Individuation and the Call: Adolescence and the Shadow Laraine Herring, MFA Abstract This paper explores the developmental characteristics of the adolescent, while also examining the emergence of the Shadow Self and the unconscious during this turbulent period. It also focuses on the effects of bereavement on the adolescent’s development. Individuation and the Call:Adolescence and the Shadow How does a person grow and develop into a functioning adult? What pitfalls stand in the way of one’s journey toward psychic wholeness? Does anyone ever achieve “completed” growth, or is the purpose of life about the process – the developing as opposed to the development? For this course, Human Growth and Development, I have chosen to examine adolescence and the individuation process, considering that this is a vital time to the individual, not just at the present moment, but also throughout the course of his/her life. I will also address the unique characteristics of adolescent bereavement. The time when we are child/adult is a fragile, volatile, and vulnerable place. Issues of separation, loss and abandonment occur naturally as the adolescent begins to break away from the parents. If we examine the life of an individual as a story, and we frame that story in terms of the hero’s journey, I believe adolescence is the moment of the “call.” Vogler (1992) tells us that once an individual is presented with a call, he or she can no longer remain in the comfort of their current world. It is the time when we begin to examine the world around us. We look at events outside ourselves and try to find a place for us in what we see. We paradoxically search for belonging at the same time we yearn to detach. Add the awakening of hormones to the equation, and adolescence is indeed one of the most treacherous of life’s passages. One reason for this is that adolescence is the first journey we are consciously aware of taking. Much of our earlier path has been instinctual – learning to eat, to drink without the breast, learning to walk, talk, and fight. These things just seemed to “happen”, based very little on conscious decisions. Von Franz (1964) advises us that adolescence, on the other hand, though also largely due to instinct and genetic programming, is the first time we are consciously aware of our bodies and minds changing. The fact that we are aware of these changes, and in many instances still unable to control them, can be frightening. The passage through adolescence is also frightening because we do not know that we can survive it. We do not know that there is another side of the shore, and that one day when we enter the next phase of development, we will be able to look back and see adolescence as a guidepost for the next journey. We have crossed over once – we will cross over again. But we can’t know that as we shout at our mothers, drive our cars too fast, test the limits of our alcohol tolerance, or stay too long with a member of the opposite sex in the backseat of a borrowed Buick. In adolescence, everything is new, intense, and potentially life threatening – if not always physically, certainly psychologically. Von Franz (1964) says: the actual process of individuation – the conscious coming-to-terms with one’s own inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self – generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it. This initial shock amounts to a sort of “call,” although it is not often recognized as such. (p. 169) Erik Erikson (1968) begs us to ask the question at the end of our lives: “Now, have I understood myself” (p. 91). This question is at the heart of adolescent angst. The adolescent is beginning to think of him/herself as a Self – as something that could perhaps be explored and understood. The adolescent begins to realize that s/he is not only an individual, but is also part of a group – a community – a whole. How to assimilate individual into group without losing Self is one of the primary challenges, not just of adolescence, but also of most of adult life. If I have a Self and I don’t know who it is, can I lose that Self to the needs of a group? Yet, if I deny the Self involvement with the group, can I survive alone? Religious and political cults are filled with people who have allowed themselves to be usurped by the needs and desires of group ideology. The struggle to find the balance is the stuff of life. This is all new territory to the adolescent. S/he doesn’t know what the outcome can be. Part of the danger the adolescent is in has to do with his/her inability to see the large picture. Decisions are made based on limited information because the adolescent, by definition, has limited experience. Erikson (1968) says, “we may speak of the identity crisis as the psychological aspect of adolescence” (p. 91). This is the time when we grow our hair long or cut it short. This is the time when we have to have a particular brand of shoes or pierce our tongues. Minimizing the depth of the identity crisis of adolescence does a great disservice to the adolescent, as well as hinders his/her psychological development. As adults, we may know the truth of the adage, “This too shall pass,” but the adolescent does not, and to offer that bit of wisdom up as balm for a broken heart or lost class election is to insult the purity and the depth of the journey the adolescent is on. Minimizing one of life’s great passages hinders the adolescent from developing a trust in his/her own experiences and emotional reactions to those experiences. It is critical for all of us, at any stage of development, to have a sense of trust in our world. Violation of this trust at an early age can compound future developmental issues. Erikson (1968) says, “for the most fundamental prerequisite of mental vitality I have nominated a sense of basic trust” (p. 96). The adolescent must learn to trust him/herself and the world around her/him. If this trust is not established early, the adolescent cannot develop the faith necessary for a healthy life. Erikson (1968) says, “Trust becomes the capacity for faith” (p. 106). He goes on to say on p. 128, the “adolescent looks most fervently for men and ideas to have faith in.” I believe part of the fracturing of our youth today stems from an unsuccessful search on their part for anything to have faith in. Often, their families let them down. Their governments, their schools, their churches, all let them down. If they have studied much, they know their very planet may be about to let them down due to overpopulation, pollution, and the destruction of natural resources. Where do they look for confidence? Where do they look for the belief that if they do manage to figure out who they are, there will be someplace, some community, that will accept them? If they can’t find that, what incentive do they have to make a difference for themselves or others? Freud believed that most of humankind’s urges stemmed from the libido (Corey, 2001). Carl Rogers felt that the human’s primary motivation was psychosocial instead of sexual (Corey, 2001). Erikson (1968) outlined the following challenges during adolescence, which seem to encompass both Freud’s and Rogers’ viewpoints. During adolescence, according to Erikson (1968), the individual is experiencing the following changes, which are a tall order for any stage of development: - expanding libidinal needs - a widening social radius - more highly differentiated capacities - a developmental crisis evoked by the necessity to manage new encounters - a new sense of estrangement - new psychosocial strength Erikson (1968) tells us “a civilization can be measured by the meaning which it gives to the full cycle of life” (p. 140). I believe we can take this as a warning for Western civilization. In a ritual-less society in which we value youth, not wisdom, beauty over substance, we leave out three-fourths of the human lifespan, focusing all our attentions on the shortest period of our lives, young adulthood. In order to reach Erikson’s (1968) ultimate credo, “I am what survives of me” (p. 141), I believe we must first believe we can survive, and having accomplished that, we must then actually survive. Campbell (1973) says: The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual’s life crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself (sic), not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages. All participate in the ceremonial according to rank and function. The whole society becomes visible to itself as an imperishable living unit. (p. 383) Adolescence is but one of many transitional phases in life. A woman’s passage into menopause, a person’s passage into old age or illness, or a person’s passage into parenthood are examples of significant events in the life of a human being. Many people choose not to mark these passages through ritual. Common delinquent adolescent behaviors such as truancy, gang affiliations, and drug and alcohol abuse may be attempts by the adolescent to ritualize this passage. Erikson (1968) states: Youth after youth, bewildered by the incapacity to assume a role forced on him by the inexorable standard of American adolescence, runs away in one form or another, dropping out of school, leaving jobs, staying out all night, or withdrawing into bizarre and inaccessible moods. (p. 132) What might happen in contemporary culture if we had rituals to celebrate a young woman’s first menstruation or the deepening of a young man’s voice? If adolescents felt they had a place to go that would honor and welcome them in their time of transition, what violence and personal suffering might we alleviate? I believe that if we give an adolescent a healthy story to follow, they will behave in a healthy manner. Joseph Campbell (1973) tells us: rites of initiation and installation teach the lesson of the essential oneness of the individual and the group. As the individual is an organ of society, so is the tribe or city – so is humanity entire – only a phase of the mighty organism of the cosmos. (p. 384) Campbell is reminding us that we are part of a larger whole. We are part of a group, even as we are individuals within our bodies. Adolescents are striving to identify as unique beings, while at the same time longing for acceptance by the group. One of the complexities of adolescence is the adolescent’s awareness of urges and actions that appear to occur due to no conscious thought or intention. This is frightening at best, incapacitating at worst. During adolescence, the ego is forming. An “I” is emerging; a consciousness is developing. But at the same time, an unconscious is emerging. Jung (1990) says, “I use the term ‘individuation’ to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological ‘in-dividual’. That is, a separate indivisible unity, or whole” (p. 275). Part of becoming whole is recognizing that there is an unconscious part of us, which is most often governing many of our thoughts and actions. Adolescence is the time when we most often get and internalize messages about the “badness” of the unconscious – the darkness – the dark side. Mythologically, these things (selfishness, greed, lust) are considered bad, even evil. Ignored, they will resurface in unconscious, self-destructive ways. Each of us has a Hitler inside of us and each of us has a Mother Theresa. A lack of awareness of either will result in an imbalance. Marie Louise von Franz (1964) cautions us that denied emotions will turn up as projections on another person or experience. Some people assume the unconscious is the “Shadow” side of the personality. This is partly true, but as von Franz (1964) says, “the Shadow is not the whole of the unconscious personality. It represents unknown and little known attributes and qualities of the ego – attributes that mostly belong to the personal sphere and that could just as well be conscious” (p. 174). She goes on to say on p. 182 “the Shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood.” There is a Ukrainian proverb that states, “Things hidden come rapping at the doors.” Like the Big Bad Wolf, they will huff and puff until they blow the house down. Von Franz offers numerous dream examples in which an individual’s Shadow turned benevolent once it was acknowledged. Unacknowledged demons persist until they are heard. Zweig (1991) advises that only through greater individual awareness of ourselves, we can begin to work with the greater darkness in the world. I believe this returns us to Erikson’s insistence that we must know who we are. Adolescence is a key time of discovery. Society teaches us well to deny the Shadow side of ourselves. In pledging allegiance to the light, we disown all parts of the darkness. If we align ourselves with the dark, we must shut out all of the light. A balanced life works like the phases of the moon. There are times when it is all light and times when it is all dark, but fifty percent of the time, it is a mixture of both. For this not to be would be unnatural. Why do we expect more of ourselves? Jung (1964) warns: consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking. Also, it frequently happens that unconscious motives overrule our conscious decisions, especially in matters of vital importance. Indeed, the fate of the individual is largely dependent on unconscious factors. (p. 282) Would it not be wise then to explore this part of ourselves that seemingly has such power? And would it not make sense to begin this exploration in adolescence, when the voices are just beginning to emerge, and the adolescent, in theory, has a parental support system to see him/her through the darkness? I think it would be very healthy for our society to include and encourage Shadow work as part of our human growth and development. Learning to integrate the Shadow, instead of disintegrate it, would go a long way toward creating more balanced, functional adults. In my opinion, as long as we are so separate from our own humanity, we will continue to repress natural emotions and desires. These repressions can turn inward and manifest as illness, aggression, isolation and zealotry, among others. Zweig (1991) says: Each of us contains both a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, a more pleasant persona for everyday wear and a hiding, nighttime self that remains hushed up much of the time. Negative emotions and behaviors – rage, jealousy, shame, lying, resentment, lust, greed, suicidal and murderous tendencies – lie concealed just beneath the surface, masked by our more proper selves. (p. xvi) Zweig (1991) also says, “the aim of meeting the shadow is to develop an ongoing relationship with it, to expand our sense of self by balancing the one-sidedness of our conscious attitudes with our unconscious depths” (p. xxiv). I believe part of an adolescent’s deep confusion comes from attempting to express desires which are completely natural, only to be told by his parents and his society to silence and stuff those desires. No wonder there is confusion and a sense of isolation at this critical passage. It seems a logical leap for the adolescent to assume that no one else has those desires since no one else is expressing them, and, since those desires have been labeled as “bad” by his/her community, s/he must be bad, and not only bad, but different. What an incredible sense of isolation occurs. Just as the adolescent is trying to connect – trying to establish a peer group – s/he is inwardly convinced that s/he is unlike any other – defective, deviant. Von Franz (1964) says: when a child reaches school age, the phase of building up the ego and of adapting to the outer world begins. This phase generally brings a number of painful shocks…some children begin to feel very different from others, and this feeling of being unique brings a certain sadness that is part of the loneliness of many youngsters. The imperfection of the world, and the evil within oneself as well as outside, become conscious problems. (p.168) Who am I? Am I the Hitler or the Mother Theresa? Am I, perhaps the worst outcome of all, ordinary, destined to make no mark on the world? I think it is the fear of being ordinary, the fear that the great destiny promised to us by our parents may have been just an empty promise – just so much air – that causes teens to take such extreme risks with behavior and emotions. The adolescent wants to prove that s/he is not ordinary, and that his or her life will somehow matter. It is at this juncture that the adolescent needs the most care from parents and guardians. In an almost violent urge to matter, many unguided youths will turn to violence as a means of making their mark. Everyone needs a ferryman to help him/her cross the river. When the mythic ferryman figure in the adolescent’s life is missing due to death or other loss, the journey is complicated. Corr (1995) tells us: Perhaps there are only two things that can really be said to be common to adolescents who are coping with death. First, they are all human beings. Second, adolescents are generally those human beings for whom the developmental tasks involved in establishing a relatively stable sense of personal identity are of particular importance. (p. 24) In an effort to create a stable identity for oneself, the adolescent goes through the process of individuation, by which s/he needs to transform the parental bond relationship. Due to limited skills, most of these transformations are breaks, until the adolescent reaches maturity and then returns to the parent as an adult. When a parent dies, these actions are thwarted. The power to break away is removed from the adolescent, leaving just one more thing out of his/her control. As adolescents seek self-created stability, they also lose the anchor they have always had in the parent figure. When this loss was not initiated by the adolescent, but by an outside, often unseen force, such as disease, the adolescent does not know where to turn for safety. S/he wants to, and needs to, test the boundaries of his/her experience, but s/he also needs to know that there is a harbor to return to. Loss of parent removes the harbor, leaving the adolescent floating in new, turbulent water. Also, when a parent dies, the trust bond is broken between parent and child. The parent is supposed to be there when needed. The parent is supposed to live until the child is self-sufficient. When this doesn’t happen, the adolescent is left with the belief supported by experience that even the most stable relationships can result in abandonment. This can create a deep-seated fear and mistrust of all relationships, and cause the adolescent to shut down emotionally, often for many years. Simon (1998) says: The child didn’t sign up for the good times with the parents, didn’t choose the happiness and love, with the knowledge that things change and sorrow may well follow. A child simply can’t do that. A child lives in the here and now as if it were forever, and if the trust in the parent is broken by the parent dying, then there’s really nothing to do but despair or shut down. The parent is gone. If that can happen, anything can, and it is better, far better, to believe in nothing, to hope for nothing, to bury one’s feelings with the dead parent. (p. 36) I can attest to the truth of this statement by my own experience. Even as I become more aware of my feelings of abandonment, I still experience them with each relationship shift. I think one of my core beliefs is an inability to understand why anyone would deliberately try to change anything. Since, obviously, things change all the time, the conflict inherent in this belief system is obvious. People who initiate change somehow become the aggressors, to me. They have taken an action that disrupts my stability and therefore become threatening. I overreact as if I was defending my life, and on a deep level, I am. I have begun teaching workshops on tools for dealing with transitions and change. The irony is obvious. I have found that some people thrive on change. However, to me, that reads “chaos.” I have found that many people are fearful like me. Most are somewhere in the middle. I teach the workshops to help myself. I have found all of my life that the best way for me to learn is to teach. Now, when change occurs, I at least have different tapes to go to in my mind. Not that I still don’t revert back to earlier patterns at times, but I am building up new tools. Simon (1998) also believes that the primary life task for the child or adolescent who has lost a parent is to learn to open up to the world again. She says this process can often take years or an entire lifetime. Sometimes the fear is simply too strong. If the individual doesn’t have a support system to help, s/he may not be capable of breaking the pattern alone. Simon (1998) says, “For a child or teenager, the death of a parent is not necessarily absorbed into a reality in a day, a week, a year. It takes a long time to realize what hit us” (p. 139). Some of the long realization time is due to the adolescent’s inability for foresight. S/he cannot know what significant life passages await in the future. S/he cannot know the depths to which s/he will miss that parent at these moments – a graduation, a wedding, a first job, or the birth of a child. Each of these milestones, and many others that are personal and specific to the griever, trigger feelings of loss. To say this is natural and a part of life does not negate the intensity and the reality of the feelings. Grief is a life process. And yes, it is one we all go through if we draw breath. But for those who lived with grief from early childhood, their world is invariably colored by those experiences. Their development into adulthood had additional challenges. Just as we all do not develop the same way like cookie-cutter humans, we all do not grieve, nor react to early loss in the same way. Some translate early loss into risk taking behaviors. Some withdraw from the world. Some overachieve. And some are able to open their hearts and welcome love again. I hope one day to be one of those. I hope to be able to enter into intimate relationships and not immediately wonder how and when he is going to leave me. I hope not to think, every time I kiss a man, that I must remember this moment, because I may not have it again. These are trust issues, a fundamental requirement, according to Erikson (1968), for successful adolescence. The question I am still struggling with today is: How does that trust get rebuilt? I can remember a dream very early in my life in which I was an old woman. I was standing in a cemetery. Rows and rows of gravestones stretched in front of me. I had long hair. It was windy and my hair blew in my face. The sky was gray. I held yellow flowers in my hand. In my dream, I said, “This is everyone I have loved. I have outlived them all.” And that was the end of the dream. This dream has recurred several times in my life. It represents one of my biggest fears – to outlive everyone I care for. But perhaps my biggest fear is that if I do not open my heart, there will never be rows and rows of people whom I could outlive. If I can’t let them in in life, I can’t let them in in death. A part of me is comforted by the dream. If everyone I love is dead, then I will always know where to find him or her. They won’t move, leave, or change their minds about me. They will be there, always, in the ground. This dream, to me, still represents the adolescent’s search for stability, for control, for order. This is still the child wanting to know, with absolute certainty, where to go for love. This is the emerging adult seeking trust. But the quiet of the dead is deafening. It takes a great deal of energy to convince yourself that the coldness of their bones is warm enough to keep you through the nighttime of your life. Adolescence is a “call.” I believe it is the call to the rest of our lives. Many factors contribute to a successful answering of this call. As we continue our constant process of human development, all the stages and factors in our lives combine to create a being who has never lived before and will never live again. Joseph Campbell (1973) tells us that the call is the first stage of the mythological journey. He says on page 58, “the call signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.” The adolescent is poised on the threshold between childhood and adulthood. That we breathe at all is a gift beyond words. References Campbell, Joseph. (1973). The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Corey, Gerald. (2001). Theory and Practice of Counseling Psychology, Sixth Edition. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning. Corr, Charles A. (1995). Entering Into Adolescent Understandings of Death. In Earl Grollman (Ed.), Bereaved Children and Teens (pp. 21 – 35). Boston: Beacon Press. Erikson, Erik. (1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton. Jung, C.G. (1990). The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Simon, L. & Drantell, J. (1998). The Early Death of a Parent: A Music I No Longer Heard. New York: Simon & Schuster. Vogler, Christopher. (1992). The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters. Studio City, CA: Michael Weiss Productions. Von Franz, Marie-Louise. (1964). The Process of Individuation. In C.G. Jung (Ed.), Man and His Symbols (pp 158 – 254). New York: Dell. Zweig, C. & Abrams, J. (1991). Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature. New York: Putnam. Killing Me Softly: James Agee and Unresolved Grief in A Death in the Family by Laraine Herring The only taboo left in American society is grief. Notice I say grief, not death. Grief is “the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior” (James 3). We are experts at rattling off statistics and passing judgement on a particular kind of death. Newscasts are filled with stories of how many children murdered other children on any particular day, how many people died in automobile crashes or succumbed to lung cancer. We shove a microphone into the face of the griever and demand to know what they are feeling, and we expect that feeling to be able to be summed up in a sound byte. If the griever does dare to cry or become angry, we instantly have the upper hand of judgement and “tsk tsk” our disapproval and discomfort over an honest display of emotion. In our electronic age, we expect grief to be confined to weekends, to closed doors and to whispered support groups. When my own father died, I had three days to return to work. I had an even shorter period of time to shove my feelings into the pit of my stomach and then a lifetime to see how they would materialize. I functioned well, according to the tenants of our society, as I starved myself to ninety pounds and spent myself into $20,000 of credit card debt. I functioned well as I overachieved in undergraduate school and then in the workplace. I functioned well as I shunned all intimate relationships in favor of my art and my career. I functioned well as I broke apart, cell by cell, in silence. When James Agee lost his father in 1916, he became indelibly marked by that grief. When he began work on A Death in the Family, he began to record what had been a lifelong process of exploring how the sudden loss of his father affected him. The skill and passion with which he was able to render his family dynamic through language is remarkable enough even if he hadn’t had to wrestle with the fact that he was unburying and exposing his own demons in the process. Posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, A Death in the Family still stands as a testament to the reality of a family’s experience of grief after the sudden death of its patriarch. Unfortunately, in 1915 when the book takes place, the techniques for dealing with grief were no better than they are now at the turn of the 21st century. I will attempt to show, through the characters’ actions, reactions and inactions, how the grievers were silenced by both tradition and by well-meaning people and were not allowed the normal and natural grieving process. The book only addresses the day prior, the day of, and the day after the significant loss, so we cannot know through the text alone what the long-term effects on the survivors were. Through the writings of contemporary grief theorists, we can speculate what may have happened to the characters of Rufus and Catherine Follet. I will attempt to demonstrate through the life of James Agee as it is reflected both in the text of A Death in the Family and through his letters and biographies, that the methods by which his family dealt with the sudden loss of his father contributed to the sufferings and challenges that occurred for Agee throughout his adult life. To begin, we must establish some definitions for the course of the paper. Bereavement will be defined as “the objective state of having suffered a significant loss.” Grief will be defined as “the subjective reaction to loss”, and mourning will be defined as “the conscious and unconscious intrapsychic processes, together with the cultural, public or interpersonal efforts, that are involved in attempts to cope with loss and grief” (Doka, Living with Grief: Children, Adolescents, and Loss, 21-22). To build a bit on the definition of grief, as I stated earlier, John James in The Grief Recovery Handbook defines grief as “the conflicting group of human emotions caused by an end to or change in a familiar pattern of behavior” (97). As a society, we are ill prepared to deal with grief. In a society that emphasizes youth, success and power, when we experience loss, it is perceived as failure on many levels. This perception of failure places unfair stigma on the person experiencing the loss. The expectation that they are somehow less than as a result of experiencing loss hinders a healthy recovery. It is important to note that grief is not a mental illness. Grief is a temporary, natural condition which occurs at the time of loss. Grief cannot be treated with pills, false bravado or other short-term energy relieving behaviors. Short term energy relieving behaviors (STERBS) are very popular in our fast-paced society. Examples include drug and alcohol abuse, “retail” therapy, sex addictions, food, exercise, workaholism and isolationism (James 78). These behaviors are learned early on, usually in childhood, as ways to make the griever feel better. The griever does feel different, and this is often mistaken for better, and makes the cycle of using STERBS to combat grief and loss that much more difficult to eliminate effectively from a person’s life. When we are sad as children and given a cookie to feel better, this is the beginning of a lifetime of masking feelings with substances. James Agee’s use of alcohol, his workaholism, tendency toward isolation and melancholia in adulthood were well-developed patterns over the course of his childhood and adolescence. There are also some myths surrounding the treatment of the topic of grief. Because these myths are prevalent in both the text of A Death in the Family and in Agee’s adult life, I want to address them here. John James outlines the major ones as follows: 1. Don’t feel bad. 2. Replace the loss. 3. Grieve alone. 4. It just takes time. 5. Be strong for others. 6. Keep busy. (35) There are many more, but the majority of grievers hear all of these things many times by well-meaning friends and family. Because people are uncomfortable when a death has occurred, they don’t know what to say. Phrases such as “ It was God’s will,” “Keep a stiff upper lip,” “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps,” “Get a hold of yourself,” and “You can’t fall apart,” (James 41-42) are repeated over and over to grievers with long-term disastrous results. I knew when speaking to people about the death of my father, that the only appropriate answer to the question, “How are you doing?” was to smile and say, “Fine. I’m just fine.” To say anything otherwise was to invite a conversation that I knew would cause the other person to go away. To imply that I was sad, angry, hurt, lonely or any one of the normal and natural feelings associated with grief and loss would be to imply weakness. It would imply that I was not strong enough for this life. Among the many unhelpful comments I heard were: “Jesus never gives us more than we can bear.” “At least he isn’t suffering anymore.” “Think of all the children who never knew their father. You were lucky to have known him for nineteen years.” “Get back into school and you’ll feel better.” “You’ll get over it soon.” “This is all part of God’s plan.” “God must have something special for you to do since he’s given you this burden.” I could go on and on. The fact that the people who told me these things were trying to be kind makes the hearing of them that much more difficult. I had to smile, take their words in, and try to get away. Anger at God, anger at my loss and anger at my father were all unacceptable emotions. I was to bear this pain in silence. I was to bear this alone. I will focus the textual analysis on the reactions of Mary Follet, wife of the deceased; Rufus Follet, son of the deceased; and Catherine Follet, daughter of the deceased. Certainly the text can be analyzed in this manner using all the characters, but I want to focus on the primary family in order to better illustrate the change in the family dynamic and subsequent behavior patterns of James Agee’s adult life. In the prologue to A Death in the Family, (hereafter referred to as ADIF)Knoxville, 1915, Agee establishes a routine to young Rufus’ life. By allowing us to enter the normalcy of Rufus’ life, we are much more affected by the disruption of that normalcy when Jay is killed. Supper was at six and was over by half past. There was still daylight, shining softly and with a tarnish, like the lining of a shell; and the carbon lamps lifted at the corners were on in the light, and the locusts were started, and the fire flies were out, and a few frogs were flipping in the dewy grass, by the time the fathers and the children came out. The children ran out first hell bend and yelling those names by which they were known; then the fathers sank out leisurely in crossed suspenders, their collars removed and their necks looking tall and shy. The mothers stayed back in the kitchen washing and drying, putting things away, recrossing their traceless footsteps like the lifetime journeys of bees, measuring the dried cocoa for breakfast. When they came out they had taken off their aprons and their skirts were dampened and they sat in rockers on their porches quietly. (3-4) Agee finishes the prologue with references to his parents and to his overriding life’s question of identity. On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts…One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening among the sounds of night. May god bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away. After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am. (7) Agee establishes a closeness and a serenity to his family dynamic in the context of a summer evening. He illustrates Rufus’ vulnerability and extreme innocence. The idea that anything could come along to disrupt this idyllic scene is unthinkable. To a child, security and safety are paramount issues. Since children are almost entirely dependent upon their caregivers for basic life support, they are particularly vulnerable to complications in mourning. “It is important that a safe, predictable system of caring for the child be established quickly…if a child knows he can trust someone to feed, clothe, bathe and love him, he can then participate in the grieving of the family. Otherwise, fears for his physical survival, withdrawal and anger will be primary” (Lord 80). Agee recognizes that the world before the sudden loss of his father is equally important to the world after his father’s death in terms of the family dynamic. The disruption of the family’s routine occurs when Jay receives the phone call from his brother, Ralph, concerning his own father’s illness. The telephone call shatters the calmness of the sleeping house and causes the first disruption in the normalcy of the household. This departure from routine is the catalyst for the future plot actions. Mary and Jay have breakfast together in the dark. They say good-bye awkwardly on the steps. Jay starts the car loudly in the pre-dawn. Mary begins to ponder what the effect of Jay’s father’s death will be on Jay’s mother. Mary begins to discuss the possible death of Jay’s father with the children. “If you can’t get well again, then God lets you go to sleep and you can’t see people anymore.” [said Mary] “Don’t you ever wake up again?” [asked Rufus] “You wake up right away, in heaven, but people on earth can’t see you any more, and you can’t see them.” “Oh.” (ADIF 54) The first incorrect piece of information Mary gives her children is the concept that Grampa Follet will be “going to sleep” when he dies. The concept of sleeping is one even a very young child understands. To associate something that the child does every day with something as mysterious and terrifying as death, is to ensure that the child is left with a host of confusing questions and emotions. Earl Grollman, in Explaining Death to Children tells us: One must be careful to explain the differences between sleep and death…otherwise, he runs the risk of causing a pathological dread of bedtime. There are children who toss about in fear of going to “eternal sleep”, never to wake up again. Some youngsters actually struggle with all their might to remain awake, fearful that they might go off to the deceased grandfather’s type of sleep. (11) Rufus asks if his rabbits which were killed by dogs went to heaven too. “Why did God let the dogs get in?” “I don’t know, but someday we’ll understand, Rufus. If we’re very patient. We mustn’t trouble ourselves with these things we can’t understand. We just have to be sure that God knows best.” (ADIF 54) This message of relying on the plan of God plants the seed for complications for both children when they are faced with their father’s death. The concept of death is difficult enough for children. When they are spoken to in metaphors, the result is confusion and doubt that can continue for years. “The “consolation” It was God’s will may cause more pain to victim families than any other well-intentioned phrase” (Grollman, Explaining Death to Children 104). Parents don’t know what happens when people die. When confronted with having to explain what they don’t know to their children, they often rely on the easy, accepted answer. This “quiets the child and provides an escape for the parent who may not know the scientific answer to the question” (Grollman, Explaining Death to Children 105). I think it is critical to note that these two key pieces of incorrect information were being relayed to the children before any death occurred at all. Children are quite literal, and tend to believe the things their caregivers tell them. Mary, albeit unintentionally, is doing great harm to the psychological development of her children. Jay doesn’t return home as scheduled, and Mary begins to get worried. The children are asleep and she is waiting in the house. The second phone call comes. This is another crucial moment in the griever’s path. The way in which the person is notified of the death is very important toward alleviating future complications in mourning. “Is this Miz Jay Follet?” “Yes; what is it?” (for there was a silence): “yes, this is she.” After further silence the voice said, “There’s been a slight – your husband has been in an accident.” His head! she told herself. “Yes,” she said, in a caved-in voice. At the same moment the voice said, “A serious accident.” “Yes,” Mary said more clearly. “What I wanted to ask, is there a man in his family, some kin, could come out? We’d appreciate if you could send a man out here, right away.” “A doctor, do you have one? Should I send a doctor?” “That’s all right, ma’am. Just some man that’s kin.” (ADIF 103-104) The gentleman on the phone, in an attempt at kindness, refuses to tell Mary the truth about her husband. Jay was killed instantly. There was no hope. Yet, he could not bring himself to be the one to tell the widow. This left Mary with a false sense of hope that prolonged her ability to process the terrible news and begin to deal with the changes that would now occur in her life. Inappropriate death notification can leave lasting scars on family members and can become the subject matter of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, including nightmares, flashbacks and an exaggerated startle response to the sound of door bells or ringing phones. A death notification by phone to someone home alone frequently results in a traumatized person who needs emotional support and sometimes physical assistance. (Doka, Living With Grief After Sudden Loss 27) After Mary receives the phone call, she immediately goes into speculation and rationalization of the meaning of the call. She retells the story constantly. Hannah, her aunt, has arrived. Hannah doesn’t know how to help Mary either. She “subdued an impulse to go to her side” (ADIF 117), feeling that “there’s no little comfort anyone can give. It better be saved for when it’s needed most” (ADIF 118). These two actions are based on Hannah’s belief in the “grieve alone” myth. She truly believes she is doing what is best for Mary. In the meantime, Mary needs to regain control of a situation that has quite suddenly and unexpectedly gotten completely out of her control. She is vulnerable and jumps from one activity to another in an attempt to keep herself busy while she waits for the news. “A feature of sudden death is the sense of helplessness that it elicits on the part of the survivor. This type of death is an assault on our sense of power and on our sense of orderliness” (Worden 98). When Mary has run out of things to do, she remarks, “I only wish we’d hear now, because I am ready” (ADIF 123). When Andrew returns with the news of Jay’s death, the family immediately begins placating her with whiskey, a short-term energy relieving behavior. “I want whiskey,” Mary said, in a small, cold voice, and tried to get up. “She needs it,” Hannah said. “Let me pour my own,” Mary said. “Because,” she added with deliberation while she poured, “I want it just as strong as I can stand it.” “It’s just the thing for shock,” Hannah said. (ADIF 134-135) The family’s encouragement of Mary’s immediate repression of her emotions further complicates not only her own grief process, but the ways in which she is able to communicate the death to her children. After Mary drinks several glasses of whiskey, she has a conversation in her bedroom with her father, Joel. “You’ve got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You’ve got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You’ve got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they’ve come through it and that you will too. You’ll bear it because there isn’t any choice – except to go to pieces. You’ve got two children to take care of. And regardless of that you owe it to yourself and you owe it to him. You understand me?” (ADIF, 140-141) This conversation between Mary and her father is taking place within hours of Mary learning about Jay’s death. She is not even given the luxury of one day to feel the pain of her loss. “The griever needs an opportunity to work through all the emotions of the traumatic event…we must help the griever understand that this type of loss would produce extreme reactions in almost anyone” (Doka, Living With Grief After Sudden Loss 123). Mary’s grieving process is immediately stifled by well-meaning people who love her. Because she doesn’t have the tools to help herself, she is unaware of the damage being done to her future recovery. This “taking away” of the grief from the griever happens again when Mary decides on an epitaph for Jay. She wants to place “In his strength” on the tombstone. Her mother, however, feels that is inappropriate because she wonders “whether people will quite – understand it…After all, it will be in a public place…I’ve always supposed it was the business of words – to communicate – clearly” (ADIF 160). Mary is not even allowed to choose the final words for her husband’s grave without hearing from the people she loves how she should behave. The “grieve alone” myth is manifested without Mary’s even knowing it. While she has been talking with her father, the other family members have been sealing off the house. “All the shades, Mary noticed, were drawn to the window sills” (ADIF 143). The literal entombment of the family in their sorrow illustrates how deeply the myth of grieving alone runs in the American cultural identity. A very significant event happens next in the text. The Follet house is visited by a spiritual “presence” , which no one can concretely identify, but everyone, including the skeptical Joel, feels something otherworldly in the house. This visitation provides a small comfort to Mary, who is able to take the event and intellectualize it into a belief that Jay is alright and has come to say his final good-byes. Mystical experiences are fairly common among those whose loved one has died. They can be very spiritually and emotionally healing to those fortunate enough to have them. Loved ones report having received direct and spontaneous communications from their deceased loved ones which range from a vague sense of the presence of the person who died to hearing voices, seeing visions – transparent figures to full bodies, feeling touches, and smelling aromas such as the loved one’s perfume or after shave. (Lord 109) Mary first feels Jay’s presence in the living room. It darts from room to room, ending up in the children’s room, where she “could feel his presence as strongly throughout the room as if she had opened a furnace door: the presence of his strength, or virility, of helplessness, and of pure calm” (ADIF 174). Mary’s relief at knowing that her husband’s spirit is free and fine is palpable. She is able to take this event and use it as a catalyst to begin thinking of the changes that will be taking place in her life now that Jay is gone. “No one knows … if these… occurrences are true messages from the deceased or merely coincidences which were assigned meaning because the receiver needed to find meaning in them” (Lord 109). Does it really matter whether the visitation was real or imagined? Is it not more important that the result of the visitation be positive and enable the griever to gain perspective and some small comfort in their time of trauma? I don’t believe this phenomenon can be dismissed as a mind trick. Our scientifically focused culture doesn’t allow room for the possibility of such things, but that doesn’t mean that those things do not exist. Janice Lord states that “this phenomenon is discussed openly in many cultures of the world” (110). This should illuminate the validity of Mary’s claim, at least on a psychological level. We can’t know whether Agee knew if this visitation occurred or not. He may have used it strictly as a storytelling device. Whether or not it happened, it serves as a powerful force in Mary’s recovery process. The next step is to tell the children. We’ve already seen the wealth of well-meaning misinformation given to Rufus and Catherine before any death occurred. It is important to remember that Mary is in a very fragile emotional state as well. She not only has to deal with her own grief and adjust to her new life, she has to find a way to tell her children something that will indelibly mark their lives. I think it is important to remember to look with kindness upon Mary. She is truly doing the best she can with the tools she has to work with. People want to be kind and helpful. Only when we are the ones who need comforting do we become painfully aware of the inability of our friends and family to help us cope with our feelings. Perhaps one of the greatest isolations the griever experiences is the isolation experienced at the hand of well-meaning friends who unwittingly negate the feelings of the griever. I stopped trying to communicate with others because I was continually shut down by their comments. I felt I needed to protect them from their own ignorance and began to resent their presence almost as much as they must have resented mine. Because I didn’t feel comfortable enough to say, “Your comments don’t help me. I need to feel angry now,” I became a participant in my own isolation. When Rufus wakes up, he wants to show his dad the cap his great-aunt Hannah bought for him the day before. He calls for his father. “‘Daddy isn’t here yet,’ [Mary] told him in a voice like hot ashes” (ADIF 225). She can’t bring herself to speak the truth yet and asks Rufus to wake up his sister. When Rufus and Catherine are downstairs, Mary tells them: “Daddy didn’t come home. He isn’t going to come home ever any more. He’s – gone away to heaven and he isn’t ever coming home again.” [Rufus] stared at his mother. “Why not?” he asked. “Because God wanted him…Daddy was on his way home last night – and he was – he – got hurt and – so God let him go to sleep and took him straight away with Him to heaven.” “Is Daddy dead?” Rufus asked. (ADIF 227) The young child has a need for cold, hard reality, no matter how painful. Death is not a concept easily grasped by children. They often need to have the truth repeated to them many times. They do not understand the concept of forever. Their short lives have been committed to routine. They have no foundation for a world other than the one they have always known. Forever could mean just a few hours to the child. Catherine tries to assimilate the information into her child-mind. Now maybe in just a minute he would walk right in and grin at her and say, “Good morning, merry sunshine,” because her lip was sticking out, and even bend down and rub her cheek with his whiskers and then sit down and eat a big breakfast and then it would be all fun again and she would watch from the window when he went to work and just before he went out of sight he would turn around and she would wave but why wasn’t he right here now where she wanted him to be and why didn’t he come home? Ever any more. He won’t come home again ever any more. Won’t come home again ever. But he will, though, because it’s home. (ADIF 233) Catherine is trying to wrap her mind around the idea of “gone.” She begins to equate it with the kittens she watched being drowned. “Like the kitties, Catherine thought; she saw a dim, gigantic old man in white take her tiny father by the skin of the neck and put him in a huge slop jar full of water and sit on the lid, and she heard the tiny scratching and the stifled mewing” (ADIF 234). Children need to associate the reality of the dead parent with a similar experience they have already undergone. Just a few moments later, she asks again, “When’s Daddy coming home?” (ADIF 237). Aunt Hannah responds with the sleep analogy again. “God put him to sleep and took him, took his soul away with him, so he can’t come home” (ADIF 237). Several vital pieces of misinformation were passed along to the children in this exchange. (1) Mary begins with a lie, telling Rufus that Jay is just not there yet. (2) Mary uses the mysterious power of God to explain the reality of the sudden death, and (3) Mary and Hannah continue to use the “sleep” metaphor to describe the death. J. William Worden states that “children between the ages of five and seven years are a particularly vulnerable group. They have developed cognitively enough to understand some of the permanent ramifications of death, but they have very little coping capacity” (125). To continue to use God as the reason for sudden death, is to, at best, introduce a questionable theology. The child may develop “fear, resentment and hatred against a God who capriciously robbed him of his father because the man was loved by God” (Grollman, Explaining Death to Children 11). Young Rufus naturally wants to know what really caused his father’s death and asks Hannah what a concussion was. “That’s the doctor’s name for what happened,” [said Hannah] “It means, it’s as if the brain were hit very hard and suddenly, and joggled loose. The instant that happens, your father was – he …” “Instantly killed.” She nodded. “Then it was that, that put him to sleep.” “Hyess.” “Not God.” (ADIF 238) To a young child, “what is dead” is an ongoing question which is “reworked as the child develops cognitively and emotionally” (Doka, Living With Grief: Children, Adolescents, and Loss 115). Children must be allowed to experience their grief in its entirety and to re-experience it as they grow and mature. They will need to “grieve the parent’s death again and again based on new developmental understandings” (Lord 79). This is often made difficult, if not nearly impossible, in American society because of its emphasis on success, well-being, and perpetual, although unattainable, happiness. As the reality of the death begins to sink into the children, they will begin to consider who they are now that this significant person is gone. Rufus wonders if he will be an “orphan” because he has no father. In conjunction with having to create a new identity, the children will also wonder who will take care of them. If the caregiver is unable or unwilling to provide concrete answers and reassurances to the child’s fears after the death of a parent, the child becomes “vulnerable to psychological problems” (Lord 78). After telling the children of the news, the family immediately swings into action with funeral preparations. The children are kept separate from these activities. When the coffin arrives at the house for the wake, Rufus is led into see the body. “Rufus had never seen him so indifferent, and the instant he saw him, he knew that he would never see him otherwise” (ADIF 281). The event of viewing the body is not to be taken lightly. Children should never be kept away from it, though they should not be forced to view it if they don’t want to. Especially in cases of sudden death, the viewing and touching of the body is vital. “People are intimately attached to the bodies of their loved ones, and no matter how strong their faith that their loved one’s soul or spirit is in heaven, they significantly mourn what happened to his or her body” (Doka, Living With Grief After Sudden Loss 30). Rufus focuses on the motionlessness of his father, whom he has only known as an active, living human. “It became strange, and restive, that it was possible for anyone to lie so still for so long; yet he knew that his father would never move again; yet this knowledge made his motionlessness no less strange” (ADIF 283). Rufus longs “in shyness” to touch his father’s hand. He is seeking to reconnect with the body he has known so intimately. Indeed, the body of the parent to the young child is one of the only bodies the child has ever known. The idea that the body will no longer move and play and laugh is one of the most difficult concepts for the child to assimilate. Was it appropriate that Mary forced the children to view their father’s body? I feel that it is important to have closure with the body. It brings home the reality of the loss. However, the choice should be available to the child. It should not be something imposed upon them by an authority figure. I have regretted not touching my father’s body after he died. I saw it in the hospital bed, but never again, and I have longed for a more complete moment of farewell. I can only speculate as to whether it would have made a significant difference in the rest of my life. What I do know is that the last time a person sees the body of their loved one is indeed one of the pivotal moments in the grieving process. Subsequently, these same guidelines should be followed when preparing the funeral. Children need to participate in these rituals. Again, they should not be forced, but they should be allowed to come to the ceremony and participate as a grieving member of the family. Too often, it is assumed that children don’t know what is going on. Where they may not be able to fully grasp the finality of death, they are certainly aware that a major change has taken place in their world, and when they are excluded from the family mourning, they are further isolated with their grief and made to feel even more alone and unsure about a world that has just suddenly and irreversibly turned upside down. Mary, preparing to leave for the funeral, kisses her children. “Now good-bye,” she said. “Mother will see you before long” (ADIF 293). The children are taken away by Walter Starr, a friend of the family. Walter then commits a great act of kindness. He “surprisingly turned a wrong corner, and then another, and then said to the children, ‘I think you’ll want to see. Maybe not, but I think you’ll be glad later on I took you back’” (ADIF 293). Rufus watches his father’s body being carried out of the house into a horse drawn chariot to be taken to the church. When the processional had left the house, Walter starts the car and drives the children away. After the funeral, Andrew takes Rufus for a walk. Rufus is longing for details about the funeral. What all did they do out there? They put him down in the ground and then they put all the flowers on top. Then they say their prayers and then they all come home again. In Greenwood Cemetery. He saw in his mind a clear image of Greenwood Cemetery; it was on a low hill and among many white stones there were many green trees through which the wind blew in the sunlight, and in the middle there was a heap of flowers and beneath the flowers, in his closed coffin, looking exactly as he had looked this morning, lay his father. Only it was dark, so he could not be seen. It would always be dark there. Dark as the inside of a cow. (ADIF 305) When children are deliberately kept from attending the funeral, as Rufus and Catherine were, their sense of isolation and confusion deepens. Earl Grollman, in Bereaved Children and Teens: A Support Guide for Parents and Professionals gives the following example: Every day, on the way to day care, when four-year-old Rebecca and her mother drove past the church, Rebecca became frightened and began to cry. She was unable to verbalize her fear. In a session with a counselor, it was discovered that her father’s funeral had been held in that church. Having not attended the funeral or graveside services, Rebecca believed what she had been told: her father was still “asleep” in that church. She was angry at God for keeping her daddy there and for not letting him wake up and come home. (200) Andrew also gave a great kindness to Rufus when he described the butterfly landing on the coffin at the funeral. “A perfectly magnificent butterfly settled on the – coffin, just rested there, right over the breast, and stayed there, just barely making his wings breathe, like a heart” (ADIF 305). Andrew is obviously moved by the butterfly and Rufus is so glad that Andrew told him, reasoning that “he had to tell somebody, so he told it to him. And it made it so much better than it had been, about his father, and about his not being let to be there at just that time he most needed to be there; it was alright now, almost” (ADIF 307). Nothing can make up for Rufus’s absence from his father’s funeral. The family is left in the text at a crossroads. Rufus, Catherine and Mary’s lives have been indelibly marked. They must return to each other and try to reconstruct their lives as best they can. The years following this life shaping event mold young James Agee into a man driven to artistic brilliance and success, rage, alcoholism, and womanizing. The sudden death of Agee’s father became both an “autobiographical and thematic preoccupation” (Horne 9). He came to “perceive his father’s early death as the formative experience in his life” (Bergreen 149). His father’s death seemed to be the one event of his life “he felt he had to understand if he was to understand himself” (Rewak 201). Perhaps we can best understand the particular struggles inherent in Agee’s life through his correspondence with his friend, teacher, and surrogate father figure, Father Flye. According to Earl Grollman, in Explaining Death to Children, when a young child experiences the sudden death of a parent, s/he makes two discoveries. The first is that s/he has limitations, and the second is that s/he, too will die. These great discoveries, which have a lifelong effect, “are at the root of melancholic discontent” (67). As Agee matures, he writes that he feels something “different from my ordinary depression and apathy; more like galloping melancholia” (Agee, Letters 163). In Father Flye’s introduction to Letters of James Agee to Father Flye, he draws attention to Agee’s unusual artistic drive. “Over a period of thirty years, there is hardly a letter in which his calling is not mentioned” (4). Agee, himself, was aware of his tendency toward overachievement. “I’m taking a schedule several times heavier than the average” (Agee, Letters 15), he writes, going on to list his achievements, ranging from Editor of the Monthly and President of the Lantern Literary Club at Harvard. His drive is obsessive. I’d do anything on earth to become a really great writer … I’ve got to make my mind as broad and deep and rich as possible, as quick and fluent as possible, abnormally sympathetic and yet perfectly balanced. At the same time, I’ve got to strengthen those segments of my talent which are naturally weak and must work out for myself a way of expressing what I want to write. You see, I should like to parallel, foolish as it sounds, what Shakespeare did. (Agee, Letters 41) From the beginning of Agee’s literary career, he was driven to perfect his craft. Writing, the writing life, and the power of language fueled his spirit. The search for the father-figure provided the catalyst for the writing. In cases of sudden death, one of the issues that complicates the mourning process is that the mourner “obsessively reconstructs events in an effort both to comprehend the death and to prepare for it in retrospect” (Doka, Living With Grief After Sudden Loss 145). A Death in the Family was written in order to “restore the past, to search for the thread that would lead him out of his private labyrinth and into the light of day” (Rewak 209). Although he spent much of his time writing commercially for magazines like Time, and writing screenplays for Hollywood, Agee never lost sight of his dream to be a great writer, or his calling to understand the deeper meaning of the sudden loss of his father. Along with the obsessive drive he had toward his art, his personality was also full of extreme behaviors. He was an alcoholic. Alcohol is one of the common short-term energy relieving behaviors described in The Grief Recovery Handbook. Unresolved grief frequently materializes in the griever in the forms of alcohol and drug abuse. Agee references his own alcoholism numerous times in Letters to Father Flye. In 1951, in reference to his sudden series of heart attacks, he writes “this whole thing is brought on by too much alcohol and tobacco” (171). By 1953, he admits “I am by now much more deeply addicted to alcohol than at any time before” (191). The drinking is a “real problem” (195). Another issue inherent in sudden, unanticipated death is that the mourner experiences “a profound loss of security and confidence in the world which affects all areas of life and increases many kinds of anxiety” (Doka, Living With Grief After Sudden Loss 145). Agee was a very insecure personality, in spite of all the activities he engaged in to keep himself occupied. He was overwhelmed with self-doubt and a belief that he would never be good enough to fulfill the high standards he’d set for himself. In 1932, he wrote “I’ve felt like suicide for weeks now – and not just fooling with the idea, but feeling seriously on the edge of it … I don’t have a thought that isn’t pain and despair of one kind or another” (Agee, Letters 50). Throughout his adult life, he wrestles with the demons of insecurity, guilt, self-beratement and an extreme lack of trust in his own ability to succeed in the world. “I now face my own hopeless inefficiency with time and lack of discipline and somewhat obscurer type of work blockage” (Agee, Letters 125). His constant battle with fear juxtaposed with his constant drive to achieve created an inner turmoil that he was only able to quiet through substance abuse and depression. His health deteriorated, and he experienced a series of heart attacks from 1951 to 1955 which frequently resulted in hospitalization. Four days before his death, he wrote that he was “planning to…use this summer…to finish my book” (Agee, Letters 210). The book he never got to finish was, of course, A Death in the Family. The duality of ambition and self-doubt eventually eclipsed Agee’s life, leaving the world with his unfinished masterpiece, a testament to both the unfinished grief process of a small boy for a father and a childhood and the alienation of a brilliant artist from his homeland and his family. In his own words, describing young Rufus, he wrote “the child was torn into two creatures, of whom one cried out for his father” (ADIF 79). The real Rufus James Agee was never able to join the two creatures. The real Rufus James Agee never stopped crying out for his father. Alcohol, drugs, womanizing, and overachieving could not fill the void. The man which has now become the myth, lost a part of him when his father died. This loss both fueled his artistic greatness and his personal destruction. If Agee had been given proper tools for handling the changes in his life after his father’s death, would his life have turned out differently? We’ll never know. I contend that given proper grief counseling, Agee might have been better able to control the demons that were a part of his personality. I contend that he might have avoided alcoholism and an early death. The human organism is survival-based. It uses the tools it has to keep itself alive. When those tools are incorrect or ineffective, the human suffers. Agee’s life was as full of suffering as his prose is full of hope. My own grief recovery process is ongoing. By incorporating the tools mentioned in this paper, I have found ways to live my life more fully in the present moment. Because of proper grief counseling, my life is richer, my heart more open, my writing more sincere. Because I was able to work through, without judgement or silencing, the series of conflicting emotions surrounding my own losses, I have been able to become an active rather than a passive participant in my life. I wish James Agee would have had the benefit of counseling. I wish he would have been allowed and encouraged to feel the wide range of emotions associated with the sudden death of his father. The broken boy who grew into the broken man constantly searched for his identity in alcohol, substance abuse and women. He constantly searched for the elusive creature he had first lost in childhood – not just his all-powerful father, but his very own soul. Works Cited Agee, James. A Death in the Family. New York: Vintage, 1998. Agee, James. Letters of James Agee to Father Flye. New York: Bantam, 1963. Burgreen, Laurence. James Agee: A Life. New York: Dutton, 1984. Doka, Kenneth J., Ph.D., Ed. Living With Grief After Sudden Loss. Washington, D.C.: Hospice Foundation of America, 1996. Doka, Kenneth J., Ph.D., Ed. Living With Grief: Children, Adolescents, and Loss. Washington, D.C.: Hospice Foundation of America, 2000. Grollman, Earl A., Ed. Bereaved Children and Teens: A Support Guide for Parents and Professionals. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. Grollman, Earl A., Ed. Explaining Death to Children. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. Horne, Joseph Phillip. “A Furious Angel: The Search for the Father in James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and A Death in the Family.” Diss. East Carolina University, 1990. James, John W. , and Russell Friedman. The Grief Recovery Handbook. New York: Harper Collins, 1998. Lord, Janice Harris. No Time for Goodbyes: Coping with Sorrow, Anger and Injustice After a Tragic Death. Channel Islands, CA: Pathfinder Publishing, 1991. Moreau, Genevieve. The Restless Journey of James Agee. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1977. Moxley, Haywood D. “Walking in Darkness: The Primal Scenes of James Agee’s A Death in the Family.” Diss. University of South Carolina, 1986. Pickens, Mary W. “Attitudes Toward Death in James Agee’s A Death in the Family.” Diss. Wake Forest University, 1979. Rewack, William John. “The Shadow and the Butterfly: James Agee’s Treatment of Death.” Diss. University of Minnesota, 1970. Worden, J. William. Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner. New York: Springer Publishing, 1991.