In this final essay, we return to the title itself: Travel Is So Broadening. Is it celebration, satire, or something more unsettling? This blog considers whether experience automatically produces growth — and why the real broadening in this story may belong not to the traveler, but to the reader willing to examine him.
In this second essay, we turn from voice to ethics. What does Mr. Schmaltz’s language reveal about how he sees other people? Here we examine how casual generalizations, small cruelties, and confident judgments create the illusion of superiority — and why Lewis never has to accuse his narrator directly. The critique is embedded in the way the story unfolds.