CHRIST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
413
the idea of the brotherhood of suffering men. Christ's image, super–
imposed on the luckless American Adam, gives him a benediction
which he could never attain by himself. Prefigured in Puritan
thought, the novelistic Christ comes now as the fulfiller of Adam's
fate.
Christ, the "hero of the lowest station,"
is
summoned when
simple man, unlearned, suffering, wronged, the democratic hero,
is
defeated by adversity or evil, and he adds to the hero's downfall
th,at radiance of victorious transcendence of fate which
is
a mark
of tragedy. Santayana cites "glorification of life" in the face of de–
feat and death as the necessary requirement of tragic stature. This
is
a quality not often found in American writing. To some extent
it
is
present in
M oby Dick
and
Billy Budd,
and Hemingway has it
in
his
best work and also in his
The Old Man and the Sea.
Even
more than Melville and Hemingway, Faulkner's heroes in their grand
doom need the summoned figure of Christ to lend them this "glorifi–
cation of life" (or perhaps for them it is only a glorification of
death) which they have buried deep in their hearts.
