The Road to Character

Humility—“the awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong” (8-9)—is the thematic guiding star of this chapter. Examples of humble behavior in the public eye—usually from actors and political figures, as well as from literature and from organizations such as the Girl Scouts of America—from past decades and centuries stand in sharp contrast to modern self-promotion and self-centeredness, underscoring Brooks’ central thesis with stark effectiveness. Adam I’s success is not possible without the firm underpinnings of Adam II’s moral struggle and personal journey toward humility. Because we can pull concrete examples from history—and even some from present-day—Brooks argues that this kind of personal development and outlook is eminently possible. We have not become a wholly degenerate society; we have merely lost our way, and it is far from impossible to rectify this. Examples of embodied humility, especially in our forebears, can be embodied and enacted today.

The personal anecdotes in this chapter function almost like characters, in the sense that their struggles and proofs of their existence against a backdrop of high drama—WWII, a high-action football game, major entertainment features, and political administrations—make them more appealing to our sense of narrative storytelling. Brooks uses Command Performance and the football game on his home television set as a vivid establishing dichotomy for what he discussed in his introduction; he goes on to name a specific array of actors, politicians, and organizations whose philosophies and public actions exemplify Little Me culture. He then relates them to himself and to the reader at a more intimate, personal level, pointing out that we have the same internal moral struggles as these great figures from our shared cultural history.

Senses of place and setting in this chapter are likewise vivid, as they are an integral part of the anecdotes that he uses to demonstrate his points. He speaks of WWII, both the European and Pacific Theaters, and he also evokes the spectacle of Golden-Age Hollywood in listing the figures involved in Command Performance—Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, and others. Settings and events of these eras help us ground Brooks’ points about moral outlooks in a social and historical context. It throws our own era and potentially damaging thinking about the self and morality into much sharper relief.