Moral Imperatives

A detailed Summary of Moral Imperatives


"When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble."

Often times, we are faced with situations or questions where we are made to choose a certain path or specific answer. Depending on which alternative you choose, your answer or choice is most certainly based on whether you are being moral or not. Sometimes, you a forced to make the decision that you normally would not make. This is Joan Didion's idea called "Wagon Train" morality. In the essays by Glaspell and Ellison, the character or characters are faced moral imperatives that might not be PC or commonly accepted, but to the person, at that particular moment, their choice seems right.

In the essay by Harlan Ellison, we are taught of a man that does not conform with the society he lives. He is called a Harlequin (which defined in Webster's Dictionary means buffoon


The essay "Trifles," by Susan Glaspell, focuses on a choice made by two women that could effect whether a woman lives or dies. The woman is Mrs. Wright, and her husband has been murdered. The county attorney and the sheriff are at the house, which is solitary in a deep hollow, where the murder occurred trying to figure out what happened. Two women are present; Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, and they find clues that lead them to believe that Mrs. Wright killed her husband out of rage and madness. The moral issue faced by these women is whether or not to tell the men that they know what happened. As they go over the clues they have found, they realize that Mrs. Wright might have had good reason to kill Mr. Wright, or so they believe in their own minds. He killed her bird, he would not let her have a phone, and he did not want children. Does this seem moral to you? A man treats his wife bad, two other women can relate to what she went through, they discover that she is the k!

iller, yet the do not tell because the feel sympathy for Mrs. Wright. This decision is a type of "Wagon Train" morality... a moral imperative that the women were faced with and dealt with.

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Approximate Word count = 795
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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