ALEJANDRO, Jeremie, F.

BSED 3-1A

“THE OTHER MARGARET”

I. Summary

The story started when Stephen Elwin purchases the Rouault King from his dealer designer
friend, Mark Jennings, another costumer, a young lieutenant, comes in to disturb their
“community of feeling”, delicately poised as they are in deliberation of the strangely attractive
cruelty of this work of art. Elwin envies the younger man decision to off to war in order to share
the experience of his generation. It is now that Elwin recalls and reflects on the Hazlitt line, “No
young man believes he shall ever die,” from” On the Feeling of Immortality in the Youth.” First
heard in Mr. Baxter’s high school classroom, the line, then the repeatedly thereafter, defines the
nature of the inspiration for Elwin, crystallizing the wisdom he would live by and impart to his
daughter.

Or so Elwin believes. Three incidents now test this belief, however, as he returns home,
his bus driver, an older man, intentionally closes the door on a young boy and his brother for no
visible reason. Elwin only supposes that he is displacing on to these strange boys a desire for
revenge for filial ungratefulness he has suffered. Lucy Elwin, his wife, retells with ironic
disregard an anti -Semitic joke picked up on her bus ride home, and young Margaret jumps to the
mistaken conclusion that her own mother has been a secret racist. And finally, the family debates
the difference between the old black maid and the new one, discovering the Margaret’s delight in
for reading expressions of decency and the capability from victims of life’s injustices as nothing
but example of “slave psychology’. Creeping hatred and critical suspicion, abroad in the land,
even in the schools, have thus invaded the homes. Thus when the “other” Margaret intentionally
breaks the Lamb, a birthday gift for her mother which is a small and delicate object in the sight
of the idealistic Margaret, her father can offer her only a small solace. His daughter weeps
bitterly and uncontrollably. And she weeps, not for the smashed object but for her knowledge
that the maid has indeed committed purposely a malicious act. Her father also knows that it was
not the other Margaret but herself that his Margaret was grieving for, that n her foolish and
passionate argument; she was defending herself from her own impending responsibility.

II. Interpretation

In this story, it means understanding that under the shadows of death, social melioration
is not that easy to consider and personal responsibility is everything. The story is to serve
fictional enactments of a remaining belief on trilling’s part as he emerged from the late 1930’s
and 1940’s which all political doctrines particularly Liberalism in its interesting conception of
improvement, progressive change, and individual enhancement are the suspect. Wisdom consists,
as Margaret’s father believes he discovers, in positioning oneself somewhere beyond local and
the temporary. A familiarity with death, surely a great leveler, is the one relationship that can
assure a man a viewpoint from which he can judge well a political emptiness.

III. Technical Analysis

The other Margaret by Lionel trilling portrays the modern critical consciousness as the general
tragedy of culture life. The story focuses supposedly on the conflict engendered in Stephen
Elwin’s teenage daughter, Margaret, by her stubborn adoption of the liberal goodness learned in
school- the society is responsible for all evils. Margaret Elwin, to her father’s mind, refuses to
face reality and recognize what she cannot know, that all of us, even the worst victims of social
injustice, are to be held morally accountable for the actions we commit. Occasions for this
conflict of “illusion and reality” arises when the open hostility of the Elwin’s new black maid,
the other Margaret of the title, is left uncheck out of tolerant admiration to the girl’s progressive
attitudes. Nastiness rise then to a climatic incident of offended violence, the planned smashing of
the beautiful green porcelain lamb that Margaret Elwin made herself as a birthday gift for her
mother.

IV. Judgment

The story, the other Margaret by Lionel Trilling contains a serious and critical subject matter.
One who is unaware of the situation between the 1930’s and 1940’s would not easily
comprehend with the story. Arrangement of the story created a surprising turn of events from the
purchase of the Painting throughout the climax and open ended finale. The words used are
somewhat complicated especially in my age that I consulted the web to verify the meanings. The
story is more of symbolism which depicts the lives of the characters. Overall, the story is
knowledgeable, but doesn’t interest me that much probably because of little knowledge of the
theme.