Defiance or Submission, Courage or Acquiescence?
“Then fifteen, Montaigne was out in the street, for the Collège had suspended classes during the violence. He witnessed the killing of Moneins, a scene he never forgot. It raised in his mind, perhaps for the first time, a question that would haunt the entire Essays in varying guises: whether it was better to win an enemy’s respect by an open defiance, or to throw yourself on his mercy and hope to win him by submission or an appeal to his better self.” (S. Bakewell) In the film The White Tiger the Indian slave combines both those attitudes according to
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