Surname 2
The action of Archilde’s mother action of killing the police warden presents a good
example of an ethical conflict between the character’s ethical values and those of the western
tradition. Catharine is from a Red Indian tribe and practices traditional Salish culture though
she had converted to Catholic faith, a religion from the west. According to the western
tradition, killing a person is a sin because most of the people are religious and believe in the
teachings of the Bible. People in the West also believe in the rule law. They, therefore,
believe in taking those found breaking the court law, where they will be charged rather than
taking revenge on them. Killing, as a way of revenge in the western countries, is seen as a
more sinful action. However, Archilde’s mother has been brought up in a tradition that does
not perceive revenge to be wrong. This is why she has the courage to stealthily walk behind
the game warden and kill him with a hatchet. She, therefore, commits murder intentionally
and in full knowledge of what she was doing.
The reason why the action by Archilde’s mother is an ultimate ethical conflict is that
it was prompted by the game warden who killed her son Louis. It can, therefore, be argued
that she did not kill because she is evil but due to the killing of her son which is her maxim.
However, it is not right to kill in order to revenge for another person. If I was in her situation,
I would have not killed the warden but would have preferred to take the warden to the court
for murder. When viewed from Kant, Mill, Aristotle’s philosophy, the act taking life as
revenge is not ethical. In the argument put forward by Kant, in his first formulation to
determine whether an action is moral or not, the action of an agent is morally acceptable only
when the reasons for doing such an action will bring no contradiction if everyone acted from
that Maxim. Catharine’s action was, therefore, a morally impermissible from this
formulation.
