndrome boy had been accepted into my brother school, fact that I was not aware of. Moved by a government “full integration” policy, schools were admitting what in those days were known as “non-traditional students”, a group that was composed by Down Syndrome, Autistic and other learning disabled children that up until that time had been going to special education centers out of the public eye. Thinking in retrospect, I personally had never been close or even seen a Down Syndrome child. The closest thing I remember was a boy who lived across the street who used to spy on us as we played in the street but never came out. Later on in life I found out that his name was Bobby and he had been the victim of a nasty disease known as Polio and thus confined to a wheel chair. Bobby was “home schooled” not because he had a learning disability, but probably because his parents tried to protect him from bullies and deep down inside they were possibly a bit ashamed of him.

After a while, my little brother (whose real name was David), decided to open up to me and told me the reasons why he had been upset in the past days. With tears in his eyes, David proceeded to narrate what he had been subjected to by kids in the school. He looked and me and said: Last Monday I went to school and some of the older kids were pointing at me and laughing. Before I knew it from the crowd I heard a voice yelling “Ramses, Ramses you mother can’t keep on her pantses.” In a macabre and cruel way of making fun of David by making up words to make a silly rhyme, they were implying that my mother was a whore who could not keep her pants on and thus, got pregnant with David. Never mind that my mother was married to my father and consequently she could not be labeled as a whore, I was enraged that this kids would have my mother in their stupid mouths. I was so upset about this that I told David that next time he saw the kid or kids who did this to him to point them out to me that I would make them pay. Keep in mind that David was around 8 years old at that time, so to him it was a huge deal to be reassured by his big brother that he was going to be protected.

Weeks went by without any incidents and then one afternoon as David and I were walking through the playground by our house, he saw the culprit of his ridicule. He seemed excited and nervous when he pointed out his “offender” in the distance. From that perspective the kid seemed big, even bigger than me at 15. Without thinking about it I ran towards him convinced that if I surprised him and hit first, I would have the advantage. Since the kid was walking away from him, I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and swung him around. A right hook to his belly made him lose his air, a punch in the mouth and then another….. by this time all of the kids in the playground were surrounding me chanting “fight, fight, fight…” All I could think of was my mother’s honor….. never again would anyone dare calling my mother a whore…. I was blinded by rage as I continued to punch and kick. It was not long before someone grabbed me and pinned me down…. In my rage I heard a woman crying in desperation…… as I reclaimed by composure, I began to see what I had done.

On the ground, bleeding with what seemed a broken nose, and crying covering his face was this big kid…. The woman who had been crying, his mother, was trying to console him and as she helped him out my rage turned to horror as I realized the kid I had badly hurt was the Down Syndrome boy that had come to my brother’s school a few weeks ago. I learned his name was Christian and in an act of cruelty bigger than anything I had ever seen, had been bullied by the bigger kids into making fun of my brother. I had inflicted a lot of damage on this boy who had no understanding of what he was saying and I did not know what to say. In an attack of remorse, I too started to cry asking him to forgive him… I could not look at him or his mother, I had never in my short life felt so much remorse.

In an effort to regain my mother’s honor, I had attacked the wrong person, I had acted without thinking, I had committed an act of violence against someone who could not properly defend himself. What a shameful and coward act.

Time passed and we all got older. Christian was taken out of the school and we never heard anything from him. I got married and had children… 3 girls and a boy. Life sometimes likes to play cruel jokes on us and my boy was born with Down Syndrome. In a reconciliatory move, I named him Christian…. Not because I felt guilty anymore, but because I wanted to protect this little Christian and make sure that no bully ever took advantage of him. Today Christian is 10 years old. He is a mild case of Down Syndrome and the doctors seem to think that he will live a long and productive life. I cannot help however, to see the stares or the little boys pointing at him when we go to the playground. Today my honor is in making sure that my son will never be abused by anyone. Funny I should say this, but sometimes when I hold my Christian in my arms I still shed a tear of remorse for what I did to that poor boy many years ago.

Answer 1

Case study " My Family's Honor" could be best analyzed by the ethical theory of Virtue ethics of self forgiveness and self respect. It is easy to forgive the wrongdoings of others easily but when it comes to our own wrong doing, that is when we recognize that our actions though, unintentional, has caused harm to others our self respect doesn't allows us to forgive ourselves that easily, and in the process of seeking forgiveness for ourself we make amendments and make sure that the wrongdoing is not repeated.

In this case ,Chuck knocked in his fist of anger, knocked down a Down syndrome child named Chrictian mistakenly for the child who bullied his brother and used abusing words for his mother. Chuck upon realization of his mistake was deeply hurt and this deep hurt stayed with him for life. And when a Down syndrome child was born to him, he named his boy with the same name of the Down Syndrome whom he had hurt badly. This is an act of amendment from Chuck's part. The other acts of Chuck's for reconciliation for self-forgiveness is, making sure his Christian is not abused and taken advantage of his inability to defend. But, still he hasn't fully forgiven himself for the act.