Human Action: Indifference or Making a Difference

Bystanders are ordinary people who play it safe. At the beginning of Cynthia Ozick's "Of Christian Heroism" we learn much about bystanders and the affects of their actions - or rather their inaction - during the Holocaust. Ozick directly involves us in the story of Christian heroism; she asks us to really imagine how it was during the Holocaust and to explore the ordinary human reaction during that time. By identifying with and pointing out the indifference of the majority, we learn how rare and magnificent heroism was then and still is now. Ozick recognizes that it may be human nature to be a bystander; however, she urges us to try heroism instead to learn how we can make a difference for mankind.

At the start of her essay, Ozick includes a quote by Herbert Gold:

There is a story about Clare Booth Luce complaining that she was bored with hearing about the Holocaust. A Jewish friend of hers said he perfectly understood her sensitivity in the matter; in fact, he had the same sense of repetitiousness and fatigue, hearing so often about the Crucifixion. (167)

Before starting her essay, I believe Ozick is setting the tone to show that we live in a time where indifference becomes an everyday reaction. Our minds are filled wi

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Ozick states, “Compassion, it is clear, sharpens intuition and augments imagination” (174). If they accepted the way things were, that was the way things remained. Who were these women and men of courage? Ozick tells us they were from all over Europe, and that they were “Catholic and Protestant.

Ozick goes on to state that because the bystanders were so large in number, what they did or what they didn’t do created the status quo. It is easy to look away or avert our eyes when we see evil in action. However, Ozick would like us to imagine our flock of bystanders as individual sheep. The normal human being is not cruel, but the normal human being is generally not heroic either. It urges us to look away from the things too terrible to look at instead of imagining what we could do to make it different. Their actions help us understand how one person, through compassion and bravery can make a difference. Heroism is, however, a characteristic we are capable of learning that needs cultivation and training to acquire. They were willing to see, to judge, to decide.

Ozick does not believe these morals and principles come naturally to humans. Her final paragraph of the first part of her essay bemoans a lack of compassion for the human race:

Indifference is not so much a gesture of looking away - of choosing to be passive - as it is an active disinclination to feel. Yet even against the risks and a status quo set by the bystanders, in every European country there were Christian rescuers that set out to save the lives of the Jews.

Stories of heroism are inspiring, but in reality most of us still identify with the bystanders because we don’t like conflict, we are afraid or feel helpless, or simply we are content being sheep in the flock.

Approximate Word count = 3228
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)

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