Family and Healing: Inevitable Failure (Sing, Unburied, Sing) - Ethan Everett

 

Throughout the novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, there is a wide prevalence of illness and pain and death. These themes are common throughout life, but they are not always treated the same way that Sing, Unburied Sing does. From the onset of the novel, Jojo is presented with impending death, with the slaughtering of the goat, and Mam’s cancer – but of note in this depiction and most others, is that this part of life is inevitable. We later see this in the way the characters handle the death of Given, and his haunting of the characters (though mostly Leonie). Mam’s inability to see Given like Leonie can, however, is of particular note: “’I ain't never have the talent for it. Seeing the dead. I could read people, read the future or the past in they bodies. Know what was wrong or needed by their songs: in the plants, in the animals, too. But never saw the dead. Wanted it so bad after Given died…’” (237)

In conjunction with the inevitability of death, is the inability for many of the characters to healthily take care of each other – though they indeed rely on each other. For example, no one attempts to get Leonie professional help with her addiction to cocaine. Rather, while there is an emphasis on the source, care comes largely in the form of food and Mam’s “healing” which has been passed through her family. That this “healing” is hereditary demonstrates how important family is for the characters in the novel for coping with illness, pain, and death. This suggests to me that characters like Leonie, who disrupts the filial bonds of care through the neglect of her children, are actually only unable to truly care because of their own needs. This helps us understand Mam’s inability to see him: it could tie to her inability to help herself, and/or the fact that she must fill the role of caretaker, and that any who fill the role of caretaker cannot, in turn be cared for. Additionally, Leonie’s inability to heal (such as when she tries to heal Kayla with a potion before Jojo forces her to throw it up (118)) because of her need to be healed allows her to see Given’s ghost.

In Ward’s narrative, families like the one depicted in the novel grow to rely on each other, for one reason or another – racism, poverty, etc.. And while the members of these families are successful to an extent in some of their forms of care, death, pain, and suffering are inevitable. We could attribute this both to the conditions of their lives, as well as to the inability of this filial system to truly take care of itself. People like Jojo and Man must rise to the occasion, at the cost of themselves, while people like Leonie suffer from the inability of this system to truly help her through her lifelong trauma.