Journal #15

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 is that living in the ideal instead of the real world, like Editha does, can be a dangerous thing.

“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.”

“You thought it would be all right for my George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and husbands of those girls that you would never see that faces of

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

Editha tries to argue with George and she makes it known that her opinion is the right one. She tells him that it is a holy war ordained by providence. She makes George doubts himself and writes him a letter with her engagement ring enclosed. She was pushing, threatening, and compelling him to go to war. She writes that there is no honor greater than serving America and that they need to agree in everything in order to be together. She tells George that he needs to think it over and come back to her if he decides to go to war. Her persuasion works in the end and he is compelled to join with the town and go to war.

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

Editha has a slight understanding of what she was done after she finds out that George has died. She mourns his loss and visits George’s mother like he asked. Editha is scorned for sending him to war. Mrs. Gearson said that Editha didn’t expect him to die when she sent him, but it is still her fault. She doesn’t truly understand her actions. She has an epiphany at the end that brings her back into her ideal world. The lady, who Editha was telling her story to, agreed that Mrs. Gearson was vulgar for saying those things. Editha rose out of self-pity and began to live in the ideal again.