The Sound of Human Dignity: An Example of Relational Virtue in A Quiet Place: Day One

Human dignity is a foundational concept in the discussion of ethics broadly and bioethics particularly. That intrinsic worth is an inherent quality of being human undergirds all inquiry into ethical practice in medicine. Yet, with this concept being basic, the protection of human dignity should not be confined within the walls of a medical office but should flow freely into the everyday realities of our interpersonal interactions. Nicholas Carr’s book Superbloom explores how increased communication opened via technological advancements has only decreased the quality of such communication, stripping digital-age relationships of empathy and a nuanced understanding of the other.[1] In this age of ideological factions and relational narrow-mindedness, it is helpful to not only discuss the consequences of such technological advancements on human interactions but also to think positively about the healthy relationships we wish to promote and preserve. In other words, we must determine what it means to be relationally virtuous.

Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) offers an embodied exploration of dignifying relational virtue manifested in a world of disorientation and death. Through the main characters—Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and Eric (Joseph Quinn)—the audience is immersed in the story of two people, different in gender, race, and experience, learning to affirm each other’s inherent worth as humans via a relationship. While virtue should be practiced even with strangers (e.g., benevolence), their narrative provides an enfleshed account of a particular ideal for human flourishing: reciprocally practiced virtue. In other words, it represents both the giving and receiving of a virtuous character within human interactions.

Relational virtue is a developing subcategory of virtue. For instance, Sungwoo Um suggests that, typical of a virtue, relational virtues benefit the possessor in that they enable the promotion of human flourishing. Further, they are intrinsically admirable and represent stable character dispositions.[2] Yet, relational virtues deserve discussion as their own subcategory as they are those characteristics manifested in two or more human beings that, when they form a relationship, such a relationship is signified as a “healthy” one.[3] This makes relational virtue unique in several ways. First, they can be particular to the relevant relationship. For instance, filial piety is a virtue particular to the parent-child relationship, not marriage.[4] Further, relational virtues also assume both affections particular to that relationship and reciprocity on the part of the related. This makes the practice of relational virtue dependent on the other party within the intimate relationship. Indeed, a person can only practice virtuous relational activities insofar as the object of one’s interactive engagement is also relationally virtuous and engaging.[5] In sum, “being relationally virtuous involves acting, desiring and feeling appropriately with regard to particular persons with whom you share the relevant intimate relationship.”[6] This also tailors relational virtue to the given relationship, freeing it from the bounds of such things as social norms[7] and accounting for the possibility of abusive relationships.[8] Thus, I will evaluate both characteristics of relational virtue and its practices within the friendship category as embodied by the characters in the film. Before doing so, it is important to understand each character and the themes they represent.

Sam is the main character of the film. The opening scene jolts the audience into the disorientation of her narrative: a young black woman dying of terminal cancer in a hospice center. While her circumstances are jarring, she has been on this journey too long; she is hardened to life and complacent. She has not come to peace with dying, but she also no longer knows how to live. Having passed the predicted time allotted to her when originally diagnosed, she can no longer embrace the possibility of a few more days but lives in a perpetual state of death as “not now.” When faced with a new deathly threat—that of super-hearing alien invaders—she trades safety to pursue the only experience of living she thinks she has left: getting pizza that reminds her of her childhood and her father’s love.

Eric is a white, middle-to upper-class male, wealthy enough to travel from England to the U.S. to attend a New York law school. Safety has been his life. Fearing being alone amidst the chaos, he follows the begrudging Sam until she allows him to tag along. He is sensitive and anxiety-prone, exhibiting a wide-eyed naivety that is explored as both a strength and a weakness. Eric wants to live. If Sam represents complacency due to dying too long, Eric represents fear of death as a newfound and unexpected reality. He had one plan: attend U.S. law school. Neither the current chaos of an apocalyptic world nor death was a part of that plan.

In many ways, Eric and Sam could not be more different. Their friendship is an unlikely one, born first from the tenacity of Eric in following Sam. Thus, recognition of shared humanity is the first relational virtue that enables their budding relationship. When faced with their own mortality, they are stripped to their core, and the differences that separate them are disempowered. This does not refute C.S. Lewis’ assertion that friendship is born when two or more people proclaim, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”[9] Rather, when faced with death, all external means of self-identity are removed, and the two mutually proclaim, “What? You too?” in response to their sheer humanity. They do not treat each other as a means to an end; in such an apocalyptic world, there is no need for social power, prestige, or financial gain. She is dying, and he wants to live. They have nothing to gain from each other but companionship, mutual protection, and relational and personal growth.

It is a beautiful picture of both the possibility and power of this kind of friendship. In a world where social media promotes shallow self-identifications and identity formation, it is essential to learn to be in relationships with those who seem, at first glance, different from ourselves. This does not mean that we should be friends with everyone. Indeed, the kind of practices required to develop the relational virtues dissuade from doing so. Rather, it is a call to search for the relationally virtuous among persons our limited mindsets might not otherwise direct us. In our technologically advanced world, we are inundated with rhetoric that drives us to categorize human beings. With no shortage of information, and with the line between what is true and what is sensational blurred, humans are prone to make quick judgments about others based on their gender, race, class, political affiliation, etc. Such swiftness must be replaced with slowness, embarking on a journey of discovering another human being as complex and storied. This is an invitation both to discover the beauty within another and also both the complexity and story within oneself.

This is also an important way Sam and Eric grow. Because of their differences, Eric learns courage, and Sam gains gratitude for life. Further, the characters affirm inherent human worth by growing in a relationship with someone seemingly opposite from themselves. In other words, they become more virtuous generally as they grow in relational virtue with one another.

While the threat in The Quiet Place franchise is unique, the apocalyptic world in which the characters live is an apt metaphor for the chaos of our time. As we reflect on how we responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, did we recognize the shared humanity of those who existed on the opposite spectrum from us on such things as physical distancing, vaccines, and the like? The pandemic allowed the world to face our frailty and mortality communally. Did we respond in relational virtue, dismantling the differences that separated us in the protection of human dignity near and far? As we continue to face political and societal upheaval in the U.S. and abroad, how can we practice interpersonal protection of human dignity now?

A relational virtue fostered through relational practice is key in this endeavor moving forward. As Um highlights, relational virtue requires dependency since the virtuous relationship necessitates interactivity. The virtue I have in mind is something that opens deep and meaningful conversation, one of the key practices of a virtuous relationship. I have come to call it “relational curiosity,” an idea no doubt developed in conversation with relationally virtuous friends. Sam and Eric exemplify this as they sit in the dark of Sam’s apartment and divulge their experience of their current circumstances. Eric struggles to grapple with the chaos of their world as his perfect plan crumbles before him. Sam is not pursuing the safety of the evacuation ships because she has had to live knowing she is going to die for long enough already. This interactive practice deepens their relationship and moves beyond recognizing shared humanity to appreciating unity in diversity.

This scene also exemplifies the dual nature of relational curiosity. To be relationally curious requires self-reflection, which leads to knowledge of individuality as being differentiated from others. In other words, it requires reflection on how embodied experiences have shaped one’s worldview up to this point. However, it also requires curiosity regarding how the other is a differentiated “self” as well, a reality inherently built upon the virtue of relational humility. In the film, each self-reflects so that they share honestly and are genuinely known, and each leaves space for the experience of the other. While their responses to their shared world differ, when the thunder pangs, they share screams in recognition of mutual human suffering.

Um further suggests that relational virtue necessitates prioritizing care for the relational partner,[10] which Eric and Sam do out of the fruit of such relational curiosity. Eric cares for Sam both out of his own distinctiveness as a human being and out of his knowledge of her. His wide-eyed appreciation for life is the medicine Sam needs to marvel at the miracle of living. When her dream of eating her favorite Patsy’s Pizza is squelched, he develops an imaginative scenario complete with a fake “Patsy’s Pizza” and a magic show at the stage of her father’s favorite piano.[11] Yet, when it comes time to leave via an evacuation ship, Eric does not beg Sam to go and continue living. While he previously risked his own life to ensure she had the pain relief needed, Eric knows that Sam has come to peace with dying and allows her to stay on land.

Sam similarly cares for Eric out of her own relational understanding. Throughout the film, Sam’s courage regularly saves Eric’s life. When his panic attacks threaten to alert one of the aliens to their location, she remains committed to him, calms him down, and thinks fast to ensure both escape safely. At the end of the film, to allow Eric to reach the evacuation ships, Sam distracts the aliens, embracing a self-sacrificial death that promotes the protection of human life. However, Sam also knows Eric’s deep appreciation for her cat. Indeed, it was Eric’s open wonder at life that drove him to follow the animal to begin with. Thus, while she could have kept the cat as a balm of comfort in her last moments, she sends it with him, providing him courage and comfort as he escapes to the ships.

Sam and Eric’s narrative provides a positive example of a path toward relationally virtuous friendships, even in a world of chaos not so unlike ours. In our technologically advanced age, where our own relational vices are mirrored back to us in the technology we create,[12] we cannot afford to be passive. Where political and societal upheaval threatens an imperception to the shared humanity of the other, we must actively pursue discovering it. Relational virtue must permeate all of one’s intimate relationships, but friendship is an important way each of us is invited into discovering the shared humanity of the other. Thus, it is a way to shape not only individual relationships but culture as a whole.

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References

[1] Nicholas Carr, Superbloom (W. W. Norton and Company, 2025).

[2] Sungwoo Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?” Philosophical Studies 178, no. 1 (2021): 97–98, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45378317.

[3] Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?” 96.

[4] Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?” 99.

[5] Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?” 102–4.

[6] Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?” 101.

[7] Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?” 101.

[8] For instance, merely because Maya is married to Kai (for example), this does not mean that she must act and feel in stereotypically loving and respectful ways in response to him. If Kai is abusive, the normative grounds for practiced relational virtue are lost. While relational virtue indeed includes a degree of forbearance, allowing both parties to develop into human flourishing, it is important to recognize that the relationship can only be ideal insofar as both parties reciprocally practice relational virtue. Thus, while Maya might still choose to practice individual virtue, relational virtue as a category does not demand marital love expressed towards him. Further, in certain cases of abuse or manipulation, Maya might be advised against practicing virtue in a way that looks like typical relational virtue (e.g., relational interactivity or treating the relational partner as special). See Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?”105–7. I would further add that unbounded interactive virtue may be enabling the development of vice in the relevant relational partner (e.g., by enabling the unhealthy partner) or may be actively putting other people (e.g., children) in the way of harm.

[9] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Harcourt Brace, 1988), 65.

[10] Um, “What is a Relational Virtue?” 102.

[11] This scene hearkens back to the puppet show Sam walks out of earlier in the film. In it, Sam experiences a moment of wonder at a “magical” puppet seemingly capable of blowing up a balloon. When the balloon pops and the puppet falls, the audience feels Sam’s desperation to see the wonder of life again and yet her refusal to do so at the risk that she be let down. Thus, the “magic show” scene at the end evidences her ability to both see the beauty of living and come to peace with dying.

[12] For instance, Monique Whitaker highlights ways technology has been shaped by racial bias and so continues such discrimination [see Monique Whitaker, “Technological Bias, Illusory Impartiality and the Injustice of Hermeneutical Obstruction,” South African Journal of Philosophy 43, no. 4 (2024): 293–306, https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2024.2373610]. Chris Hayes’ The Sirens Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource (Scribe, 2025) explores the commodification of human attention via online life and how this has distorted our values along with our intellectual, social, and political perceptions. No doubt we could discuss numerous examples of how our values have shaped the creation of technology, its use, and the consequences of this on our social and relational lives. This reflects the fact that technology is not a neutral tool. Being shaped in particular ways, one cannot merely use it with good intentions and escape the negative consequences initiated by its created telos.