A Death In The Family Character Analysis

Paloma Del Toro
Leadership Essay
10/10/17
Mr. Partyka
An Unfortunate Series of Events When life turns into a living nightmare, a child may not know what is real nor what is fake, life may become confusing. In the excerpt A Death in the Family by James Agee, this is the unfortunate sequence of events. A Death in the Family follows the events and internal conflicts that are happening inside the 6 year old, Rufus when he finds out of the unfortunate and untimely death of his father. Rufus cannot believe that “My daddy is dead.” (Jewkes 88) and is seen in denial throughout; but the child is only thinking about his own feelings, and does not know how to cope. James Agee, the author of A Death in the Family also had the unfortunate series of events

Rufus in A Death in the Family understands that death is permanent, but he still has not yet to recognize how to grieve or how to cope with the death of his father. In a way, it can be seen as Rufus is only thinking about himself and not about how the death of his father might affect others around him he saw it as showing it off to the world “To be without them teasing; looking up to me.” (Jewkes 98) Rufus is using this as an advantage to himself by “Showing off to people because he is dead”(Jewkes 98) so they would not make fun of him, but so they can look up to him because of his bravery. His ways of coping, were more like ways of finding how this death could make him a beneficiary in some way. 6 year olds do not have the knowledge of how death works, so he does not realize at first that his dad is not coming back. In the quotations above, the character Rufus is caught “Going out in the street like that when he is dead / Out on the street like what? / Showing off to people because he is dead.”(Jewkes 99). Rufus’ character is trying to live in the light of his father. After his father was pronounced dead, he then “thought of the ash tray on its weighted strap on the arm; it was empty. He ran his finger inside it; there was only a dim smudge of ash. There was nothing like enough to keep in his pocket or wrap up in a paper. He looked at his finger for a moment and licked it; his tongue tasted of darkness. ” (Jewkes 99) Rufus was trying to commemorate or live in his father’s spirit, or have a piece of his father inside himself. Given these points, the excerpt of A Death in the Family by James Agee followed the Alias for James himself, Rufus. Rufus used his own father’s death to help him advance further. Experiences shape the way a situation is viewed. And when something as severe as A death in the family occurs, perspectives and ideas are susceptible to