Mercy Among the Children

“Perhaps they were reflections of each other, in youth and middle age, a mirror into the past and future of rural men caught in the world’s great new web.” 

Lyle and Terrieux are each other’s reflection in several ways. Most prominently, Terrieux is the passive listener to Lyle’s tale, which unfolds because Terrieux spared the life of Mat Pit. While Lyle becomes a criminal, routinely stealing and inflicting violence, Terrieux is an ex-policeman. Lyle’s proposal of marriage is rejected by Cheryl Voteur, and Terrieux’s former wife rejects his attempt at reconciliation. Lyle’s narrative is heard in full, but Terrieux’s remains a mystery. He is simply a foil for Lyle’s testimony, yet the two men are also drawn together. Apart from their intimate connection to each other’s life stories, they are both alienated from society. Both men represent the worst aspect of their time of life: Lyle wasted youth and Terrieux failure in middle age. Both men wrestle with guilt: Lyle for abandoning his family and Percy, Terrieux for almost killing a man. They are two parts of a didactic continuum, offered to the reader. 

“I often wanted to enter the world of the stained glass—to find myself walking along the purple road, with the Mount of Olives behind me. I suppose because I wanted to be good.” 

Lyle’s desire to enter the sacred dimension is a fantasy of becoming a saint, an anagram and antonym of “stained.” This he accomplishes by canonizing his life and sufferings through the novel.