29 pages • 58 minutes read
Willa CatherThe Sculptor's Funeral
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1905A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Artist Against Society
Willa Cather’s fiction consistently emphasizes the struggle between the artist and society, especially within settings such as the fictional town of Sand City in “The Sculptor’s Funeral.” In this story, the artist is presented as a sympathetic figure who is exalted almost to the point of sainthood through the palm leaf that adorns his casket and a series of allusions to Christianity. In contrast, Steavens, his friend and former student, is alternately shocked and horrified by the townspeople’s insensitivity and their inability to understand life in any nonpragmatic or nonmaterialistic way.
Since the story is told through an artist’s perspective, Merrick is presented as “splendid” and “noble,” even in death, in contrast to the locals’ mocking and insulting demeanors. Nevertheless, the impact of the townspeople upon Merrick is clear. Upon viewing the body, Steavens reflects, “It was as though the strain of life had been so sharp and bitter that death could not as once wholly relax the tension and smooth the countenance into perfect peace” (331). Further, it is “as though he were still guarding something precious and holy which might even yet be wrested from him” (331). The first sentence reveals the impact of a life filled with rejection and disappointment, and the next passage builds upon the Christian motif established earlier in the story to imply that there is a spiritual nature to the townspeople’s judgment of Merrick. Society represents a threat to the soul of the artist. Indeed, Steavens recalls a conversation between himself and his master in which Merrick bitterly noted that the townspeople's judgment would be harsher than God’s, and none of his artistic accomplishments would satisfy them. He anticipated a metaphorical crucifixion upon his return to Sand City.
Within this framework, the soul of the artist is presented as superior to the material emphases of the townspeople, and Merrick is a represented as a martyr. Laird’s climactic rebuke of the men sarcastically describes the town as progressive and the men as models of knavery, linking their materialism to corruption. His final condemnation of Sand City’s men presents Merrick’s soul as too pure to be corrupted by the same materialistic influences that condemned so many other young men from the town. Cather condemns society for failing to appreciate beauty while overvaluing utility since she equates art with transcendence but pragmatism with degradation of the soul.
Exile and Homecoming
The premise of “The Sculptor’s Funeral” rests upon the concept of homecoming, though the story’s funeral context challenges traditional expectations of a typical homecoming. The townspeople quickly demonstrate a callous disregard for Merrick, referring to him first as a corpse and then as a body. They avoid referring to him by name and reject any claim of friendship when Steavens first asks after the friends and family of Merrick at the train station. This distancing encapsulates the complex relationship between Merrick and the townspeople of Sand City and establishes the conflictive meaning of homecoming in the text.
Merrick’s body is a symbol of the unwillingness of the townspeople to accept and welcome him back to town after he finds a different kind of success in the world beyond the frontier. Homecoming typically incorporates a journey of self-discovery away from the home, followed by a return or acceptance. His body symbolizes that his homecoming is a return only in a physical or literal sense. The emotionless response of the townspeople to his death suggests this his return is to a place, not to a home. The Merrick family is scattered, and the Merrick homestead is “weather-beaten” and “rickety,” demonstrating a disrepair that reinforces a sense of homelessness through lack of care and upkeep. While Merrick’s father clearly grieves the loss of his son, he also admits that he was entirely misunderstood. Being rejected by his community made Merrick’s journey more an exile than a journey of self-discovery. His return after death highlights the impossibility of acceptance for him.
Laird’s later revelations show that Merrick was misunderstood and unaccepted because there was no place for his artistic sensibility and sensitivity in Sand City. The townspeople and Merrick’s mother scorn the idealism that he represents. Despite this, Merrick is adamant that his body be returned home because “it rather seems as though we ought to go back to the place we came from in the end” (334). He recognizes that homecoming is a necessary part of any journey and a natural human desire.
While on the frontier, Merrick yearned for beauty. In the East, surrounded by beauty and spiritual refinement, he longed for acceptance and home. Merrick represents the tragedy of this internal struggle. “The Sculptor’s Funeral” presents the tragedy of Exile and Homecoming as Cather shows that a person who lacks acceptance has nothing to return to.
Success, Money, and Materialism
The role of money, materialism, and success is an important theme in “The Sculptor’s Funeral.” The main conflict of the story hinges upon the desire of the town’s men to be powerful and financially secure, but that text also highlights the disparity between Merrick’s vision of greatness and success, defined as “noble with traditions,” and the frontier perspective of success, which Steavens describes as a “desert of newness and ugliness and sordidness” (333).
The palm leaf on Merrick’s coffin is a symbol of his success as an artist, but it is met only with the idle curiosity of the townspeople. Steavens later realizes that the men “did not understand,” and “the palm on the coffin meant nothing to them” (334). Instead, success on the frontier is symbolized by what the people of Sand City value.
Early in the story, it becomes clear to Steavens that the townspeople have notions of beauty that are more suggestive of materialism and consumer culture than of authentic emotion or the sentiments that develop the human spirit. Their disregard of the body reinforces the contradiction between art and materialism. The parlor is cold and uninviting, filled with “hand-painted china plaques and panels and vases” (331). The townspeople place the coffin near a “Rogers group,” mass-marketed sculpted pieces that adorned middle-class homes in the era. The effect of the room’s décor, which is rooted in accessible, standardized décor, is appalling to the artistic sensibilities of Steavens, who struggles to identify anything representative of the artist’s individuality in his childhood home.
When Laird suggests that Steavens sit with Merrick’s body to learn more about his past from the townspeople, it becomes clear the two competing visions of success are irreconcilable. The townspeople are aware that the sculptor was not rich, and they find no value in his legacy beyond Sand City. They gleefully recount all the ways that he failed in matters of the frontier, which are controlled by business and agricultural decisions.
When Laird can stand no more of the mocking derision and cruel judgment the men heap upon Merrick’s memory, he clarifies the contrast between the artistic success that the sculptor represents and the financial and material success that the townspeople embrace. He asks why “reputable young men are as scarce as millionaires in Sand City” (335), suggesting the wealth and success the men desire is not only rare but also corrupt. He goes on to reveal the history of the boys of Sand City, which includes crime, financial ruin, and death by suicide. Finally, the lawyer notes that “there was only one boy ever raised in this borderland between ruffianism and civilization who didn’t come to grief” (335), and that was Merrick—whose love of art and beauty shielded him from the temptations of greed and materialism. In this climactic scene, Cather warns of both the danger that materialism represents to the human spirit and the corrupting influence of life on the frontier.
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