A Star Called Henry

“I looked, her other little Henry sitting beside her on the step. I looked up and hated him. She held me but she looked up at her twinkling boy. Poor me beside her, pale and red-eyed, held together by rashes and sores.” 

This citation illustrates Henry’s early consciousness that he is the unloved earthly replacement for his dead elder brother Henry, who is symbolized by an idealized gaseous star. Henry has a body full of needs that suffers because it has been deprived. He resents his elder brother for his perfect state and his enshrinement as the object of their mother’s love. 

“He was a survivor; his stories kept him going. Stories were the only things the poor owned. A poor man, he gave himself a life. He filled the hole with many lives.” 

Henry’s father, also named Henry Smart, makes sense of his standing in the world through the stories he tells about himself. The stories also sustain him, filling the “hole” of both an empty stomach and a dwelling of scant possessions with substance. 

“He was stooped, carrying the heavy ghosts of his children. He could still feel them in his arms. He could smell them. Little Henry, little Lil. His love for them was an unending fight in his chest. He was always on the verge of seeing them. He didn’t sleep anymore.” 

Henry Smart is wracked by guilt for the murders he commits in Alfie Gandon’s name and superstitiously believes that these sins have caused his children’s deaths. Each of his senses is haunted by their absence; their bodies threaten to appear and reproach him. Unlike Melody, who sees a sentimental version of her dead children in the stars, the ghosts Henry sees look corporeal and terrifying.