80 pages • 2 hours read
John BerendtMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Duality of Traditional Savannah
Savannah entices the author and the reader with its lush beauty and remote setting, in stark contrast to crowded, overpriced New York. Lurid tales of the past and fantastical creatures of the present delight and surprise the author, who states that it is Savannah’s unique setting that allows the odd and eccentric to thrive. It is hard to imagine any setting other than Savannah for Luther Driggers barhopping with his glow in the dark goldfish or the flamboyant Lady Chablis dancing at the black debutante ball. Savannah surprises with its seeming inclusivity of a wide spectrum of behavior and people. While Part 1 delights in portrayals of the oddballs and the eccentrics, the entertainers and the entertained, Part 2 explores how Savannah is not immune from the plagues of snobbery, convention, anti-Semitism, racism, and homophobia.
The murder trial brings out the fact that Savannah may not be as supportive of diversity as the colorful cast of characters suggests. In some ways, Savannah is full of conventional stereotypes and discrimination. For example, Williams describes how the elite members of Savannah society are rule-bound, deviating little from expectations: “Men from Savannah’s good families are born into a pecking order they can never get out of” (235). A partygoer at the Married Women’s Club, an organization whose extreme adherence to tradition dictates that every minute of their parties follows strict rules, points out that anti-Semitism is alive and well in Savannah.
When Savannah is named the murder capital of the United States, the city manager points out the systematic racism African Americans suffer: “91% of the murderers were black, and 85% of the victims were also black” (33). The most disturbing example of discrimination and bigotry is when a Savannah jury acquits four Army Rangers who stomped a gay man to death: “Juries in Savannah don’t seem to mind seeing homosexuals get killed. I mean, you can stomp a homosexual to death in our community, and that doesn’t seem to make a difference” (204). While Savannah’s refusal to conform is admirable in some instances, such as when the residents insist on a slower pace of life to live more fully in the moment, such recalcitrance turns sinister when they maintain a systematic resistance to any type of change involving social equality.
The Reality of Exclusion
Jim Williams controls who attends his annual Christmas party at the Mercer House, the highlight of the Savannah social calendar. He takes great delight in creating two different stacks of cards: one “In” stack for those lucky enough to receive an invitation, and one “Out” stack reserved for those who have slighted Williams in some way and thus will be excluded from the party.
However, this exhibited power cloaks the fact that the highest levels of Savannah society exclude Williams. Socialites deny Williams and his Jewish adversary Lee Adler, both leading figures in the revitalization of Savannah’s downtown historic district, invitations the most exclusive clubs, such as the Oglethorpe Club and the yacht club. The upper-echelon reserves memberships for the white Savannah natives who are wealthy, Christian, and heterosexual.
The response to such exclusion is to demand inclusion in other ways: Williams is not a member of the Oglethorpe Club, so he creates his own exclusive membership by creating the biggest annual party in town. His rivals, the Adlers, also create their own prominence in society through their real estate work, which eventually gains them entrance to the White House and a meeting with Prince Charles. In 1919, prior to these “outsider” forerunners, shipping tycoon George Armstrong built the grand Armstrong House after the club “blackballed” (6) him. The Armstrong House deliberately “dwarfed the Oglethorpe Club” (6).
Armstrong, Williams, and the Adlers have the means to create their own privileges when society denies it to them. However, those without the financial means are unable to demand inclusion. The best that someone like Hansford can hope is for Williams to buy him a grand gravestone when he dies. The disenfranchised know that life in Savannah has very few options for those with little money and power.
Appearances Versus Reality
The tension between appearances and reality runs throughout the book. The author overhears a tour guide outside the Mercer House discussing Savannah’s history through a favorable yet dishonest lens, and Berendt notices that the guide fails to mention Williams, the property’s owner: “The tourists would leave Savannah in a few hours, enchanted by the elegance of this romantic garden city but none the wiser about the secrets that lay within the innermost glades of its secluded bower” (384). Williams is a self-made man whom society accepts on the unspoken contingency that his homosexuality remains hidden. Likewise, the residents of Savannah strive to stifle unflattering events: Newspapers print “Fall from Porch Proves Fatal” rather than the truth—a gang member murdered a judge’s son because of an affair.
It is this tension between appearance and reality that creates the book’s allure. Although polite and proper conversation rule parties, it doesn’t take much for the author to get the guests to gossip about the more sinister and secretive side of Savannah. Berendt positions himself as able to appreciate the surface of Savannah, delighting in its sensual beauty, its historic prominence, and its resistance to change, but he also shows how he is able to dig beneath the surface. He literally gets himself dirty as he shows himself side by side with Williams, one of the most prominent members of society, digging in the dirt at midnight for a voodoo spell meant to help Williams gain the favor of the dead. Berendt is game for any situation. He also shows that he is an effective interviewer, able to get various members of society to spill their secrets to him, allowing him to deeply immerse in Savannah culture. Berendt uses this access to Savannah’s underbelly to shape his narrative and present the reader with both sides of Savannah’s social scene.
Genre Bending and the Role of the Journalist
In Part 1, Savannah’s locals see the author taking notes, and many know that he is a writing a book about their city, although the book’s topic is unclear. The early chapters chronicle of the unusual people Berendt encounters in Savannah, but the book takes a clearer direction as it focuses on the murder trial in Part 2. The purpose shifts from entertaining the reader to informing the reader about the details of the trial. In blending storytelling and nonfiction, Berendt positions himself as a both a narrator and a reporter. The reader must then determine the extent to which Berendt conveys the facts with accuracy. In his Author’s Note, Berendt discloses his blurring of fiction and nonfiction in relaying his experiences:
Though this is a work of nonfiction, I have taken certain storytelling liberties, particularly having to do with the timing of events. Where the narrative strays from strict nonfiction, my intention has been to remain faithful to the characters and to the essential drift of events as they really happened (387).
However, this brief note does not explain which parts of his book “strays” from the truth. In later interviews after the book’s publication, Berendt admits to inserting himself into scenes that he was not actually present for. In fact, he did not meet Williams until after the murder trial had begun. In creating himself as a character who has a front row seat to a high-tension murder trial, Berendt’s “storytelling liberties” make the book more entertaining. Berendt’s positionality to the events challenge whether his purpose as a writer is to entertain or to inform. This unknown raises the question as to whether Berendt is merely an observer reporting on a story or a participant creating the story he reports.
