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Guilt In Paul D Angelo's The Step Not Taken

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When a person sees another person suffering it may cause them pain. This constitutes their powerful system of empathy, which hints their thinking that they should do something to relieve the suffering of others. If they cannot help another, or fail in his/her efforts they might experience feelings of guilt. Humans make mistakes and many of them go down a path in their lives that can make them feel guilty later on when they finally recognize their mistake. This is evident in Paul D’Angelo’s self-narrative short story The Step Not Taken, when he the protagonist fails to help a man labeled as “typical junior executive” (D’Angelo) which leads to an epiphany of guilt and shows his true identity. We all have committed an act that we were not …show more content…

D’Angelo states “That I hope things are looking up for him. That I hope his sorrow is the past… That I am thinking of him” (D’Angelo).In the passage the repetition of “that I hope” it emphasizes the amount of guilt towards the business man. Not only does this passage show his guilt it also shows his true identity, it shows a side of a person who is a regretful, sorrow and hopeful. The reason he is showing his true identity is because it connects to his guilt. When it took place live D’Angelo did not help the weeping man which then labels him as a care free person but that is not that he truly is. That may have been the purpose of this short story as D’Angelo states “That I am thinking of him… That I am sorry” telling the reader his is full of guilt and that he did the wrong thing by not helping the man. Paul D’Angelo is not the only person that has experienced an awkward situation like this. In Patrick Dewitt’s The Sisters Brothers Eli, one of the brothers sees a weeping man and like D’Angelo he does not take any action. This later leads him to question

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