Faithful Are the Wounds

Faithful are the Wounds is an academic novel, that is it has an academic setting (Harvard University) and many of the characters are academics. It is, however, much more than that for it focuses on the impact of death on personal relationships and presents the difficulties of maintaining one's political and ethical principles.

The novel deals with an intellectual abstraction- the forfeit of liberal courage and conviction- in civilized terms and through the medium of the suicide of Edward Cavan, a Harvard Professor and a militant idealist. Edward is an intense man in his views and preoccupations. He leads an intensely lonely and remote life, following a pattern set in a childhood of rejection.

One of the best aspects of the novel for this show more reader was the way that Edward's character was presented through the vignettes of the impressions he made on the people around him. In a very realistic way these vignettes are not about incidents where Edward's thoughts and actions are necessarily understood, but they gradually provide a picture of the man about whom we learn in the prologue on page three that Edward Cavan "threw himself under an elevated train".

The narrative that follows presents Edward as seen through the eyes of a few of his friends and relatives just before and after his death: his friend, Damon, who had retracted on the principle at the foundation of civil liberties in the fear of the Communist label, which was in a sense to Edward a personal betrayal; his sister Isabel, who had never understood his alienation from her- and their family; a student, a great scholar, and an old friend- the daughter of a former Harvard dean. But his influence lives on in action as well as memory as a few years later, when academic as well as civil freedom is threatened by a Committee hearing- Damon stands up and defends the concept for which Edward had died.... This is a thoughtful rather than forceful perspective of individuals and issues.

The overall effect is to present a man who was respected and loved in spite of his remoteness. It goes beyond that to demonstrate the impact one man can have on the lives of those around him when they are faced with the presence of his death and consider what that presence means to them. show less