A Death in the Family

James Agee's A Death in the Family is a posthumous novel based on the largely complete manuscript that the author left upon his death in 1955. Agee had been working on the novel for many years, and portions of the work had already appeared in The Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar.

Published in 1957, the novel was edited by David McDowell. Several lengthy passages, part of Agee's manuscript whose position in the chronology was not identified by the author, were placed 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 Agee's writing.

It was also McDowell's decision to add the brief prefatory section, "Knoxville: Summer, 1915," Agee's poetic meditation on his southern childhood. As an overture to the novel, this evocative section, although not part of Agee's original manuscript, is extremely effective, for it introduces the theme of lost childhood happiness that is central in the novel as a whole. The novel will treat the same milieu of middle-class domestic life-a social milieu whose calm surface of "normality" is shattered by the tragic and possibly suicidal death of Jay Follet, the child protagonist's father.

In Part I of the novel, Agee quickly establishes the importance of the father-son relationship. Rufus Follet, Jay's six-year-old son, accompanies his father to the silent film theatre against the objection of Rufus's mother, who finds Charlie Chaplin (one of James Agee's heroes) "nasty" and "vulgar." This disagreement underscores the marital conflict that underlies Rufus's ambivalent feelings toward both his parents. When Jay takes Rufus to a neighborhood tavern after the picture show, despite the father's warmth and love for his son, it is clear that the father's pride is constrained by the fact that the son's proclivities, even at this early age, follow the mother's interests in "culture" rather than the father's more democratic tastes for athletic ability and social pursuits. Tensions between Rufus's parents are apparent as Jay's drinking and "vulgar" habits become a point of contention in the household, with the child Rufus caught between his sometimes bickering parents. For her part, Mary Follet is a character whose extreme subjection to moralistic attitudes suggests her own tragedy - the inability ever to extend unfettered love to another.

After Jay receives a telephone call in the middle of the night from his brother Ralph, he drives to the family farm near LaFollette, Tennessee, to visit his father, whom he believes is dying. While Jay visits LaFollette, Rufus goes shopping with his great-aunt, Hannah Lynch, and picks out a colorful checked hat that even his indulgent aunt believes to be too rakish. The hat is an indication of Rufus's subconscious rebellion against his mother's social pretensions and of his desire to establish a closer connection with his father. Since it is also a hat that Hannah and his mother might connect with Negroes, its choice also foreshadows Rufus's later curiosity concerning racial differences and his confusion over the origin of his own name, which older boys suggest is a name for blacks.

In the italicized dream-like sequence at the end of Part I, Agee presents Rufus's early childhood memories beginning with infancy. Rufus wakes on a summer night and hears voices of all the adults in his extended family. At first he feels security and peace, but he is soon troubled by the darkness and by the fear of impending calamity. After Rufus screams, his father comes to his bedside and sings to him. Shifting to Jay's point of view, the passage reveals his guilt over his excessive drinking as well as the warmth of his love for his family. In the same passage Rufus's mother, pregnant with the child who will be his sister Catherine, also sings to Rufus, and then his parents sing together in a harmony that Rufus especially likes. Rufus then remembers the last months of his mother's pregnancy when he was cared for by the black woman named Victoria. It is at the end of this italicized passage that Rufus has his first perception of racial distinctions.

Part II of the novel begins with the announcement of Jay's accident. As it turns out, the severity of his father's attack is not as great as Ralph, in his inebriated state, had imagined. Returning from the visit, his speeding car crashes and Jay is killed in an unusual manner that leaves no marks on his body except for tiny blue bruises on his chin and lip. After an initial report that Jay has been "seriously injured" but perhaps not killed, Mary endures the agony of waiting for news in the company of Hannah. They speculate that Jay might only be slightly injured, or that he might be disabled rather than killed. Mary's prayers, too eager it seems to accept "God's will" for her husband and her own martyrdom of early widowhood, are balanced by Hannah's greater restraint. After they are informed of the accident, Mary's parents, Joel and Catherine, comment on Jay's habit of reckless driving, and they even discuss the inevitability of his death, given his easy-going manner.

With her brother Andrew's return from Powell Station, the site of the accident, Mary and Hannah learn that Jay had been killed instantly after he was thrown from his car. Agee stresses the "strangeness" of the accident as apparently a cotter pin had come loose from the steering mechanism just as Jay was speeding around a curve. The chance quality of Jay's landing as he did, thrown from the car so that he might have survived if he had landed just to the right or left, strikes everyone as curious. Mary's reaction is to see the event as God's judgment on herself and to blame herself as an unworthy spouse. At the same time, she realizes that Jay must have been drinking with his brother Ralph before starting back, though she quickly banishes this "unworthy" thought. Mary sinks into the condition of self-pity and religiosity that will become a burden on her children in the future. Since Jay died suddenly in the prime of life, Mary chooses "In his strength" as his epitaph.

When Andrew calls Ralph Follet to tell him of Jay's death, Ralph feels guilty and tactlessly insists (since he is an undertaker) on "saving money" for Mary by handling the funeral arrangements in LaFollette. Jay's body has already been sent to a funeral home in Knoxville, a choice that Mary approves, and the argument as to where to hold the funeral, in Knoxville or LaFollette, again opens the rift between Jay's