Mercy Among the Children

The story of the salmon poaching, and its disastrous consequences, is another parody of the Christian fable of the feeding of the 5,000. This miracle does not grace the Hendersons, who are constantly struggling at the breadline and persecuted by the locals. Lyle’s preoccupation with fishing might also, in this context, be an analogue for the search for Christ, who is symbolized by a fish.

Sydney and Autumn’s passion for literature is another element in the novel that pertains to the metaphorical. The Hendersons’ life contrasts with the ideal presented by transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau in his famous semi-autobiographical 1854 novel Walden, a classic of American literature. Lyle draws this comparison explicitly, setting his father up as a kind of Everyman, and his life as an exemplar. Lyle’s stance here is also evocative of the absurdity enshrined in French Existentialism:

I also remember walks in the woods, and picnics and fishing trips up Arron Brook in the spring where Dad would speak about poetry and Walt Whitman and Thoreau; yet what I say here is something to measure my father by—he did not know that he, and not Thoreau, was the real article, or that his civil disobedience went to the very soul of man (45).

In this section, money, or the lack thereof, enters the awareness of the Henderson children. Lyle falls in love with the wealthier Penny, whose name is a synonym for money. A pun on “poor” is structural in the novel. One definition of “poor” is “to lack money,” but the term can also be an expression of pity and empathy. These qualities are lacking in the community, who fail to show mercy to the Hendersons in this first phase of the novel.

However, the Roman virtue of Pietas, or mercy, is practiced by Sydney and Elly, who live by strict moral principles and attend church daily. In contrast, the churchman’s family, the Poriers, are in Leo’s pocket. The Poriers, in whose family name an echo of the word “poor” is discernible, are less concerned with spiritual than material wealth: “[Griffin Porier’s] father cherished Leo’s trust—it was like currency, really” (51). This distinction between spiritual and material wealth is central in the novel.

We also see the biblical precedent subverted in the altercation with Samson: Samson is not strong, and neither is Sydney Santa Claus—but like Saint Nicholas, Sydney is saint-like. The contrast between Penny’s jubilant Christmas and the Hendersons’ unfortunate experience, who are sick and deprived even of vegetables, is stark to the point of absurdity. Once again, the author underscores the profound hypocrisy of society, even at a time when charity is traditional.

In Chapters 7 through 9, the resentment and rivalry Lyle feels towards his father and to the world gains momentum. The traditional Cartesian and Augustinian defenses for evil resound in Lyle’s loss of faith in his father. In much the same way, as 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed, for the modern man, “God is dead.” Lyle’s struggle, then, is with living in the world and reconciling the wrongs done to his family with faith in authority. Lyle shares much with French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus’s rebel (from his 1951 book-length essay The Rebel) and 17th-century English poet John Milton’s Satan (from the epic poem Paradise Lost), both of whom rail against authority and social mores. Lyle perceives a painful contrast between the “conqueror,” Leopold McVicer, and Sydney Henderson, who refuses to conquer anything.

Lyle also reenacts the dissolution of the classical hero in postmodern literature in his relationship with his father. Significantly, Lyle and Sydney have contrasting philosophical standpoints. While Lyle is an existentialist, Sydney employs a kind of Cartesianism in relation to his worldly woes.