Executing the St. Johns: The Only Moral Choice

[JackSchirmer]

It occurred to me during Episode 2, then again afterwards during the discussion, that the conventional moral position whereby killing the St. John's is considered the lesser, baser option, had it all backwards.

Here's a typical post on the issue:

Originally Posted by Viser
Yeah, definitely fighting the St. John brothers. That was very intense, I actually killed Danny out of anger, because of what he had done to us, but after knowing Clem witnessed it I instantly felt like I shouldn't have done that. Didn't kill Andy though, he being like "Get back here and finish this!!" was epic.

Thing is, if you leave the St. John's alive, aren't they simply going to continue, as long as they're alive, trapping, mutilating, murdering, and eating innocent travelers? Don't you have the moral obligation to execute them, whether in anger or after due consideration?

What would their punishment have been in the pre-ZA world for their Dahmeresque crimes? Life imprisonment, at a minimum, and a death sentence in any state that allowed it. The only question remaining is, does the ZA provide a mitigating circumstance? In this case, I think, clearly not. There's still food out there. They do live on a farm. The soil is still fertile. They have corn, for example. They have at least one cow's worth of meat and the ability to dress and prepare that meat, in the neighborhood of five hundred pounds of it, which would last a small family at least several months

Life imprisonment wasn't an option, so executing the family was the only moral thing you could have done, given the circumstances. That it might have occured in front of Clem was unfortunate, but you didn't have the option during the game of taking Danny aside and killing him out of Clementine's view.

It wasn't an easy choice, but killing the St. John's was clearly right choice, the moral choice.

[SonnyN18]

Yeah but you get some satisfaction of being the bigger man and letting him wallow in shame.

[Desmodus87]

I agree to an extent that it would be far better to kill both of the brothers. I chose to leave them both alive only because of Clementine. Having a Daughter myself I think about the situation from a perspective of a father raising a child in a post-apocalyptic world. You keep your kids safe, show them what they need to know to survive and shield them from the darkness and depravity that desperation drives people to.

If I was by myself they would have been dead and I wouldn't have had any regrets, but I wouldn't want a child of mine seeing the would as a bleak place.

[Merc]

I figured I'd just let the Walkers take care of them--blood's off my hands (Aside from Larry. Gramps had it coming), AND they can appreciate that their bodies are feeding people! Win-win! :)

[Viner16]

Kill Danny, Brenda automatically dies, and leave Andy alive.

One insane lonely desperate man is punishment enough to me.

[Zombies are Awesome!]

i left them both for the walkers, although the first time i killed Danny cause i was pissed, but when i saw Clem's reaction i felt bad

[Phoenix VII]

I killed both, since they killed Mark, wanted to kill the rest of the group, and would continue to be a threat if Andy manages to escape from the Walkers. My Lee doesn't like loose ends.

[JabbaDaHuttX7]

The only thing I ever wanted was to have some dinner with them.

[Cyreen]

Whether you kill them or not, they die. I didn't consider it a kindness to leave them to be munched by mama, I thought it was poetic justice.

[Wrighty]

Danny (I think) was trapped in a bear trap with walkers approaching from everywhere so I think it's safe to say he's dead.

Andy is more of a threat, but I think he's so heartbroken, he will probably just let the walkers have him.

Besides, I don't want their blood on my hands.

[Wrighty]

Danny (I think) was trapped in a bear trap with walkers approaching from everywhere so I think it's safe to say he's dead.

Andy is more of a threat, but I think he's so heartbroken, he will probably just let the walkers have him.

Besides, I don't want their blood on my hands.

[Viser]

Ha, I did reply to you on the other thread where you posted that. I'm just gonna post my reply here.

They were only eating people because it was ZA, pre-ZA I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened. While I still don't think they should have turned to cannibalism, the bandits might have somewhat helped in that happening, because they had to keep both their family and the bandits fed, and well, human meat was an easier option.

About killing them being the morally right thing to do... well, that's where the fun is. People have different sets of morals. My morals make sure I'm unable to think killing people is the right thing to do, and that's why when I realized I had killed Danny, I felt awful (Clementine seeing it triggered that reaction). I for one like to think that leaving them alive is an act that shows you have retained part of your humanity, and I believe it's still possible to survive in a ZA with it, although it makes it harder for obvious reasons.

And well, even if you leave them alive, all that commotion brings the walkers to the farm and they end up dying, Danny because he's trapped and Andy because he has nothing left to live for and is completely broken (which kinda reminds me of Kenny when his family dies). And who knows if they'd have kept doing it if they lived? I like to believe people can change.

[Zargus]

It wasn't an easy choice, but killing the St. John's was clearly right choice, the moral choice.

No it is not. Leaving them both alive to then be eaten by the Walkers invading the Dairy as well as Mama St. John being a Walker herself now thanks to Mark chowing down on her so she will eat them too.

Now that is clearly the right moral choice.

[RafaelBrasileiro]

I left the two turning walker food, they suffered more, and technically I did not kill them: D!

[DreadMagus]

I killed the one in the barn, but left the other alive since I had had a "no clem, killing is wrong speech" afterwards - tried to avoid being a hypocrite...

[YamiRaziel]

You can't justify the Danny choices with "walkers were gonna get him". You didn't know about them at that time so it was killing him or letting him live. You didn't know that Brenda and Andy were going to die, so this argument is invalid.

I did kill both of them because they were a threat to my group and other groups as well. They had allowed ZA to turn them into things not much different than the walkers themselves, so they had to be killed.
Regarding Clem, my stance is that I can't shield her from all the wrongs the world is going to expose her to. If I want her to survive, then she needs to learn how to deal with all kinds of fucked up situations and decisions. I can't give her some universal truth but I can try to teach her what I perceive as right and good.

[Rock114]

Killed Danny, let Andy live. Danny might have come back for us if he were able, but Andy was defeated. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't come after us again. He didn't seem to have the strength to go on after learning his family was dead.

[Zargus]

You can't justify the Danny choices with "walkers were gonna get him". You didn't know about them at that time so it was killing him or letting him live. You didn't know that Brenda and Andy were going to die, so this argument is invalid.

I did kill both of them because they were a threat to my group and other groups as well. They had allowed ZA to turn them into things not much different than the walkers themselves, so they had to be killed.
Regarding Clem, my stance is that I can't shield her from all the wrongs the world is going to expose her to. If I want her to survive, then she needs to learn how to deal with all kinds of fucked up situations and decisions. I can't give her some universal truth but I can try to teach her what I perceive as right and good.

Granted I did not know about the Walkers till after but I still never killed both of the brothers.

[Viden]

Well, let's look at Danny for a moment. He got his -leg- caught in a bear trap. Looking back at the band teacher in the woods, I don't believe that's a pleasant experience. Now, it's likely that, unlike the teacher's predicament, this trap has a release mechanism. That's a fine howdy-do, but that's still a grievous wound. This is a trap meant to immobilize -bears- stuck to a human. Even if he gets free, that wound will be constantly bleeding while he tries to get somewhere to patch it up. That barn didn't have anything useful in that sense. The only place he can go is the house. Not to mention that Danny doesn't strike me as the brains of the operation. I'm not convinced he could treat the wound properly. Danny would die of infection or even bleeding out, unless the walkers got to him first.

Brenda was doomed from the start, an unfortunate victim of circumstance. She got what she deserved, but there was nothing that could have been done. Karma's a bitch.

Andy was the only one that you had much direct control over. And judging by the options when speaking to him, at least Lee is convinced that Andy's family is dead. With this news, Andy is completely broken, having lost everything. There's no greater punishment in existence. In fact, killing him would only serve to make things easier for him.

I will agree with you. In this situation, killing them is certainly the lesser of two evils. But to a child, where morals are often a case of black or white, right or wrong, you did the right thing by not giving in to your rage.

[thestalkinghead]

when i didn't kill them both the first time i assumed we were going to have to figure out what to do with them, and take over the farm as our own, so basically we would have put them in prison (fixed meat locker) and eventually find out if they had any humanity left and whether they could ever be a part of our group, but after i beat up Andy we see that isn't an option and have to leave them to die or at least alone with little hope of surviving, murder is wrong and there is no other way of defining what you could do to andy and danny as anything other than murder

[dee23]

It occurred to me during Episode 2, then again afterwards during the discussion, that the conventional moral position whereby killing the St. John's is considered the lesser, baser option, had it all backwards.

Here's a typical post on the issue:



Thing is, if you leave the St. John's alive, aren't they simply going to continue, as long as they're alive, trapping, mutilating, murdering, and eating innocent travelers? Don't you have the moral obligation to execute them, whether in anger or after due consideration?

What would their punishment have been in the pre-ZA world for their Dahmeresque crimes? Life imprisonment, at a minimum, and a death sentence in any state that allowed it. The only question remaining is, does the ZA provide a mitigating circumstance? In this case, I think, clearly not. There's still food out there. They do live on a farm. The soil is still fertile. They have corn, for example. They have at least one cow's worth of meat and the ability to dress and prepare that meat, in the neighborhood of five hundred pounds of it, which would last a small family at least several months

Life imprisonment wasn't an option, so executing the family was the only moral thing you could have done, given the circumstances. That it might have occured in front of Clem was unfortunate, but you didn't have the option during the game of taking Danny aside and killing him out of Clementine's view.

It wasn't an easy choice, but killing the St. John's was clearly right choice, the moral choice.
Let's face it they were both going to die anyway. The generator was shorting out and they had no defenses against the walkers. Danny's leg was broken in the bear trap so he wasn't walking anywhere. if you beat Andy long enough he's in no condition to exact revenge. He would have been a broken man once he realised his mother was dead and his dairy farm was in ruins, ransacked by walkers. The farm was being over run by walkers.

If I am honest I would have killed them both if Lee was alone with them but that would have been out of blood lust not necessity. More of us need to be honest about our reasons for killing the brothers. some people just jump for the opportunity to kill because it's a video game and they can, not because it's necessary for the story. The game does give us a choice to play how we want but if you select the view icons over object you will actually hear Lee's inner voice and his own opinions about various things such as how he wouldn't want Clementine to see anymore violence when you aim the cursor on her in the meat locker etc. I personally took this in mind when playing the game.

In the comics one of Rick's concerns is how detached and cold his son is becoming because of the horrors he's seen, how he is loosing his innocence, how their world is changing him to quickly and how their loosing their humanity.

Lee had only been in the apocalypse for 3 months during the dairy farm sequence. I felt a responsibility to be the best care taker possible for clementine, this is after all a story about redemption. How the rest of the group see's Lee is as important as how Rick's group saw him. I remember in the comic when rick was at the prison and started to loose control, the group lost faith in him as a leader and they made a committee so he would no longer make all the decisions. This was shortly after he nearly beat Thomas to death, in the end Thomas was left to the walkers where he suffered a slow death. Lets face it Thomas did more things to Rick's group than the st john did to Lee's. I punched Andy until Carly told me to stop then I left him to the walkers. Some how the sequence seemed more epic that way than a quick electrocution considering Lee left with the respect from his group. Clementine actually looks proud of him. At least I was able to justify looting the car at the end because the food wasn't taken by force. But I couldn't justify killing anyone in cold blood to Clementine which is partly why I didn't kill Larry.

[dee23]

Ha, I did reply to you on the other thread where you posted that. I'm just gonna post my reply here.
My thought's exactly.

[dee23]

You can't justify the Danny choices with "walkers were gonna get him". You didn't know about them at that time so it was killing him or letting him live. You didn't know that Brenda and Andy were going to die, so this argument is invalid.

I did kill both of them because they were a threat to my group and other groups as well. They had allowed ZA to turn them into things not much different than the walkers themselves, so they had to be killed.
Regarding Clem, my stance is that I can't shield her from all the wrongs the world is going to expose her to. If I want her to survive, then she needs to learn how to deal with all kinds of fucked up situations and decisions. I can't give her some universal truth but I can try to teach her what I perceive as right and good.
We knew that the generator was defective because Lee sabotaged it remember? Andy would not have restored it to full working order in the little time he spent working on it, he was distracted by the dinner bell. So walkers were going to come, Brenda made that clear that it is routine for them to attempt to get in during the night times.

You would have known from earlier that the bear traps are altered for catching humans so Danny was not getting out of the trap just as the teacher was not getting out with out his leg being amputated. Danny did not need to die at Lee's hand. When Lee left the barn he saw the first of the approaching walkers, Carly kills one of them.

After the rescue of Kenny's wife Lee would have known that zombie Mark would have turned Brenda into a zombie.

If Andy is beaten long enough he is in no physical condition to exact revenge against Lee's group nor is he emotionally or mentally stable after learning that his brother and mother won't be coming since he understands that to mean they are both dead. Both Andy and Danny were walker food. It does not have to be shown, this is the walking dead, it goes without saying. The same way Kirkman didn't need to show us Lilly being eaten by walkers during the Woodbury army assault on the prison in the comics. She was pinned down, without ammunition whilst a heard of walkers were approaching. Everyone left behind at the prison died although it was not shown. Realistically there was no other outcome.

With regards to shielding Clementine, killing a walker or a armed man is one thing, killing in cold blood is another. Yes she is going to see "some fucked up situation" but she doesn't need to see them coming from Lee, her main role model. through out the game you see comments like Lee has made Clementine feel safe etc, for instance if you choose to leave her home at night and the police man fires his gun she panics and asks if they are going to die. Lee's words of comfort and encouragement have an effect and are recorded. When you feed Clementine in the pharmacy Carly points out that you are a good care taker. All of this reflects how Clementine see's Lee, how she is left feeling and how the group see's Lee. If the gamer doesn't care about these things that is fine but Telltale went through great detail to encourage people to see these characters as real breathing people they want to protect, that is the whole point to this game and what will Separate this game from the generic zombie shooters out there and the atari first person walking dead shooter coming out.

[thestalkinghead]

You knew that the generator was defective because Lee sabotaged it remember? Andy would not have restored it to full working order in the little time he spent working on it, he was distracted by the dinner bell. So walkers were going to come, Brenda made that clear that it is is routine for them to attempt to get in during the night times.


he only detached the drive belt, not hard to repair.
in the end it just ran out of fuel or broke on its own, Lee didn't break it

[dee23]

Killed Danny, let Andy live. Danny might have come back for us if he were able, but Andy was defeated. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't come after us again. He didn't seem to have the strength to go on after learning his family was dead.
Danny was immobilized he couldn't even get up since his foot was broken in the bear trap. Considering his leg would have got infected as it had no release latch, even if there weren't any walkers he would have died slowly any way. He was less of a threat to Lee beyond that point than Andy who I no longer see as a threat since he is outnumbered, out gunned and barely able to walk after his battle with Lee. Both Andy and Danny would have been vulnerable to both the walkers and the bandits, revenge against Lee could have only been a pipe dream.

[JackSchirmer]

I agree to an extent that it would be far better to kill both of the brothers. I chose to leave them both alive only because of Clementine. Having a Daughter myself I think about the situation from a perspective of a father raising a child in a post-apocalyptic world. You keep your kids safe, show them what they need to know to survive and shield them from the darkness and depravity that desperation drives people to.

If I was by myself they would have been dead and I wouldn't have had any regrets, but I wouldn't want a child of mine seeing the would as a bleak place.A reasonable approach, but I've been taking the tack that the world surely is, in the ZA, a very bleak place, and that shielding a child from that is to escort her to her death. We now kill clearly, unrepentently evil people when it's right because to do otherwise is to let them continue to murder innocent folks. I want the child I'm sheperding to know that. I would discuss it with her at great length, but she needs to know that, like it or not, each of us is now judge, jury, and, when necessary, executioner.

You can't protect children any longer from the truth of what is happening (in the ZA) without compromising their ability to survive. Rick (in the tv show) should have had that conversation early on with Lori. Their son is around 12. Kids younger than that can safely handle guns. The idea that he shouldn't have one or be taught to shoot one is preposterous. It's almost silly that the wife of a sheriff wouldn't want their child to learn to (safely) handle a gun when he's surrounded by threats and nearly continual menace.

[Xarne]

the right thing to do is to kill them both and remove any chance of retaliation but because they pull that BS with Clem watching, most people (like myself) rewound. They all deserved to die, not because its morally right for others who might cross their paths, but because they tried to fkn eat me!

[The_Cheshire_Cat]

the right thing to do is to kill them both and remove any chance of retaliation but because they pull that BS with Clem watching, most people (like myself) rewound. They all deserved to die, not because its morally right for others who might cross their paths, but because they tried to fkn eat me!

Dog it Dog baby

[IndigoHawk]

I agree that killing the St Johns is the only moral choice. St Johns were a danger to your group and others. If you left them alive, you're only helping them kill people after you strengthened their defenses.

Also, it was immoral for Lee to disable the generator to see what was inside barn. He endangered everyone by doing that. Instead, he should have told the St Johns that secrets might get the group killed and demanded to see what was in the barn.

If the St Johns refused, I'm not sure what the right thing to do is. Do people have any right to privacy in TWD? Would Lee have been able to insist on opening the barn or would he have only been able to take people and leave, never knowing that he helped strengthen the defenses of cannibals?

[Cyreen]

You can't justify the Danny choices with "walkers were gonna get him". You didn't know about them at that time so it was killing him or letting him live. You didn't know that Brenda and Andy were going to die, so this argument is invalid.

He was caught in a modified rusty bear trap. He wasn't going anywhere. If the walkers didn't get him, the bandits or infection would. After smacking Andy around for a bit, it's fairly obvious this isn't ending well for them.

It's possible to justify any decision, regardless of what you choose, but that doesn't make it right.