Narrative, Work, and Grief in Thomas Wolfe's the Lost Boy

The Lost Boy, haunting and elegiac in its treatment of a sibling's death, captures the lostness that informed much of Thomas Wolfe's life and work. It also illustrates the bifurcated nature of grief and the burden it imposes on those who remain behind. The "abundant sense of loss" that permeates the text reminds us that grief is not only for the one who has died, but also for oneself, the living who must carry on despite the loss and who must come to terms with the paradoxical presence/ absence it creates (Clark xiv). The grief work that follows a death of a loved one can be both daunting and redemptive, a recursive process that moves with agonizing slowness. To echo the opening lines of The Lost Boy, it is much like the light in the town square that "came and went and came again," Wolfe's visual metaphor for the nonlinear nature of time, memory, and emotion that infuse grief (1). In The Lost Boy, Wolfe depicts a close relationship between narrative and work. Human labor and enterprise appear in many forms throughout the text and are strongly associated with the grief and loss central to the story. The interplay of narrative and work ultimately proves instrumental in the remembering and mourning of Grover Wolfe, who died at age twelve from typhoid fever when the author was only four and who appears in the novella as Grover Gant. Grover's story, as it is narrated by his mother, sister, brother, and even through the consciousness of the dead boy himself, demonstrates a comingling of life and death, love and anguish, and memory and time. Through language and narrative, Wolfe deftly captures Grover's story and attempts to resolve the lostness associated with his death. According to Reynolds Price, narrative arises from the "profoundest need of one fragile species"--the need for "true consolation" (46). This finds expression in Wolfe's masterful short novel, where narrative aids in managing grief and, one might add, creating art out of loss. It is ironic that Wolfe's failure as a playwright led to his great success as a writer of narrative fiction. The need to tell one's story, which Wolfe does throughout his oeuvre, including The Lost Boy, is essential to human survival. Price sees the need for narrative--the telling and hearing of stories--to be as important to human existence as nourishment, love, and shelter. "Millions survive without love and home, almost none in silence," he explains (3). In Wolfe's case, narrative becomes the means for mourning his lost older brother and for confronting his own lostness. Completed just a year before Wolfe's death in 1938, The Lost Boy spans a thirty-year period marked by profound loss on many fronts. The era included such events as World War I; the 1918 flu pandemic, which claimed Benjamin Wolfe, Grover's twin, just before his twenty-sixth birthday; the Great Depression; and what would soon become another cataclysmic world war. These events form a subtle, but important, backdrop against which personal suffering and loss are cast. The autobiographical underpinnings of the novella also contribute to this background, making the grief portrayed in the work especially poignant. In addition, aspects of work and enterprise figure prominently into the family's history and into the events surrounding Grover Wolfe's death. In the spring of 1904, Julia Wolfe and five of her children journeyed to St. Louis, where she leased and operated a boardinghouse for visitors attending the World's Fair. The venture offered her both opportunity and escape. Money worries and W. O. Wolfe's drinking problems, along with the lure of the Fair itself, provided the impetus for the move. A determined Mrs. Wolfe informed her husband about her plans for St. Louis: "'I believe I will go out and rent a house. I will get a house. The children will see the Fair and they will be away from you'" (qtd. in Norwood 183). Work was an integral part of Julia Wolfe's upbringing and personal ethic. …