“I’m going back to work on mental health commiittee. I’m going to be its director, at least for a while. You and I will have plenty of time to
ourselves. No more working every week end.” p. 264 With this moment, Tom can more focus on his family’s life. no more
distractions from his work’s problem.
C. The Moral Values
As human being, man learns some values from his own experience. Some of those values teach him how to be a better person.In this section, the writer
wants to answer the last question from the problem formulation. Based on the previous part, there are some values that can derived from Tom Rath.
1. Being Honest Brings a Good Effects
From the previous section, the writer has explained that Tom is an honest person. He never worries about failure because of his honesty. As long as he tells
the truth, he believes that something good will happen.As a person who works in the business world, honesty is one thing that help him to stay humble and stay
away from the troubles. The biggest honesty from Tom in this novel is happened when she told his wife that he had son from another woman. That was really
amazing. He dares to confess about his mistakes in the past. Tom ready with all risks that he will get.
“He had an impulse simply to give her Maria’s letter and the photograph, but decided that would be cruel. There was an awkward silence which he
realized must be painfull to her. There was a child, he began. A child? During the war in Rome. What child? A child of mine. You had a child?
Yes”. p. 273-274
Another honesty from Tom Rath is when his boss offered him a position as personal assistant business. Tom thinks that it is a great opportunity for him,
it’s a big step for his career. But, if he take the position, he will leave his responsible at home, he needs to find place to live in Hollywood, it means that he
will loose his quality time with his family. So with all considerations, he refused the position.He tells his boss the truth.
“I don’t think I’m the kind of guy who should try to be a big executive. I’ll say it frankly: I don’t think I have the willingness to make the sacrifices.
I’m trying to be honest about this. I want the money. Nobody likes money better than I do. But I’m just not the kind of guy who can work evenings
and week ends and all the rest of it forever”. p. 261
From the quotation above Tom speaks honestly to his boss about his
decision. He’s not afraid if his boss doesn’t like with it. Luckily his boss understands about his decision. He doesn’t fired Tom, and Tom feels glad about
that. So, this is the power of honesty. Any problems you deal with, you have to be honest.
2. Remembering the Past is not Always Good
As the writer explains in the previous section, Tom is a veteran world war II. During the war, he has so many memories, bad or good. And now the war is
over, but Tom still can’t forget about the memories inside his head. When he has pressure on his job, his mind always flashback to the memories. He remembered
when he had no intension killed Mahoney, his friend in combat. Sometimes, his mind also flashed into Maria. When they still together in Rome, with Maria, Tom
feels different. Maria never hope so much on Tom, maybe it’s just a matter of expectations, because he and Betsy had always expected so much.
“Everything would be perfect for them, they would be healthy, and they would do no wrong. Any deviation from perfection had seemed a blight
which ruined the whole. But he and Maria expected nothing, they had started with hopelessness and had been astonished to learn that for a few
weeks they could be happy”. p. 181
Tom also remembers about the number of enemies that he had killed. He couldn’t forget the number, seventeen. It’s not a small amount. The following
quotation is a proof to this explanation above “It was no longer fashionable totalk about the war, and certainly it had
never been fashionable to talk about the number of men one had killed. Tom couldn’t forget the number, seventeen, but it didn’t seem real any
more, it was just a small, isolatedstatistic that nobody wanted. His mind went blank.” p. 13
We can see that it is not good for Tom to remember his past. After flashed
into his past his mind is blank. He can’t focus to his job. Another story about remembering the past is when Tom wants to go to his
office at the Schanenhauser Foundation he saw a man with leather jacket. There’s no special about the jacket, but in his mind it says something. But,
Tom tries to put the jacket out of his mind. While he was waiting to cross the street, suddenly a man besides him coughed painfully, and it’s kind of
distraction for him. Then Tom remembered about the jacket again, he remembered everything about it. The following quotation is a proof for the
explanation above
“Trying to put the jacket out of his mind, he hurried along the street. While he was waiting to cross Fifth Avenue, a man standing beside him coughed
painfully. Then Tom remembered about the leather jacket – remembered everything about it as clearly as though he had never forgotten. It had been
back in 1943, not many months before Germany started to disintegrate. Only he hadn’t known than that Germany would fall to pieces—it had seemed as though
the war would go on forever. It had been in December, early in december, that he killed the man in the leather jacket, simply because he needed the jacket for
himself.” p. 72
From the quotation above, the writer can see why Tom remembered about
simple thing, a leather jacket. His purpose is just want to take the jacket for himself, it was in December, it is on winter season, jacket is needed. Why does
Tom just ask for the jacket? The answer is no. The man in the leather jacket had been armed, he had been an enemy, the worst is he had been a German. So
killed him is legal. If he didn’t kill him, maybe Tom is killed at that time. The following quotation is a proof for the explanation above
“No, it hadn’t been like that at all. There was no use making it worse than it was. The man in the leather jacket had been armed, he had been an
enemy, legally decreed such by several governments. He had been a German, and the Germans were different from other people, or at least it
had seemed so at that time.” p. 72.
