Previous
Jim Laird
Martin Merrick is Harvey’s father. He is too ill to wait for his son’s body on the winter night the coffin arrives at the train station. Described as a meek and feeble elderly man, the unhealthy relationship dynamic between he and his wife, Annie, suggests a very unhappy boyhood for Harvey. Due in part to this dynamic, the family is only present for the beginning of the funeral before the barrage of unkind words about his son. Unable to look at his son’s coffin, Mr. Merrick looks at his wife “with a dull, frightened, appealing expression, as a spaniel looks at the whip.” By comparing Mr. Merrick to a beaten dog, Cather intimates the toxic home life Harvey must have had growing up, giving the reader ample reasoning for him leaving Sand City. Grieving the loss of his son, Mr. Merrick laments that Harvey was “always a good boy” but “none of us ever [did] onderstand him.” His financial support of his son and genuine desire to know him makes Mr. Merrick a much more sympathetic character than the rest of the Merrick family.
Mr. Martin Merrick Quotes in The Sculptor’s Funeral
The The Sculptor’s Funeral quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Martin Merrick or refer to Mr. Martin Merrick . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Sculptor’s Funeral Quotes
Feeble steps were heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail, odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy, unkept gray hair and a dingy beard, tobacco-stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up to the coffin and stood rolling a blue cotton handkerchief between his hands, seeming so pained and embarrassed by his wife's orgy of grief that he had no consciousness of anything else.
"There, there, Annie, dear, don't take on so," he quavered timidly, putting out a shaking hand and awkwardly patting her elbow. She turned and sank upon his shoulder with such violence that he tottered a little. He did not even glance toward the coffin, but continued to look at her with a dull, frightened, appealing expression, as a spaniel looks at the whip. His sunken cheeks slowly reddened and burned with miserable shame.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“That’s Harve for you,” approved the Grand Army man. “I kin hear him howlin’ yet, when he was a big feller in long pants and his mother used to whale him with a rawhide in the barn for lettin’ the cows git foundered in the cornfield when he was drivin’ ‘em home from pasture. He killed a cow of mine that-a-way once—a pure Jersey and the best milker I had, an’ the ole man had to put up for her. Harve, he was watchin’ the sun set acrost the marshes when the anamile got away.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Sculptor’s Funeral LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Mr. Martin Merrick Character Timeline in The Sculptor’s Funeral
The timeline below shows where the character Mr. Martin Merrick appears in The Sculptor’s Funeral. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Sculptor’s Funeral
...Merrick’s friends are present to collect his corpse. Phelps, the banker, replies that Mr. Merrick’s father is too weak to be out on a winter night, so the responsibility has fallen...
(full context)
...his wife’s “orgy of grief.” Looking at Annie “as a spaniel looks at the whip,” Mr. Merrick doesn’t even glance at Harvey’s coffin until Annie storms from the room with her daughter...
(full context)
When Steavens, Jim, and Mr. Merrick are left alone, Mr. Merrick gazes upon his dead child’s face in his coffin, a...
(full context)
Hollering her husband’s name, Mrs. Merrick beckons Martin into the kitchen, leaving the other two men alone. Steavens contemplates “what link there had...
(full context)
...the question off, continuing to absentmindedly clean his nails with a pearl-handled knife. Sharing what Mr. Merrick had told him, the Grand Army man relates that prior to his death, Harvey had...
(full context)
The other banker, Elder, mentions Mr. Merrick ’s financial contribution to Harvey’s success—he mortgaged some of his farms in order to pay...
(full context)
According to Phelps, Mr. Merrick should never have allowed Harvey to pursue his education in the East, claiming if Harvey...
(full context)
Jim draws a comparison between Harvey’s father mortgaging his farms to pay for Harvey’s schooling and Elder accusing his own father of...
(full context)
