An insight into Death

James Agee’s A Death in the Family is a mesmerizing book.  The power of the book does not come from its plotting.  The plot could be written in full and would not a spoil a thing for future readers, because the power of the novel comes from Agee’s ability to climb into the heads of his characters as they struggle with emotionally and intellectually overwhelming subjects. 

The novel takes place in about 1915 in Knoxville, Kentucky.  Jay, a young father of two children, is called by his drunken brother in the middle of the night to come up to the family farm because their dad is at death’s door.  Jay does so, and on his return home, he crashes the car and dies instantly from a concussion.  Mary, Jay’s wife, is surrounded by her family as she learns of the news.  Rufus, Jay’s six-year-old son, and Catherine, Jay’s still younger daughter, do their best to understand what has happened and what it all means.  The entirety of the novel takes place from the evening preceding Jay’s death to his funeral a few days later.

Agee’s insight into his characters and their relationships, and his ability to break down the movement of their grief and concerns is magnificent.  Everything rings true.  It is a perfect example of art capturing reality while making it simultaneously clearer and more meaningful than the real thing ever feels. 

Agee, who was writing about his own experiences surrounding his father’s death, died before he finished the novel for publication.  I only wish that he had been able to finish the book, because I wanted it to go on and on.

Sometimes I end these blog posts with questions that I have when I finish a novel, and I’m going to do that here.  At several points, Agee makes a connection between grief and child labor, which I find fascinating.  Andrew, Mary’s brother, is the one that breaks the news to Mary: “he was already bringing a third chair and now he sat, and put his hands upon theirs, and feeling the convulsing of her hands, thought, Christ, it’s as if she were in labor.  And she is.”  And later, before the funeral, Mary, who has been impressively stoic, breaks down: “Mary meanwhile rocked quietly backward and forward, and from side to side, groaning, quietly, from the depths of her body, not like a human creature but a fatally hurt animal; sounds low, almost crooned, not strident, but shapeless and orderless, the sisters, except in their quietude, to those transcendent, idiot, bellowing screams which deliver children.”  The first passage struck me as interesting, but the second one says to me that Agee is making a larger connection, and I’m not sure what it is. Ideas?  How are grief and labor related here?

My last question has to do with the ending passage.  According to the editor, this is how Agee knew he wanted to end the novel.  Why there?  Why with that emotional struggle?  While religion had been present throughout the book, it never felt to me like it was a book about Catholicism or religion.  It felt like religion was part of the tangled reactions, and indeed central, but not the center.  All things considered, this ending does not seem the culmination of what has preceded it but something new and distinct.  Am I missing the true core of the novel?  How does the ending change what has preceded it?

A Death in the Family is an excellent novel, and I highly recommend it.