The Human Stain

The chapter’s first line outlines the plot:

It was in the summer of 1998 that my neighbor Coleman Silk—who, before retiring two years earlier, had been a classics professor at nearby Athena College for some twenty-odd years as well as serving for sixteen more years as the dean of faculty—confided to me that, at the age of seventy-one, he was having an affair with a thirty-four-year-old cleaning woman who worked down at the college (1).

The incident that instigates Coleman’s early retirement occurs when he uses an alleged racial epithet directed at students. While referring to two students who have not yet come to class, he asks, “Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?” (6) The new Dean of Faculty calls Coleman into his office, which shocks Coleman. Coleman must then defend himself against charges of racism, as the two students in question are African American. Coleman insists he was using the term “spooks” to mean specter or ghost, since the students were absent. However, students and fellow faculty members accuse Coleman of being racist. In the resulting chaos, he chooses to resign. His wife, Iris, also dies.

After arranging for Iris’s burial, Coleman goes to Nathan’s house to ask him to write the story of his downfall, which Coleman deems absurd. Coleman has been writing this history of his disgrace and has hundreds of documents in boxes labeled “Spooks.” Coleman even wrote a first draft of Spooks, which filled 20 to 30 composition books. Coleman read the first draft and said it made him sick, so he's now begging Nathan to write a book about his story.

Coleman and Nathan dance the fox trot on Coleman’s porch after Coleman reads aloud a letter from Steena, his first love. After the dance, they sit down, and Coleman tells Nathan about his affair with Faunia Farley. Coleman tells Nathan about Faunia’s tragic life: a stepfather who sexually abused her, a husband who physically abused her, and two children who died in a house fire. Before her affair with Coleman, she also had an affair with her boss, Smoky Hollenbeck, who runs the college’s physical plant.

Coleman tells Nathan how much the affair makes him feel alive again, even though he knows “how the thing that’s restoring you can wind up killing you” (35). The next week, Coleman receives an anonymous handwritten (in red ink) note that reads, “Everyone knows you’re sexually exploiting an abused, illiterate woman half your age” (38). Coleman knows it is from Professor Delphine Roux at Athena College because the handwriting matches documents in Coleman’s “Spooks” file.

Later, Coleman takes Nathan to meet Faunia at her job at the dairy farm. Nathan watches Coleman watching Faunia and begins to contemplate their powerful physical connection. Meanwhile, Faunia’s ex-husband Lester Farley begins to stalk Coleman and Faunia. Coleman hears a noise outside of the house while he and Faunia are inside. As he yells, the man runs away. Later, when Coleman is trying to talk on the phone with his daughter, Lisa, a pickup truck drives slowly by the house. Lisa is upset with her father, and Coleman assumes she knows about the affair with Faunia. At the end of the chapter, Lester rushes at Coleman and Faunia, screaming at them and threatening them.

The narration then switches to Lester’s point-of-view. Lester has a mental condition and finds it impossible to adjust to life after returning home from the Vietnam War. He copes by being violent and with alcoholism, all of which culminates in a mental breakdown when his children die in a house fire. Lester is taken by force to the VA hospital and stays there for six weeks before being released and urged to join a support group for Vietnam veterans.