John Ferris Character Analysis "the Sojourner"

In-Class Essay 1, Rewrite 4

Kristina Kuznetcova

EN 1010A

Professor Rosenstein

20/02/2018

A Moment of Peace

In Carson McCullers’s “The Sojourner,” John Ferris is depicted as a careless and immature thirty-eight-year-old man. The author chose this surname for her main character purposely. Ferris’s life reminds us of a Ferris Wheel, with its endless sequence of repetitive episodes. He ignores the necessity to build his future, which is why he ends up without home, family, or social connections either in Paris or New York. John lives at his girlfriend Jeannine’s apartment in Paris. He stays at his family’s home in Georgia when he arrives for his father’s funeral. While spending time with his relatives he could not even remember when was the last time he visited them. The absence of socially accepted values and priorities turned him into a sojourner, a person who does not have a permanent home and a settled, peaceful life. Hence, the only place where he feels at home is the airplane, a no man’s land between destinations.

As a journalist, Ferris has to travel constantly. The activities of these voyages serve him as a shelter from reality; he escapes into them every night in his dreams. He favors the past over the future and, thus, loses an ability to predict the logical course of events. His father’s death is a shock for John, though it is the obvious outcome for a sickly, older person. By living in the current day, he loses a sense of the passage of time. Even Elizabeth remembers the date of his birthday, but for him it is an unexpected surprise. John is lost not only in time but in life as well. He realizes his emptiness while observing his ex-wife’s family.  That she was capable of obtaining a loving husband, children, and simple human happiness makes Ferris suffer from his own barrenness. He wants to impress her family by lying about his relationship with Jeannine, “‘I expect we will be married soon’” (123). He wants his life to be like theirs; he rushes home to build the desired relationship with Jeannine and Valentin. However, even the little boy knows that by the time the guignol opens up again, Ferris will forget about his aspiration to change.