In a book called The Wish list by Eoin Colfer, a girl named Meg dies. She isn't allowed to go into Heaven or Hell because the amount of good deeds and bad deeds she has done are equal. To change this, she goes down to the living world to change the balance, hopefully making it so that she can go to heaven. She goes back to help an old man who's life was ruined because of her. This is not because she feels bad for him, she is not helping him out of the goodness of her. She is helping him for a greedy selfish motive of not wanting to go to hell. This shows that according to the book, your intentions don't matter, only what you do matters.
This same thing happens again in the book when a demon is sent to make sure Meg goes to Hell. Hell wants Meg with them, and the only way Meg goes to Heaven is if she helps that man. The demon asks his computer "Wait, so why don't we just kill the old coot?" and the computer responds "Because then she has not failed. She can only go to Hell if she fails, so we just have to mess up her attempts." In the last sentence of what the computer says, he is implying that if she tries her hardest to do good, but fails, she has not done any good at all.
This contradicts the whole good and bad system though. If a man dies trying to protect his nation, but he dies and his nation is invaded, should he not be remembered as a good person? If someone kisses baby heads only for good publicity, is that considered a good act? If a poor father robs a rich corrupt man to buy food for his three motherless children, is he bad? The answer is the man who died trying to protect his nation should be remembered as a good person, the person doing good acts for only selfish purposes, should not get credit for being good, and the man who takes from the people who have more then enough to feed his children is not bad. Don't you agree? This book however doesn't.
The author probably had to compromise and leave those examples in the book, for without them the story would be incomplete, but still. It goes against the whole lesson that should be learned from the book, which is that your intentions are the things that truly matter.
I really enjoyed reading your 3rd paragraph. You never fail to leave me thinking, which is what I like best about your posts. Meg seems selfish for only doing a good deed to go to Heaven. I agree with the fact that people doing good acts for selfish reasons should not get credit. You have left me hanging! Now I must read this book.
ReplyDeleteYour post was well thought out and had an interesting argument. You did a good job of explaining the idea of motives in your book. Your idea was complex and very unique.
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