Summary: Chapter 15
Among the people who come to see Will is Cold Sassy’s
Methodist preacher, who wonders if Will’s escape is a sign that
Will is meant for great things. The visitors tell stories of train
accidents, most of them gory. One local man who works as a reporter
wants to interview Will about his harrowing experience. Suddenly,
the group hears Rucker’s voice from the veranda.
Summary: Chapter 16
Alone in the kitchen, Will tells Rucker about his adventure
and is relieved when Rucker does not, as the other visitors do,
tell Will to thank God for sparing him or act as if Will’s survival
were a miracle. Will asks Rucker if God’s will saved him from the
train. Rucker says Will lived because he had the sense to lie between
the tracks and that God can take credit only for giving Will a brain
with which to think. Will asks Rucker why Jesus said that if one
asks for something one will receive it, even though one doesn’t
usually get that for which one prays. Rucker says that maybe Jesus
was asleep when he said that, maybe people misinterpreted his words,
or maybe he never said it at all and the disciples fabricated the
promise to entice people to join the church. Will and
Rucker go back to the parlor, and Rucker asks everyone to join him
in a prayer. He shocks the guests by asking God to bless Mattie
Lou, but he moves them by asking God to help Miss Love know that
anything good in him comes from Mattie Lou. After the prayer, Mary
Willis hugs Miss Love, and all the guests follow her example except
for Loma, who storms off in a jealous huff.
Analysis: Chapters 11–16
The prejudices of Cold Sassy extend beyond racism to include
class hatred. Cold Sassy residents discriminate against their poor
neighbors from Mill Town, ostracizing them and calling them lintheads because
they work at the cotton mill. Physical differences distinguish the
Cold Sassy residents from the Mill Town residents, who have blonde
hair and lint-specked clothes. Like Loomis and Queenie, whose black
skin makes them the target of racism, the lintheads’ physical differences
make them easy to single out. Will becomes uncomfortable when he
thinks of his classmates from Mill Town, partly because of their
grimy appearance and partly because of his growing awareness of
the disparities caused by social class. He feels torn in his feelings
for Lightfoot. He is attracted to her common sense, intelligence,
and appearance, but he has been conditioned to see her as useless
and unworthy of him. Although he senses the unfairness of the stigma
against Mill Town residents, Will lacks the confidence to follow
his beliefs and openly befriend Lightfoot.
When Will talks to Rucker, he realizes he has an audience
eager to hear his story for the story’s sake, not for the chance
to drool over gossip or make pious remarks. Will’s narrow escape
from death stimulates his desire to understand life and prompts
his curiosity about God and human agency. In Rucker, Will finds
someone willing to listen to doubts about God and religions without
acting shocked. Only in front of Rucker can Will wonder aloud whether God
helped him survive. Doubting that God intervenes in the affairs of
men is considered blasphemous in Cold Sassy, where people believe
that everything happens according to God’s will. After confronting
danger and using his own wits to survive, Will feels qualified to
wonder whether God saved him or whether he saved himself.
Rucker voices what seems to be the novel’s position on
God. He says that although God might give people a nudge in one
direction or another, people shape their own destinies and God does
not interfere in every individual sickness, worry, and event in
people’s lives. In Rucker’s opinion, Will’s survival fits with this
theory that both divine and human agency influence life; Will survived
thanks to his own intelligence, but God gave Will the brain to think
with in the first place. Rucker maintains that God makes
up the general rules for when people should die, but does not interfere
in individual deaths. Rucker thinks that although God never wills
any individual’s death, he created death to allow for growth and
change—the type of growth and change that he undergoes over the
course of the novel.
