There are no good men, or bad men

“There are no good men, or bad men” is the ethical principle Lin hears from the blind singers, and it shifts the measure of character from identity to action. People, the singers’ teaching holds, are not good or evil in themselves; what they do, or refuse to do, connects them to either. The principle also reaches beyond judgment: an instant of real love can contain life’s purpose, while all matter moves toward God.

The Principle in the Singers’ Teaching

Lin asks what truth is, though he admits he is trying to keep the conversation going rather than seeking an answer. The singers reply that truth is found more often in music than in philosophy books, then reject the division of people into good and bad. Their distinction is between people, who are simply people, and deeds, which may be good or bad. Responsibility therefore rests in conduct and omission, not in a permanent moral label.

The answer opens outward from everyday ethics to a universal claim. The singers place the meaning of life within an instant of real love, whether it occurs in the heart of the noblest person or the most wicked, and describe every atom, galaxy, and particle as moving toward God. The movement is from moral classification toward moral possibility: no person is reduced to a category that makes loving action impossible.

Protection as an Instinctive Deed

Lin later measures the principle against a remembered moment at the Standing Babas. When a sword-wielding man charged, Lin stepped back and raised his hands to fight; Prabaker moved sideways and put himself in front of Karla. Prabaker was not in love with her and was not a fighter. Lin, by contrast, had experience fighting men and thought he might have been able to save them if the attacker had reached them. Yet he regards Prabaker as the real hero because his first response was to protect someone else.

That contrast gives the maxim a practical, unsentimental force. The decisive act is not the one that looks most capable or promises the most effective violence, but the small, immediate choice to place oneself between another person and danger. Watching Prabaker laughing with his friends in the slum, Lin recognizes that his admiration and dependence have become love. The recognition grows from conduct witnessed over time, and from the protective gesture that gives those qualities their clearest form.

Justice, Responsibility, and Forgiveness

The same ethic shapes the community’s response when Joseph’s repeated violence against his wife, Maria, becomes impossible for the slum-dwellers to treat as a private matter. Johnny Cigar admits that he had not intervened, caught between his anger and the belief that a wife’s treatment was a matter between spouses. Qasim Ali Hussein directs him to stop Joseph, and others join in to end the violence. The episode exposes the moral weight of refusal as well as action: the community’s hesitation has consequences, but it does not prevent its members from taking responsibility once they act.

Qasim Ali Hussein directs Joseph’s punishment with close restraint, maintaining pressure without allowing the crowd to exceed its purpose. When Joseph finally breaks down, the response changes from chastisement to care. The same men who had punished him support him, wash him, give him water, comb his hair, and offer kind words. Joseph is told that sincere remorse can be met with forgiveness and help; he is also made to touch the feet of those present. Qasim Ali Hussein then tells him that Maria is alive. The sequence treats justice not as a fixed verdict on a bad man but as an effort to stop harm, elicit remorse, and make a different course possible.

Love as Evidence of Character

Prabaker’s love for Parvati supplies another everyday measure of character. Driving toward Marine Drive, he says that he worries about her even more than he worries about his taxi and asks whether a feeling that causes worry while making him happy is love. Lin confirms that it is. Prabaker also speaks of Johnny Cigar’s love for Sita, Parvati’s sister, placing affection within the bonds of the people around him rather than treating it as an isolated ideal.

As his marriage approaches, Prabaker becomes afraid that his short stature and small build will make him an inadequate husband. He turns to Lin for reassurance, and Lin answers by telling him that love makes men big and hate makes them small. He calls Prabaker one of the biggest men he knows because there is no hate in him, and connects that judgment to knowing him better over time. The maxim thus returns to its central test: a person’s worth is revealed not by a fixed status or physical measure, but by the quality of what he gives and how he treats others.

Narrative Significance

Lin remembers the singers’ words as permanent: he can hear them again by closing his eyes, alongside the singers and the men he describes as father and brother. Their teaching becomes more than a proposition spoken in one conversation. It supplies a way to read later choices, distinguishing fighting from protection, silence from intervention, punishment from cruelty, and remorse from an identity fixed by wrongdoing.

Across these episodes, the expression does not deny that deeds can be harmful or that people must answer for them. It insists that moral judgment should attach to what people do and refuse to do, while leaving room for a change of conduct. Love is the clearest evidence of that possibility: it can appear as Prabaker’s instinctive protection, his anxious devotion to Parvati, or the community’s decision to combine accountability with a path toward forgiveness.