The Education of Steavens A funeral is an interesting event. People are mourning, but they are doing it for their own reasons. They are not really doing it for the person that is dead because that person is gone and knows nothing of it. They are really feeling sorry for themselves or have some other agenda, such as getting attention or gaining something for themselves. Their gain may be just feeling good about themselves at the expense of the decedent’s reputation or memory. In the story, “The Sculptor’s Funeral” by Willa Cather, Steavens accompanies the body of his teacher and successful sculptor, Harvey Merrick, back to Merrick’s dirty, little, Kansas hometown, for burial. He is met with a town and people who repulse him. He discovers …show more content…
The watchers wait until the family has gone to bed then they talk bad about Merrick (478). One of the bankers says, how Harve asked his dad to mortgage a farm so he could continue his education. “The old man could have stocked a farm with that money” is the reply from another watcher. The banker, Phelps, says, “Harve could have made a good living working one of his father’s stock farms if he had stayed here.” The cattleman disagrees with him by saying, “Harve never could have handled stock none.” Then the coal and lumber dealer chimes in, “Harve never was much account for anything practical, and he shore was never fond of work” (480). They even make fun of Harve’s voice calling it, “Ladylike” (480). The watchers laugh and seem to enjoy themselves as they reminisce about how his mother “used to whale him with a rawhide in the barn” (480). Phelps says, “Where the old man made his mistake was in sending the boy East to school” and he should have sent him to “Kansas City business college” and nobody disagrees (481). Steavens’ head spins as he listens to all this. He thinks, “Was it possible that these men did not understand, that the palm of the coffin meant nothing to them?” (481). Steavens thinks that the watchers have no idea the palm means Merrick was a great success. This town would never have mentioned in the world if not for its connections to Merrick (481). The cattleman even comments …show more content…
Merrick’s father said he was a good boy and kind, but admits that “none of us ever onderstand him” (477). The father cared about Merrick but not enough to stand up to the mother and protect Harve from her when Harve was growing up. Even after Harve is dead the father is torn between his dead son and his evil wife and he chooses the evil one over the one who he had just called good and kind. When the wife wails for the father to come, “He turned away, hesitated, stood for a moment in miserable indecision then reached back and patted the dead man’s hair softly, and stumbled from the room” to his wife (477). On his death bed, Merrick told Steavens of his home town, “It’s not a pleasant place to be lying while the world is moving and doing and bettering” (481). Merrick knew how the town’s people were and that they would gossip about him as a form of entertainment for them. He knew they were so bitter that he said, “after they have had their say I shan’t have much to fear from the judgment of God. The wings of the Victory, in there” and he motioned to his “studio” and said it “will not shelter me.” As a way of saying my beautiful creation will not impress the town’s people and my success will not protect me from their harsh words after my death