A Death in the Family (1957) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Rufus Follet: Agee's incarnation in the novel, the son of Mary and Jay Follet. Rufus is perceptive and inquisitive and intelligent, and he greatly admires his father.
• Jay Follet: Mary's husband and the father of Rufus and little Catherine. Mr. Follet is a big man and a gentle father. There are implications that he used to drink heavily.
• Mary Follet: Jay's wife and the mother of Rufus and little Catherine. Mrs. Follet is sensitive, high-strung, and ardently religious.
• Little Catherine: Rufus's younger sister. Little Catherine has a round face that gets red easily, and she sticks out her bottom lip when she is upset. She and Rufus frequently argue during the novel. Catherine has trouble understanding Jay's death. She is named after Mary's mother.
• Joel Lynch: Mary's father. Joel is a tough, pragmatic man who has little patience for or belief in religion. He feels, to some degree, that Mary has married beneath her, yet he remains very supportive of her.
• Catherine Lynch: Mary's mother. Catherine is a very kind old lady with a tinkling laugh. She is very hard of hearing, and therefore must use an ear trumpet in order to hear anything.
• Hannah Lynch: Mary's aunt and Joel's sister. Hannah, like Mary, is very religious, and she is calm, practical, and considerate.
• Andrew Lynch: Mary's brother. Andrew, unlike his sister, is not religious in the least.
• Walter Starr: A friend of Jay and Mary who is very kind to the children. Walter drives everyone everywhere in the novel, and at the end he invites Little Catherine and Rufus to come over and listen to his gramophone.
• Father Jackson: The priest who performs the funeral service for Jay. When Father Jackson first arrives at Mary's house, he reprimands Rufus and Little Catherine for being rude. Later, he refuses to read the complete burial service because Jay was never baptized.
• Uncle Ted and Aunt Kate: A couple who are distant relatives of Mary and Jay. Kate has red hair; Ted has a joking nature. One time, Mary gets angry with Ted when he plays a joke on Rufus at dinner.
• Victoria: A black woman who helps deliver little Catherine. Rufus likes the way that Victoria smells.
• Great-Great-Grandmother Follet: Rufus's great-great-grandmother. The ancient Great-Great-Grandmother Follet smiles at Rufus when he goes to see her when he is very small. She has eyes like pieces of broken glass.
• Great-Aunt Sadie: Rufus's great-aunt on his father's side. Sadie has a failing memory, and she lives off in the woods with Rufus's great-great-grandmother.
• Grampa Follet: Jay and Ralph's father. Grampa Follet was very burdensome to their mother, which frequently made Jay furious. Nonetheless, Jay believes that his father was a good-hearted man and always meant well. Jay has his fatal accident on the road to investigate Grampa Follet's alleged illness.
• Ralph Follet: Jay's younger brother. Ralph is an alcoholic and a generally weak and whiny man. Most of his family members feel sorry for him because he is such a pathetic figure.
• James Agee: Add a description of this character.
• Mama
• Grandma
• Papa
• Amelia
• Jessie
• Tom
• Sally
• Jackie
• Charlie
• Aunt Hannah

Quotes edit see section history

• “"There were a lot of clouds," his uncle said, and continued to look straight before him "but they were blowing fast, so there was a lot of sunshine too. Right when they began to lower your father into the ground, into his grave, a cloud came over and there was a shadow just like iron, and a perfectly magnificent butterfly settled on the-coffin, just rested there, right over the breast, and stayed there, just barely making his wings breathe, like a heart." Andrew stopped and for the first time looked at Rufus. His eyes were desperate.”

  This passage is taken from Chapter 20, the last chapter in the novel.

• “He felt that sitting out here, he was not lonely; or if he was, that he felt on good terms with the loneliness; that he was a homesick man, and that here on the rock, though he might be more homesick than ever, he was well. He knew that a very important part of his well-being came of staying a few minutes away from home, very quietly, in the dark, listening to the leaves if they moved, and looking at the stars; and that his own, Rufus' own presence, was fully as indispensable to this well-being.”

  This excerpt, taken from the Chapter 1, describes the moments on Rufus and Jay's walk home from the movie theater when they sit for a few moments on a rock and enjoy the silence of the night and each other's company.

• “"What's tempt?" "Tempt is, well, the Devil tempts us when there's something we want to do, but we know it is bad." "Why does God let us do bad things?" "Because He wants us to make up our own minds." "Even to do bad things, right under His nose?" "He doesn't want us to do bad things, but to know good from bad and be good of our own free choice." "Why?"”

  This bit of dialogue is taken from Chapter 5.

• “He was amused because his son had always mistaken the words "gal and" for "gallon," and because his wife and to a less extent her relatives were not entirely amused by his amusement. They felt, he knew, that he was not a man to take the word "gallon" so purely as a joke; not that the drinking had been any sort of problem, for a long time now. He sang…”

  This excerpt is taken from the section in italics directly preceding Part Two of the novel.

• “He thought of his daughter: all her spirit, which had resisted them so admirably to marry him, then only to be broken and dissolved on her damned piety; all her intelligence, hardly even born, came to nothing in the marriage, making ends meet and again above all, the Goddamned piety; all her innocent eagerness, which it looked as if nothing could ever kill, still sticking its chin out for more.”

  In this passage, taken from Chapter 9, Joel is thinking to himself about his daughter, Mary, as he and Catherine wait to hear whether or not Jay is alive.

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• When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That’s all.”

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• Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it’s almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.

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• How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it’s good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life.

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• He felt that although his father loved their home and loved all of them, he was more lonely than the contentment of this family love could help; that it even increased his loneliness, or made it hard for him not to be lonely.

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• By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night.

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• You couldn’t like anyone more than you happened to like them; you simply couldn’t.

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• WHEN GRIEF AND SHOCK surpass endurance there occur phases of exhaustion, of anesthesia in which relatively little is left and one has the illusion of recognizing, and understanding, a good deal.

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• After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

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• “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”

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• There they stayed quiet, the deceived mother, the false son, the fatally wounded daughter; it was thus that Andrew found them and, with a glimpse of the noble painting it could be, said to himself, crying within himself, “It beats the Holy Family.”

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Granma
• East Room

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Childhood Perception: Much of the narrative of A Death in the Family is told from the point of view of children, and primarily through the eyes of Rufus. Agee uses childhood as a lens through which to perceive reality; a child's lack of guile is the best narrative avenue to present many of life's complications, as such presentation allows us to draw our own inferences. Children typify the questioning stance that every character in the novel must eventually embrace when faced with Jay's death.When we first see Rufus, he is his father's silent companion on a trip to see a Charlie Chaplin film. After the film, we see Rufus's deep love for and insight about his father. The narrator tells us that Rufus perceives that his father loves the silent companionship of their walks home as much as Rufus does, and also that his father needs to spend this time alone, away from the home, because it restores an inner peace he cannot otherwise gain. Rufus clearly adores his father and wishes he could make his father prouder by being a better fighter instead of being good at reading. These two differing feelings—the desire to please and the insight about his father's emotions—are characteristic of Agee's depiction of childhood throughout the novel: at times, Rufus seems very young; at other times, wise beyond his years.The italicized flashbacks throughout the novel represent memories from Rufus's childhood, each displaying an event that shaped his development. It is hard to say what exactly Agee would have done with these sections had he lived long enough to work them into the body of his novel. Nonetheless, it is clear that childhood, and all that Rufus thought and felt at that time of his life, is vital to the shaping of the novel as a whole.
• The Role of Religion: Religion is probably the most notable topic of exploration in A Death in the Family. It is the greatest cause of discussion and strife within both the nuclear family of Mary, Jay, Rufus, and little Catherine, and in Mary's extended family. Mary and Hannah are the only two out of all of the family members who deeply believe in God and the Catholic church.Near the beginning of the story, Mary prays for her religion not to come between her and Jay; it is obviously something that husband and wife feel different about and disagree about. Mary greatly desires to raise her children as Catholic children, but Jay and the rest of Mary's family do not see the point in such action. However, it seems that Jay and Mary have a relationship that is stable enough to endure their differing ideologies. Early on in the story, when Rufus tirelessly questions Mary about death, she answers solely using religious ideology. We see not only that it will be difficult for her to raise her children without them questioning her beliefs, but also that it will be difficult for Rufus to accept such beliefs because they do not logically make sense.In Part Two of A Death in the Family, we can see how opposed the rest of Mary's family is to her religious beliefs. The two characters who appear most upset are her brother, Andrew, and her father, Joel. They become visibly angry whenever Mary leaves to pray or beseeches God in their presence to forgive her for grieving. The men's anger stems from their opinion that Mary is wasting her passion and intelligence on religious devotion. Nonetheless, they try to remember fact that she derives some comfort from religion, even if it is hard for them to understand or appreciate.In Part Three, religion becomes something that is comforting to Mary but that excludes her children. This happens for the first time immediately after Jay's death, when Mary spends most of her time in her bedroom praying. Then, when Father Jackson comes, he cruelly alienates the children and goes into Mary's room with Hannah and shuts the door. Even after the funeral, when the children embrace their mother, they can feel a change in her when she starts to pray, and the feel isolated.
• Memory: Throughout the novel, Agee explores the memories of a number of different characters, most notably Rufus. Flashbacks, his most common means of doing so, gives us a view of which memories have stayed with the characters through the years. In seeing this, we gain insight into what events have helped to shape the characters' personalities. The italicized passages, which give the most detailed memories, are all Rufus's except the introductory part before the beginning of the novel, titled "Knoxville: Summer 1915." The first memory describes, in almost poetic form, Rufus's fear of the dark when he was very small—young enough to be in a crib. His father comes in and sings to him for a long time, soothing the young Rufus. The long, detailed passages in which Rufus seems to have a conversation with the dark demonstrate what a sensitive child he is. At the time, Mary is pregnant with little Catherine, and the rest of the italicized passage discusses her pregnancy. The second passage in italics consists of three distinct memories: the boys who used to tease Rufus on their way to school, the visit to see Great-Great-Grandmother Follet, and a trip Rufus's family took when Uncle Ted played a joke on him. All of these events in the novel help to show how deeply affected Rufus is by various events, and primarily how eager he is to please those around him.
• The Butterfly: The butterfly that lands on Jay's coffin at the funeral, which Andrew mentions at the end of the novel, is symbolic of the hope to which all the characters must cling in order to cope with the devastation of Jay's death. For Mary and Hannah, hope takes the form of religion. It is significant that Andrew says the butterfly tempts him to believe in God, whereas religious figures like Father Jackson do not. Each character must find his or her own way of coping—an individual struggle with grief that Agee explores throughout the novel.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Followed by The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters.

Preceded by Patriotic Gore, and followed by Herzog.

Preceded by Where Angels Fear to Tread, and followed by The Ginger Man.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. James Agee (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Adam Freeland

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Pulitzer Prize (1958: Fiction)
• National Book Award (Finalist, 1958: Fiction)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3501.G35 1957
• Dewey: 813.52

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( A ) › Agee, James
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• A Death in the Family (2002) (TV) (IMDb): Staring John Slattery and Annabeth Gish

More Books Like This edit see section history