What's Wrong with Morini?

__________, you were right to call me down a bit as you did in No. 224. I should not have referenced Joey Amalfitano in the discussion. He was an awful manager anyway. I should have made clear that I did not think Whitaker was full of it, but rather that the professor's statement was another false lead. It was just a measure of my frustration with the fact that at times the anticipation of big overall themes and meanings to come in February seemed nearly to preclude discussion of the text of Parts 1, 2, and 3 right now, parts which I am finding fascinating and not unnecessary at all.

As for your 226, I cannot figure out a simple way to direct you to that passage concerning Morini. So here it is:

Norton felt somehow insulted by Morini's decision not to go with them. They didn't call each other again. Morini might have called Norton, but before his friends set off on their search for Archimboldi, he, in his own way, like Schwob in Samoa, had already begun a voyage, a voyage that would end not at the grave of a brave man but in a kind of resignation, what might be called a new experience, since this wasn't resignation in any ordinary sense of the word, or even patience or conformity, but rather a state of meekness, a refined and incomprehensible humility that made him cry for no reason and in which his own image, what Morini saw as Morini, gradually and helplessly dissolved, like a river stops being a river or a tree that burns on the horizon, not knowing it's burning.

I think that you are correct when you say that Santa Teresa affected the thinking of the others. Certainly, young Rebeca affected Espinoza's thinking. He had trouble even remembering that Archimboldi's books were stashed in his luggage.

But what is going on with poor Morini here? And why?

Although you cannot feel too sorry for the guy who ends up with the girl. On the other hand, since the girl in this case is Norton, maybe we should feel truly sorry for him.