Chapter 5
1087 Words
The Evening Service
The sun has begun to sink when the narrator receives instructions to attend the evening service at the college chapel. His emotions are still raw from Dr. Bledsoe’s brutal reprimand, but he knows better than to disobey. The chapel service is one of the college’s most important rituals, a performance not just for the students but for the image of the entire institution.
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The Chapel Atmosphere
The chapel is majestic, almost cathedral-like. Its high vaulted ceiling seems to swallow sound, its stained-glass windows filter the fading sunlight into warm, reverent colors. The narrator has always been awed by this space, but tonight it feels oppressive.
Students file in, dressed neatly, their shoes polished, their faces composed. Faculty members take their seats in dignified rows. Visitors from the community, too, have gathered, eager to be uplifted by the school’s spiritual display.
On stage sits Dr. Bledsoe, his face composed into calm authority once more. To the audience, he is the image of a benevolent leader. To the narrator, however, he now looks like a man who hides behind masks, a master illusionist.
The organ swells, deep and resonant, filling the chapel with solemn grandeur. Hymns rise from the students’ voices, carefully trained to blend in harmony. Everything is polished, dignified, deliberate. It is the college at its most formal, its most controlled.
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The Reverend’s Sermon
The guest preacher is the Reverend Homer A. Barbee, a blind minister from Chicago who has come to deliver a sermon in honor of the college’s founder.
The Reverend is small and frail, but when he begins to speak, his voice expands with power. His words paint vivid images that seem to hang in the air like living pictures. Despite his blindness, he sees more than anyone else—or so it feels as he tells the story of the founder’s vision.
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The Myth of the Founder
Barbee speaks of the founder as though he were a saint, a Moses who led his people out of bondage. His voice rises and falls with dramatic cadence as he describes how the founder dreamed of a school where Black men and women could be uplifted through education. He recalls the founder’s humility, his sacrifices, his unwavering belief that knowledge was the path to freedom.
The audience listens in rapture. Students lean forward, captivated. Faculty members nod solemnly. Some weep quietly, moved by the passion in the Reverend’s words.
The narrator, too, is caught up—at least at first. The sermon is beautiful, almost hypnotic, and he feels a swell of pride for the college. But beneath that pride, there is also unease.
For Barbee’s words make the founder seem larger than life, a near-divine figure whose struggles and triumphs have been polished into legend. The messy realities of life—the compromises, the injustices, the contradictions—are smoothed away. It is a story designed to inspire, not to reveal truth.
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The Founder’s Death
As the sermon continues, Barbee recounts the founder’s death. His voice trembles with emotion as he describes the founder’s final moments, the crowd that gathered to mourn, the vision he left behind. The chapel fills with sobs and sniffles. Students cry openly, overwhelmed by the myth of sacrifice and redemption.
Barbee’s blindness adds an eerie power to the scene. He cannot see the tears in the audience, but he knows they are there. His sightless eyes roll upward as though he were gazing into heaven itself. His voice soars, invoking the founder’s spirit as though it still walks among them, guiding the college into the future.
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The Narrator’s Internal Conflict
The narrator feels torn. On one hand, he is moved—how could he not be, surrounded by weeping classmates, immersed in the music and the eloquence? But on the other hand, he feels a gnawing skepticism.
Only hours ago, he saw the brutal reality behind the college’s polished image: the desperation of Jim Trueblood, the chaos of the Golden Day, the rage of Dr. Bledsoe. The sermon now feels like another mask, another illusion crafted to conceal ugliness beneath a shining surface.
He wonders: Is this what Dr. Bledsoe meant? That the lie is more powerful than the truth? The Reverend’s sermon, like the college itself, seems built not on reality but on myth. And the myth is stronger than any individual life, stronger even than the students themselves.
As these thoughts swirl in his mind, guilt creeps in. Who is he to question the founder, the college, the dream that has given him opportunity? Maybe he is the one at fault for failing to uphold it. The contradiction pulls at him painfully.
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A Crushing Climax
The sermon reaches its climax. Reverend Barbee’s voice rises in a crescendo as he calls on the students to honor the founder’s legacy. “Never forget,” he cries, “the sacrifices made so that you might be here today! Never forget the dream that must live on through you!”
The audience erupts into thunderous applause. The organ thunders. Students leap to their feet in an ovation.
The narrator, caught in the swell, claps too, though his heart is conflicted. He feels like a tiny part of a vast machine, swept along by forces beyond his control.
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The Irony of Barbee’s Blindness
As the applause fades and the Reverend is escorted from the stage, the narrator reflects on the irony: the man who delivered this vivid vision is blind. Blind to the world around him, blind to the messy contradictions of life, yet capable of conjuring illusions more powerful than sight.
The narrator wonders whether the blindness is symbolic. Perhaps everyone here is blind in some way: blind to the truth, blind to the contradictions, blind to themselves. The thought unsettles him deeply.
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After the Service
When the service ends, students file out in silence, their faces glowing with inspiration. The narrator lingers, feeling isolated. The music, the sermon, the tears—all of it has left him more confused than uplifted.
He steps outside into the cool night air. The stars shine overhead, indifferent to the myths and illusions crafted below. He feels very small, caught between the weight of history and the uncertainty of his own future.
Tomorrow, he knows, Dr. Bledsoe will decide his fate. The evening service has done nothing to ease his dread. If anything, it has sharpened the tension between illusion and reality, between the founder’s shining dream and the ugly truths he has witnessed.
- Writer
