43 pages • 1 hour read
Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. LeeThe Night Thoreau Spent In Jail
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1970A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act II, Pages 71-84Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Pages 71-84 Summary
Lights illuminate the jail cell, and the town clock strikes two. Henry rises and tells the Bailey that though the government controls his body, he remains a free man because it cannot control his mind. Lydian appears, telling Henry he must “go along” to “get along,” a sentiment Henry loathes. When Edward and Henry go huckleberrying, Edward races to fill his basket, but Henry moves with “deliberate relaxation.” When Edward trips, spilling his basket, Henry reassures him that he has just planted a whole field of huckleberries for a generation of Emersons. Henry pours his berries into Edward’s basket, surprising the boy, who says the berries are Henry’s; but Henry refers to ownership as a kind of “voodoo” that means “absolutely nothing.” Edward wishes that Henry was his father, and he tells Lydian this when they return. Edward says Henry can be her husband, too, since he would stay at home rather than travel abroad.
Lydian dismisses Edward and tells Henry it might not be a good idea for Henry to work there while Waldo is away. They discuss the “accidental” nature of love, and she asks why Henry chooses loneliness. Just then, Edward bursts in, holding a chicken with gloves on its feet. Days before, Lydian complained that the chickens were scratching up her garden, so Henry made gloves for them all. Edward runs to show his friends, and Lydian tells Henry to find someone to love. He responds that he already has. She doesn’t want him to be lonely, she says, and he asks about her loneliness, pointing out how she goes to bed alone at night. It’s a pity, he says, that she is so “safe” with him.
In the cell, Bailey expresses his fear of going to trial without a lawyer. He asks Henry to act as his lawyer, but Henry refuses, comparing lawyers to the devil. When Bailey asks Henry to say a prayer for him, Henry laments a God so “absentminded” that he must be reminded “Adam had children” (80). Henry folds his hands, using prayerful language, but ultimately chastises God for not treating Bailey better. Bailey returns to his cot, and Henry is back at Walden.
A scared Black man in tattered clothes appears and, when Henry reaches for his hoe, the man leaps onto Henry’s back and refuses to let go until Henry shows him the hoe is not a rifle. Henry speaks gently, asking what he can do to help, and the man asks for food. He is on his way to Canada. Henry tells him there’s bread inside, and the man is shocked to be allowed inside alone. Henry offers to catch a fish if the man will stay for dinner. The man calls himself “Williams,” as he once “belonged” to a Mr. Williams. Henry assures Williams that he hates “slavery,” too, and Williams asks why Henry lives in a “slave shack.” Henry laughs and says he wants to prove that “less is more” (82). Henry calls him “Mr. Williams” and suggests the man adopt a first name too. Williams decides that “Henry Williams” sounds like a free man. Henry cautions Williams against running “right into what [he’s] running away from,” because, he warns, the North has a kind of “slavery” too (83). Williams wants to stay with Henry, claiming he never felt freer than he does now. Though he is welcome, Henry tells him, Williams must find his “own Walden” where his skin color will not define his role in society and, even in Massachusetts, it will. Henry tells him to continue on to Canada.
Act II, Pages 71-84 Analysis
The Importance of Simplicity is developed to a greater extent in Act II. Edward is shocked when Henry gives him his own berries, and Henry explains that “Like most of the voodoo of ownership, it means absolutely nothing” (75). To own things, people must work long hours, trading freedom for money. In this sense, things own people and not the other way around. Thus, Henry believes ownership is only an illusion—people believe in it because it comforts them. Further, most people also believe that owning more things proves their success, and this is another idea Henry disavows. When Williams asks why Henry lives in a “slave shack”—his cabin at Walden is small and spare—Henry says that he’s “really very wealthy; [he] just [doesn’t] have any money” (82). Living simply means that Henry’s time is his own and he needn’t spend his days working for someone else.
Henry’s character, as well as Waldo’s, is complicated by Henry’s conversation with Lydian, which has undertones of flirtatiousness. He clearly wants to be of service to her, doing things to make her life better; he is “sheepish” when he explains how he solved her chicken problem. When she says that perhaps Henry shouldn’t be there when Waldo is away, he tells her not to be “afraid” of him, and she moves “restlessly” when she says, “Oh, you’re going to tell me that you have too much respect. For the Sage of Concord” (76). Lydian’s use of her husband’s unofficial title sounds sarcastic, given its context within a sentence fragment. Waldo travels the world as the “Sage of Concord” while his intelligent and vibrant wife must remain at home, keeping house and sleeping alone. Henry says that her only bedfellow is a letter that tells “about [her] husband’s overwhelming passion…for Carlyle,” referring to Thomas Carlyle, a Scots writer whom Waldo favors (79). When Lydian tells Henry to find someone to love, he says, “I have,” without explaining, though he asks her later, “Isn’t it a pity that you are so ‘safe’ with me?” even touching her sleeve (79). He not only refers to Lydian’s empty bed but even seems regretful that they cannot pursue a relationship. Moreover, their criticism of Waldo is implicit in their conversation; he may be Henry’s mentor and Concord’s Sage, but he is also a flawed human who can be self-centered and hypocritical in his personal life.
Henry’s professed hatred of the institution of enslavement expands on another of the play’s themes: Freedom and Liberty for All. Just as Henry cannot abide an unjust war in Mexico that results in thousands of innocent lives lost, he will neither ignore nor financially support the institution of enslavement. He tells Williams, “I’ve got no more stomach for slavery than you do,” assuring the man that in Henry’s home, Williams is “as free as [Henry is]” (82). On hearing this, Williams is comforted and “begins to breathe more easily” (82). Henry treats Williams with civility and concern, politely offering the man what he can without reservation or suspicion. He is horrified by Williams’s first idea to call himself “Mr. Henry’s Williams” because, he tells him, Williams doesn’t “belong” to anyone (83). Williams’s desire to remain at Walden with Henry is proof of Henry’s sincere belief in equality.
However, to 21st century readers, some of Henry’s claims might speak to a privilege that the text never examines. He says, for example: “there’s slavery in the North, too. Every man shackled to a ten-hour-a-day job is a work-slave. Every man who has to worry about next month’s rent is a money-slave” (83). Henry believes that most people resign their freedom to their work so that they can afford more. Through obedience to tradition or societal expectations, they allow their minds to be imprisoned, though their bodies are free. Nevertheless, there are considerable differences between this voluntary condition and the involuntary condition of enslavement. Henry problematically implies that Bailey, for example, is essentially the same as Williams. Bailey, though a professed vagrant, is white and thus enjoys privileges and opportunities that Williams does not.
