“One has to fight against the current; to battle every day and every hour against exhaustion, hunger, cold and the resulting inertia; to resist enemies and have no pity for rivals; to sharpen one’s wits, build up one’s patience, strengthen one’s will-power. Survival without renunciation of any part of one’s own moral world-apart from powerful and direct interventions by fortune- was conceded only to very few superior individuals, made of the stuff of martyrs and saints (pg 92).” As mentioned in the previous chapter, the good and evil based on humans’ moral beliefs could not exist. In order to survive, you have to be altruistic to the others and reject your own moral world. However, now I have to agree with their actions. Although everybody will view negatively of the prisoners’ actions while they are “reading” the book, I am sure everyone will act as the prisoners inside the barbed wire, if being greedy is the only way to survive. If I were one of the prisoners, can I be nice enough to share my last piece of bread with the others who are starving? I would probably not. God says we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves, but it seems God’s words are not the right solution to the way of survival. We only tend to love ourselves and be self-centered. However, can we really consider as being greedy if we are inside the prison, where no morality exists? Nothing seems right or wrong, due to the ways of surviving.
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