51 pages • 1 hour read
The Lacuna
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Parts 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6 Summary: “Loose Pages, Montford, June 1949-January 1950 (VB)”
Part 6 is a series of journal entries, some of which are undated, letters, newspaper clippings, and a transcript of a House Committee hearing.
The FBI interview Mrs. Brown at Mrs. Bittle’s boarding house on May 4, 1949, about Shepherd’s suspected Communist ties. She is very upset. Afterward, Shepherd resolves to burn the rest of Shepherd’s notebooks to avoid any incriminating evidence. Mrs. Brown pretends to burn the notebooks. Arthur Gold convinces the publisher to publish Shepherd’s third book because they have already signed a contract, but the publisher will not be doing any publicity to sell it.
The public’s fear of the spread of Communism mounts as Mao Zedong takes over China and the USSR demonstrates they have an atomic bomb. A man suspected of being a Communist because he is thought to be Russian is shot in the nearby town of Oteen, North Carolina.
The national papers publish negative reviews of Shepherd’s third novel, The Unforetold, and misquote and misinterpret his books to accuse him of anti-American and pro-Communist sentiments. His book is banned at the local bookshop.
On December 22, 1949, Tom writes Shepherd that he has a job in advertising and that he is cutting ties with Shepherd for Shepherd’s purported anti-American beliefs. In the early months of 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy whips up further anti-Communist sentiment. On March 7, 1950, Shepherd is called to testify to HUAC about his Communist ties. Shepherd is forced to admit to the House Committee he worked for Trotsky, Kahlo, and Rivera.
Part 7 Summary: “Afterward, 1959 by Violet Brown”
Part 7 opens with Harrison Shepherd’s Obituary in The Asheville Trumpet. It reports that Shepherd drowned while swimming in the ocean near Mexico City on June 29, 1951.
Violet Brown writes in the afterword that she did not actually burn Shepherd’s notebooks but instead kept them in her knitting basket for posterity.
After the HUAC hearing, Mrs. Brown is unable to find other full-time work despite her experience. Shepherd gives up writing and becomes even more of a recluse. Mrs. Brown and Archie Gold encourage Shepherd to escape to Mexico. They go to Isla Pixol, where Shepherd had lived with his mother as a young teenager. He wants to dive in the ocean again because it made him happy as a child, which is what he spends most of his time on the island doing. He insists on extending their trip for two weeks for reasons he does not tell Mrs. Brown, but presumably, it is because he is waiting for the full moon tides. On June 29, he tells a group of boys to time how long he can hold his breath on a dive. He never resurfaces and is presumed dead. Mrs. Brown is devastated.
Shepherd leaves everything to Mrs. Brown except some money he sent to Frida before they left. In 1954, Frida Kahlo dies. A trunk of Shepherd’s things found in Frida’s possession is sent to Mrs. Brown. She finds within it a note from Frida stating, “Your American friend is dead. Someone else is here” (665). She thinks this note is mysterious until she reads Shepherd’s childhood notebook, also in the trunk. In the notebook, she reads about the lacuna Shepherd discovered, and she realizes Shepherd might have swum through the lacuna and may still be alive. She wonders if that explains the money he sent ahead to Frida.
Following this discovery, Mrs. Brown sets out to transcribe and publish Shepherd’s journals. She instructs the lawyer that the manuscript is not to be published for 50 years to protect Shepherd if he is still alive.
Parts 6-7 Analysis
In Parts 6 and 7, the gap between Shepherd’s actual politics and his perceived political affiliations is at its widest. The content and reception of his third novel highlights The Complex Relationship Between Art and Politics. The novel ends on an ambiguous note that leaves open the question of whether Shepherd is still alive.
Throughout the novel, in keeping with his tendency to minimize his presence, going so far as to avoid using the first-person in his journal entries, Shepherd’s political beliefs are obscured. He feels sympathy for the poor and working-class, beginning with his gradual realization as a child of the relative poverty in which the estate’s chef, Leandro, lives, which suggests a working-class orientation. But, despite his admiration for Trotsky, Frida, and Diego Rivera and his many years in their employ, he never formally joins the Communist Party or takes up any political activism following their model. He doesn’t even vote. He testifies honestly in front of HUAC about this position, stating, “I don’t have any expertise in politics” (641). Despite the lack of overt politics, his novels express implicit politics. This is the tactic that the media takes, which further develops The Role of the Media in Shaping Public Perception and Creating Panic. As they write:
The Unforetold [his third novel] is the story of an ancient empire crumbling through its final days, while those in power remain insensible to their nation’s impending collapse. This book takes a dismal view of humanity indeed, leaving no room for wise leadership or energetic patriotism (619).
Read more charitably, Shepherd’s body of work indicates sympathy for the average person who suffers from poor political leadership, like the worries Poatlicue has about where the Aztecs are being led. While this isn’t a specific political doctrine, it suggests a left-wing orientation. The idea of the end of an empire found in The Unforetold is reflected in Mrs. Brown and later Shepherd’s assessment that the United States during the Red Scare is emblematic of a kind of collapse of the nation as freedoms are restricted and people are persecuted.
In Part 6, The Role of the Media in Shaping Public Perception and Creating Panic and The Struggle of Dual Nationality and the Search for Belonging intersect. Shepherd’s subtle and non-doctrinaire political learnings are not sufficient for him to be spared from the media shaping the public’s perception of him as a dangerous, un-American, Communist sympathizer. It is not only the public who is swayed by the salacious reporting; his lover, Tom, writes to Shepherd, cutting off their relationship, stating, “I for one still believe in the Patria [country] and I’m sorry you can’t say the same. I guess coming from another country, you have your reasons” (626-27). This is ironic because not only does Shepherd love the United States but also he was born there. However, he will always be seen as a foreigner, especially when under scrutiny, despite being an American citizen.
The novel ends on a final lacuna, or gap in the narrative. Shepherd goes into the lacuna, or underwater volcanic tunnel, he found as a child. The narrative never specifies whether he died or made it out to the other side. The note from Frida is ambiguous. It states that Shepherd is “dead,” but then it goes on to say that “someone else” is there. That “someone else” could be a figurative phrase, referring to a ghost or spirit, or it could suggest that Shepherd has assumed a new identity—an ambiguity on which the novel ends.
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