ENGL 4310

Sara's Lame-O in Porter's Stories


Okay, so I am sorry that I seem to be only responding to Sara’s past blogs…the reason is that I want these blogs to have something to do with what I am planning on writing my paper on (and the symposium as well), and since most of the blogs on this topic are written by myself, I have had a hard time finding blogs that others have written about even the stories that I will be focusing on. Since Sara did these lame-o ones covering most of the stories we have read, I found that I wanted to reply to her idea of the stories.

So, Sara stated that both the wife and the husband consider themselves to be morally superior individuals, and therefore they are slightly more lame-o than okay. I think that I agree with this assessment. Though I am not so sure that I would consider them thinking they are morally superior. I know that the husband and the wife are being incredibly defensive as a person is wont to do when they are being attacked. The fact that the fight so easily escalates makes me believe that this is not the first (nor the last) fight of this kind. As I’ve said before, I really don’t think that the rope is the reason for the fight…it’s the fact that he thought of himself instead of thinking of her, but when she gets what she wants (her coffee…which shows that he really DOES love her because he walked all the way to get it…again), she is okay with him having something for himself (i.e.: the rope).

Does being defensive mean a person believes he/she is morally superior? I don’t know. That seems to be the take Sara took, which is fine. Though she didn’t really give any support to her claim, so I don’t know what her reasoning was (though I’m sure it was brilliant because it’s Sara). I am thinking that neither of them really thought they were morally superior, just maybe that they were annoyed at each other, or something. Maybe I should re-read the story with the sole purpose of finding how they could be morally superior. I suppose that the wife could think she is because the husband had (possibly) had an affair. She has never cheated on him (or at least that’s what her accusation implies because we generally avoid accusing someone of doing something we ourselves have done…though not always), so she could think she is “better” than he is because of it. However, I don’t think that is what she is getting at. I think the main issue for this couple is not that they are morally superior, but are, in fact, not able to trust each other. The wife is obviously jealous, whether anything ever really happened between her husband and another woman. If she weren’t unsure of their relationship, she wouldn’t have become so angry about the fact that he forgot the coffee. Of course, that is probably a lie. As someone in class stated once, it could just be because she hasn’t had her caffeine fix and is apt to freak out because her body needs it. Then again, I don’t see why Porter would write a story that shows a woman being mad at her husband only because she can’t get her caffeine fix. I really think it has more to do with the trust/love issue.