Abstract
The subject of ethics is never far from the surface in most university classrooms. Imagine, for example, a literature professor teaching the close of Saul Bellow’s novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet. In the novel’s powerful final scene, the main character sits at the deathbed of a lifelong friend and quietly speaks a prayer, asking God to watch over the soul of his friend, someone who met at all costs the “terms of his contract, the terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it—that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know." What inspiration might the professor and students find in talking over this scene and examining the personal implications of the phrase terms of his contract?