Professor and the Madman

Eng.Wr. 300
6 February 2008
Writing Assignment   2
In the book The Professor and the Madman by William Chester Minor, Professor Murray was one of the main characters that was very devoted. When James Murray was twenty-four he married a school teacher named Maggie Scott. Two years later they had a baby but it died of infancy. Then Maggie fell ill, so she had to leave the country to go South of France because the Doctor said she couldn’t survive another long Scottish winter. James Murray put all his quests aside to move and take care of his wife. “had to his bitter disappointment   been forced by his domestic circumstances to abandon all his current intellectual pursuits” (35). When Maggie died, a year later Murray was engaged to a young woman. A year after that they were married while he still loved Maggie he admired the parents of his new wife, Ada Ruthven. Her father worked for the Great Indian Peninsular Railway and her mother who went to school with Bronte. “here was a woman who was far more his social and intellectual equal. They were to remain devoted, and to have eleven children together” (36).
James Murray was also determined, he loved to teach himself a lot of things like studying Hindustani and Achaemenid Persian to find out by their accents from which region of Scotland various policeman came. He had an obsessive thirst for learning and an interest in philology. “He taught himself about the local geology and botany; he found a globe from which he could learn geography and foster a love for maps; he unearthed scores of textbooks from which he could take on the enormous burden of history” (33). The letter about applying for a position at the British Museum Murray wrote showed how determined he was to get a job there. He wrote about all his knowledge of how many languages he spoke. “I have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac to read at sight the Old Testament and Peshito; to a less degree I know Aramaic Arabic, Coptic and Phoenician to the point... [continues]

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