Things by Sinclair Lewis - Part 3

This is final chapter of our journey through Sinclair Lewis’s sharp, satirical short story, Things. We are narrating the final two parts: Seven and Eight. 

If you missed the build-up to this finale, jump back to our last episode to catch Theo Duke’s story from the beginning before diving into the conclusion.

When we last left Theo, her quiet desperation was turning into an all-consuming resentment. Today, the twin burdens of social conformity and physical possessions press down harder than ever. The invisible walls of societal expectations close in, built entirely from a mountain of possessions. Theo is boxed in by social rules and drowned in a sea of unnecessary stuff. Today, we finally see if she can break free from this material cage, or if she will be buried alive by the very lifestyle she fought so hard to build.

Transcript

Welcome to Narrated Archives, where we dust off the forgotten pages of literary history's forgotten books and rediscover the timeless stories, poems, and articles that belong to us all. Join us as we step back in time, and listen to the voice of the public domain.

Today, we reach the final chapter of our journey through Sinclair Lewis’s sharp, satirical short story, Things. We are narrating the final two parts: Seven and Eight. If you missed the build-up to this finale, jump back to our last episode to catch Theo Duke’s story from the beginning before diving into the conclusion.

When we last left Theo, her quiet desperation was turning into an all-consuming resentment. Today, the twin burdens of social conformity and physical possessions press down harder than ever. The invisible walls of societal expectations close in, built entirely from a mountain of possessions. Theo is boxed in by social rules and drowned in a sea of unnecessary stuff. Today, we finally see if she can break free from this material cage, or if she will be buried alive by the very lifestyle she fought so hard to build. Here are Parts Seven and Eight of "Things" by Sinclair Lewis.

Things
VII

Eddie Barnes was back in Vernon on the sixth of his positively last, final, ultimate farewells.

Theo yelled in joy when he called. She was positively blowzy with healthy vulgarity. She had won an argument with Stacy about teaching the French to plant corn, and had walked home almost at a trot.

“Fine to see you! Saying an eternal farewell again?” she brutally asked Eddie.

For one of the young samurai Eddie was rather sheepish. He stalked about the largest drawing-room. His putties shone. Eddie really had very nice legs, the modern young woman reflected.

“Gosh, I am an awful fareweller. Nope, I’m not going to do a single weep. Because this time I’ve got my orders. I’ll be in France in three weeks. So I just thought — I just thought — maybe — I’d ask you if you could conveniently — Ouch, that tooth still aches; have to get this bridge finished tomorrow sure. Could you marry me?”

“Ungh!” Theo flopped into a chair.

“You’ve queered all my poetic tactics by your rude merry mirth. So just got to talk naturally.”

“Glad you did. Now let me think. Do I want to marry you?”

“We get along bully. Listen — wait till I get back from France, and we’ll have some celebration. Oh, boy! I’ll stand for the cooties and the mud till the job’s done, but when I get back and put the Croix de Guerre into the safe-deposit I’m going to have a drink of champagne four quarts deep! And you and I — we’ll have one time! Guess you’ll be pretty sick of Red Cross by — ”

“No. Now I know. Dear, you are a good playmate. But I know a man who thinks that when the war is over, then the real work begins.”

Eddie was grave, steady, more mature than he had ever seemed. “Yes. Stacy Lindstrom. See here, honey; he has big advantages over me. I’m not picturesque. I never had to work for my bread and butter, and I was brought up to try to be amusing, not noble. Nothing more touching than high ideals and poverty. But if I try to be touching, you laugh at me. I’m — I may get killed, and I’ll be just as dead in my expensible first lieut’s pants as any self-sacrificing private.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Of course. You have disadvantages. Comfort isn’t dramatic. But still — It’s the champagne and the big time. I’ve — ”

“See here, honey, you’d be dreadfully bored by poverty. You do like nice things.”

“That’s it. Things! That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m interested in tractors for France, but not in the exact shade of hock glasses. And beauty — It’s the soul of things, but it’s got to be inherent, not just painted on. Nice things! Ugh! And — If I married you what would be your plans for me? How would I get through twenty-four hours a day?”

“Why — uh — why, how does anybody get through ’em? You’d have a good time — dances, and playin’ round, and maybe children, and we’d run down to Palm Beach — ”

“Yes. You’d permit me to go on doing what I always did till the war came. Nope. It isn’t good enough. I want to work. You wouldn’t let me, even in the house. There’d be maids, nurses. It’s not that I want a career. I don’t want to be an actress or a congresswoman. Perfectly willing to be assistant to some man. Providing he can really use me in useful work. No. You pre-war boys are going to have a frightful time with us post-war women.”

“But you’ll get tired — ”

“Oh, I know, I know! You and father and mother will wear me out. You all may win. You and this house, this horrible sleek warm house that Mrs. — that she isn’t fit to come into! She that gave him — ”

Her voice was rising, hysterical. She was bent in the big chair, curiously twisted, as though she had been wounded.

Eddie stroked her hair, then abruptly stalked out.

Theo sat marveling. “Did I really send Eddie away? Poor Eddie. And he’ll lead his company — Oh, I’ll write him. He’s right. Nice to think of brave maiden defiantly marrying poor hero. But they never do. Not in this house.”

VIII

The deep courthouse bell, awakening Theo to bewildered staring at the speckled darkness — a factory whistle fantastically tooting, then beating against her ears in long steady waves of sound — the triumphant yelping of a small boy and the quacking of a toy horn — a motor starting next door, a cold motor that bucked and snorted before it began to sing, but at last roared away with the horn blaring — finally the distant “Extra! Extra!”

Her sleepy body protestingly curled tighter in a downy ball in her bed on the upper porch, but her mind was frantically awake as the clamor thickened. “Is it really peace this time? The armistice really signed?” she exulted.

In pleasant reasonable phrases the warm body objected to the cold outside the silk comforter. “Remember how you were fooled on Thursday. Oo-oo! Bed feels so luxurious!” it insisted.

She was a practical heroine. She threw off the covers. The indolent body had to awaken, in self-defense. She merely squeaked “Ouch!” as her feet groped for their slippers on the cold floor. She flung downstairs, into rubbers and a fur coat, and she was out on the walk in time to stop a bellowing newsboy.

Yes. It was true. Official report from Washington. War over.

“Hurray!” said the ragged newsboy, proud of being out adventuring by night; and “Hurray!” she answered him. She felt that she was one with awakening crowds all over the country, from the T Wharf to the Embarcadero. She wanted to make great noises.

The news had reached the almost Western city of Vernon at three. It was only four, but as she stood on the porch a crush of motor cars swept by, headed for downtown. Bumping behind them they dragged lard cans, saucepans, frying pans. One man standing on a running board played Mr. Zip on a cornet. Another dashing for a trolley had on his chest a board with an insistent electric bell. He saw her on the porch and shouted, “Come on, sister! Downtown! All celebrate! Some carnival!”

She waved to him. She wanted to get out the electric and drive down. There would be noise — singing.

Four strange girls ran by and shrieked to her, “Come on and dance!”

Suddenly she was asking herself: “But do they know what it means? It isn’t just a carnival. It’s sacred.” Sharply: “But do I know all it means, either? Worldwide. History, here, now!” Leaning against the door, cold but not conscious that she was cold, she found herself praying.

As she marched back upstairs she was startled. She fancied she saw a gray figure fleeing down the upper hall. She stopped. No sounds.

“Heavens; I’m so wrought up! All jumpy. Shall I give papa the paper? Oh, I’m too trembly to talk to anyone.”

While the city went noise-mad it was a very solemn white small figure that crawled into bed. The emotion that for four years had been gathering burst into sobbing. She snuggled close, but she did not sleep. Presently: “My Red Cross work will be over soon. What can I do then? Come back to packing papa’s bag?”

She noticed a glow on the windows of the room beside the sleeping porch. “They’re lighting up the whole city. Wonder if I oughtn’t to go down and see the fun? Wonder if papa would like to go down? No, mother wouldn’t let him! Windows all shining. House might almost be afire.” Out of a nap she awoke sharply. “Oh, I wish the house were afire! I want the little old brown shack. Where Stacy could come and play. Mother used to give him cookies then.

“I wish I had the nerve to set the place afire. If I were a big fighting soul I would. But I’m a worm. Am I being bad to think this way? Guess so — committed mental arson, but hadn’t the nerve — My God, the house is afire!”

She was too frightened to move. She could smell smoke, hear a noise like the folding of stiff wrapping paper. Instantly, apparently without ever having got out of bed, she was running by a bedroom into which flames were licking from the clothes chute that led to the basement. “That dratted old furnace!” she could hear herself saying aloud. She was bursting into her parents’ room, hysterically shaking her mother.

“Get up! Get up!”

With a drowsy dignity her mother was saying, “Yes — I know — peace — get paper morning — let me sleep.”

“It’s fire! Fire! The house afire!”

Her mother sat up, a thick gray lock bobbing in front of one eye, and said indignantly, “How perfectly preposterous!”

Already Mr. Duke was out of bed, in smoke-prickly darkness, flapping his hands in the air. “Never could find that globe. Ought to have bedside light. Come, mother, jump up! Theo, have you got on a warm bathrobe?” He was cool. His voice trembled, but only with nervousness.

He charged down the back hall, Theo just behind. Mrs. Duke remained at the head of the front stairs, lamenting, “Don’t leave me!”

The flames were darting hissing heads into the hall. As Theo looked they caught a box couch and ran over an old chest of drawers. The heat seemed to slap her face.

“Can’t do anything. Get out of this. Wake the servants. You take your mother down,” bled Mr. Duke.

Theo had her mother into a loose gown, shoes and a huge fleecy couch cover, and down on the front porch, by the time Mr. Duke appeared driving the maids — Lizzie a gorgon in curl papers.

“Huh! Back stairs all afire,” he grunted, rubbing his chin. His fingers, rubbing then stopping, showed that for a split second he was thinking, “I need a shave.”

“Theo! Run down to the corner. Turn in alarm. I’ll try to phone. Then save things,” he commanded.

Moved by his coolness to a new passion of love Theo flung her arm, bare as the sleeve of her bathrobe fell from it, about his seamed neck, beseeching: “Don’t save anything but the cloisonné. Let ‘em burn. Won’t have you go in there, risk your life for things. Here — let me phone!”

Unreasoning she slammed the front door, bolted him out. She shouted their address and “Fire — hustle alarm!” at the telephone operator. In the largest drawing room she snatched bit after bit of cloisonné from the cabinet and dumped them into a wastebasket. Now the lower hall, at her back, was boiling with flame-tortured smoke. The noise expanded from crackling to a roar.

The window on the porch was smashed. Her father’s arm was reaching up to the catch, unlocking the window. He was crawling in. As the smoke encircled him he puffed like a man blowing out water after a dive.

Theo ran to him. “I didn’t want you here! I have the cloisonné — ”

As calmly as though he were arguing a point at cards he mumbled, “Yes, yes, yes! Don’t bother me. You forgot the two big saras in the wall safe.”

While the paint on the balusters in the hall bubbled and charred, and the heat was a pang in her lungs, he twirled the knob of the safe behind the big picture and drew out two cloisonné plates. Flames curled round the doorjamb of the room like fingers closing on a stick.

“We’re shut off!” Theo cried.

“Yep. Better get out. Here. Drop that basket!”

Mr. Duke snatched the cloisonné from her, dropped it, hurled away his two plates, shoved her to the window he had opened, helped her out on the porch. He himself was still in the burning room. She gripped his arm when he tried to dart back. The cloisonné was already hidden from them by puffs of smoke.

Mr. Duke glanced back. He eluded her; pulled his arm free; disappeared in the smoke. He came back with a cheap china vase that for a thing so small was monumentally ugly. As he swung out of the window he said, “Your mother always thought a lot of that vase.” Theo saw through eyes stinging with smoke that his hair had been scorched.

Fire engines were importantly unloading at the corner, firemen running up. A neighbor came to herd the Dukes into her house, and into more clothes.

Alone, from the room given to her by the neighbor, Theo watched her home burn. The flames were leering out of all the windows on the ground floor. Her father would never read the three-volume history that was too valuable for soldiers. Now the attic was glaring. Gone the elephant of a London traveling bag. Woolly smoke curled out of the kitchen windows as a fireman smashed them. Gone the fireless cooker that would not cook. She laughed. “It’s nicely cooked itself! Oh, I’m beastly. Poor mother. All her beautiful marked linen — ”

But she did not lose a sensation of running ungirdled, of breathing Maytime air.

Her father came in, dressed in the neighbor-host’s corduroy hunting coat, a pair of black dress trousers and red slippers. His hair was conscientiously combed, but his fingers still querulously examined the state of his unshaven chin.

She begged: “Daddy dear, it’s pretty bad, but don’t worry. We have plenty of money. We’ll make arrangements — ”

He took her arms from about his neck, walked to the window. The broken skeleton of their home was tombed in darkness as the firemen controlled the flames. He looked at Theo in a puzzled way.

He said hesitatingly: “No, I won’t worry. I guess it’s all right. You see — I set the house afire.”

She was silent, but her trembling fingers sought her lips as he went on: “Shoveled hot coals from the furnace into kindling bin in the basement. Huh! Yes. Used to be good furnace tender when I was a real man. Peace bells had woke me up. Wanted to be free. Hate destruction, but — no other way. Your mother wouldn’t let me sell the house. I was going mad, sticking there, waiting — waiting for death. Now your mother will be willing to come. Get a farm. Travel., And I been watching you. You couldn’t have had Stacy Lindstrom, long as that house bossed us. You almost caught me, in the hall, coming back from the basement. It was kind of hard, with house afire, to lie there in bed, quiet, so’s your mother wouldn’t ever know — waiting for you to come wake us up. You almost didn’t, in time. Would have had to confess. Uh, let’s go comfort your mother. She’s crying.”

Theo had moved away from him. “But it’s criminal! We’re stealing — robbing the insurance company.”

The wrinkles beside his eyes opened with laughter.

“No. Watched out for that. I was careful to be careless, and let all the insurance run out last month. Huh! Maybe I won’t catch it from your mother for that, though! Girl! Look! It’s dawn!”

And that brings us to the end of Things by Sinclair Lewis.

In the end, Theo Duke’s journey leaves us with a haunting mirror. Lewis masterfully exposes how easily the pursuit of status can transform our homes into prisons, and how the "stuff" we own can end up owning us instead.

But it leaves us with one final, burning question. When Lyman Duke looks out at the world on Armistice Day—a day meant to mark the end of conflict and a return to peace—he chooses to set the house on fire. Was his decision to burn down the home a tragic surrender to the madness of the material trap? Or was it his own extreme, desperate act of liberation—a literal cleansing by fire to finally destroy the things that had consumed his family? 

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