Mary Trump is one expression of what T. S. Eliot had in mind with his play, “The Family Reunion.” In that story, Eliot projected himself onto the character “Harry” who felt the abysmal ugliness of his dysfunctional family. “Harry” carried the wounds of a tortured family and was able to put them into words in this very disturbing, dark drama.
With the publication of her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” Ms. Trump graphically put into words the demonic evil of growing up in the distorted world of Fred Trump, the father of our president. It is no accident that she became a therapist as the training involved and the clinical work in her career has been “purgatorial” for her. In the Eliot play, the wounded “pain bearer” of the family is described as, “a bird sent flying through the purgatorial fire.” Eliot was a deeply spiritual man and his literary work often uses biblical imagery such as “purgatory” to paint a picture of the struggle of the human soul.
In the following quote from “The Family Reunion,” Eliot summarized the spiritual work that is always underway in human experience, even in the political dance we call a “family.” At the end, I will post a longer section of the play which provides more context.
What we have written is not a story of detection,
Of crime and punishment, but of sin and expiation.
It is possible that you have not known what sin
You shall expiate, or whose, or why. It is certain
That the knowledge of it must precede the expiation.
It is possible that sin may strain and struggle
In its dark instinctive birth, to come to consciousness
And so find expurgation.
literary lew 