Summary:
A dexristion of why Hagar's behavior reveals a complex value system that changes over time through experience.
Despite Hagar's pride, blindness, age and illness, she is quite capable of fine intelligence and insight- either of things occurring at that moment in time or of things that happened in her past.
Many things, when she recalls them, she views in a different light. This is true in several cases. First of all, she now sees that the stone angel her father had bought to mark her mothers grave was also a way for him to appear to be better than he really was. She also realizes that Bram, who she thought hadn't cared about her leaving, had in fact cared. He cared even though he knew that he would never be able to live up to her high standards for him and that she would never truly respect who he was. However, she realizes this too late, near the end of Bram's natural life. Bram is delirious and rambling; in his ramblings he announced "that Hagar- I should have licked the living daylights out of her, maybe, and then she'd have seen I could"- speaking of course about her leaving him. Later she also realizes that her berating herself that "I [she] hadn't wakened" when Bram died was a foolish thing to do and states "I know better now."
Also, she reveals her intelligence by the fact that she is able to lie to other when she knows that them hearing that lie will help ease the pain that they are experiencing. She does this at least twice in her lifetime, the first time being when john is dying in the hospital. He starts to panic, even though he is mortally wounded, worrying about whether or not Arlene (the love of his life) is all right. Hagar could easily of been her usual blunt self and told him that his foolish stunt had in fact cost Arlene her life, but she is intelligent enough to realize that john desperately needed at that point in his life was to be told that Arlene was all right. So that's what Hagar did: "She's quite all right", she said, in order to spare john any more pain than he was currently in. the second time Hagar tells a lie of this nature is when someone else- this time she herself- is dying. Hagar informs Marvin that he has "been good to me [her], always. A better son than John." She knows that Marvin needs to hear something of this nature so that in the years after her death, he wont berate himself for not doing this, or for not doing that. All of Marvin's life, he has been constantly reminded by Hagar that "John always....", "John wouldn't...." Hagar finally sees that Marvin "is truly Jacob", and that he has always been her Jacob even though she was too blind to previously see this.
Hagar's own insight also allows her to realize that everyone- the numerous doctors, Marvin, and Doris- aren't telling her everything she should be told. When Marvin informs her "there's nothing exactly wrong, organically. Doctor Corby just thinks you'd [she'd] be better off with proper care and all", Hagar is automatically suspicious of what he isn't telling her. She knows that "there's something else" and desperately want to know exactly what is wrong with her. She also likely realizes, at this point, that her life will soon be over and Death will be coming for her.
She also, later in her life, manages to see that the people she fancies as being unduly cruel to her, like the doctor who gives her barium prior to her x-rays, are only doing their best and that they are seriously only trying to help her. Another time she comes to the conclusion that people are only trying to help her is when she is moved to a semi-private room in the hospital. When she awakens in the midst of the night, and gets out of bed, the young nurse tries to help her by fixing Hagar up with a "bed jacket." In the end Hagar realizes that "she [the nurse] has to do it. It's not her fault. Even I [Hagar] can see that." Even quiet meek Mr. Troy does his utmost best to help her. Shy though he is, he nonetheless sings for her- aloud and lone, not an easy task for one so timid to do.
This is the complete article, containing 722 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
