A Death in the Family by James Agee
A Death in the Family
By James Agee
Completed August 8, 2010
James Agee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Death in the Family, captured the initial moments of grief with beautiful clarity. The shock, anger and sadness that inflicted each character was so realistically drawn, it was near flawless. Won posthumously in 1957, the edition of A Death in the Family that I read contained only minor changes to Agee’s writing, plus two sections that were not placed formally into the story by the author. To think that Agee wrote this masterpiece without the benefit of an editor shows you the caliber of his writing. Like his character development, this story was close to perfect.
Jay Follett was a husband and father with a slightly mysterious past, who was called to his father’s bedside in the middle of the night. On his trip home, his car experienced mechanical failure, resulting in Jay’s instantaneous death. He left behind his wife, Mary and his two children, Rufus and Catherine.
The mysterious aspects of Jay’s life enthralled me. You get the impression that he was an alcoholic - perhaps on the wagon at the time of his death - who pulled himself out of nothing into a productive life. As Mary’s family learned of Jay’s death, you discovered they were not supportive of Mary and Jay’s marriage initially, but as time evolved, they grew to love him. Without a doubt, he held a tight bond with his son, Rufus. For most of the book, you witnessed the emotional roller coaster that the family experiences as they deal with Jay’s death. From wanting to know the details of the accident to trying to sleep and eat, death and daily living were juxtaposed for the readers to consider: How would you deal with the sudden death of a loved one?
The book ends on the day of the funeral, leaving you curious about how the family would cope so early in their grief. How would Mary survive without her husband’s financial support? How would the children learn to live without their father? Agee leaves many questions unanswered, but made one thing clear: grief is a force to be reckoned with. It ebbs and flows throughout a person’s lifetime; always there - sometimes in the distance, sometimes very close. A Death in the Family was a wonderful tribute to this raw human emotion. (
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