Journal #15

Journal 15 – William Dean Howell’s “Editha”

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 messae of the passage is that living in the ideal than in reality can be very dangerous to a person in how they live their life.


"I shall always love you, and therefore I shall never
marry any one else. But the man I marry must love
his country first of all”


“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

“He told me he had asked you to come if he got killed. You didn’t expect that, I suppose, when you sent him.”


2. What tactics does Editha use to make George believe as she does about the war?
Editha threatens George that if he doesn’t go to war she won’t be with him. She persuades him in that her opinion on it being a “holy war” is true. She also threatens him by sending him a letter with her engagement ring in it which basically said if he doesn’t go to war, she won’t be with him. This resulted in him going to war even though he didn’t want too and getting killed.

3. Is there ever a time in which Editha truly understands what she has done? Does she ever experience an epiphany?
I think Editha felt a little guilty in the beginning when she was mourning her loss of her fiancé. But she never however expierenced an epiphany because she never understood what she did wrong. Even when she visited his mom like he asked, the mother tried to drill it in her that it was her fault but she wouldn’t have it. She liked her ideal world and therefore she stayed in it.