Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Nancy Forest-Flier <forestflier AT gmail.com>]

Into the third chapter of The Second Coming, and I’ve made an interesting discovery I’d like to share. Part 1 of chapter 3 is Will’s recollection of the Thomasville hunting incident when Will was a twelve-year-old boy. After the shots are fired, and Will finds himself alone and slightly injured, trying to figure out what exactly happened and where his father is, he says to himself, “Then, without knowing how he knew, he knew that he was free to act in his own good time. (How did he know such a thing?)” And on the next page, after Will finds his injured father, he says. “Why is it, he wondered, that I have all the time in the world to figure out what to do and the freedom to do it and that what is more I will do it? ... This is a problem and problems are for solving. All you need to do anything is time to do it, being let alone long enough to do it and a center to do it from. He had found his center.” 

The key word here is “freedom.” In the previous chapter, when Allison is reading the note she wrote to herself before escaping from the asylum, she reads, “There is one thing you must not forget, or if you have forgotten, be reminded of it here and now. It is the discovery I made last week (you made? we made?). Do you remember? ... What was my (you, our) discovery? That I could act. I was free to act.” 

“Free to act” is something both Allison and Will have somehow discovered separately, and both of them understand it as a very important discovery. “How did he know such a thing?” How do we know we are free to act? Where does this knowledge come from? 

And, as I continue reading, am I going to find out?

Nancy

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