Chapter 3 Summary

A good deal of stream-of-consciousness from Reverend Gwyon fills this long chapter and brings the reader inside his claustrophobic insular world of arcane ancient history, Bible scholarship and secondhand suppositions about how the world works. Most of this interior monologue jumps back and forth through time and space, dreamlike, and the reader is challenged to sift through a small universe of people, living and dead, with whom Gwyon interacts inside his head. The only real, substantive characters in Reverend Gwyon's Alice-in-Wonderland consciousness are the town carpenter who comes to do some repairs on his spacious home and Janet, the housekeeper, in the small New England town that is his family's native ground. Gwyon's interior world is interrupted by a knock on the door and the announcement by Janet that a group of church women has arrived to see him. Gwyon runs to his...