The Eighth Day

This epic novel, published in 1967, won the National Book Award for fiction. Its central setting is a small mining town in southern Illinois but there are also sections of the novel set in Chicago, New Jersey, Ohio and in Chile. The central character, John Ashley, works in the local coal mine and the novel gives an account of the life of his family from 1885 to 1905, the plot being shaped around the 1902 murder of Ashley’s neighbour Breckenridge Lansing for which he is found guilty and sentenced to death. The author weaves the narrative in five non-sequential sections rather than in a simple chronology. By doing so, he reveals elements of the case of the killing of Breckenridge Lansing throughout the novel as he gives an elaborate account of the lives led by this small-town family before and after the crime.

The author, Thornton Wilder (born 17 April 1897), was the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes, one for fiction and two for drama. He was educated in China, where his father served as a diplomat, and California. He served in the Coast Artillery Corps from September to December 1918 before completing a degree in Yale. His first play was published in 1920 and his first novel in 1926 while he was working as a French teacher in a preparatory boarding school in New Jersey. His second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1928. One reviewer was effusive in his appreciation of Wilder’s talent:
“Mr Wilder knows precisely what he is doing and why; and, better still, how to do it. This is lavish, yet restrained, praise for a tale which I am grievously tempted to call a masterpiece.” It was this precision that characterised Wilder’s finest writing.

The most striking aspect of this novel is how the author, with a mindset shaped by World War, depicts two key attempts to save a life as futile. The murder of Breckenridge Lansing we learn is an attempt to save John Ashley. Instead he is sentenced to death. Likewise when John Ashley is identified as a fugitive while in exile in Chile, an English woman conspires to rescue him. He had previously been rescued from the train that was bringing him to be executed. Understanding him to be innocent and honourable, the reader has been taught by the author to identify with Ashley and is looking forward to the prospect of him being safely reunited with his wife and children. All the efforts to save Ashley are, however, ultimately in vain. Similarly many soldiers were dramatically saved in battle only to be killed a short time later. The author, however, goes on to show the success of his children after the loss of their father.

To a great extent Wilder uses this novel to reflect on the concept of history: personal history, family history, local history and national history. Towards the end of the narrative he reflects on the history of Coaltown, the small town at the centre of the novel:
“Here the young John Ashleys had descended from the train and looked about them, all happy expectation. The platforms of railway stations! ...Here young men departed for the First World War and returned from it. Before the second war a new highway had been built and new tracks laid eleven miles to the west of Coaltown. The station fell into disrepair. It decayed and finally went up in flames one frosty November night. It burned up, like everything else in history.”