ENGL 4310

Sara’s >“The Lame-o in Porter’s Stories”
Sara says that Maria is the morally superior person in the story, and I agree with that completely. However, she doesn’t really think she is “lame-o” because she doesn’t “kill the Maria Rosa because she holds herself higher or to rid the world of the sin Maria and Juan had committed; she does it out of grief and jealousy.” While I agree that grief and jealousy are part of the reason that Maria commits murder, I think it has a lot more to do with the institution of marriage itself. The fact that they were married in the church is a big thing for this couple. It seems as if their marriage should be on a higher playing field because they were married in the church instead of behind it. So I think that Maria really does hold herself to a higher standard, at least when it comes to her marriage. Perhaps she doesn’t believe that her marriage should be affected by things like adultery, etc. because her marriage is supposed to be a sacred thing. So maybe she’s grieving over the loss of sanctity of her marriage, but I really think that she is a “lame-o” because she wants to do what is morally right, but she then murders someone. However, she does murder Maria Rosa in order to “save her marriage.” Everything was fine before Maria Rosa came along, and perhaps she was hoping that it would all be fine again once Maria Rosa came along.

As a side note, Juan also talks of how his marriage is different than other marriages. He mentions that he cannot hit his wife and put her in his place because he was married in the church. He likes the fact that he can tell Maria Rosa what to do and hit her and all of that because he doesn’t worry that God will strike him dead for doing so. He isn’t really a lame-o though because he doesn’t hold himself morally superior, he simply recognizes that his marriage is supposed to be on a higher level.