The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

“Mercy wondered if her brother understood that he had pulled the rug out from underneath her. She’d worked her tail off for thirteen years to help Pop keep Birdsall & Son up and running for Zeddie’s benefit, and now he was about to smash it to smithereens. She wanted to say, What about me? But what right did she have to guilt Zeddie into a job—a vocation, really—that made him miserable?”

Mercy’s reflection on her and Zeddie’s respective roles in the family business highlights her sense of obligation to act as the family caregiver, even at her own expense. It is also clear that although her father considers her to be a mere placeholder for Zeddie, she genuinely loves her work as an undertaker and resents Zeddie’s choices.

“[A] soul floated past Duckers, the eerie rod of amber light drifting over the pink hillocks of Tanria like a wind-blown dandelion seed. Not that anyone but Hart could see it, and not that anyone knew that Hart could—no one who was alive, at any rate. In the days when he and Alma were partners, he had been tempted to tell her that he could see the souls of the departed—his demigod gift—but then he’d remembered what happened to Bill and he’d kept his mouth shut.”

In this scene, the interactions between Hart and Duckers provide necessary exposition that outlines the rules governing Bannen’s fantasy world. By emphasizing Hart’s unique sensitivity and perceptions, Bannen also sets the protagonist apart. Already a lonely character, Hart is isolated even further by his compulsion not to reveal the full breadth of what he sees. In a world steeped in death and spirits, he cannot share what he knows for fear that his abilities will lead him to greater losses than he has already experienced in the death of his mentor.

“Some of them will be buried in shipyards, in airtight boats that aren’t supposed to leak. Some will be burned to ash in their boats and scattered on the ocean by loved ones. But in the end, they’ll all sail the Salt Sea like you. The Warden will welcome them into the House of the Unknown God, and there will be nothing left but what Grandfather Bones leaves behind.”

Mercy speaks over the mass grave to show her respect for the dead, thereby distinguishing her attitude from Cuningham’s more profit-focused, cutthroat style. This scene therefore demonstrates Mercy’s earnest belief that she is providing an important service of care and respect to both the deceased and their families. Her dialogue also provides more details about how death is regarded in the dominant religion of the people who live in Eternity.

“I’ve been thinking on your situation, vague as it is to me, and I can’t help but wonder if more people are lonelier than either of us will ever know. Maybe lots of people are walking through their days, lonely as can be and believing no one understands what it’s like. That’s not a very cheering thought, is it?”

In her response to Hart’s first anonymous letter, Mercy reflects on the difference between being alone and being lonely even as her letter constitutes a move toward Seeking New Connections to Overcome Loneliness. Her thoughts take on a bleaker tone when she ponders the idea that everyone feels isolated and misunderstood, but by showing empathy to her unknown pen pal, she lays the groundwork for more meaningful interactions in the days and weeks to come.

“Telling a demigod to ‘live a little’ was a particular choice of words, one that made Hart stop and consider his apprentice. Duckers had never asked him about his parentage, and as Hart studied his open, earnest face, he wondered if Duckers was so naïve that he didn’t know there were demigods who didn’t live a little, but who lived a lot—lived on and on and on.”

This passage references an important aspect of Hart’s internal conflict: his preoccupation with the possibility that he will live forever as a demigod. Far from being enthused about the idea, he deeply dreads its greater implications and does not relish the idea of living “on and on and on” while those around him inevitably die and leave him alone in the world. As a result, he chooses to avoid life in general, laboring under the misguided notion that this approach will be less painful in the long run. This moment also highlights Duckers’ youth and naiveté: traits that frustrate and endear him to Hart in equal measure.

“‘Know what else I think?’ Duckers asked at his elbow. […] ‘I think you’re afraid to be nice to Mercy, because you wouldn’t be able to handle it if she didn’t like you back.’”

Having witnessed the fraught interactions between Hart and Mercy, Duckers proves to be astute and observant despite his youth, and he easily sees beneath the surface of Hart’s gruff behavior as few others have. His commentary, though unwelcome to Hart, forces the protagonist to reconsider his own motives. Thus, although Duckers plays a relatively minor role in the plot, his pointed commentary in this scene acts as an important catalyst for Hart’s character development.

“It was as if she had taken a sledgehammer to everything he thought he knew about Bill Clark, and in the process, she had smashed their friendship, too. Years of trust pulverized in an instant. He supposed he could apologize for his part in it now, but once again, he couldn’t muster the nerve to broach the subject with her.”

Hart regretfully reflects on his long-ago argument with Alma, and his ongoing reluctance to risk making amends illustrates his inability to plunge fully into the world of the living and accept the messiness of expressing vulnerability and emotion. His thoughts also demonstrate that he stubbornly idolizes Bill’s memory, refusing to acknowledge his mentor’s flaws or to process his own grief. His failure to reach out and repair his friendship with Alma is emblematic of a broader pattern of behavior, for Hart often retreats into himself rather than facing the uncomfortable emotional work required to forge and maintain meaningful connections.

“‘There have been five honest-to-gods drudge clusters reported since Tanria’s opening twenty-five years ago. One was on that ridge to the southeast. A marshal died that night. […] And one was on that field. A good marshal lost his life that night.’

Hart could recall with crystalline clarity Bill’s anguished cries as the drudges tore into him, but he kept himself composed for Duckers’s sake.”

When Hart explains the concept of drudge clusters to Duckers, he deliberately avoids conveying the true extent of his own experience with this phenomenon, and his cut-and-dried descriptions clash with his unspoken inner anguish as he inevitably recalls the gruesome death of his mentor. This exchange also establishes vital information that will prove instrumental to the novel’s climactic events.

“Anything worth doing in this life requires a leap of faith, and I have faith that our friendship can exist beyond these letters, despite all the faults and weaknesses of our flesh-and-blood selves, which is why I want to meet you, to know you better. Let us be brave.”

In this passage, Mercy urges her pen pal to meet in person, not realizing the full extent of Hart’s resistance to forging close, real-world relationships. However, she makes solid points in favor of meeting in person, arguing that their long-distance interactions render them mere “paper dolls” (159)—flat and insubstantial representations of themselves. As she declares her certainty that their relationship can survive an honest revelation of their faults and foibles, she proves herself willing to undergo the type of vulnerability needed to make a more meaningful connection. The scene also contains a wealth of dramatic irony, for Hart’s chapters have already revealed his many unprocessed fears and inhibitions on this topic.

“But as Mercy tilted her head, staring past him toward the door, he understood that she could not entertain the idea that Hart Ralston was the man behind the pen. And somehow, that was worse than the notion that this had been a joke to her.”

When Hart confronts Mercy in the café after discovering that she is his anonymous pen pal, he briefly suspects that she has known his identity all along and is playing a cruel trick on him. However, at this moment, he finally realizes that she is oblivious to his identity as the letter writer and cannot even imagine the possibility. , which he finds even more painful, thus tacitly admitting to his emotional attachment to her.

“He set the letter on his bare cot, sat on the other end, and stared at the unopened symbol of his unfinished business with Mercy. His whole life was like this letter, a series of goodbyes that never happened, a line from his past to his present that he could draw in his mind with a thick-nibbed pen from his mother to Bill to Gracie to Mercy.”

After the disastrous encounter with Mercy at the café, Hart wrestles with his feelings about the situation. His several losses throughout life become tangled together, and this dynamic deepens his emotional conflict and continues his pattern of avoidance when faced with pain and grief. His sense of unfinished business lingers to the end of the novel, spurring his reckless actions in the final chapters.

“But he badly wanted to see Mercy before he left, wanted to talk to her one more time, wanted to make sure she was okay. […] He hung the towel on its peg anyway and looked himself in the eye. There it was, a truth so evident that it may as well have been painted on his forehead in red letters. He was helplessly, boundlessly, stupidly in love with Mercy Birdsall.”

In keeping with the popular enemies-to-lovers trope, the drudge attack in Eternity marks a shift in the feelings of both main characters, but most significantly for Hart. In a flash of sudden self-awareness, he realizes that he loves Mercy, and in this passage, the rueful tone of his private thoughts conveys the sense of a moment of reckoning. By “look[ing] himself in the eye,” he finally acknowledges that he has likely loved her since they first met, and the directness of his body language indicates his sudden decision to do something about it.

“But Mercy didn’t want his apologies. She wanted him to feel as unmoored and heady and ebullient as she did. She kissed him again, this time with a depth and tenderness that placed a chunk of her own vulnerability on the line like a dare.”

The scene directly after the Founder’s Day Dance represents the moment when the protagonists’ growing relationship transcends the abstract confines of letter-writing and becomes a real-life possibility. Mirroring her letters to her pen pal, Mercy recognizes that this moment is fragile, requiring bravery and vulnerability, and her thoughts emphasize the importance of forging new connections with others despite the emotional risks involved.

“Months ago, when Hart had slipped a letter into a nimkilim box at the West Station, he had felt as though he had a bundle of knots coiled in his stomach. With each letter from his friend and with each passing minute in Mercy’s presence, those knots loosened, little by little, as if she were picking them apart with her capable fingers. He hadn’t realized how tight his lungs were until Mercy gave him room to breathe.”

In this scene, Hart’s thoughts reflect the depths of his lifelong inhibitions, which were paradoxically so consistently severe that he had never experienced the emotional openness that marks their opposite. The passage also captures the nervous tension that comes with taking a chance and reaching out to someone who may or may not choose to understand and acknowledge the sentiments being voiced.

“There was a strange ridge along the appendix, something odd. When she ran her scalpel underneath it, it peeled off, as if someone had stuck a paper-thin, flesh-colored patch to the small organ that housed the human soul. Beneath it was another hole gouged into the appendix, but there was no corresponding hole on the patch she had removed.”

As the romantic plot between Hart and Mercy progresses, the author also advances the larger mystery of this fantasy world through small clues and strange occurrences that are not fully explained. The most important clue appears in the strange patches that Mercy finds in the corpses she processes, and her astute observations eventually connect the two seemingly unrelated plot lines, linking Cunnigham’s hostile takeover to the increase in drudge attacks.

“‘Souls aren’t the only thing I can see. There’s a house in the middle of a field in the heart of Tanria, in Sector 28. No one else can see it, but I can. And those souls can, too, I think. Drudges tend to congregate there.’

[…]

‘I’m pretty sure it’s the House.’”

In the scene that constitutes Mercy and Hart’s argument and third-act break-up, Hart reveals the full truth about his life, his demigod powers, and his guilt over Bill’s death. The details of this story, particularly the house in Sector 28 and its relationship to the lost souls, are crucial to the climactic scenes in the novel.

“‘I don’t want your apologies. And you know what? I don’t want you.’

She hadn’t yelled the words; she had spoken them with a cool precision that cut him apart. He stopped crying. He stopped feeling. He stopped functioning. He existed, and that was it.”

With the brutal honesty that Mercy displays in this scene, Hart must finally face the consequences of his habitual secrets and lies, and Mercy’s long-feared rejection of him catapults him into a “dark night of the soul”: a period of intense crisis that strips him to his most basic level and forces him to rebuild his identity from the ground up. Following his usual pattern, Hart takes Mercy at her word, and rather than discussing the issue with her further, he retreats into himself without realizing that Mercy wants him to earn her forgiveness.

“As she was paying at the register she noticed a headline on the front page of the Eternity Gazette, smaller than the main headline—Drudge on the loose kills two in Herington—and tucked into the corner: Cunningham awarded patent for miracle embalming patch.

And click, everything snapped into place.”

At this moment, the novel’s disparate plot threads collide as Mercy finally understands the nuances of Cunningham’s fraud-in-progress. By employing mundane details such as a newspaper headline that Mercy just happens to see during her shopping, the author also conveys the sense that even the most fantastical elements of the novel—the murderous drudges—are an everyday detail for the citizens of Eternity.

“He thought he’d go back to the way he’d been before he fell in love with Mercy, but Mercy was the one who had made him see how years of worrying about his possible inability to die had resulted in a distinct failure to live, something he attempted to remedy now.”

Despite the pain of losing Mercy, Hart is finally beginning to understand that the benefits of connection and vulnerability outweigh the emotional risks, and this thought forces him to reconsider his fears of truly embracing the living world. Thus, although he retreats from his grief over Mercy, he makes new efforts to rekindle his connections with Alma, Diane, and Duckers. However, this inner shift does not prevent him from ultimately choosing to sacrifice his life in the novel’s climactic moments.

“He cried out—a long, strangled vowel—but he would not let go, would not leave this spot until all the lost souls of Tanria had flown into the arms of the Unknown God. He would not fail Bill this time, and he wouldn’t fail Duckers or Mercy either.”

When Hart risks his life out of a desire to protect his loved ones, he also gives in to his long-held and (possibly misplaced) belief that he must complete his unfinished business with Bill. Though he does briefly die, he also successfully finishes what he and Bill started years ago, and he also unknowingly fixes a mistake left by his father. In this way, he addresses his deepest personal wounds and heals the mistakes of both father figures in one fell swoop. When he does return to the land of the living, his emotional landscape is finally clear enough for him to identify and pursue what he really wants: a meaningful relationship with Mercy.

“‘Everyone crosses the threshold, right? So I’ve always found it bizarre that mortals are unpleasantly shocked when they find themselves either dead or on their way home. I mean, death is everywhere. Everywhere. […] A beloved dog breathes one last breath and rips a hole in a man’s heart, as if it were a surprise rather than an inevitability.

How the fuck do humans manage to look away, and why do they want to look away to begin with? Especially when it comes to lost souls?”

Having fallen through the door to the underworld, Hart has a long-overdue conversation with his father, the Warden. His lack of a relationship with his father has had a negative impact on his life, leaving him with a range of unresolved emotional issues. Even as hart finally gains a deeper understanding of his past, the Warden’s reflections contribute to the novel’s thematic focus on The Deeper Meaning of Mortality. In particular, he discusses the inevitability of death as simply another step in the journey of life, rather than as an ending.

“Suddenly, all I wanted to do was make this woman laugh as often and as much as I could. It wasn’t love at first sight, exactly—more like a knowing. I understood then and there that I was going to fall in love with her if I stuck around. So I stuck around. And that pain I felt, the one I couldn’t figure out, went away. Poof. Just like that.”

Though the Warden was initially confused about why humans cling so stubbornly to life, he grew to understand their point of view when he met and fell in love with Hart’s mother. The nameless pain that he felt as a human disappeared when he fell in love, thus highlighting the power of human connection and the interrelatedness of that connection to the meaning of life.

“You should be sorry that you thought I wouldn’t eventually forgive you for not telling me about the letters. You should be sorry that you couldn’t push past what I said in anger and come talk to me. You should be sorry that you put yourself in danger when the people who love you would rather keep you here. You should be sorry that you went and saved the world and got yourself killed in the process and left me here without you!”

The romantic plot line is finally resolved when Hart comes back to life and Mercy confronts him about his mistakes. They have both been forced to consider a life (and death) without each other and now realize that they are willing to risk pain to be together. Mercy’s insistence that Hart should have reached out to her despite her anger again underscores the necessity of facing emotional pain and discomfort to forge lasting connections.