The Sundial

by Shirley Jackson

The Sundial is written with the kind of humor that would make a guillotine laugh.

“I am sure that Lionel would have foregone dying, Aunt Fanny, if he thought his funeral would interfere with my backgammon.

I am not inhuman; if the sundial were taken away I, too, would have to avert my eyes until I saw imperfection, a substitute sundial—perhaps a star.

Fancy smiled at him. “When my grandmother dies,” she said, “I am going to smash my doll house. I won’t need it any more.”

Now, she thought; I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.

The question of belief is a curious one, partaking of the wonders of childhood and the blind hopefulness of the very old; in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something.

Old Mr. Halloran, for one, would have been considerably more lighthearted in a faith which promised him everlasting life, but in the concept of everlasting life Mr. Halloran could not believe, since he was dying.

Not-dying from day to day was as much as Mr. Halloran could be fairly expected to believe in; the rest of them believed in what they could—power, perhaps, or the comforting effects of gin, or money.

Being impossible, an abstract belief can only be trusted through its manifestations, the actual shape of the god perceived, however dimly, against the solidity he displaces. Not one of the people around Aunt Fanny believed her father’s warning, but they were all afraid of the snake.

Julia laughed. “Essex,” she said, “what is real?” Essex bowed to her gravely. “I am real,” he said. “I am not at all sure about the rest of you.”

Look. Aunt Fanny keeps saying that there is going to be a lovely world, all green and still and perfect and we are all going to live there and be peaceful and happy. That would be perfectly fine for me, except right here I live in a lovely world, all green and still and perfect, even though no one around here seems to be very peaceful or happy, but when I think about it this new world is going to have Aunt Fanny and my grandmother and you and Essex and the rest of these crazy people and my mother and what makes anyone think you’re going to be more happy or peaceful just because you’re the only ones left?”

“Well,” Fancy said slowly, “you all want the whole world to be changed so you will be different. But I don’t suppose people get changed any by just a new world. And anyway that world isn’t any more real than this one.”

It’s real inside here, we’re real, but what is outside is like it’s made of cardboard, or plastic, or something. Nothing out there is real. Everything is made out of something else, and everything is made to look like something else, and it all comes apart in your hands. The people aren’t real, they’re nothing but endless copies of each other, all looking just alike, like paper dolls, and they live in houses full of artificial things and eat imitation food—” “My doll house,” Fancy said, amused.

Fancy bent over the doll house. “Anyway,” she said, “I don’t care how shabby it is. I’m not afraid of bad people, and of not being safe.” “But there aren’t any good people,” Gloria said helplessly. “No one is anything but tired and ugly and mean. I know.”