The Second Coming

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980

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Summary

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-7

Part 2, Chapters 1-3

Part 2, Chapters 4-5

Character Analysis

Themes

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Part 2, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary

Allison takes care of Will after watching him fall into her greenhouse from the cave. She finds him easy to interact with. While she is normally uncomfortable with people looking at her, his gaze is less invasive and violating. Allison thinks that she might make a good nurse to comatose people since she can work efficiently and skillfully if no one is watching her.

Allison has grown stronger and more self-sufficient during her time in the greenhouse. However, she also finds that the late afternoon brings about a bad emotional state once she has completed all of her work for the day but it is not yet time to sleep. She considers that she might need company other than the dog, but the idea of sex or a romantic partnership is unappealing. She feels upset when men look at her sexually, and she feels no desire for women. Love does not make sense to her.

When Will wakes up, he asks Allison to run some errands for him including sending a telegram, moving his car, and bringing Dr. Vance Battle to see him. Allison goes out to complete these errands and takes joy in them, realizing that she likes having concrete and ordinary tasks to structure her life. While her family always expected her to be extraordinary, she would prefer to get an ordinary job once her money runs out. Allison sends the telegram and contacts Dr. Vance, telling him that Will Barrett is injured at her place after a caving accident. She buys steaks to cook for dinner that night.

When Allison returns to the greenhouse, she finds that Will is gone and feels lonely and upset. However, on heading to fill her water jug, she finds him outside, having fallen down again. She brings him inside and lies on him to help warm him up. Will tells her that he often falls down, and she says that’s fine because she is a good hoister after the stove project.

They lay beside each other, and Will tells Allison that he knew her mother well when he was young. He also reports that Kitty has proposed that he become Allison’s legal guardian in the event that Allison is deemed mentally unfit to manage her own affairs. While Will believes she is competent, he offers to be her guardian and protect the Kemp property for her to live in. Allison asks if he was her mother’s lover and if he could be her biological father. Will gives an ambiguous response. Allison feels that she understands love now, experiencing love for Will through his words and their shared physical touch. They eat the steak dinner, and Will tells her that he must return home to take care of the people he is responsible for, with her now included.

Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary

Will leaves Allison’s house and finds his Mercedes in the parking lot. Before going home, he sits for a while in contemplation. He recalls the pleasurable activities he used to do with Marion in this car and considers its German engineering, wondering if the problem in his life is the defeat of the Germans, which means he has no enemy anymore. He reminisces in turn about a car trip with his father across the American West; on the trip, which took place after the hunting accident, they both realized they could never fix their relationship.

As Will ponders, he has a revelation that he needs an enemy. He has to figure out what the enemy is. In a religious litany, he names his enemy as living death. Will condemns the way that Americans in the modern age live in a state like death, failing to do anything that feels meaningful or truly joyful as they instead seek material comforts. He decides that systems like the church, marriage, and family are not the answer, but rather are forms of living death.

Glad that he has finally defeated the love of death inherited from his father, Will goes to sleep in the back of the Mercedes and dreams about an incident in his childhood. His family had recently died, and their Black servant, D’Lo, tried to be kind to him. D’Lo told young Will that God had a plan for him even after Will was rude to her. At the end of the dream, Will hears a mysterious voice that tells him this memory is the meaningful thing he has been seeking.

Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary

The next morning, Will is woken up by Kitty, who has just returned from playing golf and spotted him sleeping in his car. Upset with him for missing their tryst, she does not suspect that he was going through a spiritual and mental crisis. She tells him that she plans to divorce Walter, her dentist husband, and that she suspects that Allison is living in the old Kemp place. Kitty proposes that, in a previous life, her daughter was a prostitute and spy duping the Civil War, which is why in her current life, Allison has limited speech and use of her body. Kitty thinks that her daughter cannot live in the world and should be put in an institution, where she can be cared for and kept happy.

Will goes home and finds that Leslie has closed up the house. After the wedding, Leslie and her new husband are planning to start The Peabody Foundation with Jack Curt, creating love and faith Christian communities across the state. Will misses the old, sour Leslie, distrusting her new cheerful tone. As he drives in the Mercedes to go and find her, he crashes the car into a tree. He walks to a nearby diner, eats breakfast, and then starts a conversation with a man who is going to Georgia to sell some property. Will claims to be standing at the bus stop because he is going to Georgia, thinking of the swamp where he and his father went hunting.

However, once Will boards the bus, he realizes that he does not want to go back to the swamp in Georgia. He demands to be let off, but the driver refuses. He attempts to take the bus hostage. When the driver brakes, Will slams into the window and is knocked unconscious.

Will wakes in the hospital at Duke University. Dr. Vance Battle explains that the doctors have determined that Will has a rare form of epilepsy related to the PH of his blood called Hausmann’s Syndrome. This issue is why Will falls down, often wanders away, and struggles with periods of hyper-sexuality. Will feels like he has been drafted into the army, his life now entirely out of his own control.

Part 2, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Part 2 of The Second Coming explores the aftermath of Will’s attempted suicide and his growing bond with Allison. Will’s helplessness is contrasted with Allison’s growing confidence and capability. While Kitty still focuses on Allison’s deficits, talking only about what she lacks, Allison has come to realize her ability to live independently—though she also wants some human connection.

Will’s fall into Allison’s greenhouse is a key development in the novel’s exploration of The Purpose of Love. In taking care of him, Allison finds that she enjoys having another person’s company. Previously, Allison found the presence of other people upsetting and disorienting, recalling that “the moment a pair of eyes focused on her, she was a beetle stuck on a pin, arms and legs beating the air. There was no purchase. It was an impalement and a derailment” (233). Allison portrays the experience of being watched as violent and invasive, expressing in similar terms her discomfort with the way that men sexualize her and objectify her. However, Allison realizes that she does not feel violated or paralyzed by Will’s gaze, instead finding herself drawn to the comfort his presence provides.

By helping Will, Allison comes to understand that her real problem has been in the expectations placed upon her, and not in her own ability, marking progress for her as well as she grapples with The Absurdity of Modern Life. As she successfully accomplishes the tasks that Will needs her to do, she takes pleasure in being able to navigate the world and be clearly understood. Her accomplishments prompt her to reconsider her beliefs about the value of the ordinary:

[S]he had thought (and her mother expected) that she must do something extraordinary, be somebody extraordinary. Whereas the trick lay in living the most ordinary life imaginable, get an ordinary job, in itself a joy in its very ordinariness, and then be as extraordinary or ordinary as one pleased. That was the secret (247).

Allison’s new perspective indicates the importance of free will and choice in her life. Rather than living an incredible life because her mother expects it, she decides that being extraordinary is only meaningful and valuable when she chooses it for herself. Kitty remains convinced that Allison is a completely inactive person, suggesting that Allison is the reincarnation of a Civil War prostitute and spy: “Then she was too much of this world, she knew too many men, talked too much, lied too much, and abused her body. So now she is not of this world, knows nobody, can’t talk enough to lie, doesn’t use her body at all” (286). Kitty sees Allison for what she lacks, portraying her daughter as passive and unable to make choices. However, these chapters show that Allison does make decisions and takes action when she finds practical reasons for doing so. Allison’s inactive state, in reality, was simply the result of trying to live only to please other people.

Allison and Will’s growing affection is motivated by Will’s weak and vulnerable condition, which the narrative frames through a Christian lens. When Will first crawls out of the cave, Allison connects the physical indications of his suffering with those of Christ after the crucifixion:

the abdomen dropping away hollow under the ribs, the thin arms and legs with their heavy slack straps of muscle, cold as clay, reminded her of some paintings of the body of Christ taken down from the crucifix, the white flesh gone blue with death (236).

By comparing Will’s body to the body of Christ, Percy suggests that Will’s suffering and confrontation with death has resulted in rebirth and salvation, just as Christ’s crucifixion resulted in the redemption of humanity. Another aspect of Will’s Christ-like role in these chapters comes when he finally identifies his enemy: death. As Will sits in his car, the narration shifts into a speech-like style that mirrors the language of a sermon, further indicating Will’s role in theme of The Search for Signs of God. Will declares, “[H]ere are the names of death, which shall not prevail over me because I know the names” (272). By refashioning himself as the enemy of death, Will imitates Christ’s defeat over death at the moment of his resurrection. Therefore, the second coming, Percy hints, is Will’s finding new purpose in life and turning away from his suicidal urges.