Mr. Martin Merrick. Standing apart from the rest of the group awaiting Harvey ’s body, lawyer Jim Laird’s character bridges the divide between Steavens and the rest of the funeral attendees. Laird was educated with Harvey in the Eastern U.S. as a young man, but returned home to practice law instead of seeking his fortune elsewhere.
Harvey, Jim adds, would not have "given a tinker's damn for his [Phelps's] bank nor all his cattle farms put together." But, unlike himself, Harvey did not …
Jul 18, 2019 · The young lawyer, Jim Laird, who speaks near the end also supports Harvey against the townspeople who criticize his life. Jim notes that …
Merrick is brutally beating the family’s servant, Roxy (the “mulatto woman”), for forgetting to make dressing for the chicken salad. To Steavens’s visible horror, Jim remarks how Harvey ’s mother made the boy’s life particularly traumatic growing up. Jim is astounded that Harvey managed to “ [keep] himself sweet.”.
Cather uses the townspeople's harsh criticism of Harvey to illustrate the disparity between the toxic environment he came from and the art he went on to create.Aug 29, 2019
In his climactic tirade against the town's defamation of Harvey, Laird expresses his disgust with the people of Sand City. His death concludes the story, as he passes away from a cold caught on the way “to defend one of Phelps's sons who had got into trouble […] cutting government timber.”Aug 29, 2019
“He was terribly shy as a boy.” “Yes, he was an oyster, since you put it so,” rejoined Steavens. “Although he could be very fond of people, he always gave one the impression of being detached. He disliked violent emotion; he was reflective and rather distrustful of himself—except, of course, as regarded his work.
Jim Laird, resident drunk and cunning lawyer, shares with Steavens that Harvey's mother made his childhood miserable. Confirming Mrs. Merrick's propensity for abuse, the two men overhear her violently beating Roxy, the Merrick's household servant, with exacting cruelty.Aug 29, 2019
She hysterically throws herself on her sons coffin and begins sobbing. Where is Harvey's body kept when it arrives to Merricks home ? It is kept in the parlor(the living room). What is a mulatto woman ?
Sand City, KansasIn the fictional small town of Sand City, Kansas, the body of Harvey Merrick, a famed sculptor, is brought back to his parents' house.
In the short story, the effect of the place is shown by the town's nature that is consumed with single minded people. The town has turned into drunks and corrupt people.
Society. Willa Cather's short story “The Sculptor's Funeral” explores the relationship between the artist and society. Cather portrays the townspeople of fictional Sand City, Kansas, as unrefined and amoral. Initially, it seems that Cather's scathing descriptions of the townsfolk rely on rural, Western stereotypes.Aug 29, 2019
The townsmen bring the body and coffin to the residence of Harvey's parents, and Henry Steavens goes with them. Among the townsmen is a lawyer named Jim Laird. He is about 40 years old, the same age as Harvey.
Harvey Merrick He had only one friend from home, Jim, and Jim is the only one who understood him; by all the rest, he was misunderstood (at best) or judged and insulted (at worst).Jul 18, 2019
The story takes place in Sand City, a fictional town in Kansas. It opens as a group of townsmen are waiting at the local train station for the body of Harvey Merrick, a famous sculptor.
The Enduring Power of Friendship and Loyalty . Harvey and Steavens forged a friendship so strong that Steavens will not leave his friend's coffin to the townspeople until he is certain that it will arrive in the right place.
From the moment Henry Steavens enters Harvey Merrick's childhood home, he feels that the setting isn't right. The emotion—or lack thereof—in this house cannot possibly reflect the environment which shaped his warm, passionate friend and teacher. He even looks desperately around for some hint that they have brought the coffin to the right place and finds a photo of Harvey as a young child that affirms that this group of people is, indeed, his friend's family and neighbors. He is so shocked that he feels that he will be sick several times. Steavens reflects on Harvey's desire to return home after his death:
Lacking the peacefulness expected of a corpse, in a sense Harvey seems to lack vulnerability amidst the judgment of others, even in death. His alienation from society is evident as his father laments that nobody was capable of understanding his son, portraying the sensitivity Harvey’s mother so crudely lacks. Unlock.
By assuming that nobody is coming with Harvey’s body, the Grand Army man insinuates that nobody from the East cares enough about Harvey to bring his body home. Kansas, at the beginning of the 20th century, was still a primarily agrarian economy, just beginning to feel the effects of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Inquiring about Harvey’s friends, Steavens learns about Harvey’s relationship to the town alongside the reader. By sidestepping Steavens’s question about Harvey’s friends, Phelps subtly situates the townspeople as adversaries of Harvey Merrick.
Chuckling in agreement, the townspeople listen to the Grand Army man assert that Harvey was always “bein’ edycated.”. If the townspeople’s definition of success is too narrow, then so is their definition of education. Especially for someone from a “little Kansas town,” being educated in the East was a privilege.
Merrick is brutally beating the family’s servant, Roxy (the “mulatto woman”), for forgetting to make dressing for the chicken salad. To Steavens’s visible horror, Jim remarks how Harvey ’s mother made the boy’s life particularly traumatic growing up. Jim is astounded that Harvey managed to “ [keep] himself sweet.”.
The snowy, wintry setting that awaits Harvey’s body outside the train mimics the emotionally cold homecoming offered to Harvey by the townspeople. After two pages of the sculptor remaining nameless, Steavens uses Harvey Merrick’s name for the first time.
Before the coffin can be carried into the house, a large woman opens the door with violent emotion, flinging herself onto the coffin. Harvey ’s mother explodes in a theatrical display of her grief, but Harvey’s sister sharply chastises her for the unseemly outburst. Grief can display in many different ways.
This story is set in the small town of Sand City, Kansas. Most of the people in this town are greedy and materialistic. There are very few people who actually understand Harvey Merrick, and nobody else likes him because they can't understand him.
Unlike the rest of the townspeople, Laird knows that Harvey was more successful than any of them. People putting Harvey Merrick down for a while before Jim Laird finally yelled at them for being so ignorant and then left before they could come up with a retort. Harvey Merrick's success was seeded in his happiness and contentment with how he chose to live his life. Anybody in the town of Sand City who had found real happiness like that was treated like a second-class person.
Annie, Harvey's mother. Martin, Harvey's father. Roxy, the mulatto maid in the Merricks' household. Jim Laird, the red-bearded lawyer. Philip Phelps, the banker. Elder, another banker. Thompson, the undertaker. Henry Steavens, a student of Harvey's.
In the fictional small town of Sand City, Kansas, the body of Harvey Merrick, a famed sculptor, is brought back to his parents' house. Only Jim Laird, Harvey's old friend, and Henry Steavens, his student, have any real emotion. While the mother cries out in overdone and insincere grief, Steavens and Laird talk, and we learn Laird never made it out of the town. Later, the mother, showing her cruelty, yells at her maid for forgetting to do the salad dressing. As the men sit up with the body, they moralize and criticize the deceased. This angers Laird, who comes into the room and points out how each of them are guilty, then exposing the corruption of their towns' leaders and how much they had hated Harvey. The next day, Laird, who is disgusted with himself for never having found a life elsewhere as Harvey had done, is too drunk to attend the funeral. The story ends with the notation that Laird dies of a cold shortly thereafter.