The Road to Character Themes

In The Road to Character, David Brooks challenges modern culture’s approach to character. Early in the book, he describes listening to a radio program that aired a few days after the Allied victory in World War II. Struck by the host’s humility in the face of victory, Brooks couldn’t help comparing the program’s tone to the excessive self-praise in modern culture. To explain this contrast, Brooks suggests that there are two competing moral…

From the outset of The Road to Character, David Brooks proposes that there are two sides to human nature: he calls the first side “Adam I,” a person’s external, career-oriented side. He calls the second side “Adam II,” the internal side of a person that develops character traits such as humility. Adam I believes people are born with talents they should maximize, while Adam II believes a person contains both…

Many of the historical figures in David Brooks’s The Road to Character didn’t choose the course of their own lives. When Frances Perkins witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, she was horrified by the working conditions that caused the atrocity. From that point on, her life ceased to be just about her. The fight for workers’ rights became her vocation, which Brooks defines as the job a person is called to do, not the…

In The Road to Character, David Brooks outlines a process for developing one’s character, but he is careful to mention that this road can’t be traveled solely through one’s own efforts. In the story of the ancient theologian Augustine, for instance, Augustine could only overcome his sins by becoming humbly dependent on God’s grace. Through this transformative process, he first accepted God’s love, then was so grateful for it that he forgot…

Some of the biographies in David Brooks’s The Road to Character end on surprisingly sad notes. Frances Perkins’s restraint and righteousness made her effective in her political vocation but cold in her relationships with her husband and daughter. Ultimately, “her public vocation never completely compensated for her private solitude,” suggesting that the calling that gave her so much character was insufficient to fully sustain her well-being. In another example, George Marshall surrendered his…