ve he utterly detested, placing him as it did, back in the care of his fussing widowed mother who owns and runs the family dairy farm. Convinced he’s going to die, Asbury fumes that his artistic talent has been stifled by his upbringing and in a bizarre retaliation he burns all his dreary scribblings. However, before leaving for home, he fills two notebooks with a letter to his mother, which he intends should be read after his death. In the letter he likened himself to a caged bird denied its freedom. He hoped it would be a painful reminder to his mother of what she had supposedly done to him. Asbury is the classic spoilt brat. A phoney who wallows in self-pity and craves attention; but attention only on his terms, hence his hostility to Dr Block who has been brought in by Mrs Fox to treat him. As far as Asbury is concerned, he’s on the brink of death, and death is the way he intends to leave his mark on the world, in this case his family. He knows he’s sick. Everyone knows he’s sick. But he’s desperately trying to resist any help. He’s a real ‘dog in the manger’. He sees himself as the dying artist, full of potential but with no chance of fulfilment and this is obviously how he hopes to be remembered.Back home Asbury’s symptoms worsen. He suffers from thudding headaches and drenching sweats. He sleeps poorly and has wild dreams and recalls with ‘terrible clarity’ events from the past including a childhood memory of some meanness inflicted on him by his older sister. Other memories crowd in on him. Memories of brief stays back home that never exceeded two weeks if he could possibly help it. During one of those visits, he spent a small amount of time working with Morgan and Randall, Mrs Fox’s two coloured farm workers. At the time he had been writing a play about the Negro, and Asbury wanted ‘to see how they really felt about their condition&#...
