Essay

1980. A recurring theme in literature is the classic war between a passion and responsibility. For instance, a personal cause, a love, a desire for revenge, a determination to redress a wrong, or some other emotion or drive may conflict with moral duty. Choose a literary work in which a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with his or her responsibilities. In a well-written essay show clearly the nature of the conflict, its effects upon the character, and its significance to the work.

Private Passion vs. Moral Responsibility

In life, sometimes a person’s private passion can conflict with their moral duty to others. In the novel, The Host, Wanderer has a private passion to find Jared and Jamie and keep them safe, while she also has a moral duty to tell the Seeker where other humans are if she knows where they are at. However, Wanderer confronts this conflict and chooses her private passion over her moral responsibility to the Seeker. The conflict of Wanderer’s private passion and moral responsibility to the Seeker is caused by Melanie’s memories of Jared and Jamie, it causes Wanderer to be disloyal to her own species, and it’s significant to the work as a whole in showing how souls and humans are capable of coexisting in peace.

Wanderer’s conflict between private passion and moral responsibility to the Seeker is caused by Melanie’s memories of Jared, her boyfriend, and Jamie, her brother. Whenever Melanie kept showing Wanderer memories of Jared and Jamie, it caused Wanderer to start loving and caring about them too, as if they were her own boyfriend and brother. This made Wanderer begin to sympathize with the humans and care about what happens to them. She decides she wants to help Melanie protect Jamie and Jared and make sure that they remain safe. However, protecting Jared and Jamie goes against Wanderer’s moral responsibility to the Seeker, resulting in a conflict between passion and responsibility.

The conflict between private passion and moral responsibility that Wanderer faces causes Wanderer to be disloyal to her own species by not revealing where Jamie and Jared are to the Seeker. The memories that Melanie has shown Wanderer that stirred up lots of emotion inside her have caused her to disregard her moral duty, because while being shown these memories, passion overpowered loyalty in Wanderer’s mind. Wanderer ends up choosing her private passion of finding and protecting Jared and Jamie over her moral responsibility of telling the Seeker where any humans are. Therefore, the conflicting force of her private passion must be very strong, because it’s able to overpower the other conflicting force of her moral duty to the Seeker and loyalty to her species.

The conflict of Wanderer’s private passion and moral responsibility to the Seeker is significant to the work as a whole in showing how souls and humans are capable of coexisting in peace. If Wanderer hadn’t kept Jared and Jamie’s whereabouts from the Seeker, they would’ve had a good chance of getting killed by them, which would’ve portrayed the humans and souls as not coexisting peacefully. However, since Wanderer dealt with this conflict by keeping it a secret from the Seeker, it led to Melanie, Jared, Ian, and Wanderer all coexisting happily among each other, showing that it is capable for the two species to coexist in peace.

Wanderer’s conflict between private passion and moral responsibility to the Seeker resulted from Melanie’s memories of Jared and Jamie, it causes Wanderer to be disloyal to her own species, and it’s significant to the work as a whole in showing how souls and humans are capable of coexisting in peace. This difficult conflict Wanderer faced resulted in her choosing passion over loyalty and responsibilities. However, even though this conflict caused Wanderer to go against her moral duty, it resulted in her being able to eventually live in her own body and be happy, along with Ian, Melanie, and Jared.