Roger Rosenblatt's The Man In The Water

Have you ever been in the position where you had to choose if you wanted to do the right or wrong thing? Would you describe yourself as a virtuous person? Well, the short story called “The Man In The Water” involves a character with moral features, as the author Roger Rosenblatt uses the literary elements of character and conflict to express morality. Morality means principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good or bad behavior. This story shows that you have to act with courage no matter what. “The Man in the Water” had the compassion to place others before him. This story also reminds us that humans don’t have the real power to overthrow a force as big as a nature.

Roger Rosenblatt uses character to develop moral courage. The characters in the short story are: the Man in the water, the passengers, and nature. The passengers are the ones that are trying to survive the disaster, nature is the force trying to kill the passengers, and the Man in the water is the Man who saved all the passengers. Roger Rosenblatt
The two main conflicts expressed in the story are Man versus Nature and an external conflict. The Man had to fight against nature to save the passengers. “Man in Nature. The man in the water. For its part, nature cared nothing about the five passengers.” The narrator explains the external conflict he had by saying “For at some moment in the water he must've realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had to know it, no matter how gradual the effect of the cold. In his judgment he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in the world move away from him, and he deliberately let it happen.” The Man accomplished to save 5 lives by giving his own during the accident. Even Though he knew he wasn't going to survive, he still put himself aside and gave his