55 pages • 1 hour read
Witness
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Act IIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II Summary
Leonora learns of the Leopold and Loeb murder case, a national media sensation: Two wealthy Jewish university students in Chicago murdered a 14-year-old boy, Bobby Franks, just to see if they could get away with it and prove their cleverness. Leonora is amazed that the young Franks boy was white and rich yet still a victim of senseless violence (though Franks, like his murderers, was ethnically Jewish). While Constable Johnson is excited about how the detectives traced the murder to the killers by their spectacles that they dropped, Merlin’s response is to brag that he could kill someone all by himself and get the ransom as well, and he wonders about how the killers were unconcerned about “jail, / or being haunted by a ghost, / didn’t even matter about going to hell” (38). The murder case begins to stir the town’s antisemitic sentiments.
Mirroring the Franks boy’s manner of death (he was bludgeoned with a chisel), Esther falls and hit her head on a rock while playing with a friend. She says that her sight and normal good feelings disappear in the darkness but that Lewis, her dead classmate, takes her by the hand and leads her home to her bed. Afterward, she worries about some kittens that Sara says went “far away” where they couldn’t eat the birds (the implication is that Sara killed the kittens to keep them from eating birds, but Esther doesn’t know this). As Esther searches for the kittens along some railroad tracks (where she believes Sara left them), she connects the kittens’ journey to her mother’s journey on the “heaven train.” As she searches for the kittens, she hopes she can be their mother, but she never finds them.
Leonora visits an elderly Civil War veteran, Mr. Fields, who is feeling poorly and can no longer care for himself. His glasses are so dirty that Leonora decides he can’t see what color she is, and that is why he is kind to her. She cleans the house, and when Mr. Fields tells her about the bravery of the Black soldiers in the Civil War, she decides to bake him an apple pie. In return, she tells him about Helen Keller, who was deaf, mute, and blind but who was successful and admired; Leonora confides that she wrote a letter to Keller. Mr. Fields offers Leonora an unused typewriter to help with her writing, but Leonora refuses because she knows the townspeople will accuse her of stealing it.
Viola and Harvey bicker good-naturedly back and forth about Harvey’s spending habits and women’s roles. Viola is concerned about the money Harvey spends on phonography records and, in response, Harvey tells Viola that Johnny Reeves said that a woman is happiest when she prepares food for her family. When Viola asks, Harvey admits that Johnny was brave enough to preach about women only once Iris Weaver left the store. Meanwhile, Iris claims that running liquor is the only way she can pay for her siblings’ college tuition, suggesting that she only breaks the law to provide for her family.
Merlin’s 15-year-old girlfriend, Mary, asks him to break her out of the orphanage and marry her, but Merlin is unsure. Mary wants to be married in Klan robes, but Merlin has never paid his money to the Klan and worries that they won’t approve of Mary because she buys her shoes from a Jew. Later that day, Merlin attempts to spring Mary from the orphanage, and he is charged with kidnapping when they are caught. Reynard Alexander, who hired Merlin to work evenings at his newspaper, petitions successfully for Merlin’s release, but Constable Johnson still warns Merlin to watch his step and stay out of trouble.
On Independence Day, Johnny sets fire to a cross on a hillside above the town, stating that the flames “leaping, seeking heaven” (52) are a divine sight. Merlin joins the cross-burning, despite Johnson’s warning to keep out of trouble. Through her window that night, Leonora sees the fiery cross and hides in the closet by her mother’s clothes, shaking in fear. Reynard recognizes the irony of the Klan burning a cross on a day celebrating independence, and he calls the burning irresponsible, “the work of children stirred by Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, that racist rubbish that will never fade away” (55). The next day, Sara grumbles about men in filthy nightshirts who burn crosses, but Esther distracts her by asking for the names of flowers and birds. Sara reflects that if Esther hadn’t needed a place at the last minute, she herself would have joined the Klan because it seems so decent on the surface. It took Esther’s presence for Sara to see through the Klan to their real purpose.
That night, someone throws a rock through Sara’s window with a threatening note. The Klan disapproves of Sara, a white Christian woman, allowing a Jewish man and child to live in her home. Ira offers to keep watch at night while Esther sleeps in Sara’s bed, and the next day he tells Sara that he and Esther will move into town so the Klan will leave Sara alone. Sara refuses because she cannot imagine living without Esther in her life.
Act II Analysis
Act II consists of rising action and intensifying conflict, and Hesse uses the Klan’s infiltration of the town to explore the hidden biases and motivations of the 11 narrators. The act begins with a historical allusion to the Leopold and Loeb case, reflecting 1920s American fears of immigrants, the elite, and Jews. The town’s reaction to the case, which ran from July through August in 1924, illustrates their rising antisemitism, and it provides a platform for characters to speak about justice. In the historic case, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb undertook their murderous project to demonstrate their intellectual superiority, believing it would be the “perfect crime” and that they wouldn’t be caught. The case exposed the darker side of human nature; both young men were from wealthy families and had the advantage of a higher education and exceptional intelligence. However, both men were of Jewish heritage during an era of blatant antisemitism in the United States, and the case transcended the senselessness of the murder due in part to the murderers’ religion. Americans were transfixed by the trial, and the media kept up the story with daily updates.
When the murder case fans the flames of the town’s antisemitism, the Klan targets Sara for allowing the Hirsches to live with her. However, when the anonymous Klan member throws the rock and note through her window, Sara doesn’t submit to the intimidation; she examines her relationship with Ira and Esther and strengthens her resolve to protect them. Ira’s declaration that he and Esther will move into town reflects his selfless character, and Sara realizes the depth of her love for Esther and her admiration for Ira. Ironically, if not for the Klan’s actions against her, she may have joined the group. Instead, she commits to opposing them.
Merlin’s response to the case is multifaceted. Initially, he only feels jealousy over the attention paid to the killers. When he boasts that he could have killed Bobby Franks and gotten away with it, it exposes his compulsion to prove himself to others, but it also exposes his naiveté; he doesn’t understand the inappropriateness of bragging about killing a child. Tellingly, however, Merlin also marvels that the two killers were unconcerned about jail, hell, or the hauntings of a vengeful ghost. His concerns show not only his superstitiousness but also his healthy regard for the consequences of his actions. Even though Merlin’s focus is more on evading repercussion than behaving morally, his self-reflections indicate he is a dynamic character who is still learning how to be an adult.
Death is a heavy motif in the novel, and this connects to the motif of ghosts, which Hesse introduces in Act II; ghosts are an element of superstition that will later become significant. Like the murder case, the idea of ghosts provokes unique, revealing responses from different characters. The first ghost to appear is Lewis, the child who died when the sandbank fell on him. Lewis’s ghost helps Esther when she loses consciousness after hitting her head on a rock. She says:
and i did get confused and
thinkings i did drown in sand
the way lewis did with his lame leg.
and then lewis did take my hand
and he gave me showings of the way back home […] (36).
Esther knows Lewis is dead when he takes her hand, but she doesn’t fear Lewis’s ghost. Like most of her interactions with the world, both natural and supernatural, she assumes the best intentions in what she sees and hears. Merlin, on the other hand, is terrified of being haunted. Because Esther is innocent and naïve, she has nothing to fear from the ghost of a friend, but Merlin is uneasy with himself, and he boasts of a capacity for murder; naturally, he would fear the ghost of his hypothetical murder victim. Both Esther and Merlin believe in ghosts, but Esther does so because, as a young child, she accepts all that the world shows her, no matter how fantastical. Merlin’s belief is based on superstition and fear.
Another motif introduced in Act II is the naming of things. Esther is infatuated with the names of plants and animals, reflecting her natural and innocent outlook on life. Sara, who Esther believes “has knowings of all things” in nature (6), names the flowers and birds for Esther—and in the process, she glimpses Esther’s clear and spiritual perspective. Naming plants and animals is an allusion to the biblical creation narrative, in which Adam names all the creatures in the world but does not find a companion suitable for himself (hence Eve’s subsequent creation). Sara prides herself on being self-sufficient, but as she spends time naming with Esther, she realizes that she lacks companionship in her life. While Sara’s pragmatic nature allows her to help Esther navigate others’ antisemitism, Esther’s childlike openness to all beauty inspires Sara to notice the splendor of the natural world and the innate goodness of Esther.
The burning cross on Independence Day is a strong symbol for the Klan. The poem itself is a concrete poem that takes the shape of a cross, and Hesse employs personification when she describes its “arms stretching above the town” (52); the metaphor conveys the Klan’s threatening presence in the community. Johnny is oblivious to the irony of a hate group using a Christian cross as a symbol, and he is nearly delirious at the perfection of the flames, despite their obvious infernal imagery. The cross-burning causes a shift in the town’s allegiances; Merlin reacts to the flames less than wholeheartedly, and many characters begin to distance themselves from the Klan or even take a public stance against it: Reynard deplores the recklessness of lighting a blaze in the dry conditions and calls the stunt childish; Iris states she’d rather be a Catholic than join the Klan; and Sara grumbles about men in their dirty nightshirts. Only Esther is happily incognizant of the Klan’s activity beyond a cursory mention of the cross-burning. She is more interested in the naming of plants and birds and the joyful singing that comes from Sara’s lips.
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By Karen Hesse
