46 pages • 1 hour read
Charles W. ChesnuttThe Marrow of Tradition
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1901A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 35-37Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 35 Summary: “‘Mine Enemy, O Mine Enemy!’”
The political demonstration has become “a murderous riot” (193). White men rove the streets looking for Black people to kill. Josh and his group had planned to defend themselves if provoked but know they are now actively being hunted. They retire to the hospital. Meanwhile, Jerry searches the streets for Major Carteret, but before he can find them, he is swept with Josh’s crew into the hospital. While Major Carteret and Belmont have removed themselves from the center of the action, McBane leads an assault against the hospital. Major Carteret tries to tell the other men that things have gotten out of hand, but soon, the hospital is on fire. Jerry jumps from a window, crying to Major Carteret, but before his employer notices him, he is beaten to death. Josh and his crew storm the hospital, and Josh kills McBane with a bowie knife.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Fiat Justitia”
Major Carteret returns home to find his son in grave condition with the croup. Dr. Price is out of town, so they contact every other physician they know. One, Dr. Evans, is a young, inexperienced apprentice. Upon evaluating Dodie, he realizes a surgery is necessary—a difficult surgery that no physician in town is qualified to perform except for Dr. Miller. Major Carteret calls on Dr. Miller and finds him grieving the death of his only son. He places the fault on Major Carteret, telling him the child was “struck down as much by [Carteret’s] hand as though [he] had held the weapon” (206). Major Carteret realizes he would do the same thing in Dr. Miller’s place: It is “elemental justice.” Upon hearing the news, Olivia flees the house.
Chapter 37 Summary: “The Sisters”
Olivia pleads with Dr. Miller, who again blames Major Carteret for inciting the violence that has overtaken the city and killed his child. He insists he must stay at the side of his wife and child. Olivia grovels on her knees. He tells her to make her request of Janet. For the first time, Olivia acknowledges their shared paternity, telling Janet that she is still young and might have another child and begging her to save her “own near kin?” (211). When Janet reacts with skepticism, Olivia goes on to confess that Janet is a legitimate heir and begs her, for their father’s sake, to intervene. Janet has longed for acknowledgment her whole life but tells her that now it is “tainted with fraud and crime and blood” (212). She rejects the Merkell name and money but tells her husband to go to Dodie. Dr. Miller and Olivia arrive at the Carteret house with not a moment to spare.
Chapters 35-37 Analysis
These chapters bring the book’s events to a dramatic conclusion. Major Carteret’s hatred of Black people is his motivating force throughout the book; he works tirelessly to sway public opinion toward the overthrow of a democratically elected government. The only thing he values more than the supremacy of the white race is its continuity through his only son, Dodie. However, in instigating a riot, he has killed the child’s nursemaid, Mammy Jane, and put himself in a position where only one man can help him: Dr. Miller, the same man who he refused to let aid in his child’s surgery just months before.
Adding to the irony of the situation is the death of Janet and Dr. Miller’s son, as well as Janet and Olivia’s shared paternity. When Major Carteret and Olivia call on the Millers, Dr. Miller, disabused of clinging to Respectability Politics in the Face of Racism, places the blame for his son’s death squarely at their feet. Both know that this is fair and accurate. Olivia’s shared tie with Janet—so long a source of strife and conflict—now becomes her only bargaining chip. To save her son, she must finally acknowledge Janet, thus sacrificing her pride as well as half her estate. It is unclear if this gamble works. While Janet does instruct her husband, Dr. Miller, to try to save Dodie, the novel ends on a cliffhanger with Dodie’s life still hanging in the balance.
The jeopardization of Dr. Miller and Major Carteret’s sons has symbolic resonance. For one, it relates to the motif of curses, evoking the biblical adage that the sins of the father will be visited on his son. The possible death of Carteret’s family line figuratively punishes him for his racism and suggests a self-defeating strain in white supremacism; though racism certainly hurts Black Americans much more, it is not without cost to white Americans. That Janet steps in to mitigate that cost raises questions about the level of forgiveness and forbearance demanded of those persecuted by white supremacy. She tells Olivia she will spare Dodie’s life to show her that she is not heartless—an ambiguous moment that indicts Olivia’s heartlessness by way of contrast but also suggests a need to “prove” her humanity.
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By Charles W. Chesnutt
