¶ … Parable of the Sadhu
In the story "The Parable of Sadhu," author Bowen H. McCoy explores the question of ethics while his narrator hikes in Nepal. McCoy himself was the managing director of Morgan Stanley. He was also president of Morgan Stanley Realty, Inc. Bowen McCoy then is a figure who embodies the idea of business and financial gain. What then could he gain from a trek in the Himalayas but a vacation from the stress of his money-centered world? This is the conflict that makes up the story of "The Parable of Sadhu." It is not only a cultural clash, but a moral and ethical one, which McCoy makes evident through the use of literary devices to make the reader feel the clash as much as he did.
By using a first-person narrator, the author adds authority to the words of the narrator. Whenever this perspective is utilized by a writer, the intent is to give the assertion that the events he or she is describing actually took place, or at the very least that the narrator believes that they occurred. This depends on the reliability of the narrator. In what may be called the prologue of the piece, McCoy states: "During the Nepal hike, something occurred that has the powerful impact on my thinking about corporate ethics. Although some might argue that the experience has no relevance to business, it was a situation in which a basic ethical dilemma suddenly intruded into the lives of a group of individuals" (103). This passage utilizes McCoy's authority as a man of business to convince the reader even before the story has begun that what they are about to see is something of significance. Since it has made McCoy reevaluate his thinking and his determination about the
They make these journeys on a regular basis so they can get back to nature or connect with the real world or some other such reason that is never made clear. This is a vacation for these men where their biggest concern is that nature will defeat their desires. "If we failed to cross the pass, I feared that the last half of our 'once in a lifetime' trip would be ruined" (104). This passage is written in a way that makes the reader turn against the narrator some.
For those who don't know what it's like to take exotic vacations for months on end, the concerns of the narrator and his friends seem trivial. McCoy notices that his friend is exhibiting symptoms of altitude sickness. "The initial stage of altitude sickness brings a headache and nausea. As the condition worsens, a climber may encounter difficult breathing, disorientation, aphasia, and paralysis" (104). The intent here is to show that even though the narrator and his friend put themselves in this situation, there is still a risk of danger to their minds and bodies in the mountains. The initial impression the reader gets of the narrator is of a man with too much money and not enough sense who hangs out with people who suffer from the same disproportion of riches and reason.
This all changes when one of the other travelers discovers a half-dead sadhu. One of the New Zealanders had found the man, sick with hypothermia but did not want recuing him to interfere with his vacation. So, it falls to the narrator to look after the Indian holy man. The impression that the writer has given would indicate that this kind of man would be like the New Zealander and pass the half-dead man on to someone else. "It was fruitless to question why he had chosen this desperately high route instead of the safe, heavily traveled caravan route through Kali Gandaki gorge. Or why he was almost naked and with no shoes, or how long he had been lying in the pass" (104). For the narrator beforehand, this…
Parable of the Sadhu Bowen H. McCoy's 1983 Harvard Business Review article "The Parable of the Sadhu" describes the author's own experience of how he "literally walked through a classic moral dilemma without fully thinking through the consequences" (p.106). During a sightseeing junket to the peak of Everest, McCoy and his moralistic Quaker buddy Stephen have their travel interrupted by the discovery of a religious pilgrim -- a "sadhu" -- found
It was if he had left his ethical principles behind when he entered a context where fulfilling his ethical responsibilities to others meant less than the competitive drive to reach his goal. The fact that he had tried and failed to make the climb before, as a result of altitude sickness, was a further motivator for his callousness. The other climber's similar lack of care and concern for the
Parable of the Sadhu" is a legendary text in business ethics -- it won the Harvard Business Review's Ethics Prize in the year of its publication. McCoy, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, writes autobiographically about a real experience during his leisure hours, but the lesson of McCoy's piece is one about the fundamental ethics of the business community. Bowen McCoy describes how he and a colleague "literally walked
Parable of the sadhu teaches us the importance of a group's commitment to the welfare of an individual. In corporate ethics, this would mean the support of the entire organization for the welfare and career/personal growth of an employee. In the sense of individual ethics, it means instead of doing our bit and throwing the rest of others, we must pool our resources and offer complete commitment to the welfare
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