Bread Ethical Dilemma

There has been a horrific disaster, many have perished. You find yourself and your sister alone, starving and weak. Your only food source is a small stale bread piece. With no prospect of more food, you as the older sibling must make the ultimate choice of survival, who gets the last reaming morsel of bread?

This is the ethical dilemma portrayed in the literary piece, “Bread” by Margret Atwood, where two sisters face famine. They are left starving with a single morsel of bread and must decide how to divided the aliment. There are various approaches to this situation which are outlined in the short essay “A Framework for Thinking Ethically”. Both the virtue and rights approach effectively address the onerous situation of starving siblings proposed in the essay “Bread”.

Margaret Atwood’s short essay “Bread”, presents an ethical of two famished sisters. Both are “starving” and the youngest is “weak” with a bloated belly. Amid little food they lay “on a thin mattress … [in a room] made of dried earth”. However, the pair have access to a stale “piece of bread”, thus the ethical dilemma ensues. The eldest sibling is burdened with the heartbreaking choice of whom will receive the small morsel of food. Atwood posses the questions, “Should [she] share the bread… [or] should she eat it herself”? …show more content…
This method operates on the belief that decisions must respect “the moral rights of those effected”. These rights include the entitlement “to make one’s own choices… to not be injured…[and] to be told the truth”. Correspondingly, this approach is effective in resolving the ethical impasse of the two starving sisters. If applied, the eldest would chose to divide the bread evenly despite her “better chance of living”, hence respecting her sister’s right “not to be injured”. This logic also respects the older sisters right to food and not be