James Grew's Suicide

James Grew was the Latin teacher at the small high school Cathy Ames attended after finishing grammar school. He was a pale, intense young man who had failed in divinity school and carried a sense of rejection by God. For a time after Cathy's entrance into his class, a flame leaped in him and some force glowed in his eyes; he walked on his toes and sang to himself, and he wrote letters so persuasive that the directors of his divinity school looked favorably on readmitting him. Then the flame went out. His shoulders folded dejectedly, his eyes grew feverish, and his hands twitched. He was seen in church at night, on his knees, moving his lips over prayers. He missed school and sent word that he was ill when it was known that he was walking all alone in the hills beyond the town.

The Midnight Visit and the Suicide

Late one night, James Grew tapped on the door of the Ames house. Mr. Ames, Cathy's father, complained his way out of bed, lighted a candle, and went to the door. Grew was wild and crazy-looking, his eyes shining and his body one big shudder. He insisted on speaking to Mr. Ames alone, but Mr. Ames, thinking him drunk or sick, told him to come down to the tannery in the morning and closed the door firmly. As he stood inside, listening, he heard the wailing voice, "I can't wait. I can't wait," and then the feet dragged slowly down the steps. Mr. Ames shielded the candlelight away from his eyes and went back to bed, thinking he saw Cathy's door close very silently. In the morning, a rumor ran through the town. The sexton had found James Grew stretched on the floor in front of the altar of the church. The whole top of his head was blown off. Beside him lay a shotgun, and beside it the piece of stick with which he had pushed the trigger. Near him on the floor was a candlestick from the altar; one of the three candles was still burning. On the floor were two books, the hymnal and the Book of Common Prayer, one on top of the other. The sexton figured that Grew had propped the gun barrel on the books to bring it in line with his temple. No one could figure why he had done it.

Cathy's Manipulation and Concealment

Mr. Ames's first impulse was to go to the coroner with his story of the midnight call, but he thought, "What good would it do? If I knew anything it would be different. But I don't know a single thing." He felt guilty and miserable. At dinner, his wife talked about the suicide and he couldn't eat. Cathy sat silent, eating with little dainty nips and wiping her mouth often on her napkin. When Mrs. Ames asked if the drunken man who came to the door could have been young Grew, Mr. Ames lied quickly, saying the man had a big beard. Cathy wiped her mouth, and when she laid the napkin on her lap she was smiling. When Mrs. Ames turned to her daughter and asked if she had noticed anything sad about Mr. Grew, Cathy looked down at her plate and then up, saying she thought he was sick and that somebody had said Mr. Grew was in some kind of trouble in Boston. Before the next day was out, everybody in town knew that James Grew had been in trouble in Boston, and no one could possibly imagine that Cathy had planted the story. Even Mrs. Ames had forgotten where she heard it.

Significance and Thematic Resonance

The suicide of James Grew is the first concrete demonstration of Cathy's monstrous nature as described in the novel's framework. The narrative establishes that Cathy learned when she was very young that sexuality with all its attendant yearnings and pains is the most disturbing impulse humans have, and that by its manipulation she could gain and keep power over nearly everyone. James Grew became her first adult victim. The event also prefigures later revelations: Cathy later tells Adam that when she was half-grown she made a man kill himself, and that he pretended to be good but all he wanted was to go to bed with her—a little girl. The suicide establishes the pattern of destruction that follows Cathy throughout the novel, from the Ames fire to Faye's death, and it echoes forward into the next generation when Cal's revelation of their mother's identity drives Aron to self-destruction through enlistment. The event also introduces the theme of concealed truth and its corrosive effects, as Mr. Ames's guilty silence and Cathy's planted rumor allow the true cause of the suicide to remain hidden, a pattern that repeats in the Trask family's handling of Cathy's own history.