Mercy Among the Children

Themes of justice and fate appear at the outset of the novel. Lyle wants to tell Terrieux his biography because the policeman is a representative of justice. Terrieux was once a policeman, but no longer, since the press presented him as unethical. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1866 work of psychological fiction, Crime and Punishment, echoes in the Prologue, as the criminal faces the law enforcer. Lyle muses on what life would have been like had Terrieux allowed Mat Pit to die, calling into question the sum of a man’s life and actions. Lyle’s is a kind of testimony, in both the legal and religious sense of the word. He says to Terrieux: “I want to tell you what happens in life, if you don’t mind” (5). The tale as told by Lyle is lodged firmly in the tragic mode. Like a Greek tragedian, Lyle is about to tell “the brutal rural destiny of [his] family” (13). Yet, even his own words are undermined, as his poverty is out of keeping with the tragic register. His seriousness, together with the cigarette he nonchalantly smokes, are slightly comical in appearing affected.

Lyle contextualizes his tale within the frame of existentialism, saying, “I once found underlined in a book my father owned, ‘the pain of being a man’” (19). Richards’s novel takes place in a distinctly philosophical realm. Terrieux is “cynical of change, the way most intelligent people are” (1), a member then, of the Cynic school of philosophy. Lyle’s decision to live on the streets and his critique of society and its hypocrisies are also the stance of a Cynic. The men “mirror” each-other in this sense, sharing something in their mutually disaffected and isolated states.

In Chapter 1 of “Mercy,” Roy and Sydney Henderson receive no mercy yet show mercy to others. The opening of the novel, describing bright white snow on church roofs, is suggestive of the purity of the Christian religion. “Blessed are the meek,” Christ proclaims in the New Testament. Though meek, society certainly does not bless Sydney and Roy Henderson. The representative of the social welfare system, Dr. David Scone, refuses Sydney any upward mobility in his young life when he rejects his request for a further education. As Lyle emphasizes throughout the novel, Scone also fails to support Canada’s native inhabitants, despite studying them: “the intellectual class, most of them ensconced in universities far away from any native man or woman” (23).

In contrast, Jay Beard is a neighbor to Sydney in the Christian sense, hiring him so that he can support himself, and selling him his books so that Sydney can have an education. To Lyle, the university professors are removed from “real” life, marked by the kind of hardship that the Hendersons endure. This division, or distinction between reality and the world of fiction, continues throughout the novel, which is characterized by realism but imbued with allegory. One example of this is Roy’s difficulty in distinguishing between real and fake blood on television. In the same way, Elly later interprets the deceitful manipulations of the other characters as “miracles.” Elly and Sydney Henderson live their lives in the parabolic dimension, where the host literally becomes the blood of Christ, and the family’s sufferings are akin to the tests of Job.

In the community in which the Hendersons live, this system of hermeneutics has devolved into hypocrisy. The community worships false idols, whether those idols are McVicer’s money or Mat Pit. Many of the literal events in the novel have additional significance when placed within a Christian context. It is left to the reader to discern the moral of this pseudo parable.

Elly Henderson is unintelligent and does miss social cues, yet she possesses an “elemental” understanding. In this sense, she is representative of the natural, as opposed to the hypocrisy of society. Society shuns the Hendersons because they refuse to compromise truth. Elly perceives what she calls “miracles” in nature and names her daughter “Autumn” after a gust of wind inspires her. Sydney sees Elly as an angel, but later, she kisses him and tastes of radishes, revealing her essential naturalism.

Sydney and Elly are comparable to Adam and Eve in their innocence, independence, and the natural setting of their home. Their persecution during their lives and reification after death is saint-like, and follows the pattern of Christ’s own life, during which he was persecuted and killed before being reborn. The serpent in the Hendersons’ Eden is the Pit household. The Pits spread lies about the Hendersons throughout the novel, still, Sydney and Elly help Cynthia when she is in labor. When the child is born, it is dead, and is shrouded in Christmas lights. This event, like many in the novel, is a tragic parody of the Christ story. Cynthia’s child is stillborn during the celebration of Christ’s birthday.