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Lester
Henry is an inmate on death row with Ray. After Henry and Ray become friends, Ray learns that Henry was a member of the KKK who is on death row for lynching a young Black man named Michael Donald. When Ray confronts Henry about this, Henry admits that everything his parents taught him about Black people was a lie. Ray recognizes Henry’s true remorse, particularly when Henry introduces Ray to his father, Bennie—another KKK member—and proudly announces that Ray is his best friend. Henry also joins Ray for book club, and because they read books that deal with racism in the American South, Henry acknowledges the racism he was taught and is ashamed of the views that brought him to death row. Before Henry is executed on June 6, 1997, he admits that he thinks of Ray like a brother. Henry illustrates the importance of community and humanity on death row, and how the inmates’ support for each other supersedes what they did in their pasts.
Henry Hays Quotes in The Sun Does Shine
The The Sun Does Shine quotes below are all either spoken by Henry Hays or refer to Henry Hays. 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:
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Chapter 13 Quotes
We weren’t a collection of innocent victims. Many of the guys I laughed with had raped women and murdered children and sliced innocent people up for the fun of it or because they were high on drugs or desperate for money and never thought beyond the next moment. The outside world called them monsters. They called all of us monsters. But I didn’t know any monsters on the row. I knew guys named Larry and Henry and Victor and Jesse. I knew Vernon and Willie and Jimmy. Not monsters. Guys with names who didn’t have mothers who loved them or anyone who had ever shown them a kindness that was even close to love. Guys who were born broken or had been broken by life. Guys who had been abused as children and had their minds and their hearts warped by cruelty and violence and isolation long before they ever stood in front of a judge and a jury.
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Chapter 16 Quotes
Compassion doesn’t know what color you are, and I think Henry felt more love from the black men on death row than he ever did at a KKK meeting or from his own father and mother.
We had met a few more times in book club and had read Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All the books talked about race in the South, and Henry at first had shied away from the subject, almost pretending not to know how unfairly blacks were treated until we called him out on it. He was ashamed of how he had been brought up and ashamed of the beliefs that had brought him to the row. “You never knew what a person could grow up to become,” he’d say.
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Chapter 18 Quotes
Some days, I could see he was tired, and I wondered about the wear on a person when so many lives depend on what you do each day. He carried a big burden, and it wasn’t just mine. He spoke of justice and of mercy and of a system that was so broken it locked up children and the mentally ill and the innocent. “No one is beyond redemption,” he would say. No one is undeserving of their own life or their own potential to change. He had such compassion for victims and for perpetrators, and an intolerance and even anger for those in power who abused that power.
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Chapter 19 Quotes
When you took a life, it didn’t bring back a life. It didn’t undo what was done. It wasn’t logical. We were just creating an endless chain of death and killing, every link connected to the next. It was barbaric. No baby is born a murderer. No toddler dreams of being on death row someday. Every killer on death row was taught to be a killer—by parents, by a system, by the brutality of another brutalized person—but no one was born a killer. My friend Henry wasn’t born to hate. He was taught to hate, and to hate so much that killing was justified. No one was born to this one precious life to be locked in a cell and murdered. Not the innocent like me, but not the guilty either. Life was a gift given by God. I believed it should and could only be taken by God as well.
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Henry Hays Character Timeline in The Sun Does Shine
The timeline below shows where the character Henry Hays appears in The Sun Does Shine. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 12
...says his mother makes a pretty good pie herself, and he says his name is Henry. Ray apologizes for what happened in Henry’s case.
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Chapter 13
The state denies Ray’s petition and everything that Santha claimed in it. Henry explains to Ray that if Perhacs could have raised something during his trial and appeal...
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...day. That night, Ray showers next to a guy named Jimmy Dill; Jimmy says that Henry Hays has money from the KKK, so he’ll probably get out. Ray walks back to...
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That night, Ray calls out to Henry, saying that he just figured out who Henry is. Henry is silent for a while...
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The next day, at visiting day, Henry gestures Ray over to meet his parents. Ray holds out his hand, but Henry’s father...
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...to testify, because judges don’t like guys from out of town. That night, Ray tells Henry that he can get over Henry being in the KKK, but not that his life...
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Chapter 14
...the guards escort the visitors out, while inmates have to go back to their cells. Henry tells Ray that his dad, Bennie, fell over like he had a heart attack—he has...
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Chapter 15
...book club meeting consists of Jesse Morrison, Victor Kennedy, Larry Heath, Brian Baldwin, Ed Horsely, Henry, and Ray—five Black guys and two white guys. They use the law library but they...
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...asks them what they liked about the book and what made an impression on them. Henry says he likes the idea that a person’s soul can be reborn, no matter what...
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Ray points to a passage that Henry says he also liked and copied down on a piece of paper. In it, John’s...
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Chapter 16
...1994, Alan Black files an amended Rule 32 petition for Ray. In May of 1997, Henry learns that he’s going to be executed on June 6. The guys try to assure...
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...Uncle Tom’s Cabin—all books that deal with race in the American South. In the discussions, Henry admits that he is ashamed of how he was brought up. Henry wonders what kind...
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Before Henry moves to the death room to await his execution, he and Ray talk one last...
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Chapter 24
...him guilty. He knows that they were taught to be racist, just as someone taught Henry Hays to be. He tries to look for meaning in his life—a reason for why...
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