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 4, Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Redemption”
Part 4, Chapters 1-7 Summary
Two weeks before Elly’s death, Sydney hears she’s sick. He gives his notice. He’s learned French form his fellow workers and writes home that he plans to get his Bachelor of Education and become a teacher. John Delano comes to see him and tells Sydney that he would not only be exonerated but might be rewarded with as much a million dollars.
Connie Devlin turns up at the camp where Sydney works, and Sydney protects him from the other men, who seek retribution after Connie steals from them. When Sydney leaves, Connie begs to come with him and confesses everything to Sydney. As they leave the camp, snow is falling. Unbeknownst to Sydney, this is the day that Elly dies.
Sydney disappears in a storm on his way home, and Lyle and the Forestry Commission search for him for months. Lyle returns home and tells Autumn and Percy that their parents were great, and Autumn tells Percy they will take him to Saint John for his birthday.
Connie Devlin returns home wearing a new jacket and boots and quickly confesses everything. Mat Pit complains to Lyle, telling him Cynthia is engaged to Leo McVicer and Gladys has returned home to live with her father. Mat encourages Lyle to kill Connie, claiming that Connie pushed Sydney down a cliff.
Rudy has no money. He begs Cynthia to let him see Leo, but she threatens to call the police. Cynthia has already told Leo and Gladys that Rudy will claim Teresa May as his own child to discredit her, as he now threatens to do. As Rudy exits the house, he meets Mat Pit, who says he has a plan.
Percy struggles to do his best in everything and keeps giving Lyle, who is drinking, little presents. Autumn sees the cuts Lyle has given himself over the years. Lyle dreams of killing Connie, Rudy, Mat, and Danny Sheppard.
Leo has a stroke, and Cynthia becomes his nurse. Frederick Snook appears with a will and gives Cynthia power of attorney. She and Leo drain his accounts and take the money back to the house. Gladys says she wants to see Gerald Dove, but Cynthia ignores her and takes Leo to put the money in the safe, memorizing its combination. Cynthia anticipates Mat’s attack and decides to take Leo and Gladys to the community center to visit the Yugoslavian visionary Leo paid for. Cynthia has a dream in which Sydney tells her that her child is more important than money. She replaces the will that entrusts Leo’s estate to Elly Henderson’s children with the will Snook gives her.
Leo McVicer intends for Lyle, his grandson, to run his works. Mat Pit wakes Rudy and, loading a pistol, tells him it is time to break in and steal McVicer’s safe.
Part 4, Chapters 1-7 Analysis
Like the biblical New Testament, this phase of the novel is headed for death, resurrection, and the afterlife. Lyle distinguishes between his father’s world, of faith, and the worldliness of the more privileged in society: “Men and women certain of the new world and their right to be entitled would not have known my father’s world” (347).
Mercy Among the Children represents earthly suffering in its many facets and life as a spiritual test. Richards’s novel in this sense represents the totality of human life. In the same way that the heavenly family are universal figures for mankind in the Christian faith, so does the Hendersons’ suffering represent the suffering of all mankind. Richards does not let his readers close his book without reckoning with the implications of its lessons in their own lives, as though Lyle’s narrative were a kind of sermon:
But my father knew by heart the book of Job, where the world is not a certain place, where anything man has can be taken from him, leaving him to sit in stunned acceptance of the horrible Word of God. Only the young think there is freedom from that book—wise men and kings know it is the greatest and truest book in the world—and my father was nothing if not both of those (349).
With the disappearance of Sydney in the snow, Lyle finally admits that his parents were “great,” and Autumn promises to take Percy to Saint John. The Henderson children canonize their parents as saints. Despite Mat Pit’s continued machinations, he, along with the other powerful people in town, experiences a loss of power. As the community reifies the Hendersons, the town’s tyrants increasingly lose control.
Grieving the loss of Elly, the children attempt to regain control of their world. Lyle contemplates avenging his mother’s death by killing those who harmed her. Percy assumes a parental role toward Scupper Pit, the Pits’ dog. In attempting to care for Lyle and bring the dog back to life, Percy is attempting to revive his mother.
While the children mourn their loss, the Pits become increasingly fixated on McVicer’s safe. All the characters seek control. Like the plot of a Greek tragedy, the audience learns that the enemies are part of one family, at war with itself. There is a bitter irony in Cynthia’s plan to abandon McVicer and Gladys at the community center. This community is profoundly broken.
