53 pages • 1-hour read
Days Without End
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Chapters 10-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Two years later, a Sioux girl who Thomas calls Winona (because he cannot pronounce her real name), has grown very attached to Thomas. Starling, whose mental state is in decline, dislikes that Thomas is befriending the child, which leads him to rant about his racist views of varying peoples. Due to his cyclical, chronic illness, John is told he can’t sign up for another term, and Thomas is free to go with him. John is worried he won’t find better work after the army. Thomas asks Mrs. Neale if he can take Winona as an “apprentice servant,” and she agrees only after Thomas assures her is not interested in Winona (who is then only nine years old) sexually.
When Thomas, John, and Winona reach Missouri, they learn that John’s father, whom John hasn’t seen in more than 10 years, has died in Pennsylvania. John estimates himself at age 25 and his father 45 or 50. They contact Noone who has left Daggsville for Grand Rapids, where he runs minstrel shows. He has work for Thomas “if he ain’t lost his pretty looks fighting” (98), and John tells Thomas he is still pretty as the two cuddle and kiss. Winona, who decides she prefers the last name Cole to McNulty, thinks nothing of two men sleeping together. John and Thomas buy her several pretty dresses, which Thomas thinks he likes as much as Winona does. The three head to Grand Rapids to meet Noone, who has aged well. They introduce Winona as John’s daughter, which pleases John.
John references the nonbinary Sioux they met near Fort Laramie, who were “so good looking [it] made your knees soft to see them” (101) and suggests that Thomas could have the same effect. They plan a minstrel performance that will feature John, Thomas, and Winona and pay 25 dollars a week. John and Thomas spend the last of their savings on the finest dress they can find for Thomas. That night, John and Thomas chastely hold hands under the blankets while Winona sleeps nearby.
Chapter 11 Summary
When their act debuts, the troupe puts on blackface, including the two Black men in the troupe. Thomas puts on his elaborate outfit of women’s clothing, including undergarments. Thomas and John’s act includes a tender kissing scene, and Thomas feels awe at being able to show their love in public. They are a hit with the audience. John and Thomas feel guilty about putting Winona to work and seek to get her into school instead, but the nearby school won’t take her because she is Sioux. Beulah McSweny, the Black usher at the minstrel show, offers to teach Winona and explains he knows how to read because his father was a free man. McSweny also becomes their landlord. John, Thomas, and Winona settle in as a happy family; they estimate they are 29, 26, and nine, respectively. The men find simple pleasure in raising the young girl.
Thomas begins to wear dresses at home, as they make him feel “easier.” Winona takes to singing Sioux songs, and Thomas frets that he or John may have been the one to kill her mother. Thomas and John refine their act, luring in women of the town as well as the men. Several of the townsmen fall for Thomas’s onstage persona, prompting John to declare his love frequently. Winona writes to Lige on John’s behalf, who reports he and Starling are both well. A letter from Mrs. Neale reports that “there are other kinds of war brewing generally” on the plains (112). Thomas, prompted by McSweny, identifies with the Union and is filled with patriotism. He and John resolve to join Major’s company, which is gathering in Boston. They leave Winona with McSweny in Grand Rapids and promise to return soon.
Chapter 12 Summary
In Boston, volunteer soldiers gather. Major (whose rank is now colonel) organizes them and promotes John and Thomas to corporal and Starling and Lige to sergeant. Thomas and John sign up for three years while most volunteers sign for 90 days. All believe the war will be over quickly. Most of the men have no military experience and Thomas observes that many are Irish. The march to Washington reminds Thomas of life in Laramie, though he notes that the cannons are much larger. Thomas meets a man named FitzGerald who, like Thomas, lost his family to famine and came to the U.S. via Quebec. Starling makes anti-Irish comments, which irritates Thomas, though he admits Starling is a competent commander. John and Thomas send their wages to McSweny for Winona’s care.
The Union men get in position for their first battle, in which 4,000 of them combat 3,000 Confederate soldiers hidden in trees. The Confederates respond to the Union’s greater weaponry in a chaotic manner that surprises Thomas. He contrasts fighting Native Americans with fighting men who are “Irish, English, and all the rest” (122). The battle rages on until the grasses catch fire, halting the shooting. A wordless truce takes hold while “medical boys” and chaplains go tend to the wounded.
Chapter 13 Summary
In the aftermath of battle, many men are shocked by the carnage, but John and Thomas are more experienced and cavalier, grateful primarily that everyone in their card game has survived. Thomas thinks about Winona, how far away the “darkness” of his own childhood seems, and how John brought “light” into his life. He thinks about how many souls are lost to war and about the foolishness of burying bodies out of respect in a place where wolves will come dig them up. He notices a bear has approached without his hearing it, but Thomas and the bear just stare at one another for a moment before the bear leaves.
The Union men camp for winter, which brings boredom. They put on minstrel shows, including FitzGerald in a dress, whom Starling professes wanting to marry. Fever and famine plague the camp. Spring comes and the men take to digging trenches to shoot from. Starling says he misses Laramie; when FitzGerald asks if Starling wants to “help the black man get his freedom and keep the Union” (127), Starling is confused, saying he only came to fight because Major asked him, not because he cares about emancipation (which he emphasizes through his use of racist slurs). Major (now Colonel Neale) returns from a failed attempt to spend the winter with his family. More Union soldiers arrive from further north, which improves the mood at camp.
Ten thousand Confederate soldiers march in from the south. There are only 4,000 Union men, but they are “dug in like prairie dogs. Rifle pits galore a mile wide” (128). Starling accuses Lige of being a “Tennessee traitor” because he’s from a Confederate state and fights for the Union, but Lige counters that Starling doesn’t know anything and that Lige knows what makes “a back-stabbing turncoat” (130). Their fury turns to sudden laughter. They prepare for battle, Lige with a paper with his name and farm address written on it, so that his body can be identified if he’s killed and word sent to his father. The anticipation causes men to vomit, urinate, or defecate. The Union guns mark the start of the battle and Thomas notes that many of the Confederates don’t even have shoes, which reminds him of the slums of Sligo. Smoke covers the scene, and the battle becomes, for Thomas, chaos and terror interrupted only by the process of reloading his gun as fast as he can. Some of the Confederates try to retreat, but can’t, due to more of their own soldiers behind them. Eventually, the Confederates successfully retreat, and the Union soldiers collapse with exhaustion, John sleeping against Thomas’s shoulder.
Chapter 14 Summary
Evening comes and the Confederates return, taking the Union soldiers by surprise. The fighting in the darkness is confusing and quickly turns to hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and knives. The fight lasts only for 10 minutes before the darkness makes it impossible, with hundreds killed in that time. The soldiers transport the wounded back to camp, where the surgeon tries to patch as many terrible wounds as possible, including Lige’s—a knife to the neck. Lige lives but can’t turn his neck and so is honorably discharged. Starling is very worried about Lige as he returns to his father’s farm in Tennessee, especially since Lige has to walk to get there and nobody knows if there’s even a road. John is touched by Lige’s promise to keep in touch.
The company is moved north to a place called Edwards Ferry, relieved by other soldiers at the front. In Union territory, farmers offer the soldiers fresh and hot food, which pleases Thomas. They reach the main camp and Starling finds a cherry orchard, which provides the men with an uncommonly nice day. Pay comes irregularly, but when they are paid, Thomas and John send money back to McSweny for Winona. Winona sends a packet of letters, reporting she is working for Noone’s minstrel show again and hopes John and Thomas return safe. John believes Winona is the prettiest girl in Michigan, which Thomas says makes sense, as she’s “Handsome John Cole’s daughter” (140), which makes John laugh. John says he hopes he will see Winona again.
The company marches towards Tennessee. They receive a letter from Lige, who reports that his father was hanged for being a Union sympathizer. This news upsets Starling greatly. Colonel Neale is demoted to major again and sent back to Laramie. Starling wants to go with him but can’t until his term of service is up. John considers fetching Winona and going to Laramie as well after their term is over or the war ends, whichever comes first, but Thomas reminds him how frequently he was ill there. Thomas also wants to go back to wearing dresses, which he can’t do in Laramie, so John suggests going to San Francisco, starting a theater there, or staying with Noone. They feel optimistic about life after their service, which is over in four months. Starling’s service ends and he follows Major to Laramie. Thomas reflects that “Starling Carlton is the strangest man I have called friend” (142).
Chapters 10-14 Analysis
These chapter further explore the hierarchies of racist ideology that, per Barry’s presentation, are absurd, yet are entirely reasonable to the characters—even when those who hold such viewpoints offer no explanation for them. Starling Carlton, for example, claims that “Irish was bad enough and far as he’s concerned you can take all the Africans and put them into a great feed for hogs but he says Indians is the worst” (96). Starling, who maintains that he considers Thomas a friend throughout their lives, does not seem to experience a disconnect at claiming such things in front of Thomas, who is Irish. Furthermore, neither Thomas nor Starling seems to question why Starling feels compelled to offer this assessment, which is not material. Barry here emphasizes the commonplace nature of racist logic in 19th century American culture, further undermining the image of the soldier as hero that he challenges throughout his text.
This portion of the novel also sees Thomas, John, and Winona reuniting with Noone: “Turns out Mr Noone has a new place up in Grand Rapids running minstrel shows and he says he might just have work for Thomas McNulty if he ain’t lost his pretty looks fighting” (98). Minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment in the American 19th century as their condescending, paternalistic form of racism felt more palatable to many audiences than other, more violent, anti-Black performances. These performances, featuring predominantly white performers wearing blackface, acted out racist stereotypes that presented Black individuals as lazy, dimwitted, and buffoonish while suggesting that Black people were simultaneously happy and childlike. Minstrelsy originated in the American Northeast in the 1830s and was popular nationwide by midcentury. The format became less popular in the 20th century, though some minstrel troupes performed into the 1950s.
Despite the racism inherent in the minstrel form, it offers Thomas and John the opportunity to play lovers onstage and act on their love and desire for one another in a public space. When Thomas dresses in lady’s clothes and has a dramatic love scene with John (a contrast to the normally comedic bent of minstrel performances), he thinks with pleasure, “Handsome John Cole, my beau. Our love in plain sight” (107). Nuancing the novel’s discussion of Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Family-Making, queer desire is thus rendered socially acceptable, something than can be acted on in public, when it is a performance. Thomas, however, notes that the men in the audience do not see his and John’s love as a joke: “They have seen something they don’t understand and partly do, in the same breath” (107). For John and Thomas, their time in the minstrel show is thus both something exploitative (it turns their love into a spectacle for others to consume) and an opportunity for them to demonstrate their love without secrecy.
When Thomas and John fight for the Union army during the Civil War, Thomas is faced with the idea that he must now fight an enemy who is like himself: “It is not like running at Indians who are not your kind but it is running at a mirror of yourself. These Johnny Rebs are Irish, English, and all the rest. Canter on, canter on, and enjoin” (122). Despite the way in which the Irish are discriminated against in America—and the long history of violence between the Irish and the English, which was a direct contributor to the Irish famine that killed Thomas’s family—he still sees white Confederates as “like” him in a way that Native Americans are not. This demonstrates both the pervasiveness of racist ideology in American culture and the uncertain position vis-a-vis whiteness that the Irish occupied in the 19th century. While the Irish were painted as “other” in comparison to the English or the Dutch, contrast to other “less white” peoples caused the Irish to be included in concepts of whiteness, signifying the ways in which the project of white supremacy uses plasticity of definition in order to sustain itself. By instituting complex racial hierarchies, white supremacists, as organized in this way, discourage identification between Irish and Black peoples without thinning the consolidation of power held by those who are “whiter” than the Irish.
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