The narrator repeatedly says ‘I done what I done for my own pure-D satisfaction’, exposing his naivety and passivity as he abides by the racist system in place he fails to realise or admit that he did not act solely out of personal choice.2 The character epitomises the superiority that white men felt entitled to in the Southern state he feels cheated by his black neighbour and is drawn to act on his jealousy.
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Her murderous white character believes that he commits his crime for personal reasons, refusing to accept that he was manipulated into possessing a discriminatory doctrine by the larger system that he is adhering to. Welty demonstrates how the racial tensions in society incite hatred on both an individual and personal level. As William Murray expounds, Welty avoids a straightforward assault on the people of Mississippi instead of a simple vilification of individuals, she delivers depictions of injustice that illustrate the complicity of the southern environment as a whole.’1 Rather than focusing on individual prejudice Welty, as Murray states, allows readers to place blame on the social systems for racial violence. Narrated by the killer, Welty gives an insight into his motivations behind the murder in doing so, she allows the reader to experience some level of sympathy for the character. By basing her text on a true event, the author prompts the reader to question the fraught racial bias prevalent in American society by highlighting the horrific treatment of the black community.
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Based on the true event of Medgar Evers in Mississippi in 1963, Welty exemplifies the racially fuelled conflicts that she witnessed throughout her lifetime in the American South this is furthered through the basing of her fiction town, Thermopylae, on the capital Jackson. Driven by feelings of hatred and frustration, the narrator recounts his murder of his black neighbour. In the short story Where Is the Voice Coming From?, Eudora Welty writes from the perspective of a white, underprivileged and jealous man.