The Human Comedy

Author: William Saroyan

Release: February 4, 1943

Publisher: Harcourt

Genre: Fiction

Main Character(s): Homer Macauley, Katie Macauley, Bess Macauley, Mary Arena, Ulysses Macauley, Mr. Grogan, Mr. Spangler, Miss Hicks, Hubert Ackley III, Auggie Gottlieb, Marcus Macauley, Mr. Ara, Diana Steed

Synopsis: Adventures of a singing telegraph messenger in the San Joaquin Valley

Declassified by Agent Palmer: Tragedy plus 80 Years Equals the Ongoing Relevance of The Human Comedy

Quotes and Lines

“But as long as we are alive,” she said, “as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us. His body can be taken, but not him. You shall know your father better as you grow and know yourself better,” she said. “He is not dead, because you are alive. Time and accident, illness and weariness took his body, but already you have given it back to him, younger and more eager than ever. I don’t expect you to understand anything I’m telling you. But I know you will remember this–that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world–no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.”

“They’ve been wanting to retire me for years,” he shouted. “They’ve been wanting to put in the machines they’re inventing all over the place–Multiplexes and Teletypes,” he said with contempt, “Machines instead of human beings!” He spoke softly now, as if to himself or to the people who were seeking to put him out of his place in the world. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have this job. I guess I’d die in a week. I’ve worked all my life and I’m not going to stop now.”

“Everything is changed,” she said–”for you. But it is still the same, too. The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child. But the whole world has always been full of that loneliness. The loneliness does not come from the War. The War did not make it. It was the loneliness that made the War. It was the despair in all things for no longer having in them the grace of God. We’ll stay together. We’ll not change too much.”

“A man doesn’t begin to really love his country until it’s in trouble. All the rest of the time he takes it for granted–like his family.”

140 to end of chapter There was a pause…
Grogan’s RANT!

“I’m not supposed to drink, Tom,” Mr. Grogan said. “You know I’m not supposed to drink.”
“Sure I know you’re not supposed to drink,” Spangler said, “but I also know you like to drink and what a man likes to do is sometimes more important than what he is supposed to do–so go ahead and have yourself a drink.”
“All right, Tom, Mr. Grogan said, and left the office.

“…I used to like to read, but no more. Now I don’t even want to look at newspapers. I know the news. The news is corruption and murder all over the place, every day, and not one man in the world shocked about it.”

“Each man is the whole word, to make over as he will and to fill with a human race he can love, if it is love he has, or a race he must hate, if it is hate he has. The world waits to be made over by each man who inhabits it, and it is made over every morning like a bed or a household where the same people live–always the same, but always changing too.”

“I know that sobbing,” Mrs. Macaulay said. “I have heard it before. It is not yours. It is not any man’s. It is the whole world’s. Having known the world’s grief, you are now on your way, so of course all the mistakes are ahead–all the wonderful mistakes that you must and will make. I will tell you at breakfast in broad daylight what any of us might hesitate to say in the comforting darkness of night, because you are still fresh from that sleep and grief and because I must tell you. No matter what mistakes are that you must make, do not be afraid of having made them or of making more of them. Trust your heart, which is a good one, to be right, and go ahead–don’t stop. It you fall, tricked or tripped by others, or by yourself even, get up and don’t turn back. Many times you will laugh and many times you will weep, but always you will laugh and weep together. You will never have a moment of time in your life to be mean or petty or small. Those things will be beneath you–too small for the swiftness of your spirit–too insignificant to come into the line of your vision.”