Cold Hatred

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how Eudora Welty introduces her readers to the mind of a sociopath killer in her short story "Where is the Voice Coming From?". The paper discusses how the author strikingly illustrates the anatomy of racial hatred. The paper examines the short story that is a chilling account of a cold and calculated murder set in the South during the 1960s; the murder of a black man who had been campaigning for equal rights in the town of Thermopylae. The paper shows how the story is written in first person from the killer's perspective, without divulging his name, to allow Welty to retain a sense of moral distance from the character, who deserves no humanization or sympathy that a name would confer.

From the Paper:

"The narrator is a resentful, spiteful man who murders Roland Summers because he hates seeing African-Americans achieving economic parity with whites, let alone superceding poor whites in the South. Throughout "Where is this Voice Coming From," the narrator reveals his resentful attitude. He says that the black man lives "pretty close to where I live," emphasis on the "I" to emphasize his hatred for simply living in the same region as black people. The narrator's resentment grows deeper and becomes more directly connected to economic parity. For example, he states, "his street's been paved," refers to his "new white car," and his "paved driveway.""

Sample of Sources Used:

• Welty, Eudora. "Where is the Voice Coming From?" Retrieved Feb 14, 2006 from http://web.mit.edu/norvin/www/somethingelse/welty.html

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