5 Paragraph Essay: The Seventh Man

“…I went over the timing of the events in memory it always seemed to me that I could have made it.” The way the main character feels in this statement is a very good example of survivor guilt. Survivors of disaster often feel responsible for the deaths of those involved in the same disaster. To move on with his life the seventh man must forgive himself because having the guilt weigh him down isn’t good on him and it won’t help him accelerate forward with his life. The seventh man should forgive himself because K. getting swept away was not his fault. “Hurry, K.! Get out of there! The wave is coming!” This time my voice worked fine” in this little quote the seventh man had actually tried to save K. by telling him to run. K.’s death was out of the narrator's control because Tsunamis are dangerous and while K was …show more content…
“I try to scream, but my voice will not come. I swallow water, and my lungs start to fill.I wake up in the darkness, screaming, breathless, drenched in sweat.” He would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and sweating. “This is probably why I never married. I didn’t want to wake someone sleeping next to me with my screams in the middle of the night. It was something I could never share with another person.” Never married, and never enjoyed water again. The never enjoying water is understandable because after being what he had been through “ I had always enjoyed swimming, but after that day I never even went to swim in a pool. I wouldn’t go near deep rivers or lakes. I avoided boats and wouldn’t take a plane to go abroad.” The fact that the narrator went back by train and went to the exact beach where it happened was a big leap forward from not going near water for so long. At that exact beach he just let himself go and fall into the waves finally letting go of the memories and being at peace with the death of his best