Willie Keith—May Wynn

Willie Keith—May Wynn is a romance defined by a reversal: Willie ends a relationship he once regarded as beneath his ambitions, then, under the threat of death, recognizes May as the person he wants to marry. His proposal marks a change in how he understands both love and his own choices, but the account closes before May’s response arrives. Their future remains suspended between his certainty and her unrecorded decision.

Identity and Early Attraction

Willie’s later account traces his love for May to their first meeting at Luigi’s. He remembers being struck by her as soon as she took off her coat, and insists in his letter that his attraction was immediate. With hindsight, he also recognizes qualities he had failed to value properly: he considers May brighter than himself and possessed of more character. His retrospective praise contrasts with the judgments that led him to leave her.

The relationship had lasted three years before Willie broke it off. He describes having decided that May was not good enough for him and says he treated a clean break as more honorable than continuing correspondence that might give her false hope. His admission makes clear that the separation was not caused by a loss of feeling. Rather, he had convinced himself that ending the relationship was the right thing to do, while his own pride and immaturity shaped that conclusion.

Separation and Wartime Reassessment

After their time together in Yosemite, Willie’s mother persuaded him to postpone marriage. In his later letter, he recalls that she framed his desire in terms of physical attraction, and that her arguments helped him regard the relationship as a trap. He characterizes his response as snobbish and adolescent. His proposal thus answers not only the breakup but also the reasoning behind it: he no longer accepts his mother’s judgment as a sufficient reason to give May up.

For five months after deciding to end things, Willie did not write to May. He later acknowledges that the silence followed from his determination to make the separation final, not from uncertainty about how to contact her. He had thought that avoiding further correspondence would spare them both a drawn-out break. In retrospect, he sees this as part of the same mistake: he had mistaken withdrawal for maturity and had denied his feelings rather than confronting them.

The decisive change comes during a kamikaze attack on the USS Caine. As the plane approaches, Willie thinks he may die and feels an overwhelming regret that he did not marry May. Since jilting her, he had pushed thoughts of her away when they returned during tired or difficult moments. In this crisis, that regret no longer seems to him like weakness; it feels like a truth he can no longer evade. The possibility of losing his life turns the relationship from a past attachment into the future he fears he will never have.

The Proposal and the Future Willie Imagines

Late one night, while the USS Caine is alongside a repair tender, Willie writes to May. He opens by comparing his realization to the repeated experience of being shaken from sleep aboard ship: after a long interval of avoiding the relationship, he has at last been forced to face it. He admits that his letter may astonish her and that he does not know what she now thinks of him. This uncertainty does not weaken his decision to write; it makes the act of proposing an appeal rather than an assumption that she will take him back.

Willie states that he wants May to be his wife and that his love is no passing wartime impulse. He acknowledges that he had treated her as though she were not good enough for him, then reverses that judgment, describing her as stronger and wiser than he is. He also recognizes the role of his own social pretensions: the idea of marrying into a supposedly suitable family had mattered to him, though he now understands that it could not justify giving up the person he loved. His letter is an attempt to name the ways his earlier standards distorted his view of May.

He makes the proposal concrete by describing the life he hopes they could share after the war. Willie wants to return to school, earn an advanced degree if his finances allow, and become a college instructor, preferably in a small town. He expects to use an insurance policy left by his father to support several years of study, supplementing it with work such as tutoring and perhaps government assistance for veterans. These plans connect his marriage proposal to a broader reassessment of his vocation: he has found pleasure in helping sailors with Armed Forces Institute courses, advising them, and watching them learn. He believes May had understood his interest in teaching before he fully understood it himself.

His imagined future is not presented as effortless or guaranteed. Willie recognizes that May may not want the life of a college instructor’s wife, and that she may no longer care for him. He asks her to decide whether his letter is worth answering and seeks forgiveness for his earlier treatment of her. He also tells her not to let resentment toward his mother determine her response, saying that he will no longer surrender the possibility of marrying May to his mother’s objections. The letter therefore combines a declaration of love with an acknowledgment that May retains the choice.

Waiting and an Unresolved Ending

Willie revises the letter repeatedly, then types a clean copy and considers how it will strike May: startling, undignified, and emotionally unguarded, but true to what he feels. He knows that no polished phrasing can erase the fact that he is returning to someone he jilted. After sending the proposal, he waits for an answer. Six weeks pass while the old minesweeper lies at anchor, and he grows increasingly anxious. He writes several pleading letters but tears them up, feeling foolish when he rereads them.

When a large envelope addressed in a woman’s handwriting appears on his desk, Willie immediately thinks it may be May’s reply. It is instead a letter from Lieutenant Ducely, who reports having seen May singing at a club but had not spoken to her. Ducely’s message confirms that May is still performing, but it supplies no answer to Willie’s proposal and no account of her feelings. The distinction between the envelope he hopes for and the one he receives sharpens the ending’s uncertainty: Willie has made his choice plain, but May’s response remains unknown in this evidence.

Significance of the Relationship

The romance registers Willie’s movement from self-protective certainty toward a more candid acceptance of responsibility. His earlier decision to leave May rested on judgments about status, desire, and what his mother thought was best; his later letter identifies those judgments as failures rather than virtues. The danger aboard the USS Caine does not create his affection, which he says began at their first meeting, but makes the cost of continuing to deny it undeniable to him.

The proposal also joins intimacy to a changed idea of adulthood. Willie does not promise May wealth or a glamorous life. He offers a modest, conditional plan centered on education, teaching, and a life together, while admitting that she may decline. His love letter is therefore both a request for reconciliation and a record of a choice he has finally made for himself. Because the evidence stops before May answers, the relationship’s final outcome cannot be stated; its closing movement is Willie’s commitment, not a confirmed reunion.