A death in the family Essay -- essays research papers

crowd together Agees A Death in the Family is a posthumous new(a) based on the largely complete manuscript that the author left upon his death in 1955. Agee had been working on the impertinent for many years, and portions of the work had al sympathizey appe bed in The Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harpers Bazaar. Published in 1957, the novel was edited by David McDowell. Several lengthy passages, part of Agees manuscript whose position in the chronology was not identified by the author, were indicated in italics by the editor, whose decision it was to place them at the conclusion of Parts I and II. These dream-like sequences suggest the influence of James Joyce, especially of Ulysses, on Agees writing. It was also McDowells decision to add the brief introductory section, Knoxville Summer, 1915, Agees poetic meditation on his southern childishness. As an overture to the novel, this evocative section, although not part of Agees original manuscript, i s extremely effective, for it introduces the theme of lost childhood happiness that is central in the novel as a whole. The novel depart treat the same milieu of middle-class domestic life-a mixer milieu whose calm surface of normality is shattered by the tragical and possibly suicidal death of Jay Follet, the child protagonists father. In Part I of the novel, Agee quickly establishes the importance of the father-son relationship. Rufus Follet, Jays six-year-old son, accompanies his father to the silent film theatre against the remonstrance of Rufuss mother, who finds Charlie Chaplin (one of James Agees heroes) nasty and vulgar. This disagreement underscores the marital conflict that underlies Rufuss ambivalent feelings toward two his parents. When Jay takes Rufus to a neighborhood tavern after the picture show, despite the fathers enthusiasm and love for his son, it is clear that the fathers pride is constrained by the fact that the sons proclivities, change surface at this early age, follow the mothers interests in culture rather than the fathers much democratic tastes for athletic ability and social pursuits. Tensions between Rufuss parents are unornamented as Jays drinking and vulgar habits become a point of broil in the household, with the child Rufus caught between his slightlytimes bickering parents. For her part, Mary Follet is a character whose extreme subjection to moralistic attitudes suggests... ... a prayer for the dead. lag Uncle Andrew takes Rufus for a walk and tells him about the magnificent butterfly that settled on Jays coffin just as it was lowered into the grave before degenerate off high into the sky an episode that Andrew believes miraculous. Andrews then reviles Father Jackson, who has refused to read the full burial service, since Jay has never been baptized. Rufus struggles to understand the hostility that Andrew feels toward the church compensate as he loves Christians such as Mary and Hannah. Rufus wants to ask for s ome clarification, but instead he and Andrew walk silently home. Thus Agee ends the novel on a note of unresolved conflict. As he grows up, it is suggested, Rufus will continue to suffer from the same divisions of faith and social milieu that are involved in his parents relationship, and he will develop into the contemplative workman who already, at the age of six, has shown such sensitivity to human motives and the language in which they are conveyed. Written toward the end of his life, A Death in the Family may be considered Agees attempt to understand the origins of, and to come to terms with, the self-division that plagued his existence.