Sophia’s commentary on “Morality and Perspective in Eudora Welty’s Flowers for Marjorie and A Memory”, by Robert Cheng
The essay begins with the author quoting the great thinker Socrates and telling the reader of Socrates’ objections to the Athenians’ direct democracy. He then relates this to the central idea of his essay, which discusses the morality and perspective in two of Eudora Welty’s stories. This is a sophisticated way to introduce a topic, by first showing the reader a famous moment where morality was on trial and tying it to the short stories.
The writer then continues on, saying that each of Welty’s stories “…seems to return to Socrates’ sentiment that relative emotional values, while they might be able to blur the line between right and wrong temporarily, must ultimately give way to the established right and wrong.” He seems to leave unspecified just how Welty does this, though he supplies two contrasting examples. After reading the essay I still had a question, which is: do the stories themselves blur the line temporarily, do the characters blur the line, or does the reader blur the lines? My guess is that the characters are the ones who blur this line, and they are the ones who soon give in to the established right and wrong. Later in the essay, about “Flowers for Marjorie”, it is explained how Howard first does something very wrong unconsciously, then wakes up from a delusional state, and turns himself in. However, in “A Memory,” it is unclear if Robert is profiling the memoirist or the girl herself, so I would suggest specifying who or what blurs this line.
Cheng proceeds in explaining how the idea of morality is present in the short story “Flowers for Marjorie.” In this case, the story “most adeptly frames the conflict between absolute morality and relative morality.” What are absolute morality, relative morality, and what is the difference between them? Yes, the author does say that “…even though relative morals can adapt to absorb any situation, absolute morals will always prevail.” I am confused, though, as why absolute morals would eventually take over relative morals. How are relative morals weaker than their counterpart? Wasn’t Socrates still executed because of his outcry? Weren’t his thoughts on the Athenian government part of his own system of morality?
In his assessment of “Flowers for Marjorie”, the writer explains the plot to the audience, quoting much of the story along the way. He tells us about how Welty describes the main character as one who is not emotionally ready for the changes in his life. Cheng writes that the main character, Howard, was in a sort of dream state while he murdered his wife, so he was “…an innocent man who couldn’t help what he was doing.” How can Howard be forgiven as an innocent man? He committed murder of his wife and unborn child. He might not have been fully conscious (and he wasn’t entirely drunk, either), but it doesn’t change the fact that he killed Marjorie. Robert mentions that Howard does in fact turn himself in when he awakens, and then says that this was how Welty showed that absolute morals would always prevail. She apparently “uses the framing of the story to bend, but ultimately not break, our malleable moral alignments.”
A slightly different approach is taken in the assessment of “A Memory.” The author notes that the difference between the two stories is that the first is in third-person limited while “A Memory” is in the first person, like a memoir. “A Memory” is then compared to “Flowers for Marjorie” many times as Cheng elaborates on the occurrences of the former. He believes that the narrator leads readers to have an opposite feeling for her younger self than the sympathy they possibly feel for Howard. The girl in “A Memory” is portrayed in this composition as absurd and full of excuses.
The essay concludes nicely by stating that the victims of both stories were used as foils of the two main characters to emphasize their emotional instability and their cluelessness of the big picture. The reader, too, “…is confused about which side they should take.” The writer wraps it up by telling the reader, “…Welty’s message is that we can’t trust our relative emotional values to make our judgments.” Frankly, how does perspective affect who we side with in a story? Aren’t morals themselves creations of human society and perception? Cheng’s point is clear: decisions and judgments should not be based on our own emotional values. This is definitely true in the long run, but it is not always the case where humans do not make choices from pure instinct.