Who would you save: an old famous painting or an old woman? Given the predicament in the poem Ethics by Linda Pastan she discusses this problem if a museum was on fire and you were only able to save one. Ethics Linda Pastan In ethics class so many years ago our teacher asked this question every fall: If there were a fire in a museum which would you save, a Rembrandt painting or an old woman who hadn't many years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs caring little for pictures or old age we'd opt one year for life, the next for art and always half-heartedly. Sometimes the woman borrowed my grandmother's face leaving her usual kitchen to wander some drafty, half imagined museum. One year, feeling clever, I replied why not let the woman decide herself? Linda, the teacher would report, eschews the burdens of responsibility. This fall in a real museum I stand before a real Rembrandt, old woman, or nearly so, myself. The colors within this frame are darker than autumn, darker even than winter?the browns of earth, though earth's most radiant elements burn through the canvas. I know now that woman and painting and season are almost one and all beyond saving by children. In this poem, Linda gives a predicament to a young child portrayed as herself. As a child she believes that of course she should save the old woman from the fire since the painting is a secondary concern. She sometimes imagines that the old woman is her grandma increasing the need to save the woman