New Outlook on Life for Clark in Lucia Nevai’s “Faith Healer” They say if you are lucky enough to get a second chance at something, do not waste it. When faced with a second chance with the person he loves, the narrator of Lucia Nevai’s “Faith Healer,” Clark, intends to take it. Narrow-minded, sexist, and racist, Clark is an absentee father still stuck in his own selfish ways and desperately in need of finding integrity in his own. But after escorting his sick ex-wife to a faith healer, he discovers selflessness. When, in a truly selfless act, he helps Eppie be put to rest, he also finds a new outlook on his own life. Clark reveals immediately that he would do anything for his ex-wife, Eppie, who knew Clark when no one else did. Clark claims “Eppie had [him] down to the penny” (214). When Eppie calls him up to take her to a faith healer in Tennessee, he does not hesitate. However, he is very narrow-minded about the faith healer because he believes they are “bogus healers who prey on innocent victims and take their life savings” (219). He was more concerned about them taking “his life savings” (219) than actually helping Eppie. On their journey to see the faith healer, Clark has a run in with a ranger after getting lost walking to a waterfall. Clark was going to ask for direction from the ranger, after discovering the ranger was a woman from New York, there was “now way [he] was going to ask her for directions” (223). Clark’s narrow-minded and sexist self gives a piece of his mind to the lady ranger instead. While eating at Jo-Jo’s, Clark started to show off to the owner Jo-Jo’s. Clark does not realize until then that this trip was not about him yet after this realization he does not care. “It was still about [him] and what [he] needed to prove” (225). Showing that Clark is still stuck in his selfish ways. In the story, one can see the racism in Clark by his attitude after he leaves Jo-Jo’s. He is so intrigued by “the way he said Nigger so freely”(226). From Clark and Eppie living in the North, the line between black and whites was not as definite as it was in the South. Clark immediately make makes a racist comment after realizing that the faith healer, Willie Mae, is black. Clark says, “did you just make me drive you 1,200 miles to a black women’s house” (227)? Clark refuses to go any further with Eppie, showing that Clark is still in his selfish ways. That is until Willie Mae invited them inside. Clark describes her saying inside as “a ray of sunshine through the bars of a man serving a life sentence” (227). Which is basically describing Clarks life, because he is lost in his selfish ways like a man in prison, and hopefully Willie Mae will show him ways to better himself. Clark point out to Willie Mae that he “would not have driven all this way if [he] knew [she] was black” (227). However, this racist comment did not affect Willie Mae at all. Instead she smiled at Clark in a way that was “not a smile with the lips but a smile with the whole face” (228). When asked to pray, Clark says, “I never have prayed and I didn’t intent to start” (228). Clark’s narrow-minded ways could not get him to do the smallest thing to try and help Eppie. Instead he felt as if he was too good to do that. After Willie Mae was done praying, Eppie was crying and Willie Mae asked Clark to comfort Eppie. Clark’s sexist and selfish thoughts were the first to come to his mind. Clark claims that he does not like anyone telling him what to do, “let alone a woman” (228). After he comforted her, Clark realized how much he truly loved Eppie. After his realization, “Eppie started to glow. I mean glow. I loved that woman. I loved her more than life itself” (230). This realization showed Clark that he could love something more than himself. Clark gave Eppie the overdose she requested, and her death brought them closer than before. It “made [his] life” (230) by having Eppie sharing personal feelings. Eppie’s “life was complete” (230) after Clark carried her to see the waterfall. However, Clark knew his life never could be complete without Eppie in it. When the children of Clark and Eppie arrived, they blamed Clark not letting them help decide their mother’s treatment. Just as Willie Mae smiled at Clark, he smiled at his children the same way. He smiled at them with his “whole face” (231). Clark was seeing the goodness around him. When Clark tried to leave Tennessee and could not, he knew that could not leave the memories he made with Eppie here. Clark’s final thoughts, “Life was becoming pure magic now. Imagine that, magic coming to an old bastard like me” (231). This speaks so much about how he has changed as a person from his narrow-minded, sexists, racist, and selfish ways he was before. Now Clark sees the good in things and is happy and has a new outlook on life. Willie Mae helped him realizes he could love something more than himself and still be happy.

Works Cited Nevai, Lucia. “Faith Healer.” Best of the South. 2001. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005.