Patched Up Heart

My first song is about Samuel. Samuel is the type of person who leaves a legacy. He plays a key role in the novel even though he dies halfway through. Samuel pushes himself out of his nature to bring Adam to do the right thing when Adam is neglecting his children. Samuel consistently offers counsel and is a source of wisdom in the book. 
I chose to put Samuel’s song first because he plays a prophetic role in the novel. 
He says, "There's a black violence on this valley. I don't know—I don't know. It's as though some old ghost haunted it out of the dead ocean below and troubled the air with unhappiness. It's as secret as hidden sorrow. I don't know what it is, but I see it and feel it in the people here." Samuel’s words serve as a warning for the book to come. He says later, “That’s it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles – only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness”. Samuel recognizes the ways that humankind has been corrupted, but he also sees the hope of humanity. He celebrates the human soul.

Samuel

The second song is about Lee. Lee lives with the Trasks and raises two Trask boys. He shares the story of his mother with Adam. She dressed as a man to be with her father when he is sent to work for the railroad company. She does the work of a man, and all while pregnant. Her life seems impossibly hard, but Lee tells Adam, “My father said she was a strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructible”. His mother made it through the pregnancy, but the work caused her to go into labor early. Lee’s father has to rescue him from the dying body of his mother. But the most unexpected turn of the story is that from then on, the camp became his mother. The very people who killed his mother are those who now give him life. Lee says, “Before you hate those men you must know this. My father always told it at the last: no child ever had such care as I. The whole camp became my mother. It is a beauty – a dreadful kind of beauty”. Lee believes in the necessity for telling the truth of a story and not making it more dramatic or taking away the worst details. He says, “There’s more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar”. The focus of this song is the importance of truth from Lee’s perspective. The verses are based on the story of his mother and father.

My third song is about the character Cathy. The narrator questions what makes a person human or a monster. Monsters are deformed. Cathy looks normal, but her soul is deformed. Cathy does not struggle with good and evil, she is evil. “The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster”. Cathy does not have the ability to struggle with morality and that makes her less human.
Cathy has a strange fascination with Alice in Wonderland. She tells her mother when she is a child she wants to grow small no one can find her. Again, she thinks of the book as she is dying. As she goes to put an end to her life she harkens back to Alice’s food and drink that say “Eat me” and “Drink me”. She thinks of Alice as she is going to die. “And her heart beat solemnly and her breathing slowed as she grew smaller and smaller and then disappeared – and she had never been”. She does become so small, just as she told her mother she would. Because she wants to die, it seems she knows she ought to struggle with evil, but she does not struggle with evil and she is a monster because of it. Cathy’s desire to make herself small, to die, is strange when placed against her manipulative qualities and her seeming hardness. Cathy’s song leads well into the next song, Cal, which shows the humanization of the struggle with good and evil.

Cathy

My final song is about Cal. He struggles intensely with good and evil. This is juxtaposed against his brother Aron. Similar to his mother, Aron does not seem to struggle with morality. Now he differs from his mother in that on the surface it looks as though he is good. But ultimately he is selfish and his lack of a struggle also takes away his humanity. The struggle proves you are alive. In the second verse, Aron is mentioned. He seems perfect, but in reality, the struggle is better. 
One of Cal’s key passages for his struggle is when he presents his father with the money. He wants to buy his fathers love, literally. He will do anything to find himself in what he sees as good because he believes he is stuck in evil. 
There are also a few places where Cal is seen wishing he was like his brother. I find it interesting that Cal wants to reach this ideal of a person, when in reality Cal is more of a human, in a sense, than Aron. Cal is convinced Aron does not do or think bad things, but is overwhelmed with his own guilt. 
Cal is a dark character, but also one who is glittered with hope. He knows his mother, where he comes from, and he thinks he is trapped in her likeness. But he finds he also has the ability to choose good.  
Cal exemplifies one of the big themes of the book, which is timshel. Lee explains his interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel. God says to Cain that sin is crouching at the door, but thou mayest rule over it. Cal struggles to find the ability to choose throughout the novel. Finally, at the very end, with his dying breath, Adam tells Cal, “Timshel!”  The choice frees Cal.

SARAH RINGER

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