Blog post for 1st reading response

Jonathan Singer 809                                                                         10/5/14

    Us humans can not keep having our sense of duty. We care only about ourselves, and not about the issues if others. Most people in the world have too much of a sense of duty to themselves, and not towards others. The two books The Kill Order by James Dashner and Foundling by D.M. Cornish each focus on numerous themes, and the themes in both books are very similar.  I would like to focus on the theme of duty in this post. The book Foundling is about an orphan who gets enlisted in the imperial lamplighters, a service to fight monsters off the central road.  On the way to the conscription office, though, he gets shipwrecked and meets a very dangerous woman and they face monster attacks their friends death and finally through much struggle ultimately make their way to the lamplighters’ conscription office. Rosamünd is always steadfast in the face of danger. In The Kill Order is about a world after horrifically destructive sun flares killed about half of the population.  In the book, there is a bio-weapon released and it is spreading like wildfire, killing all indiscriminately but after a while the people who don’t die turn insane.  Protagonist Thomas and his friends have to fight their way to safety at every turn. People, both fictional and real are too dutiful to themselves and not at all dutiful to others. Thomas will do whatever it takes to get him and his friends to safety.We are too caught up in our own troubles that we do not pay any attention to the struggles of others.

   The theme that I would like to focus on is duty.  Duty is a very broad ideal spanning everything from greed (duty to yourself) to dying to save another.  The ideal of duty is found more in Foundling than in The Kill Order although it is still present in The Kill Order.  In Foundling, the main character Rosamünd is steadfast in his sense of duty especially about his service that he pledged to the emperor although many more tempting offers have appeared.  In The Kill Order the sense of duty is duty towards yourself as shown in the will to survive.  The main characters will go to any extent to survive including killing thousands upon thousands of people.  They have no remorse, no mercy, no respect towards others. They are the epitome of duty oneself.

    Duty is present in other forms too. Another form of duty that is present in The Kill Order is morality.  There are organizations willing to obliterate millions upon millions of defenseless, innocent humans for nothing but personal gain. They do not care about others lives, and therefore are clearly not dutiful towards those people. On page 436 of Lamplighter “some people can be downright lethal” and, according to Webster's New Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of lethal is "causing death".  The woman in the story did not only cause the death of her enemies but also to her allies by bringing them into dangerous situations.  Her servant was killed, along with scores of monsters.  She even harms the protagonist Rosamünd, while they all fight against orcs and monsters.   As it says on page 317 in The Kill Order killing the man was his only goal and,  according to Webster's New Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of killing is "causing the death of". Thomas did not care how it was done or who did it, all he wanted was to see the man dead.

     To make a long story short, in Foundling, Rosamünd is always dutiful towards others.  He will obey and serve to the very end. He will always do what he thinks is right. Thomas from The Kill Order however, is only dutiful to people he knows and loves. He will do anything for his friends, but anyone else should not cross his path. They both have their own view into the murky waters that are the ideal of duty.

   We can connect these to our lives in the real, modern world.  As you may know there is a famous saying, that the Spaniards used in their colonization of the Americas, “For God, gold, and glory!”  That is a sense of duty to yourself.  But there is another famous saying, by Calvin Coolidge  “Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” signifying duty unto another.  In the world today there are far too many acts of selfish duty.  ISIS for example is killing people for personal gain, “For gold, God, and glory.”  But, thankfully, there are always good people in this world.  There are always those few people saying “Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”  People such as those fighting diseases like Ebola who are risking their lives for the good of the world. They always do things out of selflessness.  Both books have duty. They are both very similar. Both tell us one main thing: To try to bring the selfless duty out of our natural tendencies of selfish duty.