Casual Belief vs. Effective Behavior - the Last Samurai

610 Words3 Pages
Casual belief vs. Effective behavior Morality and justice can be considered the same thing but it varies depending on culture and historical context. All forms of justice are built on a foundation of moral assumptions that include ideas about ethics, fairness and the law. So technically both are the same thing; except justice is more looked as laws to keep peace between people and morals are just a belief depending on the individual. In the movie Captian Algren suffers from PTSD which is linked to his night terrors. He is traumatized by his involvement in the massacre of the Native Americans in the Indian Wars and because of that, he has a enormous hatred towards Colonel Bagley; the man who ordered the massacre. During the movie it’s obvious he regrets what he did. In the beginning he is offered a job to train soldiers and agrees solely for the payment. It is shown in the movie that he deals with his PTSD with alcohol to get rid of the memories. I don’t think he realized how much of a problem it actually is until he is captured by Katsumoto and put in Taka’s home. Taka is the one who mentions to Katsumoto that he has trouble sleeping at night and wakes up screaming sometimes. One day Katsumoto mentions it to Algren; it’s his way of making conversation and getting to know his enemy. However, throughout the movie he seems to find himself in the new culture surrounded by him and slowly his night terrors disappear. I feel like both morality and justice play part in his suffering. Morals are beliefs and practices related to the notion of right conduct or good character and justice is about fairness regards to a wrongdoing. Justice emphasis the effects of certain actions and the burden of these effects; I think it neutralizes the interests of the people governed in order to provide protection to them. Morality, on other hand, is more about the actions, the
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