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A Death in the Family | Introduction

James Agee’s novel A Death in the Family is a classic American story, chronicling just a few days in 1915 during which a husband and father is called out of town to be with his own father, who has had a heart attack, and while returning is killed in a car accident. Agee patterned the story closely after his own life, focusing on a boy who is the same age that he was when his father died. The narrative shifts from one perspective to another, including the young widow and her two children and her atheistic father and the dead man’s alcoholic brother, to name just a few, in an attempt to capture the ways in which one person’s loss immediately and powerfully affects everyone around.

The book was published in 1957 by McDowell, Obolensky, two years after Agee’s death from heart failure at the age of 46, and was awarded the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Although Agee had worked on it for almost a decade, he had not produced a definitive final draft, and so his publishers had to put the book together in a way that they believed would make the most sense. They have indicated places where they added materials that come from outside of the flow of the story, such as the opening section “Knoxville: Summer, 1915,” which was first published in the 1940s. Critics agree that the end product is a consistent novel, one of the most moving works ever written about one of the most traumatic experiences a child could ever face.

 

A Death in the Family Summary

Knoxville: Summer, 1915

The segment titled “Knoxville: Summer, 1915” was originally published independently of A Death in the Family. In it, the speaker identifies himself as a grownup looking back on his childhood. He does not mention the characters who appear in the book: still, the quiet neighborhood evenings that Agee remembers in this section resemble ones experienced by young Rufus in the story that follows it.

Chapter 1

The first chapter focuses on the perspective of Rufus Follett, a six-year-old boy in Knoxville, Tennessee. Rufus and his father go to a Charlie Chaplin motion picture. On the way home, the father stops at a tavern, bragging about his son to the other people there. He tells Rufus to not tell his mother they stopped. In bed and falling asleep, Rufus hears his parents talking in the next room, vaguely understanding that his father is going somewhere.

Chapter 2

Jay Follet, the father of Rufus, receives a call late, around two in the morning, from his younger brother, Ralph. Ralph is drunk and explains, unclearly, that their father has had a heart attack. Jay is not able to tell just how serious it is but agrees to drive miles to the town where they live immediately.

He tells his wife, Mary, to stay in bed, that he can stop at a diner for something to eat, but she insists on making him a breakfast before his journey. In exchange, he makes the bed, as a surprise for her after he is gone. He tells her to think about something that she wants for her birthday that is coming up, and they share a happy, loving moment as he leaves into the darkness in the middle of the night.

Chapter 3

To cross the Powell river in his overnight car ride, Jay has to waken a man asleep at a ferry crossing. The man has Jay drive onto his boat, warning him that he will have to pay double fare to cover the boat’s round-trip voyage, even though Jay himself is only going one way. When they reach the other side, though, they find a family in a horse-drawn wagon, waiting to take their produce to market. The ferryman says that he cannot fairly charge Jay the nighttime rate for a “dark crossing” since there is someone to pay for the boat’s return trip.

Chapter 4

Before rising that morning, Mary lies in bed and thinks about her relationship with Jay. Though they have had difficult times, and his family has not been good to her, she prays to God that their future together will be peaceful.

Chapter 5

Mary explains... » Complete A Death in the Family Summary