Short Fiction · Chapter
V explained
Scripps O'Neil, carrying a bird, hesitates outside a barber shop in a frozen Northern town, then decides to eat at Brown's Beanery.
What happens
Scripps O'Neil, carrying a bird, hesitates outside a barber shop in a frozen Northern town, then decides to eat at Brown's Beanery. Inside, he orders beans for himself and his bird, and an elderly waitress shares a surreal story about losing her mother in Paris. Scripps learns of work at a pump-factory and leaves feeling clearheaded.
Themes in this chapter
American Identity and Disillusionment
Scripps's memory of Sherman burning his family home reflects a fractured American identity, while his search for work and meaning in a frozen town underscores post-war disillusionment.
The Search for Authenticity
Scripps rejects the barber shop's 'society of men' and seeks something different; the waitress's story and his consideration of honest work at the pump-factory highlight a quest for genuine experience.
The Absurdity of Authority and Religion
The waitress's absurd tale of a missing mother replaced by a French general, and the failure of police and embassy to resolve it, satirizes institutional authority.
Characters to notice
- Scripps O'Neil
Protagonist of the chapter; hesitates at a barber shop, enters Brown's Beanery with his bird, listens to the waitress's story, and considers working at a pump-factory.
- Diana Scripps
Scripps's mother; recalled in a memory about General Sherman burning their house during the Civil War.
- Sherman
General Sherman; appears in Scripps's memory of the Civil War, burning the O'Neil family home.
- The girl
The elderly waitress at Brown's Beanery; tells Scripps a long, strange story about losing her mother in Paris.
Key passages
“Scripps O’Neil stood irresolutely before the barber shop. Inside there men were being shaved. Other men, no different, were having their hair cut. Other men sat against the wall in tall chairs and smoked, awaiting their turn in the barber chairs, admiring the paintings hung on the wall, or admiring their own reflections in the long mirror.”
Scripps O'Neil hesitated outside a barber shop, watching men being shaved, getting haircuts, or waiting in chairs while smoking and looking at paintings or themselves in the mirror.
Establishes Scripps's indecision and his observation of mundane male social rituals.
“Sherman had burned their house down on his March to the Sea. 'War is hell,' Sherman had said. 'But you see how it is, Mrs. O’Neil. I’ve got to do it.' He had touched a match to the white-pillared old house.”
Scripps recalls General Sherman burning his family's house during the Civil War, with Sherman apologizing to his mother as he set it on fire.
Highlights a traumatic family memory tied to the Civil War and Sherman's March.
“I was terribly frightened,' the waitress went on, 'and rang the bell for the management. The concierge came up, and I demanded to know where my mother was. 'But, mademoiselle,' the concierge explained, 'we know nothing about your mother. You came here with General So-and-so'—I cannot remember the general's name.”
The waitress recounts how she woke in a Paris hotel to find her mother replaced by a French general, and the concierge claimed she had arrived with him.
The waitress's surreal story of identity loss and bureaucratic failure.