Andra-Elena Agafiței

American Studies

MA

JEDEDIAH BERRY’S INHERITANCE

DEALING WITH THE DEMON. A PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACH

Having rather a slightly unusual beginning, confusing and abrupt, Jedediah Berry’s short
story, Inheritance, makes us acquainted with what we might call one of the most important
events in the main character’s life, Greg: escaping the images and memories related to his
father and moving on with his existence.

Before we begin we must mention, that in analyzing the text, we shall make use of the
psychoanalytical approach, even though other approaches could have been applied. This
possibility has been somehow suggested to us by the very title of the short story. We consider
that the word “inheritance”1, more than any other words, suggests “the need” of seeing the
text from a psychoanalytical point of view and “the task” of identifying all the hidden
symbols of the past and present, establishing connections between them, revealing thus the
secret signification.

From our point of view, Inheritance is a very interesting and intriguing text at the same time,
not due to the above mentioned subject but to its construction and method of bringing the
matter into discussion. As far as we perceive it, the story displays the image of a triangle, in
which the three characters, Greg, the beast and his wife Lilith compose it. The order in which
we have mentioned them is not at all random, it is meant to suggest that the character
standing in the middle is, in fact, the “problem generator”. Having said all these, let us now
proceed with our analysis.

1
Inheritance: a) the act of inhering property; b) the reception of genetic qualities by transmission from parent to offspring; c)
the acquisition of a possession, condition, or trait from past generations.
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The text opens with a physical presentation of the beast, description which makes allusions to
its evil character: “but it was a worrisome beast, its snout long and searching, head furry
with woolly clumps around the ears, cloven hooves at the end of its lean legs”. The animal is
seen as being in the company of Greg and his friends, during the Saturday night poker game.
Even though at first sight nothing seems to be wrong – except its horrifying look and smell –
as the story unfolds, we are to learn that this creature occupies a quite important position in
the life of the two spouses, Greg and Lilith. Furthermore, as we shall see, it gives birth to
different reactions coming from the members of the couple and this happens because it means
something else for each of them. We reach here the “hot spot”, if we may call it like this, of
the whole text. As you could have assumed, these feelings aroused by the beast’s presence in
the house do not differ because one of the characters is a man and the other one is a woman
but because they relate to it and perceive it from opposite angles. Of course, one can say that
women in general tend to be more attached to the living creatures around the house but, in
this case, things are not that superficial and we must see their deeper meaning.

In reading carefully the text, we notice that Greg’s attitude towards the animal is totally
opposed to the one that Lilith adopts. In dealing with it, she seems to perceive this creature as
being her child and acts like a mother would: washing it, feeding it, taking care of it, learning
it the alphabet, defending it in front of her husband (we refer here to the moment in which
Gordon, Phil and Elise’s son is hurt by the beast). Not having a baby – or at least this is what
we have understood – she fills up the emptiness inside her with the presence of this creature.
Lilith transfers all the feelings she could have had for a child over this animal. Furthermore,
her strong attachment is underlined by the fact that in referring to the beast, she uses the
pronoun “he”, not “it”, as anyone would have done it. This “closeness” might be regarded as
something strange – how can a woman be so sympathetic towards what might seem to be a
creature of Hell – if we forget the meaning of Greg wife’s name 2. After all, a resemblance
between the Lilith in the text and the one in the legend can be seen. Greg’s wife protects her
“child” just as the other one claims equal treatment. If this does not happen (in our case, if

2
Lilith (name of Babylonian origin). Adam’s original mate was the demonic Lilith who had been fashioned, just like her
male counterpart, from the dust of the earth. Lilith insisted from the outset in equal treatment, a fact which caused constant
frictions between the couple. Eventually the frustrated Lilith used her magical powers to fly away from her spouse. At
Adam’s urging, God dispatched three angels to negotiate her return. When these angels made threats against Lilith’s demonic
descendants, she countered that she would prey eternally upon newborn human babies, who could be saved only by invoking
the protection on the three angels. In the end Lilith stood her ground and never returned her husband.

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Greg does not treat the animal right), she might consider divorcing (an equivalent gesture of
Lilith’s leaving Adam): “I don’t want a divorce”.

If for Lilith the beast represents something she cares about and dearly looks after, for Greg,
things take a different turn. First of all, his attitude towards the creature is a negative,
rejecting one, and we can mention here some examples to sustain our affirmation: he takes it
to the poker night game just because his wife asked him to do it, he does not seem to be
worried about its wound and he does not want it in his bed or in his room, he throws it out,
shouting at it: “Greg grabbed its arm. <<Come on>>, he said, <<off the bed>>”. Second
of all, as opposed to his wife, he calls the animal “it” instead of “him”. This implies two
things: on the one hand it shows that he is not that emotionally involved in the “relationship”
with the beast and that he is perfectly capable of making a clear distinction between a
creature and a human being and, on the other hand, it could indicate a “handicap”, the fact
that he cannot relate on an emotional level, that something “down there” in his mind and soul
is not in the right place… and here comes the big question: why does this happen? What is it
that actually makes Greg feel what we perceive as being some sort of indifference and disgust
mixed together, when it comes to the animal? And, furthermore, why does he kill it in the
end?

As the story unfolds, Greg’s real problem comes to surface and this proves to be not the
animal itself but what it represents on a symbolic level. Having found him in his father’s
basement, “dirty and half-starved”, the beast represents the “inheritance” itself, the sole
reminder of his passed away relative, except for some photos taken during the war, which
show the image of “a taller, handsomer version of Greg”. As one may easily read between
the lines, the problem is the relationship with his father, a father who never showed him
pictures with himself – in fact, it is Phil who gives Greg these photos – a father who seems to
have been absent in the most part of his son’s life: “for the last thirty years the man and I
were strangers”. It is now that we understand why the animal’s presence in the house bothers
him: because, by his simple existence, he is brought back memories from the past. His
attitude and words are indicators of an inner tension, caused by the beast being around him:
“Now he’s dead and I feel like he’s around me all the time”.

His father being dead, thus his problems with him remaining unsolved, Greg tries to fix this
by adopting a rather cold and bossy attitude towards the beast: “Now it knows who’s the
boss”. This very statement is a clear indicator of a real problem. By uttering these words, we
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realize that Greg is really trying to demonstrate something: he wants to show the creature
who is now in control of the things. In other words, he tries to impose on the animal the
authority he should have made proof of in front of his father, whose influence can still be
noticed in Greg everyday’s life. As an example, we mention here the fact that, in teaching his
subject, he spends more time than it is necessary on talking about the World War II and the
Holocaust, war in which his father took part.

Taking into consideration all Greg’s actions and thoughts, we consider ourselves entitled to
state that, to some extent, he finds himself in a sort of competition with the image of his dead
father, situation which he tries to overcome by “punishing” the beast, not giving it enough
attention. On the one hand, we deal with the image of a handsome man who fought in the
war, and, on the other hand, with the image of a History teacher, who lives an ordinary life.
Although he tries to change things, by stating loud and clear who is the boss, in fact, he does
nothing more than to reiterate his father’s behavior. So, in the new “scheme”, Greg occupies
his father’s role, and the beast that of Greg, who is left out.

The end of the short story, killing the beast, stands in a symbolic manner, for killing the
haunting image of his father. Murdering the animal, Greg gets rid of the pressure and high
tension imposed by it. Still, in his attempt to wash away memories related to his relative, he
becomes the one he’s trying to escape from. If, during the war, his father killed people (Jews
especially), now, in his turn, he does the same thing, only at an infinite smaller scale. In doing
this, he can now reestablish the somehow lost relationship with his wife. Not having anyone
standing, as an impediment between them, their lives can go back to normal, without arguing
because of it.

Seen from another angle, on a higher level, the beast represents all his father’s murders. Thus,
by having it in his own house, Greg “inherits” the feeling of guilt transmitted by his father’s
bad deeds. In order to “erase” these negative emotions, he decides that killing the beast is the
best solution, not seeming to be aware that, as his father, he kills something because of it
being different. In this case, the creature is the equivalent of the Jews dead in the Holocaust.
This way, not only that he repeats his father’s actions, but he is a living proof that one cannot
escape the “genetic inheritance” (that of a killer, we might add).

To put it into a nutshell, Jedediah Berry’s short story, Inheritance, deals with the problematic
father-son relationship, issue that is solved – to some extent – by killing its symbolic

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representation, “incarnated” in a hideous living creature. Once murdered, things can go back
to their usual course.

On-line Resources:

1. http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/950206_Lilith.html

2. www.thesaurus.com

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