David Henderson's Struggles In Mercy Among The Children

Many children are granted with a joyous life but then there are some children who live a merciless and abusive life. David Adams Richards’s Mercy Among the Children is based upon the life of Lyle Henderson’s father, Sydney. In the novel, David Adams Richards portrays to the reader the hardships children face shape their adulthood. Many of the adult characters face many hardships as a child and those incidents shape them to be the person they are as an adult. Sydney Henderson, the protagonist of the novel, and his wife Elly Henderson face many hardships as a child which follows them through to their adulthood. However, even if they both face struggles as a child, the outcome of their struggles differs from one another. Foil characters, Sydney

He is humiliated by his own father that “beat him one Sunday in front of most of the parishioner on the church steps” (Richards 12). After being ridiculed by his own father, Sydney is further pushed as an outcast by the rest of the community always being accused of things he did not do. The author allows this to be a time for the reader to feel pathos towards Sydney. It clearly portrays the hardships and struggles Sydney goes through as a child and allows the reader to relish in the feeling of Sydney’s pain while his own father “tormented him in front of kids his own age” (Richards 13) as well as the rest of the community. With the public beatings, Sydney becomes the social outcast of the community and is considered “a danger to people” (Richards 26). Similarly, Elly is also the outcast because of her behavior being an orphan girl. After Elly finds that her own family left her “in an orphanage, and then taken to the home of Gordon Brown, had a profound effect” (Richard 25) on her. With the situation she is in it made Elly very introverted and nervous as a child. Elly has many rituals and prays to God every day to ensure that

Sydney, when he is accused of stealing the smelt and killing Trenton Pit he “said nothing” (Richards 135), in Sydney’s opinion he believed that Connie, Mathew, and rest of the community “cannot do this and not destroy themselves” (Richards 193). It is because of his silence that allows him to be accused of many more things that he did not commit. Even when it came Sydney’s trial for the murder of Trenton Pit, Sydney “thought it was not necessary to bother a lawyer” (Richards 143) until Elly goes to Isabel Young, the lawyer, herself. The author reveals Sydney nature of putting other people above himself regardless if it was the truth or not. Similarly, Elly is an oppressed woman who cannot stand or speak out for herself. When Rudy walks “straight to her – and touched her cheek” (Richards 71), Elly is mortified but does not do anything to help herself. The author reveals a key trait of being passive in Elly, it emphasizes her inability to do what she wants to do. Elly will not stand up for herself because that is how she is raised to be, completely naïve of the real world around her. She is oblivious to all the men that she attracts, which ultimately creates more danger for herself and her family. However, their archetypical character differs from one another. Sydney, in the novel, is the mentor whereas Elly is the White goddess. Throughout the novel,