The Morning Watch by James Agee

First published: 1951

Type of plot:Bildungsroman

Time of work: Good Friday, 1924

Locale: An Episcopalian boys’ school in middle Tennessee

Principal Characters:

• Richard, nicknamed “Sockertees,” the twelve-year-old protagonist
• Richard’s Mother, a well-meaning but somewhat smothering and ineffectual parent
• Hobe Gillum, and
• Jimmy Toole, Richard’s rambunctious companions, approximately his age
• George Fitzgerald, and
• Lee Allen, older boys, prefects who might be called to the priesthood
• Willard Rivenburg, the school’s leading athlete, admired by the younger boys
• Claude Gray, an effeminate boy who is fanatically pious
• Father Fish, Richard’s favorite teacher

The Novel

As far as outer action is concerned, not much happens in The Morning Watch. The story itself is so short that it is best described as a novella. All of the story’s action occurs within two or three hours during the early morning of Good Friday. Only the most devout could call the action earthshaking: Three boys sleeping in a dormitory are awakened at 3:45 a.m. to take their turns in a religious vigil; they join other worshipers in the silent, prayerful watch at the school chapel; then they wander off together for a cold swim in a nearby quarry, the Sand Cut. By far the longest section of this three-part story is the middle part, devoted to an hour’s watch in the chapel.

Most of the action in The Morning Watch occurs inside Richard, the twelve-year-old whose consciousness the reader shares. For Richard, the Easter season is, like the new year for others, a time of heightened awareness, of taking stock, of awakenings and new beginnings. This particular Easter season is special for Richard because it also marks his transition from childhood to adolescence. It is his one big time of awakening to the prospects of manhood—to sexuality, to independence, to his own nature, and to the nature of existence generally. His life takes a new but fairly natural direction.

Richard’s development and his religion influence each other. Just as the Easter season stimulates his adolescent awakening, so his awakening in turn influences his religious views. With amusement and shame, Richard thinks back on himself a year before, when, as an eleven-year-old religious fanatic, he aspired to sainthood, practiced self-mortification, and even harbored crucifixion fantasies. Getting himself crucified, however, raised certain practical difficulties: In his fantasies, he thought of building a cross in the school’s shop, but since he lacked woodworking skills, he had to settle for being crucified on one of the school’s iron bedsteads.

Now Richard is amazed at the change which a year has wrought in him. His aspirations to sainthood faded during summer vacation in Knoxville, and he became aware of the pride, irreverence, and craziness of his fantasies. Besides, he started indulging in a solitary sex act. Even now, as he imagines Christ’s wounds, he cannot help picturing them in terms of Minnielee Henley’s intimate parts, which he saw when they were climbing a tree together. Richard realizes that, as a saint, he is a washout.

Now Richard sees himself as merely another erring human being, and it seems to be a predicament that he cannot escape. Even as he prays and beats his chest in contrition, the devil tempts him with irreverent and prideful thoughts. He recalls portraits of a simpering and effeminate Jesus, finds the idea of intoxication of Christ’s blood amusing, and thinks Claude Gray’s attitude of prayer is theatrical. Anguished at such thoughts, Richard berates himself more, until he can finally congratulate himself that he is contrite and humble. Immediately he realizes that he has sinned again, in the very process of atonement. So it goes for Richard, in a vicious circle of alternating contrition and pride.

Leaving his soul in the hands of a merciful God, Richard gets on with the business of growing up. After attending the vigil, he and the other two boys, Hobe and Jimmy, assert their independence through a gross violation of the rules. Instead of returning to the dormitory, they go off to the Sand Cut for a swim. Here, when they strip naked, they silently appraise each other’s progress toward manhood. In a daring expression of his budding manhood, Richard dives to the cold, muddy bottom of the Sand Cut. He confirms the results of this test when, on the way back to school, the boys come across a beautiful snake which may or may not be poisonous. Admiring the snake, Richard does not really want to kill it, but when Hobe mortally wounds it, Richard finishes the snake off by smashing its striking head with repeated blows from a rock held in his hand. The other boys, and Richard himself, are impressed by his feats, and the three boys are in high spirits as they return home to their inevitable punishment. Not even the fear of punishment or the thought that the snake will survive until sundown (similar to Christ suffering on the Cross) prevents Richard from secretly exulting over his strong right hand, on which the snake’s blood and saliva have not yet finished drying.

The Characters

Richard’s development is dramatic because up until now he has been something of a mother’s boy. His father died when Richard was six, leaving Richard in the sole care of his mother, an exceedingly religious woman, who enrolled him in the Episcopalian boys’ boarding school so he could be in the company of other boys and men. Yet the woman herself took up residence on the school’s grounds, causing Richard to hang around her cottage, trying to get a glimpse of her (usually denied). Meanwhile, Richard apparently suffered the harsh, lonely fate of most mother’s boys who are dropped into the midst of the wolf pack. His self-mortifications and fantasies of martyrdom are obvious emotional outlets. To Richard, intimidated and demoralized, his lack of status is still excruciatingly evident. Even on this Good Friday morning, the older boys scorn his meekly offered statements and refer to him as “crazy”—a judgment with which Richard privately concurs.

As Richard grows and asserts himself, there are stirrings of rebellion against his mother and against religion, which he associates with his mother and with effeminate behavior. He feels a moment of hatred for his mother, who teaches that being good means submitting to the unhappiness that God decrees. In that case, Richard thinks, who wants to be good? Other available models of goodness are hardly more inspiring. Poor Claude Gray, with his effeminate voice, looks, and manners, is grotesque in his abandonment to piety. His mother having died, Claude has attached himself to the Virgin Mary and seems fixated on the sainthood stage that Richard has recently left. The two smug prefects, George Fitzgerald and Lee Allen, busy with their flower and candle arrangements, are not much better, though George is kind toward the younger boys, while Lee harasses them.

One person whom Lee does not attack is the great, hulking athlete Willard Rivenburg, even though Willard sits in the vestry with the prefects, devours their coffee and cookies, and laughs satanically. The younger boys practically worship the manly Willard, an antimasque figure who embodies their spirit of mischief. Foulmouthed Hobe seems well on his way to becoming another Willard, while Richard, after he performs a notable athletic feat, emulates Willard’s slack-jawed stance. Even so, Richard notes objectively that Willard easily falls asleep anywhere and seems to know as little as a person can. A better role model for Richard appears to be Father Fish, his favorite teacher.

Since The Morning Watch is autobiographical, there was once much interest in identifying the characters. Perhaps the only identification still of interest is young Agee himself, as represented in Richard. Though fairly natural, Richard’s development is uneven in pace, occurs in excessive forms, and leaves certain conflicts unresolved. In short, Richard remains a bit crazy and seems to forecast the adult Agee’s troubles (three marriages, undisciplined habits, and an early, fatal heart attack).

Critical Context

The Morning Watch belongs to a long and distinguished line of American Bildungsromane, including Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Though The Morning Watch has neither the comic tone nor the idiomatic style of these two monumental works, it shares their American skepticism about becoming “civilized” and deserves some of their popularity. In its own restrained way, The Morning Watch is a small, undiscovered American masterpiece.

Agee produced very little fiction, The Morning Watch being the only longer piece published during his lifetime (A Death in the Family was published posthumously, winning a Pulitzer Prize). Yet The Morning Watch clearly shows Agee’s considerable talent. Structurally it is a complex but tightly controlled and unified work. The rich, demanding style combines William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, subtlety and photographic clarity.

Bibliography

Barson, Alfred. A Way of Seeing: A Critical Study of James Agee. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972. A revisionist view of Agee, whose earliest critics thought that the writer’s talents were dissipated by his diverse interests, causing him not to produce enough quality material, but who judged him to have been improving and focusing his skills at the time of his death. Barson inverts this thesis, stating that Agee’s finished work should not be so slighted, and that his powers were declining when he died. Contains notes and an index. Should not be confused with A Way of Seeing: Photographs of New York (New York: Viking Press, 1965), a collection of photographs by Helen Levitt with an essay by Agee.

Bergeen, Laurence. James Agee: A Life. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984. The definitive biography of Agee, based on interviews with those who knew him and examinations of his papers. Also contains illustrations, notes, a bibliography of Agee’s writings, a bibliography of works about him, and an index.

Hersey, John. Introduction to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. A long and thorough appraisal by one of Agee’s contemporaries who practiced much the same blend of reportage and literary interpretation that distinguishes Agee’s best work.

Kramer, Victor A. James Agee. Boston: Twayne, 1975. This short introduction to the life and works of Agee is a good book for the beginning researcher. Besides providing a biography of the writer and a careful discussion of all of his major works, Kramer also includes a chronology of Agee’s life, an annotated bibliography, and an index.

Lofaro, Michael, ed. James Agee: Reconsiderations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. Contains an Agee chronology; a brief biography; essays on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, on A Death in the Family, and on Agee’s journalism; and a bibliography of secondary sources. Several essays argue for ranking Agee higher as a literary figure than previous critics have allowed.

Madden, David, and Jeffrey J. Folks, eds. Remembering James Agee, 2d ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997. The twenty-two essays in this book touch on every important aspect of Agee’s life and work. They range from the reminiscences of Father Flye to those of his third wife, Mia Agee. The interpretive essays on his fiction and films are particularly illuminating, as are the essays on his life as a reporter and writer for Fortune and Time.

Seib, Kenneth. James Agee: Promise and Fulfillment. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968. As the subtitle indicates, Seib’s study rescues Agee from the critical judgment that his work was more potential than performance. Maintains that Agee’s contemporaries could not recognize his greatness because they judged him by traditional standards, when the writer was actually striking out in new directions that they did not understand. Agee is a link between the traditional man of letters and the new media of film and television. Contains notes, an index, a bibliography of works about Agee, and a bibliography of Agee’s writings. Includes a list of his film and book reviews, which are often hard to track down.