Lieutenant Commander Oram and Captain John Adam are lethal weapons. These characters are leaders; kings of their castles. Their emotions are storms that cloud their thoughts, making hard decisions similar to escaping from quicksand. When the submarine of Michael Bruce’s Gentlemen, Your Verdict lies helpless at the bottom of the ocean, Commander Oram must decide whether 15 innocent men should die for 5 to live or if all 20 men will die from oxygen deprivation. Colin McDougal’s The Firing Squad focuses on protagonist Captain John Adam, who is asked to be the executioner of a prisoner he feels innocent and whose execution he disagrees with. The characters in question were both placed in very different situations, yet can be compared and contrasted
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On the path to making the right decisions, both characters had to face a moral dilemma. Captain Adam was forced to decide between what he was expected to do and what he believed was the right decision. After accepting the role of executioner, he had a moral dilemma in that if he chose to go through with the execution, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. The following quote describes Captain Adams thoughts on the execution, “For a moment he was weak with nausea, the flood of shame was sour inside him” (75). This thought of his proves that he finds the execution sickening and therefore he made the right decision by stopping it. Commander Oram also trusted his gut feeling in his moral dilemma. With his pride, Oram went down with his own ship. Another moral dilemma that Oram faced was the choosing of which men would be the ones to die. The moral dilemma of Commander Oram is similar to a situation in the movie, Eye in The Sky. In this film, the life of an innocent girl may be sacrificed in order to save the lives of others that are considered more important. The commander in this story, like Oram, had to decide who was going to die and who and going to live. Both Captain Adam and Commander Oram’s moral dilemmas faced tough decisions that ending in sacrificing themselves to save another and to do what was
On the path to making the right decisions, both characters had to face a moral dilemma. Captain Adam was forced to decide between what he was expected to do and what he believed was the right decision. After accepting the role of executioner, he had a moral dilemma in that if he chose to go through with the execution, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. The following quote describes Captain Adams thoughts on the execution, “For a moment he was weak with nausea, the flood of shame was sour inside him” (75). This thought of his proves that he finds the execution sickening and therefore he made the right decision by stopping it. Commander Oram also trusted his gut feeling in his moral dilemma. With his pride, Oram went down with his own ship. Another moral dilemma that Oram faced was the choosing of which men would be the ones to die. The moral dilemma of Commander Oram is similar to a situation in the movie, Eye in The Sky. In this film, the life of an innocent girl may be sacrificed in order to save the lives of others that are considered more important. The commander in this story, like Oram, had to decide who was going to die and who and going to live. Both Captain Adam and Commander Oram’s moral dilemmas faced tough decisions that ending in sacrificing themselves to save another and to do what was