Birth from A Dead Man

I wanted Peyton to live. Considering how the narrator left plenty of hints along the way that there was no happy ending for our slave owner and secessionist Farquahar, it was irrational, childish, and wishful thinking. Twice the narrator would tell us how the execution would proceed, with the soldiers stepping aside from the plank so that Peyton could fall through and die from a broken neck. He explicitly stated that Peyton “was as one already dead”, well before going on in great detail describing what could have happened had Peyton managed to escape. And, compared to the length at which the narrator went through to fabricate these miraculous things Peyton “pulled off”, the confirmation of Peyton’s actual death seems at the very least marginal insignificant and, for my part, definitely easily overlooked. This was possible in the story because of section II, in which the narrator went back in time and gave the readers a glimpse into Peyton’s history as well as what has led to his demise. Section II’s importance subsumes the theme of our course well, or at least what we have discussed so far from class. It’s critical in constructing a believable sympathetic protagonist that the readers can and will root for. Not going in-depth in arguing whether his devotion for the Southern course was reprehensible or praiseworthy, still I think it’s safe to assume that by creating the character of the Federal scout, who immediately breaks our trust as well as Peyton, the story elevates Peyton to a relatively higher moral ground to which the readers look up. It’s important to recognize that Peyton has done nothing so far to gain our trust other than letting his gullibility get the best of him. Self-depreciation can go a long way. 

But was Peyton an actual protagonist? Our subconscious may demand us to resonate with the struggle Peyton was going through against an external force, whatever that may be, because we in our lives face our own struggles as well. So in our lives, we tend to envision ourselves as our own protagonists (this is entirely up to debate). Consequently as story-telling creatures we find such reflections in characters of our own creation. Within such framework, no matter how much evidence of the contrary is to be thrown in our face, we would more likely than not to marginalize the death of our hero, especially a death with no rhyme or reason, the kind that stops the hero from actualizing his cause and belief, and anticipate his return, until we know his return isn’t possible. This “warring” perception of the human condition to me is the main propellant for what I think as classic storytelling, where the ‘protagonist’ we were assigned to follow wins the day, and the main reason why the ending of the story, if not inevitable, is welcomingly cathartic. It was with the death of Peyton that withered away the long overdue unquestioned conditioning of the way we read and write and react and respond and position ourselves and our senses of world. If that’s a little far-stretched for those who have been well acquainted with the gore and violence of, say, Game of Thrones and its many posers, perhaps we can find mutual agreement in an alternative reading of the function of the ending, that of reinforcing the notion of deliberate break-away of modern storytelling from its classic predecessors. This then would partially explain my using of the word “childish” in the beginning of the post. More on that some other day, but understand that I do not side with the belief in a hierarchy in modes of storytelling.