What the Nuns Taught Us

One can chose to live a life of virtue or vice, a choice only we ourselves can make. Terrence Malick’s movie The Tree of Life, on the surface tells the story of a family in Waco Texas in the mid 1950’s, but at its heart, the movie questions things much deeper. Malick’s work questions the significance of a single human’s life in comparison to the world’s history as a whole. In the beginning of the movie, Mrs. O’Brien talks about the ways of nature and grace. Nature is selfish and cares only for itself while grace lives through compassion. This is similar to how Plato describes a tyrannical man and philosopher king in his book, Plato’s Republic. Of the five types of souls, the philosopher king, or aristocratic man, is the most just in the way he lives. On the other end, there is the tyrannical man. He is the least just and the worst type of human. In The Tree of Life, Mrs. O’Brien concept of living by the ways of nature or grace, mimic those of Plato’s idea of what a just, aristocrat, and unjust, tyrannical, man look like showing the similarities and differences in Malick’s and Plato’s conceptions of virtue and evil.

In the beginning of the movie, Mrs. O’Brien talks about what it is to live in the way of grace verses the way of nature. The way of nature “only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way.” The way of nature is selfish. It cares only for itself, thinking not of others or the society it lives in. This mimics how Plato describes an unjust man. A man who is unjust is consumed by worldly pleasures and cares little for others. Injustice “is to one’s own profit and advantage” (344 c). Just like nature, the unjust man has others give it pleasure, forcing them to do...

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...he men. Malick, as seen in his movie, is a Christian. This effected what he believes a virtuous man is. His virtuous man is what the bible says he should be. One who stands up to evil to fight for the good of men around him. Plato on the other hand, lived before the time of the Christian religion. He was not taught the strict moral code that is embedded in the Christian religion as Malick was. Plato created his just man instead out of the man that he personally wished he could be. Plato thinks on a level that is very rational. It only makes sense to him that someone, whose life passion is learning, should be the one making decisions, and rulers of the city. But when he lives in a place, where his rulers are dim-witted, and care not for education, it angers him. These outside forces have a huge impact on who each person believes is just, and what makes a just man.