Morning Watch

James Agee's short novel "The Morning Watch" shows how, by 1950, Agee had matured as a writer and thinker. For all of its stunning beauty and sensuous description, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (1941) lacks the cohesiveness and careful planning that distinguish "The Morning Watch." The latter work shows Agee writing at the height of his powers and treating a story, set during Holy Week in an Episcopalian boarding school closely modeled on Agee's own St. Andrew's, that resonates with deep religious feeling and sharply observed memories. The first two sections of "The Morning Watch" show the strong influence on Agee of James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist," but, if anything, Agee's depiction of a young boy's undergoing spiritual torment is more believable and more sharply written than Joyce's account. The third and final part of "The Morning Watch," set in the early morning hours of Good Friday, is a beautifully-conceived reworking of Christ's passion as experienced by three young boys who have played hooky from school and who learn their own capacity for blood lust and tolerance for violence. Agee's fondness for children and animals and his deep love of Scripture are vividly evoked in this last section. "The Morning Watch" is short--under 125 pages--but it is an unforgettable introduction to Agee's magisterial novel "A Death in the Family" (published posthumously in 1957) and a gem of a novel in its own right. It is easy to see why Flannery O'Connor so enjoyed "The Morning Watch" when it was first published, for Agee's clear-eyed understanding of his characters' fascination with violence and their coming to terms with their own possibilities for greatness would motivate many of O'Connor's own characters.

this story commonly displays the common curiosty in youth with religion and somehow how Man welcomes Evil in some form or another(as of the snake in the end) when Richard gradually excepts it as a common thing to be accepted by his peers it's nostaglic, dark gothic style illustrates the confusion of a deeply religious boy in a world of evil