Persons and Others Essay Example

is to try, from the standpoint of someone who is disempowered, to understand the moral requirements of situations where people have others in their care who are extraordinarily vulnerable to assaults upon their sense of self. I believe this is Lorraine Code’s thesis, everything she covers in her essay can be related back to those three sentences. I agree with just about everything Code says in her response to the novel. She makes good points about how it is unjust that this elderly woman is having trouble maintaining her sense of self and these two women who are supposed to be helping her are just making it worse by trying to make Caro this that she is crazy and losing it.

The women refer to the people in their care as nothing more than “poor things”, as if they aren’t people but merely objects; and Code recognizes that by objectifying these old people the caretakers saying that they are worth nothing. As stated by Code on page 4 “ Treating a person as little more than an object, in its cognitive dimension, implies acknowledging no significant differences between such a person and an ordinary, everyday object”, what I get from this is that the women who run the nursing home and those who objectify any person are completely ignorant.

Before you can judge and objectify, though you really should never objectify people, you need to truly know a person and understand who they are and where they came from; a treatment that Caro’s caretakers never gave her or any other “guest” in their nursing home. Code explains through Kantian’s formulation that “one must

always treat with humanity” and that there are different levels of knowing other people.

It takes time to truly know some one and if we just give time to understand people we could treat them much better and more appropriately. These two women who run Twin Elms have put themselves in this position and portray themselves as responsible women who can be trusted with old, senile, and overall vulnerable people. Code believes the best way to care for these type of old people is sympathetically and compassionately; as we would want to be treated if we were in their situation, because believe it or not we all will be one day.

I also appreciate how Code points out in her response that for some of those reading As We Are Now there is a nothing wrong with the treatment given to Caro Spencer from those running the home. The women are fulfilling their duties to their guest, their obligations are to simply provide shelter, food and medical attention need be; which is exactly what Caro Spencer has purchased by staying there. She just wants more though, and who can blame her. It is an awful situation and all one could hope for is that the people around can understand what you are going through and treat you accordingly.