Alice Walker offers her own form of revival to her readers in her short story "To Hell With Dying." In this story of an old man repeatedly revived to life by the love of a neighbor's children, including the story's narrator, Walker shows how the narrator's spirit, repeatedly called by the values of another culture, is revived through her connection with the old man.
The old man, Mr. Sweet Little, frequently suffers from bouts of depression caused by the limitations that have been placed on his life and from which he must be revived. "Mr. Sweet had been ambitious as a boy, wanted to be a doctor or lawyer or sailor, only to find that black men fare better if they are not. Since he could become none of these things he turned to fishing" (Walker 490). Although he seems to possess few redeeming qualities in the dominant culture - he is not well-employed, he does not care for his farm, he is a drunkard - he is beloved by the narrator's parents because of his internal capacity to love. He "has acquired the traditionally feminine qualities of gentleness and empathy (Hollister 90). As a younger man, he gave up his true love in order to marry another girl and raise a son he wasn't sure was even his. The only thing that saves him from giving in to despair is the loving relationship he shares with the narrator and her brothers and sisters and the ritual of connection they share.
It is through such a loving, compassionate ritual that the magic of revival occurs. The narrator describes it in terms of a literal revival. "As soon as his eyes were open he would begin to smile and that way I knew that I had surely won" (Walker 493). The language Walker uses indicates almost a literal waking from the grave, but they also become entwined with larger ideas. "Her revivals of Sweet whenever he seems near death evolve into a ritual described in terms of striving and 'success'" (Hollister 91). As the narrator grows up, she embodies this striving and success by becoming a doctoral student in the north, far away from her southern and spiritual roots. The seeming reduction in dying episodes on the part of Mr. Sweet suggests he is deriving significant comfort from seeing her succeed. But in this success, the narrator unknowingly slips into a need for her own revival.
The narrator's close connection to her family as a child is contrasted sharply with her isolation as a student. She talks at the beginning of the story about having a number of brothers and sisters, she mentions playing with her older brother frequently, she describes a very loving interaction between her father and mother toward their children and others. As a student, though, she only relates events to her isolated existence far away from home. "That the freedom gained by developing her head does in fact distance and separate her from her soul is implied by her calling herself a 'lady', by an educated formality of phrasing at times by the abrupt jump from South to North in the fifteenth paragraph, and by the allegorical coincidence that just as she is about to attain her high degree, Mr. Sweet dies: 'how could I believe that I had failed!'" (Hollister 91). Only when she returns to say her last good-bye to Sweet, and finally realizes that she is not able to keep the people she loves alive, does she finally understand the importance of holding on to those rituals that reinforce her relationships.
In this short story, Walker provides her reader with a sense of revival for both of the major characters. Although the old man is unable to contribute anything to his society based on the values of the outer culture, he provides his own community with a sense of love and compassion that teaches them about the importance of relationships. They are literally life-saving. Where the story really grabs attention, though, is in the realization that it isn't only the old man being revived in these rituals of affirmation. It is through such connections that the narrator finds her way back to her community and her own inner self after buying into the values of that outer culture. This is not necessarily a critique of the white culture, though. "Walker focuses far more on the internal struggles of black people and the black community than on the relationship between races" (Andrews 7). Instead, it is portrayed as a struggle between lifestyles and values. Finally, through this connection, the old man has achieved the success he dreamed of - seeing a child of his heart succeed on both his own values of love and relationships and the values of the outer world based on education and career.
Works Cited
Andrews, Claudia Emerson and Janet McCann. "Alice Walker." Magill's Survey of American Literature. Salem Press, 2006: 1-9. Print.
Hollister, Michael. "Tradition in Alice Walker's 'To Hell With Dying.'" Studies in Short Fiction. 26.1, (Winter 1989): 90-95. Print.
Walker, Alice. "To Hell With Dying." The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the Present. Langston Hughes, ed. Boston: Little Brown, 1967: 490-96. Print.
