Isiah Ellison

Final Essay, ENG 2001

Professor: Sean Scanlan

December 14th, 2020

The Woman with the Sixth Sense

            This essay will be about the ethical decisions made by Jaswinder ‘Jazz’ Smith in the short story “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” by Tony Parsons. The main character in this short story Jazz, followed deontology ethics, thus making her a deontologist. A deontologist is one who makes choices according to a set of rules or guidelines. Jazz is a deontologist of the imperfect duties’ category, which means that although she has a set of rules that she follows for her work, she does not take an all or nothing approach to it, and she can be quite flexible as opposed to being an absolute justice authoritarian. Jazz is an immigration officer with a sixth sense/intuition for detecting those who were trying to gain entry into the UK for the wrong reasons. “Jazz liked to say that it wasn’t her job to refuse entry to the UK. It was her job to have an inner alarm bell […] and when someone wasn’t coming to the UK for the right reasons, it was her job to hear that bell ring” (Parsons, 2011, p. 46). Throughout the story Jazz had encountered several people with whom she had some sort of conflict and resolution with. What I found to be interesting is the interactions she had with her coworkers Ken and Norm.

            Ken and Norm also played a role in the interactions Jazz had with some conflict causers. Jazz’s coworker Ken was a UKBA officer that one would go to with what they called ‘questioned documents.’ Ken was a fellow deontologist like Jazz however, Ken seemed to take a perfect duty approach as opposed to Jazz’s imperfect duty approach. This became evident as Ken critiqued the passport of the man in black. Ken was slightly impressed with what was done to the altered passport, but had said that it was not in the league of some of the other altered passports he has examined, and even went into detail about what alterations were made down to the least noticeable one in detail.  Norm follows utilitarian ethic, thus making him a utilitarian; which means that Norm makes decisions based on what he believes is the morally right thing to do in a situation. This became evident when Norm wanted to prioritize seeing Megan because Megan was making a fuss, as well as when Norm went to the bathroom with the Asylum-seeking man because he had eaten his passport and Norm believed the man was going to puke. 

            In this short story, Jazz was sort of a lie detector for people “she felt the flash of ice-cold irritation that came when she knew she was being deceived;” (Parsons, 2011, p. 50) however, she was not able to detect the lies in a passport. Ken however, with the help of the VSC40, was essentially a passport lie detector “Ken and his VSC40 saw through them all” (Parsons, 2011, p. 49). Ken with the VSC40 was able to read microchips, assess paper quality and read surface features such as visa stamps. Ken had confiscated passports that were stolen, forged, borrowed, expired, had pages removed and inserted, visa stamps removed and bogus ones inserted, as well as other altered or substituted passports. The most interesting interaction between the two deontologists Jazz and Ken, was when Ken asked Jazz if she thinks the man in black is importing controlled substances, to which she replies yes by giving her own theory of what she believes the man has done to import the drugs. Ken finds a flaw with Jazz’s theory and then questions Jazz once more. Jazz answered Ken’s question with yet another theory which seemed to be based on her intuition.

            Jazz’s interactions with Norm showed that there was a huge gap in overall experience between the two giving off the impression that Norm was wet behind the ears, or a greenhorn if you may. Jazz noticed how Norm was shaking with nerves and how Norm would wipe his sweaty palms on his trousers. Jazz would tell Norm to take a deep breath, calm down a bit, or assure Norm that everything will be fine. Jazz informed Norm that they would temporarily ignore Megan to go after a man that Jazz knew was seeking asylum and would try to destroy his passport shortly after landing. Shortly after Jazz and Norm apprehended the asylum-seeking Afghanistan man, Norm had lost sight of him, even after Jazz said ‘Just don’t let him out of your sight’. Jazz used her experience and intuition to accurately predict what the man might do. “Jazz headed back towards the gate, guessing that the man would try to land himself, meaning arrive at one terminal and then attempt to clear immigration at another. […] Sooner or later, Jazz thought, you bang your head up against my border” (Parsons, 2011, p. 54).

            Both Jazz and Ken used Deontological ethics to determine that the man in black was trying to smuggle in drugs. “The inner alarm bell rang loud and long when she looked at the passport photo of the young man dressed in a black T-Shirt, […] She looked at him and she looked at the passport and she read the biometric data on the microchip and somehow it did not fit. [..] She was not an expert in forged passports, but she knew a man who was” (Parsons, 2011, p. 46). Part of being a deontologist and a professional is knowing the scope of your field. Jazz’s sixth sense alerted her beforehand that something was not right, however she still got another professionals input on the situation. “Nothing feels right about this guy, […] what do you think?” (Parsons, 2011, p. 49).

Norm used his utilitarian thinking in ways that suggested that he was prioritizing the needs of the conflict causers instead of imposing the rules. Jazz was definitely more sarcastic towards Norm in the story and it felt as if Norm was her sidekick. “It’s same sex for searching, so I will not have the pleasure. Have you done your nails, Norm?” (Parsons. 2011, p. 57). Jazz did her job well but was noticeably stricter on anyone tried to deceive her. “I don’t care if someone lies to themselves, […] but I don’t like it much when they lie to me” (Parsons, 2011, p. 48)

References

Parsons. T (2011). Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. In Departures – Seven Stories from Heathrow. Harpercollins.

Scanlan, S. (2020) Five types of Ethics https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/profscanlan-english2001-fiction-f2020/files/2020/11/Five-types-of-Ethics-fall-2020.docx