Tartuffe: Morals and Ethics From the moment of our conception, who we are and how we will one day believe and behave is completely laid out for us. Truly our upbringing and everyday environment play a role in who we are and how we present ourselves but, the reality is, we are who we are meant to be. We each serve a very specific purpose in life. Granted some of us are blessed with a more dignified role, and others, well, were not as lucky in the casting department. However, within those of us who were graciously bestowed a sense of morality, lies a specific amount of morals, or ethics. The question of course, is how much and why, why do we believe as we do. Well, I’ll tell you why….we were born that way. From birth we were meant to be a certain way. We were meant to follow a certain believe, that’s what makes us who we are. For example, in Moliere’s Tartuffe, Tartuffe acted in the name of every ethical belief imaginable, yet lived by not one of them. Tartuffe was without a doubt a man of nonexistent morality. Which better proves my point, “people are born with morals.” Just as some people are born to be leaders, people are also born to live as honest ethical human beings. Of course in the case of morality, ethical stability comes in various levels. All who hold the ability to live as principled individuals maintain a certain amount of moral dignity. Despite how much or how little your ethical reasoning stretches, it’s still there, and will always be there. Tartuffe was an odious hypocrite whose apparent piety ingratiated him with the credulous Orgon and his mother Mme. Both Orgon and his mother believed that Tartuffe's pious example of immaculate ethics would be good for the remaining members of the family. But everyone else in the family, including the outspoken servant Dorine, was perceptive enough to see right through the impostor. Right from the get go, Tartuffe’s overwhelming misco...
