A Calamity of Souls

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, racist violence, ableist discrimination, domestic violence, and sexual assault as depicted in the novel.

“Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,

Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!

But in the very world, which is the world

Of all of us.”

The novel’s epigraph is a quote from a poem by William Wordsworth. In it, Wordsworth stresses the idea of finding happiness—not in some place like “utopia” or a “secreted island,” but in the very world we live in. This quote depicts a central idea of the text: that there is no secret world waiting for us where we’ll find happiness. Rather, for us to find happiness, it is up to us to fix the world we live in.

“What was memorable was the grand upheaval that would define and qualify the full measure of their deaths. It would fuel a calamitous surge of energy, like that of a sawed-off shotgun randomly discharged into an unsuspecting crowd.”

The novel begins with a description of Anne and Leslie Randolph’s death. The text uses a simile, where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as.” In this case, it compares the effect the Randolphs’ deaths will have to the impact of a shotgun fired into a crowd. This foreshadows the chaos that will unfold throughout the novel—protests, a media frenzy, violence, and, ultimately, more death throughout the trial.

“And he had always found it bewildering that she venerated a long-dead Confederate general at the same time she shed tears for the recent deaths of two men who held views diametrically opposed to all the Confederacy had stood for.”

When Hilly is introduced, Jack notes her complexities immediately. Although it would seem like simple hypocrisy—she mourns King and Kennedy while harboring racist beliefs—it turns out that her character is more complicated, as she once loved a Black man from whom society forced her apart.