The main character is Wilfred James, a farmer. The story is written as his confession. He says that he killed his wife, Arlette James and cozened his son into it. He did it for a piece of land that her father left her. Wilfred wanted to unite his farm and this land, but his wife wanted to sell it and move to a big city. He also says that after many years living together he started to hate her.
In this story the idea of the Conniving man is described for the first time.
After doing the deed, Wilfred gets haunted by his wife, he has hallucinations and some strange things start to happen. His farm is attacked by huge rats that kill his cows and he believes that it is his dead wife who sends them to get revenge. His son Henry gets crazy and decides to run away with a neighbour's daughter and start a life of robbers, they begin to rob banks all over the state. But one winter day they get into an ambush and both of them get killed. When Wilfred gets the news he believes it is some kind of divine punishment and feels his fault in it.
A year after he has to sell the farm because he doesn't have money, and, has to move to a town, just like his wife wanted. There, he works as a librarian until one day he is found with his wrists bitten by rats in a hotel room and this confession on the table next to a gun that he was going to use to commit a suicide.
In my opinion the story has some common points with "Crime and Punishment" by Fedor Dostoyevsky. The main character is afraid that somebody could find out what he did. But unlike "Crime and Punishment", everything goes pretty well for the main character, he manages to hide his crime and nobody ever suspects him. He is also haunted and gets crazy like Rodion Raskolnikov. And I think that if you forget about supernatural elements in this book, the ending could be a simple suicide of a man who couldn't live with the burden of his deed anymore.
In this story the idea of the Conniving man is described for the first time.
"I believe that there is another man inside of every man, a stranger, a Conniving Man. And I believe that by March of 1922, when the Hemingford County skies were white and every field was a snow-scrimmed mudsuck, the Conniving Man inside Farmer Wilfred James had already passed judgment on my wife and decided her fate"
After doing the deed, Wilfred gets haunted by his wife, he has hallucinations and some strange things start to happen. His farm is attacked by huge rats that kill his cows and he believes that it is his dead wife who sends them to get revenge. His son Henry gets crazy and decides to run away with a neighbour's daughter and start a life of robbers, they begin to rob banks all over the state. But one winter day they get into an ambush and both of them get killed. When Wilfred gets the news he believes it is some kind of divine punishment and feels his fault in it.
A year after he has to sell the farm because he doesn't have money, and, has to move to a town, just like his wife wanted. There, he works as a librarian until one day he is found with his wrists bitten by rats in a hotel room and this confession on the table next to a gun that he was going to use to commit a suicide.
In my opinion the story has some common points with "Crime and Punishment" by Fedor Dostoyevsky. The main character is afraid that somebody could find out what he did. But unlike "Crime and Punishment", everything goes pretty well for the main character, he manages to hide his crime and nobody ever suspects him. He is also haunted and gets crazy like Rodion Raskolnikov. And I think that if you forget about supernatural elements in this book, the ending could be a simple suicide of a man who couldn't live with the burden of his deed anymore.
I like your comparison, Sasha
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