The utter sorrow of Agee's Death in the Family

The italicized chapters or sections in James Agee's A Death in the Family (1957) represent ncomplete passages that Age left as part of his unfinished manuscript on his death in 1955; later editors determined whether to include these materials and if so where to place them. Probably not all should have been included except as appendices - all of the italicized sections are out of sequence w/ the rest of the narrative - but some represent some of Agee's best writing. In particular, I was moved almost to tears by the section at the end of part 2 about the 4-year-old Rufus, son of the man who died, who is teased unmercifully by older kids in the neighborhood. The whole section is quite horrifying (though not in any gruesome or sadistic way) because it's so believable: The older boys keep asking Rufus to tell them his name; he knows that they know his name, but their repeated inquiries lead him to tell them his name, at which they burst out howling. In particular they taunt him w/ racist epithets. They don't harm him physically, but the psychological torment is almost worse. Even more painful, all of us have either been part of such bullying - on one side or the other, or both - or have silently witnessed such ill treatment, which is extremely painful to read of now. Agee (or his editors) follow with 2 sections that build on this teasing: One involves a visit to elderly relatives in the country, and Rufus is asked to tell his great-great-grandmother who it is. When he tells her his name, this echos against the teasing of the previous chapter; we see that this young boy has been so tormented that it's hard for him to say his name - though the elderly woman seems touched by his speaking to her. There is a hint that he may be of mixed race, though this plot point is not clarified at this point - end of section 2. In the final passage of this section some friends of R's parents note is gullibility and tease him in a playful way, but we can see that this teasing deeply hurts Rufus, obviously because of the more painful teasing he's endured by other children. Knowing, as we do, that this young boy is now bereft of his father - we have not yet had a scene in which the children are informed about the death - further builds the tension and sorrow regarding these passages.