1. SaiCh
Period 6
Loyalty
“My Brother’s Keeper”, a short story by Jay Bennett, is about a
teenager who makes his final decision to value honestly more than loyalty after
having a dilemma. Also, “What Price Loyalty?” by Gerald Pomper, is a news
commentary, which points out that loyalty gets more complicated in the real world
and suggest the readers to deliberate on the consequences more than follow the
absolute moral. Both texts convey that it’s acceptable to be disloyal when
considering the consequences of certain situations withfull thought and how it
works with other essential moral values.
Despite the fact that loyalty is one of the principles that is included in
the utopian world, sometimes people should consider other important principles as
well. Then values between them will ensure that they are parallel and do not create
any other ethical problems. If so then disloyalty can be acceptable. For instance, in
“My Brother’s Keeper”,before Jammie makes his final decision, he had
considerloyalty to his brother as a first priority, as he promises to help his brother:
“You can count on me”(281). However, he makes his final decision tofollow his own
principle that is honesty rather loyalty as he says in the court: “And Jammie knew
that he could never again be his brother’s keeper” (283).This illustrates that he
notices the two principles are not parallel and it creates ethical problems. He also
needs critical thinking to decide which one is more important. Therefore, it is

2. reasonable for Jammie to be disloyal to his brother because he thoughtfully predicts
that this will bring the best outcome.
Loyalty can harm oneself or others if he or she follows blindly without
thinking of the consequences. In the news commentary,Pomper gives an example of
Adolf Hitler(286). Since the German general Staff honored Hitler blindly, he and
others ignored the Holocaust. This ignorance had an extreme impact on history
since massivenumber of people died which was the worst ethical issue. The writer
also gives the other example of how loyalty can be unacceptable: “During the Cold
War, Secretary of State Dean Acheson said he refused to turn his back on Alger Hiss,
even his friend was revealed to be a Soviet spy”(287). This example shows that
loyalty could create the negative impact to the nation or society. Thus, people
require more critical thinking about the consequences that will happen in future
than to absolutely adhere toloyal.
Loyalty not only creates problems in history or in short stories or
history, but also in daily life. According to a teenager from ISB high school, her
brother told her to keep his secret about stealing mom’s money. However, she told
her mom the truth. This shows that my decision based on both ethic and
consequences. Loyalty conflicts with honest because it creates ethical problems of
lying. Also, this conveys the negative outcome since her mom has to work harder to
get more money to replace what had been lost.

3. It is reasonable to be disloyal when loyalty creates other ethical
problems as seen in “My Brother’s Keeper” or the teenager’s experience, or contains
negative consequences as seen in “What price loyalty?”.