35 pages • 1 hour read
Michael CunninghamWhite Angel
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Proximity of Love and Pain
Carlton’s impending death hangs over the story from early on, when Bobby says, “Here is Carlton several months before his death” (2), yet this is not just a story of death; it is a story of brotherly love. The love between the two boys is never in question. Despite the age difference, Carlton enjoys hanging out with his little brother, and even though Carlton recklessly introduces his younger brother to various substances, he also loves him and believes himself to be broadening Bobby’s mind, rather than endangering him. Bobby relies on his brother’s guidance and confidence, and Carlton wants his brother to approach the world with the same sense of wonder and confidence that he has. He tells his brother, “There’s not a thing in this pretty world to be afraid of. I’m here” (2).
Of course, there are things to be afraid of, but the dangers are never what the characters expect. Carlton’s death is framed as a bizarre accident, not as a direct result of intoxication or reckless behavior. The other deaths mentioned in the story are random, too—planes drop out of the sky and kill families sitting in their homes. Death and pain are always threatening to descend from nowhere, and the brothers’ parents are more aware of this. Their mother faced her own tragedy when the man she loved died in a wartime aviation accident, and she knows to manage her expectations and prepare for the worst. In some ways, her life has prepared her for pain, but nothing prepares her for the loss of her son. When Carlton dies, she screams, and “[a] part of her flies wailing through the house, where it will wail and rage forever” (14). Love lives in proximity to intense pain, as death is always shadowing life. Likewise, the cemetery borders the street of family homes painted in “optimistic colors.”
When Bobby sees his brother having sex in the cemetery, he mistakes the look of pleasure on his brother’s face for one of pain. Later, Bobby wants to ask his brother “as casually as I can manage, about the relationship between love and bodily pain” (7), but he never does, because their mother interrupts. This unasked question about love and pain hovers over the narrative, as everyone who loved Carlton intensely is marked in some painful way by his sudden death. His girlfriend has a crisis after the funeral and sees a psychiatrist three times a week. Bobby’s mother retreats into the guestroom to establish “her life of separateness” (14), perhaps to withdraw from a world that only promises more pain.
Bobby is in such pain from the loss, and so tortured by guilt, that he can neither directly look at Carlton’s girlfriend nor even write her name, despite empathizing with her. His own pain and guilt isolate him—but this pain is a consequence of his intense love for his brother. Carlton’s death seems to evince that love will always bring with it the possibility of disaster, just as the radios “sang out love all day long” before the “river caught fire” in Cleveland (1).
The Reckless Optimism of Youth
The contrast between generations is a consistent theme in the story. The younger generation were raised amid the fervent counterculture of the 1960s and, as a result, look at the world differently than their parents. The older generation, in contrast, lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War, and these collective traumas shaped them. This contrast illuminates the reckless optimism of the younger generation. Carlton, as a symbol of his generation, has a reckless optimism—and, in an unfortunate sequence of chance events, this optimism leads to his tragic death.
Carlton is a poster child for 1960s counterculture with his long hair “pulled back into a ponytail” (2) and his free attitude about drugs, alcohol, and sex. He has many unexpected ideas that signal his open-mindedness and readiness to experiment, regardless of risk. Likewise, he has no qualms about initiating his younger brother into his illicit world, believing that fearlessness will inculcate him against danger: “Drugs can’t hurt you if you feel no fear” (3). Carlton dreams of Woodstock and a bright future where all are liberated from the capitalist demands of work and formal education.
The adults are not so optimistic. They know that disappointment is inevitable and there will be no release from life’s responsibilities. Bobby says his father is “formerly handsome” and that his long-suffering face is worn out, while his mother “looks at things as if they give off a painful light” (6). Their former beauty is obscured by the accumulated stresses of their lives—unlike Carlton, who shines with the same beauty his mother once had. The adults have aspirations outside of their jobs, but they are trapped by financial necessity.
At the party, the adults briefly shed their disappointment. Inspired by Carlton’s young friends, they let loose and allow the teenagers to take the lead. The boys’ mother is beautiful again. Even their father dances, if awkwardly. The future once again seems bright, as if the older generation will take inspiration from the young and transform. Bobby feels the change is revolutionary: “By tomorrow, no one will be quite the same” (12). This prediction bears out, though for unexpected reasons. Carlton’s sudden death is what transforms them.
The narrative’s recurring motif of flight highlights the optimism of youth and the recklessness that accompanies fearlessness. Carlton believes he and Bobby can fly, “and we do. For a moment we strain up and out, the black night wind blowing in our faces” (4). Further, as he stares out the window with Carlton, Bobby believes the secret of flight is a matter of faith—a willing suspension of disbelief. The adults lack this faith, as their age has brought them enough trauma to dismantle such fervid idealism. In contrast, as he falls asleep at the party, Bobby is “dreaming of flight” (11), and Carlton believes so much in the UFO that he stays out longer than the rest of the partygoers. This leads to his death. Youthful optimism, when reckless, is the ultimate risky flight, but it allows one to dream.
The Lasting Effects of Grief and Regret
“White Angel” explores the effects of grief and regret. When Carlton dies, his parents grow distant. Bobby believes a part of his mother’s soul left forever when Carlton died, and in the year after, she isolates herself in the guestroom. His father seems lost. Bobby finds him “shuffling across the living room floor after midnight” (14), and when Bobby greets him, he almost thinks it’s Carlton’s ghost. After Bobby leads him back to bed, his father says he wants to talk—but they don’t, and Bobby just sits with him and listens to the clock. It seems there is nothing to say. They are alone, but together in their grief.
Bobby grieves his brother, and he is haunted by how he didn’t try to warn him about the glass door. As a nine-year-old, Bobby could not have been responsible—he believed Carlton would only “bump his nose. It will be a good joke on him” (13)—but even years later, his remorse remains. Bobby’s remorse and the depth of his pain are almost hidden until the story’s final paragraph, as if the pain is too immense to tell the reader directly. To an extent, his guilt has an almost incapacitating quality; because Carlton’s girlfriend did try to warn Carlton, Bobby can neither look at her face nor write her name, despite his empathy for her suffering. This admission is the final note of the story. Up until Carlton’s death, the tone is light and even humorous; after Carlton dies so horrifically, the tone becomes somber.
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