Hannah Coulter and The Dwindling Membership: An Exploration of Ethics and Community

Wendell Berry’s thought cultivates thoughtfulness. However, this thoughtfulness does not merely regard top-shelf theoretical realities, although those become present. What Berry presents for consideration are things we have often already taken for granted or overlooked––things that appear to require no more thought from us. These items we have already implicitly made up our minds about precisely at the point which we have failed to see in them a need for further thought. In the novel Hannah Coulter, Berry helpfully engages us in this very thing. In essence Berry reminds us to think on things such as community, home, loved ones, and farming and asks us how we relate and how they relate. As he does this, in Hannah Coulter, he provokes the reader to value and find their place among these things. Two of these very things are nature of a community and how the mindset of employment and contracts sometimes undermines community. In this paper, we shall explore the dual themes of membership and employment in Hannah Coulter with an aim to see some implications which surround this dual theme. I will begin by sketching the story of Hannah Coulter, showing the book’s expression of the themes and then concluding with four implications which we may take from those themes in hopes that we can love our neighbor.

Hannah Coulter is about the life of an old woman who has lived the majority of her life in Port William, Kentucky. The book is not simply to tell a story. Although it does that, it is not interested in the reader following the facts to the conclusions as a normal book would. The book is Hannah remembering and processing her life, love, grief, and community to those still alive. This is evident from the structure of the book. Berry, in telling Hannah’s story, does not conceal the latter half of the novel from the first as if to keep the reader in a state of anticipation. In fact, he begins the novel by telling of Hannah’s second husband––even of his death (5). The novel is set up to feel a unique tension­­––not of waiting for the end, but seeing how the foregone conclusion is processed and evaluated. Hannah says “This is the story of my life, that while I lived it weighed upon me and pressed against me and filled all my senses to overflow and now is like a dream dreamed” and “This is my story, my giving of thanks” (5) In her story then, Hannah processes all that “weighed upon” her and “pressed against” her––namely, the people and places that would make up her life. Hannah’s growing up contained the death of her mother and her relationship with her grandmother. The story then records her marriage to Virgil and the birth of their daughter Margaret after Virgil is declared missing in action. On considering her grief and how Margaret was “an orphan before [she] could be born,” (50) Hannah says: “I began to know my story then, like everybody’s it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead” (51). This encapsulates the book well. Hannah, in remembering and processing her life, explains that her life is one that contains the absence of those who are loved by her. Her story then is one in which Hannah bears her sense of loss and finds what is true amidst that loss. In one of the few metaphors the book contains, Hannah says that grief is the gold thread that holds life together (51). The only other thing that she attributes to this gold thread is gratitude which in the end would frame much of her grief. (51) Hannah loses her mom, her grandmother, her first and second husband, and many others which shaped the life she lived. Grief, and somehow gratitude in its midst, propels the narrative. The story is thus less like a mystery and more like a eulogy of a time, a place, and a people whom Hannah loved through age.

Hannah’s story is focused heavily on people, the choices they make, and the community which envelopes the world of those choices. It is hard to conceive of Hannah Coulter without attending to the membership which so tightly binds some of the Port William citizens together. Farming is done in the membership. Life is lived in the membership. Grief is shared in the membership. However, slowly but surely, the membership grows old and thin. Hannah is left to remember and process the story, and the reader is left with questions. What is a membership? What could it look like today? What is at stake in its loss?

Some of what Hannah Coulter explores is the dehumanization of society––the concept that certain things should resemble a machine or mechanism rather than a membership, community, or people. These two categories or ways of life begin to show just how apposed they are to each other. The dehumanization of society begins to change how farming is done and then how people are to relate, and finally, how life is to be lived or grieved together. One of the first glances at the dehumanization of society is Nathan’s disdain for the concept of ‘employment’. Hannah explains: “Freedom, to him, was being free of being bossed and being a boss” (132). A better solution in Nathan’s mind was the work-swapping which functioned as the work horse of the community. When someone needed help, others would come. When others needed help, Nathan would go. This work-swapping was a backbone for the community of farmers who shared their work, their tools, and their harvest. They did not owe each other money or any other monetary item; they owed each other their commitment, their hands, and their very selves. In fact, when there was a need for an employee and the employee would prove unsatisfactory to Nathan, he would call them “another damned employee” (132). Hannah notes that the harshest criticism he ever made of the children was telling them “you’re acting like a damned employee” (132). This was when, like Hannah and Nathan’s son Mattie, they would not look around to see what could be done, but do only as required. This attitude was at odds with the membership. However, as Margaret, Mattie, and Caleb moved away and became employees it became more clear that this was just the way work was to be done. The war, the only place Nathan was ever an employee possibly spurred in him this hatred for employment because it proved to be an unsympathetic machine which marched young men into hell without mercy. Nathan would say almost nothing of the war but that it was “Ignorant boys, killing each other” (5). After Nathan’s death, Hannah read up on the war and made some perceptive conclusions as well. Hannah exclaimed of the machine of war: “you knew the terrible loneliness of the thought that your life was worth nothing. You were expendable. You were being spent” (171). Hannah also states:

I began to imagine something I know I cannot actually imagine: a human storm of explosions and quakes and fire, a man-made natural disaster fathering itself up over a long time out of ignorance and hatred, greed and pride, selfishness and a silly love of power. I imagined it gathering up into armies of “ignorant boys, killing each other” and passing like a wind-driven fire over a quiet land and kind people. (172)

This war, like a machine, had reeked merciless havoc and it would not wait for the appraisal or approval of man. Hannah claimed that “Nathan knew all his life: it can happen anywhere” (172). Perhaps Nathan hated the concept of “employees” because it reeked of the machine of war which had shown him utter destruction. It was a merciless machine which never considered the individual, those whom were loved by them, and the place that would be most affected by their loss.

To Nathan and Hannah’s disappointment, each of their kids would move away. The years would multiply their distance and the dehumanization of society began to touch not just Port William, but Hannah and Nathan themselves. The kids, caught up in the machine of employment, visited less and were soon mostly unavailable to them. Hannah mentions how Mattie showed up just twenty minutes before Nathan’s funeral and then how he “hurr[ied] back one breath after the preacher had said the final amen” (165). Hannah then considers “all [that] it had cost, of all the engines that had run, just to give one man a few minutes of ordinary grief at his dad’s funeral” (165). This seemed to be the cost, not just of distance, but of employment to a machine so big and disconnected with its parts. Visiting was to look different, but grief was also to look different.

The farming had also changed. Hannah notes: “the old neighborliness has about gone from [Port William] now. The old harvest crews and their talk and laughter at kitchen tables loaded with food have been replaced by machines, and by migrant laborers who eat at the store” (179). Port William was now like a picture puzzle, whose lost pieces were not being replaced. This turn to distance and machinery completely changed the culture and people. The great machine of employment had taken away the things that used to bring the membership together: kids, and the shared nature and means of their work. Hannah recalls that “there was a time when Port William drew its members into itself every Saturday night” (164). Hannah notes how they would trade, share and buy goods or “whatever else they had to be together in order to do” (164). “Now” Hannah claims, “Port William, or what is left of it, is most likely to assemble…in the Tacker Funeral Home… [where] the survivors of the old life come to pay their respects” (164). This, if anything, is a sad eulogy of a membership dwindling away from the common life it had shared. Hannah finally says, “We feel the old fabric torn, pulling apart, and we know how much we have loved each other” (164). According to Hannah, the membership was falling apart. It wasn’t for a lack of love, but the lack of a similar sentiment among the younger generation that would replenish the membership. However, with many kids moving away, less sharing of work and farming, the continuity between and within generations was dwindling. That was the reality Hannah was seeing pass away before her eyes in that funeral home.

Although it would be easy to overstate the dehumanization of society in Hannah Coulter because of Wendell Berry’s other writings, I simply want to show the ethical implications of this theme as it related to the whole web of relations in Port William. The relationship between the membership and Hannah’s grief was intrinsic. Hannah didn’t grieve apart from the membership but within it. There was no place for her to grieve but with a people who also felt her loss. Community was an essential part to her grief. Hannah says that “grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it” (51). Where and how do you bear it? In and with the membership. Grief was to be carried among them, not upon only one. Hannah expresses this when she says: “I could tell of my sorrow when Virgil went away, but it was not strictly speaking, my sorrow. It was the sorrow of the family, of Port William…” (41). The membership in Hannah Coulter provides a phenomenal picture of community, one which is probably not felt by many readers. It is clear that, as Hannah would say, “this membership had an economic purpose and it had an economic result, but the purpose and the result were a lot more than economic” (93). Though the farming, trading, and working brought them together, they came together to share a life in common and share grief too. Perhaps the difference between the membership and the company is that the company’s purpose and result are purely economic, while the membership reaches much further. What can we learn from this?

Although practical implications may seem hard to make if we are not living in the kind of membership which Hannah Coulter presents, I believe our spiritual membership in the body of Christ is sufficient for any lack in physical membership which we may be experiencing at present. The first implication I want to draw attention to is that we are all working in a field together. Spiritually we are bonded together in the body of Christ, but we are also to work a spiritual field and to “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2). We are, like those in Port William, intimately connected by the nature and means of our work. This then should propel us to (a) pray and (b) discern wisely. We are not just in a physical field, but in a moral and spiritual field which produces fruit that discerns not just the work of our hands, but the intention in our hands. To pray is to know our frailty and limits by asking in need––there is too much work at hand and we need other members to harvest this field. Prayer will not only summon more fellow workers, but should summon wisdom on how to work the field. We are limited in our capacity to know exactly what the field needs, but the Lord of the harvest knows, and will send members with different skills into the parts of the field we are not equipped for. In this moral field, we pray as a plea for help because we are limited. Our limits which are felt emotionally, spiritually, physically­­­ cause us to reconcile our nature to itself and realize the unreconcilable chasm between our nature and God’s. This drives needy prayer, recaptures the centrality of the universe, and rests in a great sigh of relief––the fate of the universe is not ours to bear. This recognition compels our prayers and fills its content––we ask for wisdom for we need to discern wisely how to act in this moral and spiritual field. The field is diverse in plans, projects, skills, and tasks, all of which may change in season. Navigating this field does not require simple route memory of repeatable action or laws. Rather, it requires the laborer to know his place and time in the field. Is it time to sow? Is it time to harvest? Is it time to plant this? Is it time to plant that? Are we planting corn where last year we planted tomatoes? The diverse field requires the knowledge of universals––what is corn, tomatoes, the field, places, people, planting, etc. However, the universals must be known in relation to the individual elements. Our minds must capture both the objective and subjective aspects of reality. This portrait is that of a rather complex moral field. However, it should not discourage us, but teach us to be gentle, kind, patient, quick to listen, slow to speak or judge motives, and self-controlled. This moral field, like the fields in Port William require more than an employee to fulfill requirements. It requires a member or agent who is looking out for the good of others. So, we should earnestly pray for grace­­ in the fashion of workers––who do not look nor work exactly like us, but help us better tend the whole field––and discern wisely the work of our hands because there is a dynamic web of relationships around us and so anything done is done unto them.

The second implication is that the workers in this field are family. Everyone in the field is thus bound to each other and to hurt a single member is to hurt the whole. Membership in the body of Christ then thrusts us to really consider the needs and loves of others. We cannot treat them as a means to our ends, but ends in themselves. If we truly do this, we cannot serve alongside another in the same membership and love her work without loving her. We cannot treat others in the same membership as employees––cogs in the machine we have built. No, the moral field is not just the ground harvested, but the very space between the members. Everything in the field relates and so is infected by one and any act. If this portrait is true, then moral living insists on intentional living. Being members of such a field should prohibit us from conceiving of any action as aimless or pointless.

Actions are like arrows shot in the field. We cannot conceive of a useless arrow since every arrow has in it the potential to grieve another member. We must precede and act with caution and with others constantly in view. No arrow shot is neutral. Either we shoot purposefully and train ourselves to navigate the moral field with precision, or we conceive of our actions as useless, shooting them about, to the detriment of others. If we do not train, then the day will come when we desire an honest, clean shot and our imprecision will rear its head and hurt our very loved ones and ourselves. Every arrow is thus a dependent (not independent) event in our moral exercise. We must take care because in this field, grief or joy lies at the end of every action. Moral deliberation should then take account of the whole membership and every move from deliberation to action should be done with purpose. Preceding and acting with caution is not the only consequence of our understanding of working amidst a membership. Although it implies proper caution, it also implies proper freedom. We are now free to love because we are not competing employees, but members of one body promoting every part to the health of the whole.[1] If the health of the society promotes the health of the individual, we are no longer caught in a zero-sum-game of joy, but can freely invest in our own joy by giving it away freely.

The third implication is that we now find a proper context for our grief. In 1 Corinthians 12:26 Paul says: “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” The body then is not just the place for shared love, but a place for shared grief. Hannah agrees: “You can’t give yourself over to love for somebody without giving yourself over to suffering” (171). There are no fair-weather friends in this body. Hannah then says, “It is this body of our suffering that Christ was born into” (171). If the metaphor is to continue, we can see that Christ has come among us. He has descended, entered into the membership, and borne our ultimate sorrow. Since Christ is a member among us, he does not just take our grief, but we share in his. We truly are members of one body, bearing each other up. However, Christ, our brother, having worked the field perfectly and precisely, was executed, struck down in this field because we despised him. We saw a common member who exposed us all and like Cain, we struck down our brother. But, Jesus’s blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). And we have been offered a new covenant, one that eliminates our striving and competitiveness because we have been born into one body, have one hope, are under one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Ephesians 4:1–7). The context of our grief is twofold: (a) it has completely been borne in Christ, and (b) it is presently being borne in his body. We should not suffer something alone, but bear it with others because it is their grief too. We do this while knowing that one day we shall see how he has truly borne our griefs and sorrows.

The final implication is a question: ‘what happens if we lose our common field?’ This is the kind of theme which Hannah Coulter implicitly explores. The tightknit community is no longer. There are only employees. No shared work or fields or families, only employees fulfilling contracts. The bond is only for economic purposes. To keep the body metaphor, it would look like parts being sewed together, a heart implant, everything foreign and everything competitively building up its own part––absolute disfunction. If we move again to the field and arrows metaphor we also see the disfunction, but we see mostly its harmful probabilities. If we are not united in the field, and the field is no longer shared between members, we in essence will all work our own fields alone while everyone else’s field is beyond our own horizon. We cannot hold a common sense since we do not share a common field.[2] So, in our inability to interact with those in separate fields, we fail to see what and how our actions affect. And so, our actions are like arrows shot beyond the horizon. We can direct the arrow’s direction, but cannot conclude when it is safe to shoot. And so, ignorance deals harmful blows to an agent we cannot conceive, an agent beyond the reach of our love, but within the reach of our actions. Outsourcing, job specialization, the portability of goods, and next-day shipping have benefits, but this is its curse. A shared field, a shared meal, a membership that undermines the zero-sum game of each workers’ joy will inform ignorance, provide a space for wisdom, and plant the seeds of love.

Altogether, we see Hannah Coulter express a tension between the themes of membership and employment––which I have called the dehumanization of society. I believe that these two themes were some of the things Wendell Berry wants the reader to consider and themes I have long been confronted with since leaving the Amish community I was born into. The themes implicitly explore some questions like: ‘what are the perks of membership?’ and ‘what do we lose without it?’ My hope was to answer these questions by explaining that in a membership we are not only taught to be careful and precise with our actions, but we are given the freedom to love and nourish our neighbor. We are also given help in our grief as our grief is currently being borne by our membership and ultimately by Christ. The dangers of losing sight of the membership is a culture which loses a common field and so loses the ability to love their neighbor. Ultimately, Hannah Coulter provides an incredible picture of grief, love, and life being shared. A reality that is too often slipping away into contracts and only being shared by those with common interests. I hope this paper achieved its goal in cautioning the reader to be gentle, and imploring the reader to abound in love for his neighbor.

[1] Ephesians 5:28: “He who loves his wife loves himself” is a wonderful picture of the non-competitive mutual upbuilding which I am trying to explain above. If you truly are tied together in one body (in this case one flesh), building up the other does not come at the expense of our own building up, but to its profit. [2] This thought is heavily influenced by “Common Worlds, Common Sense, and the Digital Realm” by L. M. Sacasas.

[3] Cover photo is by Ramadhani Rafid on Unsplash