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 2, Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Fury”
Part 2, Chapters 1-6 Summary
Mat Pit complains to Constable Morris about the justice system as the two of them sit in Polly’s Restaurant. Later that evening, Alvina Pit asks Mat to swear on the Bible he had nothing to do with Trenton’s death. He refuses, and she feels guilty for blaming Sydney. Everyone thought Mat was a hero and sent him letters of support until he stole three gallons of gas.
Mat and Cynthia discuss suing McVicer over Trenton’s death but decide against it. They know that they are running out of options and that if they don’t retaliate, suspicion will fall on them. The company might sue Connie Devlin for breach of responsibility, and in that case, he will turn on them. They decide to shoot Sydney through the door of his house. Rudy threatens to go to the police, so Cynthia blackmails him by saying she is carrying his child and will expose their affair.
The Pits decided to sue Leo McVicer and the construction company. Their lawyer Frederick Snook jokes about how Roy Henderson once tried to pay him in dollar bills that flew away in the wind. The trio plan to sue both Leo McVicer and Sydney Henderson. As he lets the Pits out of his office, Snook reflects that he has long been Leo McVicer’s lawyer.
Sydney Henderson gets drunk and tells the crowd at the gas station he is sorry he didn’t treat Trenton differently, which they interpret as a confession. Everyone in the community goes to the Pit house to express their condolences, including Jay Beard. By the next night, everyone has heard that Sydney confessed. Complaining about his situation, Mat suggests that Connie Devlin was “in league with [Sydney]” (186). Mat intimidates Connie into silence and submission.
Sydney tells Lyle that some thugs beat him and forced him to drink. He had not confessed to killing Trenton. He had lost his glasses in the snow, without which he could not read. Lyle bathes his father’s wounds but writes a list of his failings and calls it the “Seven Deadly Sins” (169).
Several days later, the family has run out of food, and they send the children out to buy some at the store, but the store won’t sell to them. Elly is now five months pregnant. Autumn liked seeing her picture in the newspaper and unlike Lyle, didn’t realize the negative connotations.
Someone has shot Sydney through the wall of the house, and he has a flesh wound. Lyle wants revenge, but Sydney reproves him. Elly begs Lyle to go to church and pray for them. On the way, he finds the shell used to shoot his father. Lyle curses at the church and asks Rudy Bellanger to drive him to the police station so that he can report the shooting. Rudy gives Lyle $40 and takes the shell. Lyle buys food for his family but longs to be drunk.
Part 2, Chapters 1-6 Analysis
The first three chapters of “Fury” are about injustice. Opening with Mat Pit’s deceitful conversation with Constable Morris, the symbol of the law, Lyle’s fury at the world is comprehensible. While Mat receives hero worship, the victims of his cruelty continue to suffer, and his own brother is dead. The Pits’ legal battle and Frederick Snook’s duplicity further underscore this theme of injustice.
Even Cynthia asks a stark ethical question, which frames the injustice perpetrated by this “hero”: “She asked him again what money would be worth the child’s life. He said, his voice genuinely breaking, that he didn’t know” (158). Lyle also reflects furiously on the injustices endured by his family at the hands of the legal system supposedly dedicated to justice. Roy Henderson was “an illiterate man who had nothing and died in jail with nothing but an address in his wallet, he answered stiffly and morally by saying, ‘the law is the law’” (179).
The loss of Sydney’s glasses in the snow is a literal enactment of the misperceptions that dominate Chapters 4 through 6. While the community grieves Trenton’s death at the house of his brother and murderer, Mat continues to lie and manipulate the people around him. Richards infuses the narrative with irony, likening Mat to the biblical brothers whose fighting defined barbarity: “A wail went up from Mathew like the cry to God that Cain himself may have made” (165). Autumn’s misperception of herself in the newspaper continues this idea, which reflects Sydney’s guilt, the central misperception in the novel.
