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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

“Thank You for the Light”

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Parable of Taboo Compassion

Richard W. Halkyard

Winthrop University

Thirty-nine and beating ceaselessly against the doleful future, F. Scott Fitzgerald

wired a parcel to his literary agent, Harold Ober, on June 19th, 1936. Composed in half-

cursive scribble, Fitzgerald’s accompanying note regarded his new vignette, “Thank You

for the Light,” as “an old idea…too good to back in the file” (West 1). Notwithstanding,

the manuscript bypassed the desks of prominent publications, including The New Yorker,

baffling publishers for a myriad of reasons. Most recurring was the curious nature of the

tale, divorced from the cornerstone elements associated with Fitzgerald (e.g., class, love,

adultery, etc.). Others pawned the piece off as another dreary installment of his self-

exposé, “The Crack-Up” (1931).

The supernatural elements of “Thank You for the Light” vexed critics and

publishers alike, eliciting every reaction from the general snub to outright rejection slips.

With the analysis below, I will rectify certain misconceptions regarding the short story. In

turn, I volunteer a new interpretation — through structural theory — illuminating

Fitzgerald’s subtle faith and view of God as his weary life approached its final chapters.

“Thank You for the Light” regards the loneliness and addiction of the lowly Mrs. Hanson
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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

in want of the taboo pleasures of smoking. Yet, in folktale form, Fitzgerald pens a parable

of a much grander hope: a God-like conduit who extends poignantly personal compassion

in the pit of a widow’s despair.

Fitzgerald introduces the middle-aged traveling businesswoman and widow Mrs.

Hanson as she transitions into her new Midwestern sales territory. Along the new route,

Mrs. Hanson quickly surmises the heightened sensibilities in her new clientele,

particularly towards her habit of smoking. Yet, Fitzgerald suggests that Mrs. Hanson’s

penchant for smoking goes beyond recreational. Indeed, after choosing to quit so as to

appease potential business partners, she begins to slip into a painful withdrawal. During

her withdrawal, Mrs. Hanson meanders into a Catholic cathedral in the off-chance that a

smoker’s sanctuary might be found among the votive incense. The saleswoman finds

mercy altogether unexpected. In a quasi-conscious state of wakeful sleep, Mrs. Hanson

envisions the Madonna with Christ statuette descending upon her to heal her ailments.

Awakening once more at a loud cracking noise, the girdle saleswoman finds her once-

unlit cigarette now burning and no soul in sight to have ignited it. The author draws his

fantastic vignette to a close with Mrs. Hanson’s reply: while puffing a cigarette and on

bended knee, she prayerfully utters, “Thank you for the light.”

Nearly eighty years after penning the tale, James L. West III distills Fitzgerald’s

“Thank You for the Light,” into two ingredients: smoking and loneliness. Of Mrs.

Hanson’s carcinogenic taboo he writes, “In 1936 it was still not entirely proper for a

woman to be seen smoking in public, and many businesses forbade smoking on their
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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

premises” (2). Albeit a double-standard, West speculates unwholesomeness as an impetus

for rejection as conservative males of the day frequently objected to women conducting

business sales. Additionally, her pitch dealt with apparel of an intimate nature. Closer to

the quintessence of “Thank You for the Light,” West remarks on the evocative loneliness

of Mrs. Hanson. He aptly summarizes, “The story is about loneliness…the ways human

beings avoid alienation and despair,” (4). Though keen, West’s explanation does not

greatly consider the author’s psychological state as of 1936 or “Thank You for the Light”

in respect to its structural form and function.

West determines the vignette as Fitzgerald’s defense against the nihilism of Ernest

Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” However, he declares his case for such a

reading cannot be proven “but, for the purposes of interpretation…[“Thank You for the

Light”] can certainly be read against ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” (6, West’s italics).

James Campbell of the Times Literary Supplement agrees with West regarding the

stories’ contradictory conclusions. Campbell expresses Fitzgerald’s “answer” in his

article, “Shedding Light.” He says, “Hemingway’s waiter didn’t find [a light] — ‘Our

nada who art in nada, nada be thy name’ etc — but Mrs Hanson did” (2). While

Campbell — on the whole — is accurate, perhaps West’s closing statement speaks most

directly to the spirit of this paper. He lobbies, “Fitzgerald is saying that there is always

light ahead of something, for Mrs. Hanson and for others. Perhaps a lingering loyalty to

his Catholic upbringing…had been ‘hanging around’ in his head ‘for a long time” (7).

While Mrs. Hanson’s fate certainly ends in hopeful light, I believe West fails to
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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

acknowledge for whom the story is truly meant. The light Mrs. Hanson receives is indeed

the same light Fitzgerald yearned for— what he wanted to believe. Put another way, the

vignette’s prayerful ending is Fitzgerald’s prayer. The author reaches out amid addiction

to a God he does not know, in the only way he knows how: through a pen. Perhaps only

Laura Guthrie, his secretarial mistress, captures Fitzgerald’s estate mere months before

he sent “Thank You for the Light” to Ober. In a penciled journal entry during the summer

of 1935, Guthrie writes,

He is completely alone because no persons are near to him, and he has no

religion to comfort him. He makes me think of a lost soul,

wandering in purgatory—sometimes hell. He tries so hard to

drown it out with drinking and sex. Sometimes in the heights

of these moments he forgets for a brief time—then it all

comes back in overwhelming force. ‘Life is not happy’ as he

says. It isn’t for him. He said it was a good thing he was not a

rich man or he would have been dead long before now

(killing himself with indulgences!) but that the necessity of

doing work had kept him going (177).

Still other critics, including Ruth Prigozy and Jennifer McCabe Atkinson,

determined “Thank You for the Light” is lavish with indecency. Prigozy found

Fitzgerald’s compact miracle play ripe with “obvious shortcomings…[including a] flat,

expressionless narrative, and a drab though sympathetic heroine” (Prigozy 82).

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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

Ultimately, she determines miraculous, supernatural forces do not condescend to

frivolous destitution. Similarly, Atkinson deems the Madonna descending to Mrs. Hanson

as “ludicrous and absurd rather than clever and humorous,” (53). Despite Fitzgerald’s

occasional implementation of humor, his proclivity undoubtedly leaned towards pathos.

By establishing his heroine’s foundational lack of Catholic praxis, Fitzgerald exonerates

her from a clever and irreverent “Thank you for the light” (Fitzgerald 323). Furthermore,

Mrs. Hanson senses the insufficiency of her first reaction. She kneels, in turn, to repeat

the praise once more in prayer. In lieu of cleverness, readers witness a woman in awe,

whose reaction — compounded by withdrawal, weariness, and emotional brokenness —

connotes a sort of pseudo-aloofness. Mrs. Hanson simply does not know the proper

reaction ruling out Atkinson’s perception of her jocularity. Her awe, I assert, exists as her

only sensible course of action.

Aside from absurdly labeling “Thank You for the Light” as an “irremediable

failure,” Prigozy posits the short story as a warning from Fitzgerald. She reckons, “The

trivial conceptions…are nevertheless poignant reminders that age, hard work, and

unfulfillment can reduce one’s claim on life merely to a temporary respite from

exhaustion” (82). Despite her correct inclusion of an unfulfilled life, Prigozy overlooks

Mrs. Hanson’s underlying need for cathartic fullness by overemphasizing the temporal

nature of the relief she receives. Like Fitzgerald, Mrs. Hanson craved not the

manifestation of the need (i.e., smoking). More precisely, she thirsts for some shade of

companionship. She needs relational comfort.

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Charles McGrath of The New York Times recognizes her deeper craving. He

supposes that if read in the light of suffering addiction, “the ironic, prayerful moment at

the end is another version of the sense of loss and spiritual emptiness that Fitzgerald

wrote so movingly about in the essays collected in “The Crack-Up” (2). Fitzgerald

undoubtedly projected his spiritual emptiness onto Mrs. Hanson. Quite tragically, his

alcoholism lent an empathic credibility to the narrative. Yet, his vignette articulates more

than mere sympathy or emptiness of spirituality. As established, the author wallowed in

such an state; “Thank You for the Light” provided Fitzgerald with a vicarious exit

strategy from existential woe and lethal addiction. However fanciful, “Thank You for the

Light” afforded Fitzgerald the sense of spiritual escape and otherworldliness he vied for.

Yet, even the whimsical moments of “Thank You for the Light” derive from Fitzgerald’s

narrative brilliance. The author demonstrates his craftsmanship through combining a

nuanced narratology of the Formalist folktale with the poignant exemplification of a

parable.

The Russian Formalist tradition — a school of structuralist theory seeking to

codify literature into units — delineates between fabula (story) and sjuzhet, or plot. To

formalists, plot is an artful, non-chronological unfolding of events, superior to story

(Abrams 173). Contrary to this school of thought, Fitzgerald employs elements of

chronological sequencing in “Thank You for the Light” to serve the story’s meaning. In

this way, Fitzgerald’s tale bears a structural resemblance to the Russian Formalist story.

His most effective structural component is the constant referral to Mrs. Hanson’s
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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

schedule. Her business schedule creates the narrative’s framework and assists in parsing

out psychological cause for her addiction. For the latter ambition, Fitzgerald fills the gaps

in Mrs. Hanson’s schedule with her interiority. These vehicles of form move the story

along and unfolds the plot. In addition to pace, his framework renders a sense of

familiarity, typifying the Russian byt — or the “everyday life” story (Steiner 64). Quite

innovatively, the more abstract, but relatable configuration of inner-monologue, takes a

character of extraordinary life circumstance — for 1936, that is — to an existence

agreeable with the ordinary. Thusly, Fitzgerald built a folkish connection between Mrs.

Hanson and the reader. Her everyman quality stirs concern within the reader for all of her

comings and goings. Mirroring humanity — either in her busy schedule, indefatigable

addiction, or loneliness — readers begin to associate her, and consequently her fate, with

themselves.

When considering “Thank You for the Light” alongside the meditations of

Russian narratologist Vladimir Propp, the piece’s structure harnesses greatest power to

express meaning. In addition, Fitzgerald’s hopeful illustration of a compassionate deity

breaks through. Propp’s seminal Morphology of the Folktale devised a system to decode

folktales. Comprised of thirty-one functions (i.e., elements, events, characters, etc.),

Propp “identifies predictable patterns that central characters, such as the hero, villain, or

the helper, enact to further the plot of the story” (Bressler 103). Among Propp’s actants,

the villain, the helper, and ascension remain most pertinent.

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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

In Mrs. Hanson’s case, the villain lives internally and externally. Widowed, with

neither correspondents nor familiar business partners, isolation and loneliness eat away

at the natural, inner desire for fulfillment; so, she turns to smoking to ease such wounds.

Meanwhile, the external forces — i.e., her new clientele — place unspoken restrictions

upon the only object which seems to sooth the inward painful of her loneliness: smoking.

Fitzgerald writes, “She was a widow, and she had no close relatives to write to in the

evenings…smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence

of a day on the road,” (321). According to Propp’s sixth function, the villainous agent

“assumes a disguise…[and then] uses persuasion…[or] other means of deception or

coercion,” (29-30). The evil within coerces Mrs. Hanson with evening reminders of her

lonesome circumstances. For reasons left unknown, she suffers divorce from all kindred

ties. Each broken connection burrows the crater of emptiness further within her. Under

the false pretense of satisfying her emptiness, an inner voice speaks, coaxing her to

smoke in the nearby cathedral.

First, the voice assumes complacency in God’s kindness. Comparing the trivial

quantity of her cigarette with hourly incense offerings, her villain within imposes on Mrs.

Hanson’s conscience. Further still, the invisible adversary reminds Mrs. Hanson of her

irreligious estate. Because she does not believe in the Catholic God, her enemy reasons,

erring against God poses an impossibility. As a final barrage, the deceitful villain

presents an illogical correlation between the God’s permission to smoke and the more

recent discovery of tobacco. A grand presumption lay embedded in this statement.

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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

Persistent evil coerces her into believing that God’s “day” is long since past (Fitzgerald

322). Again, we see Fitzgerald crafting his prose in such a manner that structure equals

meaning. He structures the aforementioned lie with a sort of chiasmus. Mrs. Hanson’s

malevolent inner-monologue persists in the assumption that God exists and that He

possesses a sensibility. Additionally, the future tense of the phrase “wouldn’t mind”

insinuates a future state of God’s consciousness (322). The next clause — operating out

of and leaning on these assumptions — implies God as non-existent. This rhetorical

reversal imbalances Mrs. Hanson. Confused by deceit, and thus easily led, she is guided

into the cathedral to smoke.

Once the heroine finds herself in the cathedral, two of Propp’s functions

undeniably appear: a magical helper and the hero’s ascent. Propp identifies helpers

“suddenly appear[ing] of [their] own accord,” or an entity “eaten or drunk,” (44-45).

Fitzgerald abruptly brings the cathedral into the narrative, transplanting readers from

Mrs. Hanson’s interiority. The house of God all at once supplies “inspiration” — albeit a

negative one — resulting in an invitation to “pray” unto God (Fitzgerald 322-323). A

case for the cigarette as an agent of supernatural power comes with taking “a puff” of the

miraculously lit tobacco. Doing so produces in her a previously non-existent spirit of

thanksgiving (323). Despite addiction’s evil promises to Mrs. Hanson, exterior helpers —

both of which possess an otherworldly, religious quality — bring her face to face with a

God-like visage in the Madonna statuette. Over and above mere presence with God, Mrs.
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Hanson — regardless of the lie prompting her — begins an uncomfortable, but delivering

communion with God.

Quite the contrast from the aching loneliness and anonymity of the movie theaters

she frequented, Mrs. Hanson finds herself imagining an animate God “come down, like in

the play ‘The Miracle’” to share a oneness with her (Fitzgerald 323). Fitzgerald brings

his heroine to dreamily experience a grand exchange between God and herself. In effect,

the Madonna — with her presence — temporarily liberates Mrs. Hanson from loneliness.

Moreover, the Madonna removes her physical and emotion fatigue by granting Mrs.

Hanson a repose deep enough neither to think of nor mention nicotine. In addition, the

peaceful deliverance lulls her into soft slumber. Her deliverance illuminates Propp’s

second function: the hero(ine)’s ascent. Propp designates the final function of his system

as an ascension to “the throne,” where the “hero receives half the kingdom at first, and

the whole kingdom upon the death of the parents” (63). The Proppian qualifiers for

ascension (i.e., inheriting the kingdom at the death of another) harkens to the Gospel of

the Judeo-Christian tradition. St. Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthian church unfurls a

similar exchange in which Christ’s condescension is purposed to the one end of

embodying the sin of mankind so as to destroy it (Holy Bible [ESV], 2 Corinthians 5.17).

In their respective texts, both the Corinthians and Mrs. Hanson share a common fate: soul

rest.

The point at which the heroine’s soul is hushed by a need supernaturally met is

where Proppian folk function and the conventional parable intersect. In the closing lines,
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Fitzgerald seemingly relates a parable to the literary community and his readership at

large. Up until Mrs. Hanson’s final words, Fitzgerald pours out the pain of addiction and

the purgatorial aches of loneliness. But, he also conveys a faith where the marginalized

and broken are soothed into peace. William G. Kirkwood in “Parables as Metaphors and

Examples,” speaks to the critical scorn of the parable — analogical stories illustrating a

convention (Genette 233). In opposition to such criticism (including Atkinson’s

aforementioned commentary on cleverness) Kirkwood declares, “The story as example is

not merely a clever way to adorn generalities, it is the closest words can come to giving a

way of life a place to come to life” (433). In other words, Fitzgerald exerts his prosaic

ability to furnish the most ample space for a potential, salvific reality to live. Kirkwood

continues, “[The parable] aims to disclose possibilities that lose meaning as they are

generalized into ideas, but gain it when they are reflected in specific acts,” (433). The

God-conduit Madonna’s alleged condescension and provision to Mrs. Hanson is indeed

specific. Moreover, the compassionate act is specific to Mrs. Hanson. Positioning a God

figure to not only condescend to the marginal and suffering, but to extend grace to them

in any form discloses a possibility in the supernatural. By that same token, Fitzgerald

reveals the chance for supernatural rescue from addiction and healing past wounds

wrought by the disease.

While parables like “Thank You for the Light” seek to show that those deepest in

valleys of distress are not beyond the miraculous hand of the supernatural, the author

behind such tales must necessarily be acquainted with the pain to know the hope out from
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it. Though F. Scott Fitzgerald died eight years later at the age of forty-four, without ever

publicly proclaiming faith, I argue that such a parable as “Thank You for the Light”

whispers the tenuous belief held by a man of sorrows.

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th Ed. Heinle & Heinle. Boston, 1999. p.

173.

Atkinson, Jennifer McCabe et al. “The Lost and Unpublished of F. Scott Fitzgerald”

Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual 1971. Bruccoli, Clark, Layman Inc., p. 53, 1971.

Campbell, James. “Shedding Light.” Times Literary Supplement. 31 Aug. 2012. Web.

Jan. 15 2018.

Donaldson, Scott. “The Crisis of Fitzgerald's ‘Crack-Up.’” Twentieth Century Literature,

vol. 26, no. 2, 1980, pp. 171–188.

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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Thank You for the Light,” I’d Die For You. ed. Anne Margaret

Daniel. Scribner. New York, NY. pp. 320-323. 2017.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca:

Cornell U. Press, p. 233. 1980.

Kirkwood, William G. "Parables as Metaphors and Examples." The Quarterly Journal of

Speech, vol. 71, no. 4, Nov. 1985, pp. 422-440.

McGrath, Charles. “A ‘Fantastic’ Fitzgerald Story, Resurrected in The New Yorker.” New

York Times. 31 Aug. 2012.

Prigozy, Ruth. “The Unpublished Stories: Fitzgerald in His Final Stage.” Twentieth

Century Literature, vol. 20, no. 2, 1974, p. 82.

Propp V. I︠ A
︡ , et al. Morphology of the Folktale. Second edition. University of Texas

Press, 1968.

Steiner, Peter. “Three Metaphors of Russian Formalism.” Poetics Today, vol. 2, no. 1b,

1980, pp. 59–116.

West, James L. W., III. "Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and 'Thank You for the Light'." F. Scott

Fitzgerald Review, vol. 11, 2013, pp. 1-9.

Endnotes

1. Publications which passed on “Thank You for the Light” are as follows: Harper’s
Bazaar, Vogue, Vanity Fair, College Humor, and The New Yorker.
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PAC Postscript Halkyard: “Thank You for the Light”

2. “Our nada, who art in nada, nada be thy name…” referenced from Ernest
Hemingway’s 1933 short story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” p.2

3. Quotes were extracted from Fitzgerald’s letter to Ober asking to publish the piece, on
June 19th, 1936.

4. See Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Crossway. 2001. *2nd Corinthians 5.21 ~
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.”

5. See Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Crossway. 2001. *2nd Corinthians 4.17 ~
“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory
beyond all comparison.”