Journal 15

Journal 15 – William Dean Howell’s “Editha”

1.  Write a sentence that summarizes the story’s overall message, and provide  three direct quotes from the story that best illustrate this message.

The message of the story is that listening to others and compromising your beliefs can lead to bad things.

“It isn’t this war alone; though this seems peculiarly wanton and needless; but it’s every war –so stupid; it makes me sick. Why shouldn’t this thing have been settled reasonably?”

“He told me he had asked you to come if he got killed. You didn’t expect that, I suppose, when you sent him.”

2.  What tactics does Editha use to make George believe as she does about the war?

She tries to tell him that he has to join the war because most of the other men do it. She thinks thatfighting and winning is what life is about and makes you successful. She said that if he didn’t go to the war, she woud no longer marry him.

3.   Is there ever a time in which Editha truly understands what she has done?  Does she ever experience an epiphany?

There is a time where she understands what she has done when she gets the word that George died. She is sad because of his loss and visits his mom. She gets yelled at by his mother and is blamed for his death. She doesn’t fully understand that it was her fault, but at least she gets a slight understanding of what she did. She has an epiphany when the women who was listening to her story took her side.