Word: gooders
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more powerful. What he and a skilled novice screenwriter (Stephen Geller) have done is combine some of the Vonnegut reactions the author presents intermittently in his book with a now slightly-more-articulate Pilgrim. They have also cut away any digressive interludes with such past Vonnegut characters as do-gooder Eliot Rosewater and sci-fi prophet Kilgore Trout, and built up interplay between two characters more central to the heart of Slaughterhouse itself: Edgar Derby, Billy's best friend, substitute father figure and moral fellow; and PaulLazarro, the evil of the world summed up in a pipsqueak from South Philly...
...interested but not surprised at the complaints of Do-Gooder Frank Ferree's neighbors about his house. If his neighbors had his spirit of brotherhood, they would take brush and ham mer in hand and help him put his "damned eyesore" in order...
...ills, much less the minuscule efforts of an individual. Thus a man who, say, sponsors a ghetto child for two summer weeks in the country might be accused by the politically devoted liberal of ignoring the proper government channels, sneered at by a right-wing zealot as a "do-gooder" and denounced by a Weatherman as an irrelevant pander to a sick system...
...gooder is not everywhere an epithet, and charity remains a vital force. Fortunately, there are many Americans who still practice it. Indeed, there are indications that it is returning to vogue in new forms. All kinds of people are looking for alternatives to the big, impersonal welfare state; the communes of the young, for example, a novel institution in modern America, could not survive without direct, highly personal human interdependence...
Certainly a sense of moral obligation to the needy is deeply implanted in the American character. Day's "opulent, careworn saint" is a firm fixture in the national legacy. John Winthrop, Puritan leader and first Governor of Massachusetts, probably laid down the first American do-gooder's covenant when he told his flock: "We must love one another with a pure heart fervently, we must bear one another's burdens, we must look not only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren." William Penn was a tireless proponent of charity...