In Reynolds Price’s The Company of the Dead, we are privy to the recollections of a 92-year-old southern man named Hub. Hub recalls the time when he and his best friend Simp worked as “setters” from the period when they were about 12 ½ years-old to the time they were aged fifteen (Price 910). Most of the story is devoted to their experiences while “setting” for a forced-into-retirement schoolteacher named Miss Georgie. As bizarre as any imaginative character from Faulkner like Miss Emily, Miss Georgie lived alone save for an old black house-man. When she dies, they are asked to “set” for the first time ever. They relish the opportunity initially but experience fits of sleepiness, conflict with the house-man Jarvis, and, even worse, a ghoulish bubble which rises from Miss Georgie’s dead lips. This bubble puts the fear of God and the supernatural into the pair, as, when Hub tells Simp who is too afraid to look that the bubble has not disappeared “He heard the news with bald-faced terror” (Price 915).
Despite their harrowing first job, the boys survive and feel stronger because of the experience. The next “setting” of General Matthew Husky’s “enormous remains” goes off without a hitch, mainly because the boys follow the work ethic advice of “setters” delivered to them by Hub “The lesson is nothing but this. Keep the corpse as cool as you can, no more bugs than you can help, and don’t go touching their burial clothes” (Price 916). The final “setting” revealed is one that will change the lives of Simp and Hub forever. Simp never revealed the details of “setting” for the idealized beauty of Miriana Adams. Miriana died trying to find her partying husband to inform him she was pregnant (the one condition on which he agreed to give up the bottle). After debating over the presence of God, angels, and the afterlife in the remarkable beauty of the corpse, the pair are awoken one nig...