TWO MODERN INCEST HEROES
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self in a dream. It was a distorted dream of intercourse in which
the dreamer finds himself in a white man's house in the bed–
room of a white lady. There follows a nightmare sequence in
which the dreamer tries to escape from the embrace of the white
woman and flees through the door of a grandfather clock, run–
ning with pounding heart through a hot, dark tunnel.
When the dreamer wakens he finds himself on top of his
daught.er in a sexual embrace. It is the mome.nt before the climax.
And here is the farmer's dilemma:
If
he moves to withdraw he
will sin.
If
he stays he will sin. He cannot act without moving
and he cannot move without sinning. Trueblood (urged on by
his daughter) stays to sin.
Now the farmer's wife, Kate, is aroused and goes mad with
horror and revulsion. Kate, posing as God's wrathful instrument,
grabs an axe and brings it down upon her husband who lies
hypnotized before this terrible judgment. But at the last minute
he cannot bring himself to submit to the axe and turns his head
to one side. The axe strikes the side of his face. Kate, ready to
strike again, poises the axe and then Trueblood sees it stop, "like
9Omebody done reached down through the roof and caught it."
The axe falls behind her at this time, and Kate stumbles out the
back door and vomits.
Trueblood leaves his home and, following the myth, becomes
a wanderer shunned by all men. In exile he ponders his guilt.
Did he sin or didn't he sin? Is a man responsible for his dreams?
. Trueblood does not appeal to God for a judgment, and God
remains sile.nt during Trueblood's exile. A man of a more philo–
sophical tum of mind might have spent the rest of his life wander–
ing in the wilderness pondering his guilt. But Trueblood is a
practical man. When he finds that he cannot know his crime or
his guilt, he accepts the impossibility of knowing and sees the
• absurdity of his exile for an unjudged crime. He decides to return
to his family.
At this point Trueblood breaks with the myth. And from
that moment the myth collapses, all the actors in the ancient
pageant lose their lines, and the myth goes off on a lunatic ramp–
age reversing its prophecy. Trueblood returns to his family and
his sin bring him undreamed-of prosperity.
