History Main / GoodSamaritan

The TropeNamer is one of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}' parables from Literature/TheFourGospels, in which a Jewish man is mugged and left for dead and naked by the roadside. Two of his own people, a priest and a Levite (an entire clan of assistants to priests), simply walk past, and the only person who helps him is a Samaritan, who not only tends to his wounds but brings him to an inn where he can recuperate, going so far as to shoulder his medical expenses. In a historical context, Jews and Samaritans are both Israelite ethnoreligious groups which back in Jesus' day distrusted each other at best, and at were war with each other at worst (not unlike modern-day Jews and Arabs, both Semitic groups; nowadays Jews and Samaritans have more tranquil relations), each side claiming to adhere to a "pure," unadulterated form of the Israelite religion passed down from Abraham to Moses. Thus, in its day Jesus' story was pretty shocking to his Jewish audience in its emphasis on humanizing the "enemy". Indeed, in context Jesus is reciting this parable to a lawyer who asks him what the word of God means by "to love thy neighbor" in order to enter into Heaven, emphasizing that one's "enemy" is still one's "neighbor". The closest trope to the above moral is probably IWasJustPassingThrough. To further complicate the story, there are religious rules that prohibit contact with corpses, and the first two passersby may have assumed that the traveler was dead (though actually there are some exceptions to those rules, which may have applied here). The story shows that, when forced to choose ToBeLawfulOrGood, it is almost always preferable to [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight be the latter]]. In many modern uses of this trope, the Samaritan will protect and heal the hero even if the hero is explicitly a hunted fugitive.

The TropeNamer is one of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}' parables from Literature/TheFourGospels, in which a Jewish man is mugged and left for dead and naked by the roadside. Two of his own people, a priest and a Levite (an entire clan of assistants to priests), simply walk past, and the only person who helps him is a Samaritan, who not only tends to his wounds but brings him to an inn where he can recuperate, going so far as to shoulder his medical expenses. In a historical context, Jews and Samaritans are both Israelite ethnoreligious groups which back in Jesus' day distrusted each other at best, and at were war with each other at worst (not unlike modern-day Jews and Arabs, both Semitic groups; nowadays Jews and Samaritans have more tranquil relations), each side claiming to adhere to a "pure," unadulterated form of the Israelite religion passed down from Abraham to Moses. Thus, in its day Jesus' story was pretty shocking to his Jewish audience in its emphasis on humanizing the "enemy". Indeed, in context Jesus is reciting this parable to a lawyer who asks him what the word of God means by "to love thy neighbor" in order to enter into Heaven, emphasizing that one's "enemy" is still one's "neighbor". The closest trope to the above [[MoralOfTheStory moral]] is probably IWasJustPassingThrough. To further complicate the story, there are religious rules that prohibit contact with corpses, and the first two passersby may have assumed that the traveler was dead (though actually there are some exceptions to those rules, which may have applied here). The story shows that, when forced to choose ToBeLawfulOrGood, it is almost always preferable to [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight be the latter]]. In many modern uses of this trope, the Samaritan will protect and heal the hero even if the hero is explicitly a hunted fugitive.

* In ''Film/RunSweetheartRun'', Cherie encounters a few as she tries to escape the BigBad.
** A convenience store clerk lets her have tampons for free when she admits she has no money.
** At a club, Cherie is being harassed by a group of men when a woman pretends to know her and gets her away from them.

* In Jim Butcher's Literature/TheDresdenFiles novel ''Literature/DeadBeat'', Kumori stops to revive a random dying stranger. What makes this so peculiar is that performing {{Necromancy}} rots the mind such that she should not have been performing good deeds if she could perform so powerful a spell.

* ''Manga/InuYasha'': Rin stopped to help Sesshoumaru when he was wounded after a fight with the titular character. He later repaid the favor when [[EmpathicWeapon his sword]], [[HealingShiv Tenseiga]], ''demanded'' that he bring her back to life. She became his MoralityPet and he went from full-on villain to AloofBigBrother.

* Nurse Joy in ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'' (''all'' of them). Her services are free to anyone who needs them, and the only time she's ''ever'' had to turn someone away from a Pokémon Center is because it was overcrowded. (Exactly where she gets her funding is a mystery, but then, her family ''does'' seem ''very'' large...)
* This is the backstory of Hakkai and Gojyo in ''Manga/{{Saiyuki}}''. Coming home from the bar one night, Gojyo tripped over a very badly injured Hakkai; Gojyo took him home, got him a doctor, and spent a month nursing him back to health. Unsurprisingly they're good friends now.

* Ikuma Momochi, from ''Manga/TokyoGhoul''. A character from the LightNovels, he is a pacifist Ghoul that was adopted by humans and strives to live peacefully with them. The territory assigned to him by Anteiku is a suicide hot spot, allowing him to scavenge corpses to satisfy his HorrorHunger. In spite of this, he routinely saves people preparing to commit suicide -- choosing to go hungry rather than stand by and watch someone end their life.

* Rakushun found Yoko almost dead in ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'', and after he helped her they ended up hanging together.

* [[ComicBook/BlueBeetle Jaime Reyes]] encountered one of these just after the events of ''Infinite Crisis'' when his ClingyMacGuffin dumped him naked in the desert.
* In ComicBook/JudgeDredd, "The Samaritan" is a nickname given by the judges to a psychic criminal: she uses her powers to detect dormant medical emergencies and anomalies on random passers-by, then luring them on an alley, knocking them out to perform the medical action needed, and calling for further help before skedaddling. The [[CrapsackWorld setting]] being what it is, this seems to be the only way she's found she can help people at all. And, true to the trope, she ends up saving the life of Judge Dredd himself.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'', Jim goes to help Bones after he crash-lands.

* ''Film/TheBlindSide'' has a rare example of a rich samaritan. Leigh Anne helps Michael Oher, a homeless black student at her children's school, by giving him a home, tutoring, and general emotional and vocational support to enter the football team.

* The leading male in ''Film/{{Cellular}}'' helps the female lead simply because he's the only one who can. She randomly dialed out on a broken phone and the odds of her being able to get an actual number again without being caught are slim to none. He then runs around all day, stealing cars, shooting guns, fighting with the DirtyCop squad, and generally getting "in deep shit!" And he never quits.

* Zeus Carver from ''Film/DieHardWithAVengeance'' doesn't know anything about John [=McClane=] other than he's a white man in Harlem wearing nothing but a racist sandwich board sign. Despite being a rather unrepentantly bitter and biased man when it comes to white people, he saves him from a gang. It wasn't that he necessarily wanted him to live, but he was afraid of what would happen if a white guy was killed on his block. Throughout the film, Simon Gruber calls him "The Samaritan."

* An interesting use in ''Film/TrainingDay:'' The hero stops to rescue a little girl, and gets a LaserGuidedKarma reward for it later. The twist? The hero is an on-duty police officer, and only in the CrapsackWorld he's just stumbled into could the rescue be considered a noteworthy act.

%%* Haidee in Creator/LordByron's ''Literature/DonJuan''.
* Esmeralda to Quasimodo in ''Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame''. After Quasimodo gets arrested by soldiers for trying to kidnap Esmeralda, after being ordered to do so by Frollo, he gets publicly whipped as punishment. He then begs the watching crowd for some water, which no one will give him. Someone even throws a bottle after him to mock him. Esmeralda then steps up on the stocks and lets him drink from her own bottle. This causes Quasimodo to fall in love with her.

* ''The Quest for Saint Aquin'', a 1951 short story by Creator/AnthonyBoucher, takes place in a future where religion is forbidden. A Catholic priest traveling incognito blows his cover and gets beaten up, stripped naked, and dumped in a ditch. Two people walk by; he can tell by various clues that they are also Catholic. He is helped by a Jew -- who observes a little tartly that he is ''not'' a Samaritan.
* Old Horghuz and several other tribeless wanderers help out Temujin and his family in ''[[Literature/{{Conqueror}} Wolf of the Plains]]'' when they are exiled from their own clan. Hence the following passage when Tolui kills some of them:

* In ''Literature/LesMiserables'', the act that righted Jean Valjean back into heroism was a parish priest ''he had just robbed from'' covering for him to the cops who had caught him, and ''giving him more''. The dumbfounding degree of kindness shown gave him a good HeroicBSOD and helped him avoid truly becoming a criminal.
** Following the example set by the priest, Valjean later becomes a Good Samaritan to several of the other characters, including Fantine, Cosette, Marius, and even [[spoiler: Javert]].

* Lori and her family play the Good Samaritan to the man they find collapsed in their driveway at the beginning of ''[[Literature/AuntDimity Aunt Dimity's Christmas]]''; Willis Sr. even calls out an RAF helicopter to airlift the man to hospital when the roads are blocked by snow.
* An interesting example in Creator/IsaacAsimov's ThreeLawsOfRobotics: The second part of the First Law says that a robot may not, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. In other words, all robots are ''programmed'' to be Good Samaritans. This idea is frequently [[PlayingWithATrope played with]] in his stories.

* ''{{Series/Firefly}}'': "[[BadassPreacher Shepherd]] Book always said, if you can't do [[ShootTheDog something smart]], [[HonorBeforeReason do something right]]."

* Edith Keeler from the classic ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS1E28TheCityOnTheEdgeOfForever}} The City on the Edge of Forever]]" embodies this trope perfectly. She runs a soup kitchen for the homeless and downtrodden in Depression-era New York and truly believes in the inherent goodness of man. [[spoiler: So of course, [[BecauseDestinySaysSo she's fated to die]].]]

* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in a sketch on ''Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook'', which reenacted Jesus' teaching of the parable to his disciples. One of them interrupts to rail against the [[UnfortunateImplications implications]] of the story -- ''of course'' a Samaritan stopped to help, they're perfectly lovely people, they'd give you the shirts off their backs. Why would you automatically assume that someone from Samaria would walk straight past a man in need?
-->'''Jesus:''' What I'm saying is, he was a good Samaritan. That's ''good''... ''Samaritan'', if you can imagine such a thing.\\
'''First disciple:''' Yes I can! I think we all can! I know there's a lot of prejudice against Samaritans, which is terrible! But I'm sure I speaks for everyone in this room when I say there's loads of nice Samaritans!\\
'''Second disciple:''' Yes, [[SomeOfMyBestFriendsAreX some of my best friends are Samaritans!]]\\
'''Third disciple:''' Yeah, me and the wife went on holiday to Samaria last year and they were lovely people!\\
'''Wife:''' They couldn't do enough for you.\\
'''First disciple:''' So what I'm finding offensive, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, is your unreflecting acceptance of this cliché that all Samaritans are wankers!
* This is what led to Dick Mayhew's disappearance from normal society and fall to the magical underworld in ''Series/{{Neverwhere}}''. On the way to a gala with his upper class girlfriend, he stopped to help a bleeding homeless girl, despite his girlfriend yelling at him to ignore the [epithet].

* This is how a character with the Charity Virtue in the ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'' regains Virtue - by stepping forward to help somebody who needs it at significant risk or cost to the self. Examples might include an untrained man running into a gunfight to pull a child to safety, a woman who gives her last twenty to a homeless man even though she needs to buy supplies for an upcoming fight, or similar.

* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'' campaign, there's a small group (well, rather large for any group not big enough to be a full-fledged Faction) called the Ring-Givers who believe that everything that you give to others will eventually come back to you and that you only get as good as you give. Members of this group provide charity to others and live by accepting it from others. (No easy feat in this setting, where most folks believe that EveryManHasHisPrice.). Most members are, indeed, Good Samaritans, but unfortunately, there are plenty of [[BadSamaritan Bad Samaritans]] in the group too.
** Surprisingly, because Planescape works on ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve, it works. More surprisingly, in time the Ring Givers became a full-strength faction.

The TropeNamer is one of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}' parables from Literature/TheFourGospels, in which a Jewish man is mugged and left for dead and naked by the roadside. Two of his own people, a priest and a Levite (an entire clan of assistants to priests), simply walk past, and the only person who helps him is a Samaritan, who not only tends to his wounds but brings him to an inn where he can recuperate, going so far as to shoulder his medical expenses. In a historical context, Jews and Samaritans are both Israelite ethnoreligious groups which back in Jesus' day distrusted each other at best, and at were war with each other at worst (not unlike modern-day Jews and Arabs, both Semitic groups; nowadays Jews and Samaritans have more tranquil relations), each side claiming to adhere to a "pure," unadulterated form of the Israelite religion passed down from Abraham to Moses. Thus, in its day Jesus' story was pretty shocking to his Jewish audience in its emphasis on humanizing the "enemy". Indeed, in context Jesus is reciting this parable to a lawyer who asks him by what does the word of God mean by "to love thy neighbor" in order to enter into Heaven, emphasizing that one's "enemy" is still one's "neighbor". The closest trope to the above [[MoralOfTheStory moral]] is probably IWasJustPassingThrough. To further complicate the story, there are religious rules that prohibit contact with corpses, and the first two passersby may have assumed that the traveler was dead (though actually there are some exceptions to those rules, which may have applied here). The story shows that, when forced to choose ToBeLawfulOrGood, it is almost always preferable to [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight be the latter]]. In many modern uses of this trope, the Samaritan will protect and heal the hero even if the hero is explicitly a hunted fugitive.