Look Homeward, Angel

Eugene travels home to Altamont, where Luke and Hugh Barton greet him and inform him of how Ben contracted influenza from Daisy’s visiting children. He has now been diagnosed with pneumonia in both of his lungs. Eugene arrives at Dixieland and goes upstairs to see Ben, who is plagued by “loud, hoarse, rapid, unbelievable” gasping that “gave to the scene its final note of horror” (441).

Bessie Gant, a relation of their father’s, nurses Ben “with little pity in her, and a cold lust for the miseries of sickness and death” (441). Eliza remains blindly optimistic for Ben’s recovery. Ben refuses to allow Eliza into the sick room, as “the dying boy did not want to see her” (443). Eugene is overcome with pity for his mother upon seeing “the fear and pain in her dull black eyes” (443). Ben’s temperature lowers in the morning, and the family holds onto hope that he may recover. Eliza reveals that she has kicked out Mrs. Pert, Ben’s lover who cared for him in the days leading up to his full-blown illness.

The family watches and waits throughout the day. Eliza attempts to enter Ben’s room once again only to hear Ben’s cry, “Get out! Out! Don’t want you!” (446). Helen updates Mrs. Pert hourly by phone. Despite his previously lowering temperature, Ben worsens, growing delirious and struggling to breathe. Eugene and Luke rush to Wood’s Pharmacy to purchase an oxygen tank for Ben, who “had almost choked to death” (447).

Ben falls further into delirium and “hummed snatches of popular song, some old and forgotten, called up now from the lost and secret adyts of his childhood” (447). Bessie Gant soon calls the family into the room for Ben’s last breaths. Helen and Eliza struggle to contain their despair; “weeping with bitter unrestraint, with the contorted and ugly grimace of sorrow, mother and daughter embraced each other” (440). Gant obsesses over his own ill health in these moments of intense emotion, much to the frustration of Helen, who declares she will no longer live to serve him but to serve herself. Upon hearing “the low mutter of Ben’s expiring breath,” the family calms and draws “together in a superb communion of love and valiance, beyond horror and confusion, beyond death” (449-50). Requesting to be alone, the family surrounds Ben in his final moments.

The family sits in silence with Ben until midnight, when Eugene is left in the room with his frozen mother for Ben’s last breath. Eugene is struck by realization:

“Suddenly, with horror, he saw that she was watching her own death, that the unloosening grip of her hand on Ben’s hand was an act of union with her own flesh, that, for her, Ben was not dying—but that a part of her, of her life, her blood, her body, was dying” (452).

Eugene prays for the safe passage of Ben’s soul until he collapses in exhaustion; Eliza sits stoically by Ben’s side. Eugene calls the family back in before Ben takes his final breath. Then “his gray eyes opened” and he “seemed to rise forward bodilessly from his pillows without support—a flame, a light, a glory—joined at length in death to the dark spirit who had brooded upon each footstep of his lonely adventure on earth” (454). Ben dies.

The Gant family plans Ben’s funeral. Despite their immense grief, they are filled with “an enormous relief” and peace for “this end of pain that touched them all with a profound, a weary joy” (456). On their way to eat breakfast, Eugene and Luke inform Mrs. Pert as well as Ben’s peers at the local newspaper of Ben’s death. They eat at the diner Ben frequented and encounter the usual cast of characters who carry on about their day as usual, a truth that causes Eugene to “burst into a fit of laughter, gasping and uncontrollable, which came from him with a savage violence” (461). The boys return home to sleep before meeting Horse Hines, the undertaker.

Eugene and Luke pick out Ben’s casket, a dignified plain casket. They see Ben’s embalmed and “immaculately groomed” body, which Eugene feels “bears no mark of him” (464-65). As he touches up Ben’s corpse “like a painter before his canvas” (465), Horse Hines seeks praise for the artistry of his work. Unable to restrain “a slow strangling gurgle” (465), Eugene bursts into laughter.

Ben is given “a grand funeral,” in which he receives “more care, more time, more money than had ever been given to Ben living” (466). The eccentric Pentlands attend Ben’s funeral, and Eugene despairingly sees himself in “their lust, their weakness, their sensuality, their fanaticism, their strength, their rich talent” that is “rooted in the marrow of his bones” (467). They bury Ben on a rainy October day.

Observing his mother’s grief, Eugene is plagued by thoughts of staying in Altamont to help her. He resolves to leave quickly, but Eliza convinces him to stay for a couple of days.

The day before Eugene’s departure, he visits Ben’s grave and encounters Mrs. Pert, who shares that she is leaving Altamont to live with her daughter in Tennessee. They bond over the shared reality that they are both leaving Altamont forever. Mrs. Pert departs, but Eugene maintains a solitary vigil by Ben’s graveside until nightfall.