Argument:
Using the Toulmin model for a 5-page essay, support, refute, or complicate your sympathy for either moral absolutism or moral relativism based on a comparison of Best Friends and Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog."
Using the Toulmin model for a 5-page essay, support, refute, or complicate the notion that Roy is morally justified in "stealing" his best friend Sam's wife in what is a natural evolution of self-growth and self-discovery thereby making the novel a champion for moral relativism.
Moral absolutism vs. moral relativism
Irony lends itself to moral relativism and contradiction
Male narcissism
Loyalty to friendship or oneself
Friends who outgrow their friends who become energy vampires
Spouses who outgrow their spouses like Tobias Wolff's "Say Yes"
Private desire vs. public responsibility
Muganda (man-child) who is a consumer zombie and dying in the suburbs.
Maturity and self-growth lead to love
Who's more sympathetic, Roy or Sam?
Chris Hedges laments The Last Man.
"What Moral Relativism Means to Me"
"Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts"
Compare Sam's solipsism (retreating into consumerism and loneliness) to Nikolay in Chekhov's short story "Gooseberries."
Compare theme of moral absolutism with Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog."
Chekhov's defense of illicit love.
Rereading the Short Story
Compare theme of marital alienation with Tobias Wolff's "Say Yes."
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