63 pages • 2 hours read
David Adams RichardsMercy Among the Children
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 1, Chapters 17-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Mercy”
Part 1, Chapters 17-22 Summary
Constable Morris takes the threatening letters Sydney received in the mail and tells Sydney that he must have falsified them. Inspector Morris tries to convince Elly to give evidence against Sydney. After their discussion, Elly stays in bed because she is afraid of losing her child. No one speaks to the Henderson children at school. Sydney stops going to church but reads Marcus Aurelius. McVicer is blamed for hiring Sydney in the first place and throws a children’s benefit to garner public goodwill. Rudy has misgivings about the suffering of the Hendersons, but Mat Pit intimidates him into silence. Crazed with guilt himself, Mat steals a Fitzgerald novel from the Hendersons’ house.
The inquest begins, and Isabel Young defends Sydney. Constable Morris takes the stand, followed by McVicer. If Sydney is not charged, McVicer will face a lawsuit over the availability of explosives. Isabel Young collects evidence of the suffering Sydney has endured over the years. Connie Devlin perjures himself by lying about Sydney. Mat Pit is a witness and uses a book of Sydney’s that has sexual content to evidence his claim that Sydney tormented and sexually abused Trenton. No one from the university defends the book as a piece of literature, though it is well-known and read.
Elly is angry with Sydney, who is reliant on Isabel Young to help him escape prison. Young questions Mat Pit, implying that Mat himself abused his brother. Connie Devlin, taking the stand once more, swears that he saw Sydney Henderson on the bridge. Young presses him to admit that after he lost his job for drinking, Sydney got his job back for him. She also points out that Sydney doesn’t know how to drive and is incapable of positioning the truck where Connie had said. Sydney is acquitted.
Part 1, Chapters 17-22 Analysis
Once again, communication breaks down in Chapter 17, where Constable Morris fails to read between the lines when Sydney receives threats in the mail. Later, the novel that Mat Pit uses against Sydney Henderson in court is similarly misconstrued. In the context of a novel, these events are ironic, and it is as though Richards would have his readers wrestle with the trust issues experienced by his protagonist, Lyle. Discernible behind these ironies is a gallows humor that does not diminish the increasing tensions.
Sydney begins to read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, an important Stoic text, at precisely the moment that he is under the greatest pressure. Aurelius was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 CE. The book is a chronology of the emperor’s life and stresses appropriate judgement of one’s actions and the acquisition of a transcendental perspective. Aurelius argues that the only way someone can harm a man is for the man to be reactive. This applies to Sydney, who has decided never to raise his hand or his voice and never seeks retribution. In a way, Richards is testing Aurelius’s argument through his narrative.
As with many aspects of the novel, the names of most of the characters are emblematic. Isabel Young, for instance, takes the part of the innocent, childlike Hendersons, while Connie Devlin cons the court by perjuring himself and playing devil’s advocate to Sydney’s resolute morality. That the characters are almost archetypes in this way advances an allegorical reading of the novel. Much as medieval Christian parables involve characters like “Avarice,” “Greed,” and so forth, Richards’s novel raises questions of morality for a modern, more secular readership.
