What is a Good Deed? - Story Review of The Good Samaritan

    In the story The Good Samaritan, written by René Saldaña, Jr., Rey, a Mexican American teen, recounts being repeatedly exploited by Mr. Sánchez who manipulates neighborhood boys with unfulfilled promises of pool access and basketball court privileges. When encountering Mr. Sánchez stranded with a flat tire, Rey initially drives past but relents after recalling his father's work-exhausted face. Though resentful of Sánchez's past deceptions, Rey changes the tire while rejecting future invitations. The writer’s reaction to Sánchez’s unbearable actions of taking advantage of a group of children is quite out of my expectation as he returned kindness for evil. How he denied Sánchez’s another invitation brings a sense of humour while getting us to think about it deeply. So what’s a good deed?

    Above all, returning us with satisfaction is the basic feature of a good deed. Satisfaction comes in forms besides just wealth, it sometimes acts as a positive emotional value. Take a common example, when people take on voluntary work, volunteers get a sense of satisfaction as they offer their help to others, giving them a sense that they are needed and useful to the society. While in the story, Rey helped Sánchez when he was at his wits' end because of his broken car. Such things, which can be named as good deeds, are beyond just pecuniary benefit, instead, the energy of positive emotion is the "goods" that are "traded" within it, with both the helper and the recipient getting what they need, returning them satisfaction. A good deed produces people's high-level needs, such as satisfaction, and provides them for not only oneself, but also others.

    A good deed should at least not infringe upon others' rights. A good deed shouldn’t only centre around oneself without considering others. In the story, Sánchez is a self-centred person as he always took advantage of children for his own purpose. In the short term, such action truly brought benefits to him. However, as time went by, his name was mud once the children discovered they were being used, making the deed such a bad deed which was harmful to others without benefiting himself. There is no effect without a cause, a bad starting point is doomed to a bad outcome at the very beginning. A good deed gets as many people as possible benefit from it.

    A good deed has a positive impact on the community’s environment, relying on one’s proper understanding of the harmony of its community. Proper understanding will give a person magnanimity so that one will devote to making contributions to the community. On one hand, Sánchez’s decisions and actions mainly center around himself and for the purpose of making benefits for himself, finally becoming the motive of making use of children, which has had a negative impact on community harmony. On the other hand, even if Rey and Sánchez had an insurmountable contradiction, Rey still chose to give a helping hand to Sánchez in the certain situation as what Zhuang Zi said, “Respect your own elders and those of others, cherish your own young and those of others as well”, showing his idea of emphasizing neighborhood harmony. He won’t benefit directly from his act of kindness, but it would promise him a more friendly society. A good deed is something not only will one benefit oneself, but also is beneficial to others.

     Though the story mainly discusses the relationship between neighbours, the criteria for judging whether things are good or bad are also contained therein. It provides us with the way of handling contradictions through Rey’s decision to help Sánchez, who had contradictions with him and it can be considered as a vivid example of a good deed. In a word, a good deed has a positive impact on Individuals, others and even society. It is the mainstay for the stable and sustainable development of society, which means that choices can only be made after considering units above to ensure they will promise us with an acceptable result, as only a good deed has the strength to achieve such hope.