ENGL 4310

Sheppard sat helpless and miserable, like a man lashed by some elemental force
of nature. This was not a normal grief. It was all part of his selfishness. She
had been dead for over a year and a child's grief should not last so long.
"You're going on eleven years old," he said reproachfully.

For the past two summers I have worked at a clothing store in St. George called Van Heusen (thankfully, that will not be the case this summer). Among the many moments I remember from my experiences there is one that I was reminded of when reading the above passage from "The Lame Shall Enter First." A young boy was being mildly rambunctious in the store, and I overheard his mother say in a stern and exasperated voice, "Stop it; you're acting like a little kid." My guess was that the boy was maybe six or seven years old. I thought to myself, "What's your point, lady? He is a little kid; that's why he's acting like a little kid." My reaction was similar in this instance. Just what are you driving at, Sheppard? There's nothing wrong with a child crying over the death of his mother, even if it was a year ago, no matter his age. Are you so out of it that you don't recognize that?

Neena and Jillian both said they were disturbed by the story and by Sheppard's relationship with Norton. I, on the other hand, was just really sad. The images did it all for me.

Norton throwing up his cake/peanut butter/ketchup concoction? Wow. On page 599:

He [Sheppard] got up and carried the plate to the sink and turned the water on
it and watched grimly as the mess ran down the drain. Johnson's sad, thin hand
rooted in garbage cans for food while his own child, selfish, unresponsive,
greedy, had so much that he threw it up.

When I read that, I wrote, "He threw up because he was CRYING, because you're an insensitive father! Sheesh!" (I've seen my younger brothers throw up many a time, even when they weren't sick, simply because they'd been crying so hard and gotten so worked up.) We've mentioned before that there's a tendency for alliances to shift in O'Connor's stories, and this is the moment when I firmly lost all sympathy for/loyalty with Sheppard; he couldn't show love or understanding for his son, his eleven year old, practically orphaned son, even when he'd been crying so much over missing his mother that he made himself sick.

On page 607, Sheppard finds Norton in one of his late mother's old coats. "He pulled it open and winced as if he had seen the larva inside a cocoon. Norton stood in it, his face swollen and pale. Sheppard stared at him." Again, no sympathy from father to son. It makes me so sad. And furthermore, Sheppard uses this instance of his son's grief to his own advantage (or what he would claim was to Johnson's advantage), telling Johnson, "I've got a problem. I need your help." My, how problematic for him to be burdened with a son in pain. How inconvenient.

The thing that's finally so, so sad is Norton's decision to take his own life. He's a little boy. I can't get over that: a little, little boy. He found his mother in the sky ("I've found her! Mamma! She's there! She waved at me!"), and reflecting on a prior conversation with Johnson (who was ultimately a more reliable, and more dastardly, source than Sheppard on the matter of where his mother was), decided - not without justification - to join her.

The child still looked puzzled. "Where?" he said. "Where is she at?"

"On high," Johnson said.

"Where's that?" Norton gasped.

"It's in the sky somewhere," Johnson said, "but you got to be dead to get there. You can't go in no space ship." There was a narrow gleam in his eyes now like a beam holding steady on his target.