The Lame Shall Enter First

The Lame Shall Enter First is a story that is jam packed from start to finish with both suspense and foreshadowing to hook readers into it. The story follows Sheppard, a man who works at a reformatory with troubled youth, and his young son, Norton. Sheppard decides to take in a troubled young man named Rufus Johnson, which begins the toughest journey of his life. The exposition of this story is explained through Sheppard’s thoughts back to his time spent with Rufus in the reformatory. Sheppard is revealed to have been his doctor (or an equivalent of a doctor), working with him to free his mind from the thought that he is in control of the devil. Being abused by his grandfather and with a mother in the penitentiary, Rufus soon finds himself in need of a place to stay and winds up on Sheppard’s doorstep. It is decided that Rufus would live with Sheppard and Norton, which is where the rising action of the story begins.

     Sheppard is the obvious protagonist of this story. He is the good guy that everything is centered around. He is a troubled man, widowed and a single father beginning to notice the bad qualities in his seemingly perfect son. Sheppard sees Rufus as a vision of himself – someone he can save and polish into his own perfect son. This unfailing desire to save Rufus makes Sheppard a Christ figure. In more ways than one, Sheppard is self-sacrificing on his quest to save Rufus, even taking responsibility for him when the cops come around to pick him up. Sheppard’s name alone is enough to give the reader clues into the fact that he is indeed a Christ figure. If one looks back to John 10:11, which says “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”, the relation is very clear. Sheppard is the good shepherd, putting his own life on the line to save Rufus, no matter what the cost.

     Throughout the course of the story, Sheppard suffers many blows from Rufus, who is single-handedly destroying his life. Rufus’s one goal is to tarnish Sheppard’s reputation. He does this by breaking into houses and trashing them, peeking through windows, and several other things. Anything that can make Sheppard look or feel bad, he does. An example of this would be the climax of the story, in which Rufus reaches “grace” and eats a page from the Bible, yelling that he will never eat earthly food again. Another example of this would be when Rufus is arrested by the police the last time and is driven off while screaming that the lame shall enter first and that Sheppard is under the devil’s control.

     The conflict of the story also lies within Sheppard himself, meaning that this is an internal conflict. He wants nothing more than to save Rufus and make him into the son he always wanted, leading to him neglecting his own son in the process. In media res, Sheppard is torn between his desire to save Rufus and his desire to see him leave. After all, Rufus caused him nothing but torment and suffering during his stay in their home. Will he let him stay and continue to suffer, or will he tell him to go? Sheppard debates this throughout the story, often wishing that Rufus would just decide to go, hoping that something will push him too far and he will simply disappear.

     Next there is the antagonist, the bad guy, the person causing the conflict in the story. In this story, the antagonist is none other than Rufus Johnson, bad boy and problem causer extraordinaire. Rufus does nothing other than cause problems for Sheppard from the point that he arrives, even down to the moments before his leave from the home. Rufus’s actions toward Sheppard are there to do nothing more than ruin his life and cause chaos to ensue. Rufus, believed to be under the devil’s control, could be seen as the opposite of Sheppard, the story’s Christ like figure.

     With the antagonist comes a very important literary device – foreshadowing. There is heavy foreshadowing in this story. The reader can begin to piece together the ending early on when the changes in the boys’ personalities begin. Norton goes from a prideful, bright little boy to a blank slate, to what could be considered crazy in a very short amount of time. Rufus goes from being cruel and seemingly emotionless to joyful, perhaps even prideful. The changes in Norton’s personality foreshadow his demise, and also symbolize his decent into madness. Rufus literally drives the boy mad, prompting him to hang himself, the biggest plot twist of the story.

     The entire story seems to relate back to one bigger picture, bringing intertextuality into the mix.

The Sheppard ordeal relates back to the bible – Sheppard being a Christ figure, self-sacrificial and determined to save Rufus at all costs. Rufus himself could be symbolic of the devil, who creeps in and causes utter destruction and torment to anyone weak enough to be trapped in his grasp. Norton could be symbolic of what happens to the conflicted people – they are either saved or completely destroyed, his fate being the latter. Symbols are everywhere in this story, such as Rufus’s club foot referencing back to his own shortcomings or the fact that Sheppard purchased the new shoe to make up for the aforementioned shortcomings.

     The most influential part of the story, though, is the message that it indirectly sends to readers. One should always care for their own before others. Sheppard was guilty of neglecting his own child, putting Rufus before him, and he paid dearly for it. Even when Norton tried to show an interest in things his father liked, he was still pushed aside, ultimately giving his own life because of the pain and madness that consumed him. One should always be ready to help others, but not to the extent that their own are cast aside into the shadows. After all, it is never certain what consequences may follow such actions.