Witness

Act III accelerates the divisions in the town. The Klan begins a series of anonymous threats against select townspeople, and the group’s immorality becomes more evident through their lawlessness and violence. However, Hesse also relates incidents of beauty, hope, and selflessness amongst those who stand against the Klan.

Sara and Esther continue to be reminders of a simple and pure life. Esther especially is attuned to the satisfaction and serenity that comes from completing common chores. When she and Sara bring rhubarb to town, Hesse incorporates sound imagery to demonstrate Esther’s joy in the simple task: The wagon “squeaks, squeaks” to town, and Esther describes the journey back to the farm with the “rattle-empty wagon / and five jingle nickels” (54). Squeaks, rattles, and jingles are light-hearted, cheerful sounds. Hesse uses imagery again when Esther describes the circus setting up in town; the men have “big hammerings,” the breakfast sizzles and fills the meadow with good smells, the smaller tents look like “spiderwebs / traced in raindrops” (85) while the ladies have sparkly clothes and the clowns flop in their big shoes. Esther delights in how “all the circus people and animals / did have knowings of the job they must do” (85), and she even finds a job for her father; he must give the clowns better fittings for their feet so their shoes won’t flop. Esther believes every person and animal has a knowledge of where they fit into the natural order of life, and the sight of so many people and animals who do exactly what they should fills her with joy.

Sara and Esther’s experience at the fair reinforces the theme of the goodness and beauty in nature. Esther recognizes the games of chance as cheats, and she is angry with the sideshows and games that encourage people to “[take] shots at the ‘n*****’s head’” (91). Drawn to the horse races and livestock exhibitions, she wants to again learn the names of all the animals, and she cuddles and comforts the baby animals. The contrast between Esther’s goodness and the Klan’s hatred foreshadows a collision between the two.

Hesse makes a stylistic choice in capitalization, which becomes evident in Act III. While the novel brims with proper nouns, the only capitalized word in the entire novel is “God,” and Hesse capitalizes the word only when Esther says it. The capitalization of “God” indicates the importance of conscience and judgment in the novel, and by choosing the child Esther to be the sole narrator who recognizes this importance, Hesse shows that Esther is the only true spiritual voice in the town. Although Johnny uses the word “god” repeatedly in his sermons, his utterance is never capitalized. Johnny’s idea of an intolerant and exclusionary god is contrary to the actual gospel he ostensibly preaches, and the fact underscores the character’s already acrid irony. Finally, Esther declares at the end of Act II that she is always talking to God and doesn’t need a synagogue to do it; her remarks illuminate that her ongoing dialogues with plants, animals, and birds are actually her conversations with God.

Hesse also uses the motif of death to foreshadow the climax as well as to illustrate Esther’s consistent exposure to death, which shapes her relationship with God. Both Esther’s and Leonora’s mothers have died, but Esther continues to be surrounded by death throughout the novel. When Sara pragmatically kills the newborn kittens in Act II, Esther attempts to find them to stop them from taking the train to heaven. She remembers the man who was shot in New York, and she worries about Senator Greene dying. The Senator becomes the standard against which Esther judges a person’s chances of survival; when she hurts her head, Dr. Flitt tells her she will heal even better than the Senator. When the farmer shoots Bossie the cow, Esther extracts a promise from the vet that Bossie will not die. Ultimately, Esther attempts to join her mother in death when she puts herself in the path of the hurtling train—and she is saved only because Leonora is chasing the ghost of her own deceased mother. Death also stalks both Klansmen and Klan victims equally in Act III; the hearse of a slain Klansman catches fire, and the Klan lynches a Polish man. The slowly escalating violence and multiple allusions to death creates a mood of foreboding tension that will culminate in the climatic incidents in Act IV.

Merlin’s character begins to change in this Act, shown in his reactions to Leonora’s rescue of Esther and the theft of his car. Merlin and Leonora have been linked since the beginning of the novel and are foils to each other. A foil is a character who contrasts with another character, typically the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist. Both Merlin and Leonora hold deep-seated beliefs about race; Merlin is a white boy who detests Black people, and Leonora is a Black girl who detests white people. In Act II, Leonora began to reevaluate her views on white people due to her relationship with Mr. Fields. When she rescues Esther, she never thinks of the color of Esther’s skin, but only sees her as an odd child who is in danger.

Merlin, too, shows a nascent ability to see past race. He states that he himself could have saved Esther, a “jew kid,” from being hit by a train, because he saw the whole thing, too (however, he didn’t save Esther, because he thought it was impossible for anyone to outrun the train). When he remembers Leonora running, he compares her to a deer in a rifle sight, “one you let go / cause there’s no way to hit / a swift brown rush weaving through the trees like that” (76). While the comparison still describes Leonora as prey and less than human, Merlin’s words are tinged with admiration, even as he boasts that she didn’t do anything he couldn’t do. He says that “something kept me in my place” (76), an inadvertent allusion to his persisting inability to move beyond his prejudice, but he still states admiringly that he “never saw anyone move that fast” (76). Hesse also reinforces Merlin’s growth when she alludes to an earlier poem from Merlin: In Act II, he boasts that he could kill a Jewish child; by Act III, he boasts that he could save a Jewish child. The next time he speaks, he expresses his determination to not give the Klan the keys to Reynard’s newspaper office, and in his final poem of the third act, he describes how a fellow Klansman holds him at knifepoint and steals his car. Merlin’s three poems in Act III move from envying Leonora’s courage, to taking a small stand against the Klan, to recognizing that the Klan members would gladly kill him over a car.

Constable Johnson also begins to wonder about the Klan’s true intentions. While never officially a member of the Klan, Johnson has a “why not” attitude toward their activity. However, as their lawlessness increases and they threaten the town’s stability, Johnson becomes less neutral. He repeatedly questions the Klan about their threats against Reynard, the Hirsches, and the Sutters. When Merlin’s car is stolen, Johnson compares the theft to the Klan’s framing and murder of a Polish man across the country, calling the members “riffraff” and deciding that if they could steal a car from an awestruck boy, then they could murder a man and frame it as suicide. He also notes that when Viola’s cat needs rescuing from the tree, none of their new Klan customers will help her, and neither will her own son, Willa, who tormented Leonora by telling her that the Klan would burn her and her father up. (When Johnson rescues the cat, it foreshadows his attempt to save Johnny later in the novel when Johnny plans his own death). However, Johnson’s growing dislike of the Klan stems less from their hatemongering than from their growing lawlessness in a town he has sworn to protect. He still has hidden biases, such as his racism and his dislike for women’s independence, but he is no longer willing to ignore the Klan’s activities.

Harvey and Viola’s eroding marriage symbolizes the town’s growing rifts. Hesse usually presents Viola’s and Harvey’s voices together within a single poem titled “harvey and viola pettibone.” Their poems are structured as dialogues between the two, and Hesse writes their conversations mostly in third-person limited perspective. In Act III, however, Viola separates herself from Harvey figuratively when she speaks alone in a poem titled only “viola pettibone,” describing welcoming the composer John Phillips Souza to town for a concert. She also literally detaches from her husband when she watches the concert from the backstage as a guest of Souza, refusing the seat that Harvey saved for her. Although Hesse features the couple as dual narrators in a later poem, they are arguing, and the poem contrasts markedly with their earlier good-natured bickering. In this poem, Viola chastises Harvey for causing a riot with his broom sale. While the situation is humorous—women fought each other for the chance to buy the brooms—it shows that their business is suffering due to Harvey’s Klan involvement, and Viola believes the incident evinces Harvey’s deteriorating reputation as well. Harvey’s riot starkly contrasts with Viola’s place of honor at the town concert. He denies responsibility for the women’s minor injuries in the broom sale, and when he tells Viola that he will have the Klan “see to” Dr. Flitt, Viola “shakes her head in disgust” (93) and attempts to repair his reputation by bringing care baskets and new brooms to the injured townswomen. When Hesse describes the couple “facing off, each as stout and solid as a house” (93) it reflects that the couple represents the two factions of townspeople who are facing off regarding the Klan.

An element of irony also highlights the difference between the Klan’s pretenses and their actual agenda. Irony is when contradictory statements or situations reveal a reality that is different from what the reader expects. Irony can come in three forms: verbal, dramatic, and situational. Verbal irony is often sarcasm. For example, when Iris sarcastically says that the topic of “enlightened humanity” would make for a good discussion at the Klan’s next cross-burning, she means that the Klan is anything but enlightened.

While verbal irony consists of a character saying the opposite of what the reader expects, situational irony is when an outcome or circumstance is the opposite of what the reader expects. Hesse uses situational irony when Merlin gives a ride to a fellow Klansman, because the reader does not expect that Merlin’s new friend will carjack him. Also, when the Klansman’s coffin catches fire, it defies the expectation of what would happen to a God-fearing person’s coffin.

Dramatic irony happens when the reader knows something that the characters don’t, and characters actions contradict the actual situation. For instance, John Phillips Souza is renowned as a patriotic American composer; his “Stars and Stripes Forever” is a national treasure and the highlight of the concert. However, Souza is a Catholic and the son of a Portuguese immigrant. He represents everything the Klan despises, but because Harvey doesn’t know this, he enthusiastically applauds the performance. There is also dramatic irony when the Klan, drunk on bootleg whiskey, breaks into a church basement to look for weapons (they only find a dusty chalice, which they steal). These activities—bootlegging and burglary—directly oppose their professed role of helping law enforcement; additionally, there is irony in the idea that a Catholic church would store tanks and airplanes in its basement. By foregrounding the irony in the Klan’s actions, Hesse suggests that its members don’t realize their group’s terminal hypocrisy.