Journal 3

Rick Davidson Journal Entry 3
The Welty story is about a political murder. The murderer is the narrator of the story so we can see the inner workings of his mind. First off, the author chooses dialect to show the ignorance of the shooter. You can tell in the opening line the narrator in racist. The plan slowly forms within his mind to shoot nigger who is always talking on the TV. The plan was so simple it had to work: walk to his house early in the morning, wait for him to get home, shoot and kill him, and then make a getaway in brother –in-law’s truck.
Later, after the murder we gain more insight into the killer’s mind. He says, “His face was in front of the public before I got rid of him, and after I got rid of him there it is again – the same picture. And none of me.” After this statement, I believe he wanted the attention. Why else would a murderer be angered by not seeing his photo on TV but yet another photo of his victim? It suggests to me there are some unsaid ulterior motives. Did he kill Mr. Roland Summers for the attention it would bring? I believe he was dually driven toward the murder.
The O’Connor story was an account of a spoiled brat teaching his mother a lesson which killed her. Julian’s mother brought him up right. She provided a home, food, and even a college education after her husband died. The doctor told Mother she needed to lose a couple pounds to lower her blood pressure. Julian was to take her one day a week to fitness class because she would ride the bus on account of darkies. Julian hated the trip and time he spent taking his mother to the gym shown by the line, “He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith.” He knew his mother to be prejudiced and prided on his not being so. He wishes to teach her an object lesson but she earns one in the end trying to give charity in a demeaning way to a black child. The culmination of Julian’s previous action plus that of the irritated mother are too much for mother and she dies. I feel once he loses her mother he lost part of himself. The foreshadowing of the stroke that kills her is a nice touch looking back.
Politics within the first are the driving cause for the killing even if the shooter was too ignorant to understand. In the second story politics gives the black mother a means to sit by a white person. Politics in both stories play a subtle role. Sin in Welty’s story is defined by the person doing the action. I feel the shooter had felt justified in the shooting and well as Mother treating the darkies the way she did. To Mother the golden rule didn’t apply to the black community. Within Welty’s story the murder was never openly portrayed as bad or evil but it was instead needed or overdue, while according to Julian his mother’s behavior was horrible toward the Blacks. I did like how even though Mother was racist she still “thought little Negroes were on the whole cuter than little white children”.