A Gas Station Burns in the Forest: Illuminating Our Moral Legacy - Summary | Write to be Read

The article “A Gas Station Burns in the Forest: Illuminating Our Moral Legacy” is written by David A. Shapiro, in the article, the writer takes a close look at the moral; a legacy that we are leaving for the generations to come. According to the writer, the present society is selfish and greedy in which people don’t want to take the responsibility to solve the problem existed in society. People-centered on personal affairs devastating into the selfishness.

The writer picks an incident of travel with his father in an expensive motor car. In the journey, they were traveling through the way of the National Conservation Area, where two petrol pumps, one was multinational and modern, and the next was simple and old. They filled the petrol from the modern petrol pump because their credit card would be accepted. After a short travel, they heard a great explosion on the old petrol pump and they saw people burning there. A mother was crying for help because her daughter was inside the restroom. The writer told his father to return back and take the responsibility of rescue but the writer’s father, who was a physician, denied doing so claiming it wasn’t good to be devastated in the problem.

Such thinking of the father compelled the writer to think about the mentality and moral values of modern society and people. Modern people want to escape from the moral duty and responsibility being indifferent to human sentiment on the name of the job and taking care of the family. The society in which morality is decayed leaves the negative consequences for the generations to come. In a society, underclass people have to face injustice, have to be exploited and devastated into the problems but rich people don’t pay attention to such miseries.

Hence, the writer is trying to criticize the moral decadence of the present generation that obviously misleads the generation to come.