“Why should I feel sorry It was Claude Daigle that got drowned, not me.”

The expression “Why should I feel sorry? It was Claude Daigle that got drowned, not me.” is Rhoda Penmark’s reply when Leroy Jessup challenges her for going skating after Claude Daigle’s drowning. Its stark division between Claude’s fate and her own makes the line a compact display of Rhoda’s apparent lack of sympathy—and one that continues to reverberate after she has walked away.

The Exchange at the Park

Leroy confronts Rhoda as she heads toward the park, asking how she can enjoy herself while her schoolmate is still damp from drowning in the bay. He presses the accusation, saying that she does not even feel sorry for the boy. Rhoda, briefly startled from her habitual calm, swings her skates from side to side and answers with the expression. The immediate setting sharpens the contrast: she is on her way to skate, while Leroy insists that grief should keep her indoors or send her to church.

The sentence does not deny that Claude died; instead, it treats his death as a misfortune belonging to someone else. Its blunt final contrast makes Rhoda’s own safety the measure of whether sorrow is necessary. In the exchange, Leroy expects mourning as evidence of ordinary fellow-feeling, while Rhoda answers as though the fact that she was not the one who drowned settles the question.

Echo and Significance

After Rhoda leaves, Leroy repeats the words to himself while sweeping the courtyard and securing the basement door before quitting time. He mimics her voice as best he can, and the sentence echoes in his mind. His first response is a wry appreciation; he then concludes that Rhoda cares about nobody who is alive, not even her mother, and recognizes something of himself in her refusal to be outmaneuvered. The repetition carries the exchange beyond the park: Rhoda’s answer becomes, for Leroy, both evidence of her meanness and a point of unsettling resemblance.

The expression’s force lies in its plain, self-protective logic. It reduces a death that Leroy regards as calling for compassion to a distinction between the person who drowned and the person who did not. Because Leroy repeats the exact line after the encounter, the words serve not only as Rhoda’s reply but as a verbal trace of the emotional distance he sees in her.