In the third episode of Firefly, the crew on the Serenity finds a derelict ship and search it for survivors. They find one man and they rescue him off the abandoned ship, and soon learn he was mentally disturbed (probably by what he witnessed). I think when they begin to asses him, Mal understands immediately that he has turned into a Reaver, horrible inhuman cannibals who commit atrocious crimes on humanity. My question is, how could the man turn into a Reaver after he watched the Reavers murder 13 other families and probably his own family too?
I think the answer to this is that when someone witnesses a horrible action, the person is going to be affected by that for the rest of their life, and become severely disturbed. His humanity was stolen by the Reavers, which subsequently caused him to become very homicidal and violent to anything that could possibly be threatening to him. In a sense he was similar to that of a beast waiting in the ship to pounce on anything that entered his domain. Mal’s humanitarian effort was commendable for giving the people a proper burial and saving the sole survivor. Which, because of his lack of religious morality and his cold personality, would be something he wouldn’t do. Even though he did this for monetary gain, it was still a very humanist act. The Priest gives the last rights to these poor, slain, civilian families, which were looking for a new life in deep space (something that, if Mal’s humanity did not permit, they would still be without proper burial). Overall we are starting to see Mal’s more kinder and caring side as the series progresses.
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