The Sculptor's Funeral What does Steavens notice is different about the red-bearded lawyer from the others at the funeral in "The Sculptor's... Henry Steavens notices that the red-bearded lawyer, Jim Laird, is the only man who genuinely appreciates the talent and understands the merit of the sculptor, Harvey Merrick.
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Everything you need for every book you read. Everything you need for every book you read. “The Sculptor’s Funeral” relates the story of a sculptor’s return to his hometown—a town he fled as a young man to pursue his art—to be buried.
After two pages of the sculptor remaining nameless, Steavens uses Harvey Merrick’s name for the first time. Inquiring about Harvey’s friends, Steavens learns about Harvey’s relationship to the town alongside the reader.
Although titled “The Sculptor’s Funeral,” the actual funeral occurs in the final paragraph of the story. Confirming the cyclicality of this narrative, Jim dies on a haphazard legal errand for one of Phelps’s sons.
Appalled by the stories he’s hearing, Steavens can’t believe that “the palm on the coffin meant nothing” to the townspeople. He wants to remind them that Sand City wouldn’t even be a recognizable name on a map if Harvey hadn’t grown up there.
The story focuses on Harvey Merrick, an acclaimed sculptor whose body is returning home to Sand City, Kansas, after a life spent pursuing his art in the Eastern U.S. Unlike most protagonists, Harvey is only described through anecdotes told about him, because he dies of tuberculosis prior to the events presented in “The ...
Jim returned to Sand City to work as a lawyer, and he regrets doing so. The conclusion of the story states that Jim eventually dies of cold while traveling west to defend the son of a Sand City townsman in court. More summaries and resources for teaching or studying The Sculptor's Funeral.
As “the worldwide call for men,” the whistle also represents a call to action. Even in a place like Sand City, they are connected to larger cultural and economic shifts through the expanding railroad system in the U.S. Upgrade to unlock the analysis and theme tracking for all of The Sculptor's Funeral !
Steavens is equally appalled by the cheap vulgarity of taste that is everywhere apparent in the decor of the house and can scarcely believe that Merrick could ever have had any connection with this place.
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 ?
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.
Steavens understood now the real tragedy of his master's life; neither love nor wine, as many had conjectured; but a blow which had fallen earlier and cut deeper than anything else could have done—a shame not his, and yet so unescapably his, to hide in his heart from his very boyhood.
Sand City, KansasPlot summary 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.
Point of View The story's narration is written in the third person and the past tense. The story's main point-of-view character is Henry Steavens, as he is the only character whose thoughts are ever conveyed directly to the reader.
After Harvey Merrick passes away, his corpse is brought back to the town of Sand City, Kansas where the late sculptor's parents currently reside. The only people who seem to really feel grief over Merrick's death are Jim Laird (Harvey's friend) and Henry Stevens (Harvey's former student).
martyrdomThe palm leaf would become an important part of Christian iconography as a symbol for martyrdom; its placement on a tomb indicating a martyr was interred there.
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.”
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a tall, corpulent woman rushed out bareheaded into the snow and flung herself upon the coffin, shrieking . . . . As Steavens turned away and closed his eyes with a shudder of unutterable repulsion, another woman, also tall, but flat and angular, dressed entirely in black, darted out of the house and caught Mrs. Merrick by the shoulders.
Cather uses a great deal of visual imagery throughout the story to establish the mood and to enhance characterization. When Henry Steavens arrives with the coffin at Harvey's family home,
Instead of coming home alive, to be appreciated and loved, Harvey comes home dead, to be judged and forgotten. This allusion certainly adds to the tone of sadness in the story, though the narrator regrets not Harvey's life but Harvey's family's inability to appreciate its beauty.
Harvey Merrick, on the other hand, is not associated with such vivid and extreme visibility. The narrator tells us, of him, that no matter with what or whom he came into contact, "he had left a beautiful record of the experience—a sort of ethereal signature; a scent, a sound, a color that was his own.".
Jim Laird's anger and bitterness are closely connected to Willa Cather's signature themes: The plight of the gifted artist in conflict with pettiness and social preference for convention, and the...
One way in which "The Sculptor's Funeral" is influenced by realism is in Cather's depiction of characters' speech. For example, the man in the Grand Army suit at the train station speaks in a...
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.
It could be that Harvey didn’t inform them about his life—or more likely, the townspeople didn’t care to keep up with information about him once he left. Adorning the coffin’s black cover, the palm leaf is a mark of honor that symbolizes the sculptor’s achievement as an artist in spite of the town’s judgment of him. Ironically, it is this same symbol the townspeople curiously crowd around. They are unable to recognize what the palm leaf means, just as they are unable to recognize Harvey’s success as an artist.
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.
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. Kansas’s economy was struggling as factory work compelled more and more people to move eastward. By modifying the word “repytation”—or reputation—with “some,” the Grand Army man leaves it up to the reader to interpret the dead man’s reputation as good, bad or otherwise. It is clear, however, that the Grand Army man judges the funeral arrangements as less than adequate. Jim’s disinterest in this conversation barely dissuades him, which demonstrates that the townspeople are eager to share their opinions of the dead man, regardless of their audience.
Steavens remarks that the relationship between Harvey and his environment—an environment that enacted as much trauma upon him as his parents did— was “the real tragedy of his master’s life.” This presents Harvey’s values in opposition to those of frontier America at the turn of the 20th century. From Steavens’s perspective, the Western U.S. contains a “sordidness” that New England, “old, and noble with traditions,” does not. It wasn’t Harvey’s fault that he was born in a provincial place like Sand City, but it was a lasting shame he bore with him.
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.
The parlor’s kitschy decorative style indicates Harvey’s parents’ materialistic taste. Art created for art’s sake is denigrated, while decorative, mass-produced art for purchase is obviously held in high esteem. Steavens can’t believe that an acclaimed sculptor like his master could have grown up in such a tackily decorated home. None of Harvey’s artwork is displayed, except a crayon portrait he drew as a boy. Steavens’s reluctant willingness to let anyone approach Harvey’s coffin further highlights Sand City’s unwillingness to reevaluate its opinions of Harvey.
Introduction. “The Sculptor’s Funeral” is a short piece of fiction by American writer Willa Cather, who achieved recognition for her portrayals of life on the Great Plains. The story was first published in the periodical McClure's Monthly Magazine in 1905. Cather may have taken inspiration for the character of Harvey Merrick from ...
When the train arrives, the townsmen meet Henry Steavens, a student and friend of Harvey’s who has accompanied the coffin, and they all travel to the home of Harvey’s parents. The coffin is placed in the parlor, and all the townsmen, other than a lawyer named Jim Laird, leave.
Harvey has died at the age of forty of tuberculosis. He was born and raised in Sand City but was educated on the East Coast, where he became a successful artist.
Following his graduation, Jim returned to his hometown to work as a lawyer, but he has always regretted his decision. Jim is a shrewd and intelligent man, but he is also an alcoholic, and the next day he is too drunk to attend Harvey's funeral.
The Sculptor's Funeral. "The Sculptor's Funeral" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in McClure's in January 1905.
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.
“The Sculptor’s Funeral” relates the story of a sculptor’s return to his hometown—a town he fled as a young man to pursue his art—to be buried. Jetting through calm meadows blanketed by snow, the night train carrying Harvey Merrick ’s body disrupts the “soft, smoke-coloured” stillness, ...
The funeral progresses, and Jim asks Steavens if Harvey was always “an oyster,” because as a boy he was shy and reserved . Discussing Harvey’s general mistrust of others, his apprentice describes him as committed to his sculpting and to believing the best in others, even though he didn’t seem interested in entangling himself with them. More than anything else, to the two men who might have known him best, Harvey is an artist requiring a category all his own. Anything Harvey touched, “he revealed its holiest secret,” “liberat [ing]” the innate beauty of a piece of marble.
Tenderly touching his dead son’s face, Martin Merrick laments to Jim Laird that Har vey was “always a good boy,” but nobody was capable of understanding him.
Under the weight of his wasted potential, Jim denounces Sand City as a town upon “which may God have mercy.”. After this impassioned speech against the town, Jim shakes Steavens’s hand and they depart. Steavens attempts to reach out to Jim and reconnect after the funeral, but never hears anything back from him.
Jetting through calm meadows blanketed by snow, the night train carrying Harvey Merrick ’s body disrupts the “soft, smoke-coloured” stillness, arriving at the station in Sand City, Kansas. Only Harvey’s devoted apprentice, Henry Steavens, accompanies his body home from Boston.
Unwilling to part with his master’s body, Steavens drives up to the Merrick family home in the hearse. Before the pallbearers can even bring the coffin into the house, Harvey’s mother rushes outside in an exaggerated performance of her grief, “shrieking” about her son’s death.
Judgment appears throughout “The Sculptor’s Funeral” to give various perspectives on the life of the deceased sculptor whose body is returning home for burial. 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.
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. However, as the story progresses, Cather uses the townspeople to represent the “whirlpool” of societal expectations, vice, and greed from which Harvey Merrick, a sculptor, escaped to pursue his unconventional passion…
Returning to the place of one’s birth is a common theme in literature. However, Cather deviates from that identity-seeking narrative by having the sculptor’s return home occur after his death. Rather than have the eponymous sculptor tell his own story about his upbringing and its effects, the reader hears about Harvey ’s life through the perspective of others. Harvey’s childhood included its fair share of familial trauma, a bizarre parental dynamic, and a town that…
Continuing on his tirade, Jim contends that Phelps and Elder are not capable of being role models for this younger... (full context) Jim draws a comparison between Harvey’s father mortgaging his farms to pay for Harvey’s schooling and... (full context)
Jim asks Steavens if Harvey remained an “oyster” throughout his life, explaining that he was a... (full context) As more people arrive, Jim excuses himself from Steavens, letting him experience the crowd of Sand City townspeople that had... (full context) At the cattleman’s moralizing mention of Harvey’s rumored drinking problem, ...
Acting as a foil to Harvey, Laird represents the ruined potential of the young men who were stif led by their environment.
The cattleman reminds the other townspeople about a time when Harvey let one of his cow’s escape because he was watching the sunset rather than the cattle. This particular anecdote functions as an allegory for Sand City’s commitment to seeing the bad in Harvey. Bicher, Morgan.
The cattleman reminds the other townspeople about a time when Harvey let one of his cow’s escape because he was watching the sunset rather than the cattle. This particular anecdote functions as an allegory for Sand City’s commitment to seeing the bad in Harvey.