The Second Coming

Allison “Allie” Huger is a protagonist and love interest to Will Barrett in The Second Coming. She is the daughter of Kitty Vaught Huger. Allison was raised in a wealthy home and was preparing to become a classical singer until she experienced a mental health crisis. Her parents sent her to a psychiatric institution, where her psychologist, Dr. Duk, prescribed electro-convulsive therapy, which erased many of her memories. Despite this loss, Allison escapes from the institution by relying on written instructions left by her past self before the electro-convulsive session. She travels to North Carolina to find a property left by her aunt Sally Kemp and take up legal residence there.

Allison wears large, practical clothing she purchased after escaping from the hospital, and she has a boyish appearance due to her baggy clothes and short hair. When Will first meets her, he describes her hair as “cut short and brushed carefully, as old-fashioned as the book she was reading. It made him think of the expression ‘boyish bob’” (76). Allison’s old-fashioned bob is the result of her choosing a random haircut from a movie poster for Three Days of the Condor (1975). The haircut symbolically suggests her disconnection from modern society and modern gender expectations.

Allison struggles to live in the modern world, which her mother believes might be due to a past life as a Civil War sex worker and spy, in which Allison’s past self was too immersed in worldly and material pleasures. Allison also feels that she has failed at living, claiming, “[M]y mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted” (94). However, once Allison is living on her own in Sally Kemp’s old greenhouse, she finds that she can successfully care for herself once she is away from the pressures of other people’s expectations. Her success through stepping away from society highlights The Absurdity of Modern Life. Without being watched and evaluated by others, she learns to be self-sufficient and even begins to enjoy singing again for its own sake.

Allison struggles with her inability to communicate with others through speech. Because of her amnesia and her anxiety, Allison finds it difficult to talk to other people and to understand their responses. She worries about offending people by leaving conversations, and she cannot comprehend why so many people say words that are clearly contrary to their actual feelings and intentions. Will notices that Allison “spoke slowly and carefully as if she were reading the words on his face” (76). When she speaks in an unrehearsed manner, Allison’s dialogue is confusing and full of puns or linguistic jokes. A major reason that Allison falls in love with Will is that he understands her unusual manner of speaking and provides her with the words that she needs in order to talk clearly with others.

Katherine “Kitty” Vaught Huger is a love interest to Will Barrett and an antagonist of The Second Coming. Kitty was previously Will’s lover when they were much younger; their relationship is more prominent in Walker Percy’s novel The Last Gentleman. After travelling with Kitty and her two brothers, Sutter Vaught and the terminally ill Jamie Vaught, Will began a love affair with Kitty. However, Will eventually married Marion Peabody instead and has not seen Kitty since then. Kitty has since married a dentist, although she does not love her husband. When Kitty reappears in The Second Coming, in town for Leslie’s wedding, she tries to initiate an affair with Will.

Kitty is an attractive older woman who has become more confident and sensual with age. Will notices how she has changed since their previous encounter: “[S]he was bolder, lustier, better-looking but almost brawny, a lady golfer, brown and freckle-shouldered. Her voice was deeper, a musical whiskey-mellowed country-club voice with a laugh he didn’t remember” (131). While Will is still attracted to Kitty, his description of her hints that they have become romantically incompatible over time as Will sees his golfing, wealthy lifestyle as a form of living death.

As a mother, Kitty is caring but overbearing toward Allison. Kitty’s high expectations for Allison’s life and career have pushed Allison into a mental health crisis, with Allison now certain that failure is inevitable. Kitty wants to put Allison back in a psychiatric hospital because she believes it is the only safe environment for her to live; however, Allison finds that she is capable of taking care of herself and solving problems as long as she is not subjected to the pressure and judgment of other people. At the end of The Second Coming, Kitty is furious with Will for what she sees as a perverted and predatory relationship with her daughter. Will uses his legal knowledge to ensure that Kitty will not be able to institutionalize Allision again, but he and Kitty are no longer on good terms.