Ethics

Linda Pastan

In ethics class so many years ago

our teacher asked this question every fall:
If there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face

leaving her usual kitchen to wander

some drafty, half imagined museum.

One year, feeling clever, I replied

why not let the woman decide herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand

before a real Rembrandt, old woman,

or nearly so, myself. The colors

within this frame are darker than autumn,

darker even than winter—the browns of earth,

though earth's most radiant elements burn

through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one

and all beyond saving by children.

Linda Pastan was born in New York on the 27th of May in 1932.  She is currently living in Maryland.  She has twelve poetry books published.

     In lines three through six, Pastan states the question her Ethics teacher would always ask.  The question is if there were a fire in a museum which would you save, a Rembrandt painting or an old woman who hadn't many years left anyhow? 
 

Above are some of Rembrandt's paintings.  I couldn't find how much his paintings are worth because they aren't for sale, but what I did find was his paintings would be well over a couple hundred million dollars.  If I was asked that question my answer would be the old lady.  I would choose her because even though a painting is worth more money than I'd probably ever see, a life is priceless.  In lines 13 through 14, Paston answers the question by asking why the old woman can't choose for herself.  Her teacher then explains that then she would be running away from her responsibilty to decide.  When she is older, she's in a museum standing before a Rembrandt and she realizes that a kid would choose to save an old woman simply because it's the right thing to do.