Victory or Failure

Adventure

"Who do I want to become, and what impact do I want to have on the world around me?"


Looking at Che's earlier life, I think that at that time he wasn't sure what he wanted to become. It was clear that he wanted his life to be an adventure. I think that his original goals were changed by the things that he experienced. On his road trip, his eyes were open to the horrible poverty which many South Americans faced, which was REALLY upsetting to him. I think that one of his goals early on was to help the working people/ those in poverty to have a better life, which relates to his socialist views. He wanted to help those around him who were without hope. Che didn't like the rich and the dictators because they had so much, while others had nothing. He was angry that people were homeless in their own country.
When he went on this journey, Ernesto wanted to become a doctor so that he could help others the way that he had been helped with his asthma, as a child. After all of his experiences Ernesto came to the conclusion that he could not really help the world in this way. There would always be problems that he would be helpless in. Che was willing to fight for his values and decided that becoming a revolutionary would allow him solve some of these problems. Because of this he fought for Cuba's freedom in their revolution as well as in other things.

The perplexing part of this is that a doctor decided to kill others. Doctors promise only to "heal" others, so it seems as if he went against his values when he became a soldier. This brings into question whether or not his accomplishments were actually victories for him or not. In a way his being a part of concentration camps and all of his killing shows that he failed at his original goals.

He did some very good things in his life, but he still went against his doctors oath and killed. There are many different opinions of him, but really no way to actually decide if his life was a victory or a failure for him because he is not alive to explain whether or not he was proud of his life work.