The Night of the Hunter

In a literary age often characterized by intentional obscurity and rampant symbolism, it is interesting to find a first-class novel which affects neither. The Night of the Hunter, Davis Grubb's first attempt at novel writing is mainly a narrative--grim, sometimes sordid, but at the same time warm and deceptively optimistic. And the author surprises readers hardened to literary cynicism with the rarity of a happy ending.

Terror, sensual love, and greed are the themes of the Night of the Hunter. But Grubb does not comment on them through his characters, they are merely components for good story-telling. Setting his characters in the Ohio River valley of West Virginia, he makes the great Ohio both a backdrop, and a kindly provider for the two helpless, terrified children that are his subjects.

The plot is simple: A condemned father tells his two children, John and Pearl, where he has hidden ten thousand stolen dollars and makes them swear they will never disclose the secret. Most of the book concerns itself with the attempts of the father's released cell mate to make the children reveal the money. It is the ten year old son that is the hero of the novel. Never quite grasping the significance of "those green pieces of paper," protecting his trusting five year old sister from the sinister hunter, he endures hardships as only a child could: "the most dreadful and moving thing of all was the humbling grace with which these small ones accept their lot. They would weep at a broker toy but stand with the courage of a burning saint before the murder of a mother. . . They abide."

If one must have symbols, Preacher is Evil. His mind is contorted into a fantastic kind of Calvinist logic: He has been sent to rid the world of greed and sensual pleasure; to do so he must have money. Travelling up and down the Ohio he accomplishes all by enticing middle-aged widows to marry him; just before the wedding he acquires their meager fortune. Then he kills them. But when he marries the mother of the two children in hopes of getting the stolen money, he happily fails.

Rachel Cooper is the heroine from whom John and Pearl at last receive the love which they have been denied by their weak and sensuous mother. Mcllowed and not hardened by life, Rachel is the most clearly-defined character in The Night of the Hunter.

In the prose, beautiful and simple though it is, appear the unmistakable marks of a first novel. The similes are sometimes strained; the spring ground smells like "the healthy, passionate sweat of a country waitress." Occasionally his attempt for poetry-in-prose sounds sing song, "John eat your mush . . . Eat your breakfast and hush!"

Yet even with the stigma of a first novel, The Night of the Hunter cannot fail to be impressive. There is the local color of a Caldwell short story, and the sustained narrative of Galsworthy, both combined with the new, effective touch of Davis Grubb.