The Blood of the Lamb by Peter De Vries

First published: 1962

Type of plot: Comic realism

Time of work: 1920’s-1950’s

Locale: Chicago and New York City

Principal Characters:

• Don Wanderhope, the narrator, the son of a Dutch immigrant in Chicago; he becomes an advertising executive in New York
• Ben Wanderhope, his father, an immigrant garbage collector
• Louie Wanderhope, his brother, a medical student who dies of pneumonia
• Greta Wigbaldy, Don’s girlfriend, later his wife; she eventually commits suicide
• Carol, their daughter, who contracts leukemia
• Rena Baker, the tubercular girl with whom Don falls in love in the sanatorium

The Novel

Peter De Vries’s The Blood of the Lamb is a deeply religious novel, although the religious sensibility is often expressed in unconventional ways: through the comic, the grotesque, the mundane, and the tragic. The novel’s protagonist, Don Wanderhope, whose name suggests a religious quest, grows up in a strict Dutch Calvinist immigrant family in Chicago and later tries to escape from the confines of his immigrant background and become more fully Americanized. Yet he finds his aspirations to the good life thwarted by a series of unhappy circumstances as baffling in their own way as the Calvinistic God whom he has eschewed. The novel is written as Wanderhope’s autobiography, with the first section presenting the rather conventional, albeit comic story of an ambitious young man, but the last part of the book, the heart of the novel, deals with the religious crisis brought on by Wanderhope’s discovery that his daughter Carol has leukemia. “What people believe is a measure of what they suffer,” Wanderhope remarks early in the novel, and his daughter’s illness tests his faith and spiritual resources.

The novel opens in the Wanderhope apartment in Chicago with Don’s father, Ben, his uncle, and other relatives arguing over the infallibility of the Bible and trying to coax Ben back to orthodoxy, while his son Louie interjects wisecracks as he dresses for a date. Understandably, Don and Louie are more interested in the secular world of Chicago than in Calvinistic Dutch Reformed theology. Don idolizes his older brother for his freethinking and worldliness, but Louie, the golden-haired, healthy boy, dies of pneumonia at the age of nineteen. After his death, Louie remains a model for his younger brother, who strives to escape from the provincialism of his Dutch immigrant background.

Eventually Don meets a Dutch Reformed girl, Greta Wigbaldy, the daughter of a successful builder, who encourages him in his worldly quest. She obtains a key to one of her father’s model homes, which they use for their rendezvous until they are caught while making love one evening when her parents arrive with buyers. Don soon finds himself committed to marry Greta.

Around this time, he contracts a slight case of tuberculosis, which requires him to go to a sanatorium near Denver for rest and recuperation. His marriage postponed indefinitely, Don finds himself bedridden and bored. He becomes a member of a small Thursday night literary group which gathers at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Simpson, but his reprieve comes when he meets Rena Baker, a lovely, demure girl who has just been moved from the infirmary to the ambulatory section. The two fall in love, although Rena is still quite ill and does not survive the winter. The pathos of Rena’s death foreshadows that of Don’s daughter Carol later, as does Dr. Simpson’s confession that he had a son, Stevie, who died of leukemia. Rena’s death further erodes Don’s faith, as he reflects, “Perfect love did not quite cast out fear, but rage did grief, or nearly so.”

Don returns to Chicago to find both his father and Greta Wigbaldy hospitalized in the same psychiatric institution, his father for depressive symptoms, and Greta for brooding over a child she had conceived out of wedlock with a married man at her office. When Greta’s parents discover that Don is back, they railroad him into marrying their daughter. Unfortunately, Greta’s emotional instability only worsens after they move to New York with Don’s advertising firm. Alcoholic binges and an extramarital affair mark the progress of her self-destructive behavior, which culminates in a suicide attempt that sends her to the hospital for six months. In the meantime, their daughter Carol has become a child of extraordinary grace and charm, and her father shifts his love and affection to her as Greta succeeds in her second suicide attempt.

The heart of the novel presents Don Wanderhope’s intense love and affection for his daughter, as he learns to cherish the joy of the ordinary, which, rather than suffering, best nourishes the soul. Having suffered so much already, Don is determined to enjoy every moment with his daughter, especially after a puzzling extended illness sends her to the hospital for a series of diagnostic tests. The novel deepens in religious significance as Wanderhope confronts the meaning of human suffering and death. He becomes a kind of modern, secular Job, buffeted by sorrow and loss, culminating in the last and greatest test of his faith, the discovery that his daughter has leukemia.

Through the final year that he spends with Carol, Wanderhope alternates between hope and despair as his daughter’s condition temporarily improves or worsens. The spectacle of other parents living through the agony of their children’s illness is enough to test anyone’s faith, as the novel confronts the theological issue of why the innocent suffer. Another parent, Stein, is driven to cynicism and bitterness by the tacit assumption among the hospital staff that “everything was fine.” Stein’s daughter, Rachel, and Carol become fast friends as he and Wanderhope share a fellowship of parental misery. They often commiserate during their long weekends on the children’s ward.

Carol becomes more thoughtful and mature as her disease worsens, actually helping to comfort her father. Birthday parties and weekend outings become great events during her temporary remissions, but the “beast” always returns. Wanderhope contemplates a statue of Christ near the hospital, which comes to represent for him the suffering servant. He prays to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases, to give them but one more year, but as Carol’s leukemia slips into remission, a drug reaction destroys her immune system and leaves her vulnerable to staph infection, which runs throughout the children’s ward. The blood of the lamb is sacrificed, meaninglessly, to the foul disease, which has come back to strike in disguised form. In his dignity as a suffering parent, Wanderhope achieves a kind of holiness akin to that of his brave child, who slips away as he watches over her one afternoon. He takes her unused birthday cake and flings it at the statue of the suffering Christ, the comedian who takes a pie in the face for all human suffering.

The Characters

Though De Vries is skilled at creating comic caricatures, Don Wanderhope is clearly at the center of the novel. An immigrant’s son from a poor and unpromising Dutch family, his principal motivation is to become successful enough to enjoy some of the benefits of the good life. Yet he is thwarted by a series of personal and family calamities. Wanderhope, as his name suggests, is born to wander (away from his childhood religion, in search of other consolations) and to hope (for some respite from the suffering meted out to himself and those he loves). A secular pilgrim, he chooses the comfortable path of an advertising career, but he is still beset by heartaches in his private life—Louie’s and Rena Baker’s deaths, his wife’s suicide, and finally, Carol’s death from leukemia.

A modern Job, he faces many temptations to his faith, and like Job, he is too honest to accept the easy answers of orthodoxy; but unlike Job, suffering does not deepen but diminishes his faith. For as Wanderhope comments at one point, “there seems to be little support in reality for the popular view that we are mellowed by suffering. Happiness mellows us, not troubles; pleasure, perhaps, even more than happiness.”

Carol Wanderhope, his daughter, is depicted as a graceful, charming, and vibrant girl, with blue eyes and straight blonde hair, an impish grin, and remarkable courage and fortitude. She is no doubt modeled after De Vries’s own daughter Emily, who also died of leukemia. Carol becomes the center of her father’s life after Greta’s suicide, and he lavishes such intense love upon her that one almost senses a foreboding of loss. She also becomes the focal point of her father’s faith and belief. Once her disease is diagnosed, she courageously endures the long and painful treatment for leukemia, and when her death finally comes, it is a shock, though not unexpected. Carol shows a wisdom beyond her years in her understanding of her father, especially in the tape-recorded message that she leaves for him after her death, and in her ability to bring joy and happiness to others despite her affliction. De Vries captures all the charm of her girlish mannerisms with great affection and care in making her an unforgettable character.

Greta Wanderhope, Don’s wife, on the other hand, is in many ways an unsatisfactory character. One is never given any credible motivation for her depression, alcoholism, or affairs, especially after her daughter’s birth, nor for her suicide. She seems to function primarily as a plot convenience, to be discarded when no longer needed. Rena Baker, though briefly presented, is a far more appealing character than Greta.

Some of De Vries’s minor characters are unforgettable comic types, such as Ben Wanderhope, Don’s immigrant Dutch father, with his insomnia and religious doubts; the quack Doc Berkenbosch; the organ-grinder, Mr. Italia; his voluptuous daughter Maria; the cynical Dr. Simpson at the sanatorium; the bitter unbeliever, Stein, whose daughter Rachel also has leukemia; and Mrs. Brodhag, Wanderhope’s sturdy New England housekeeper.

Critical Context

Many critics regard The Blood of the Lamb, published midway in De Vries’s career, as his finest as well as his most serious novel. Basically a comic novelist, De Vries has often dealt with religious issues in a circumspect manner, but here he allows his seriousness of purpose to become more apparent. He employs a confessional format as a way of placing his narrator in a grotesque, bewildering world in which his characters have little control over events. His response to that world has been comic, as if to say that our only defense is to laugh at the tragic absurdity or grotesqueness of life. This tragicomic note is best illustrated by the birthday party in the hospital for the children suffering from leukemia. There is nothing more pathetic than the death of a child, and De Vries registers that pathos in the cynicism of Stein and the impulsive anger of Wanderhope, who flings his daughter’s birthday cake at the statue of Christ.

In The Blood of the Lamb, De Vries employs his comic genius to serious purpose in confronting the contemporary meaning of suffering. If the tone of the novel seems mixed, that is intentional, since the grotesque is “a blend of the tragic and the comic.” De Vries does not escape into nihilism in his rejection of traditional religious views but affirms, in his narrator’s credo, a clear set of humanistic values. In refusing to hold God responsible for the death of his daughter, Wanderhope dignifies himself in his suffering and affirms a compassionate Deity, worthy of worship, who shares the burden of human sorrow.

Bibliography

Bowden, Edwin T. Peter De Vries. Boston: Twayne, 1983. A concise critical biography that provides a useful overview of De Vries’s life and works. After an introductory biographical chapter, Bowden discusses each of De Vries’s major novels. The text is supplemented by a chronology, notes, and a selected bibliography of primary and secondary works.

Campion, Dan. Peter De Vries and Surrealism. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1995. Provides chapters on De Vries’s literary life, his encounter with surrealism in the 1930’s, his novel But Who Wakes the Bugler, and his use of humor. Includes very detailed notes and bibliography.

David, Douglas M. “An Interview with Peter De Vries.” College English 28 (April, 1967): 524-530. A lively interview in which the author raises some interesting questions about De Vries’s style of humor. De Vries discusses his use of suburban settings, his character types, and his humorous attitude toward sexuality.

Higgins, William R. “Peter De Vries.” In American Novelists Since World War II. Vol. 6 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 1980. A standard author entry that provides a useful profile of De Vries’s life and works. It includes a list of primary and secondary sources.

Jellema, Roderick. Peter De Vries: A Critical Essay. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1966. This monograph in the Contemporary Writers in Christian Perspective series includes a critical study of De Vries’s first eight novels. This study points to the religious issues that are often overlooked in discussions of De Vries as a humorist.

Sale, Richard B. “An Interview in New York with Peter De Vries.” Studies in the Novel 1 (1969): 364-369. This interview touches on De Vries’s writing habits and includes questions about the type of humor in his novels and his view of the world. De Vries discusses the question of whether he is a black humorist.

Yagoda, Ben. “Being Seriously Funny.” The New York Times Magazine, June 12, 1983, 42-44. A feature article that presents a portrait of De Vries and an overview of his literary career. Yagoda’s article offers a good introduction to the writer and his work.