Thomas Carlyle

After reading all so much poetry, Thomas Carlyle’s stories were a bit of fresh air. I thoroughly enjoyed his story “The Irish Widow” from Gospel of Mammonism. He writes of an Irish widow with three kids. She goes asking for charity for she has nothing. It is actually quite a sad story, but I think has a good moral at the end. She is infected with typhus fever, and no one shows any sympathy probably for the fact that she is Irish. As sick as she was, no one lends a helping hand. She died of fever, along with 17 other people who caught it from her. I believe Carlyle was trying to make the point that people should not judge other people or look down upon them because they are less fortunate. Those who were “better” than her also caught the fever as well. This story kind of reminded me of the Beatles song “Eleanor Rigby” because no one really paid attention to those people in the song, and they will be forgotten forever. Well I don’t know if anyone else would have gotten the comparison, but as soon as I read this story, the song started playing in my mind. The Irish widow was pleading with those around her saying “I am your sister, bone of your bone; one God made us: ye must help me!” I don’t think she was referring to those people as her biological sister but as a spiritual sister, because we are all made in God’s image and we are spiritually all brothers and sisters. While the physician is speaking, he makes us realize that we are all created equal regardless if we are poor, Irish, rich, or etc. Those people let an innocent person die all because she was not like them. He uses the word “impossible” repetitively throughout the story, making different uses for it. Carlyle first uses it when the people deny that the woman can be their sister, “No, Ipossible; thou art no sister of ours.” He then continues on and the doctor uses it somewhat mocking the people who denied her, because now 17 people are dead, and it is impossible for her to be their sister. Without those people’s help the woman and 17 other people are dead. Was it impossible for the people to help, would it have been impossible for the 17 people who died to live if those people helped the Irish woman. This story makes us realize we are all the same, and we should help the needy.