Fever

John Edgar Wideman’s “Fever” is a retelling of the yellow fever epidemic that struck Philadelphia in 1793 and the title story of his 1989 collection, Fever: Twelve Stories (Penguin Publishing Group), on which this guide is based. The story advances one of Wideman’s broader goals as an author: to correct the historical record to include the voices, experiences, and contributions of African Americans. This piece is Wideman’s second endeavor to represent the history of Philadelphia, where he attended college. Following on the incisive social critique of Wideman’s novel The Lynchers (1973), “Fever” similarly exposes the hypocritical failures of the “City of Brotherly Love” to fulfill the promises on which it was founded.

Content Warning: This story discusses racist violence.

Though there is no coherent linear narrative, the sections of the story generally proceed chronologically to recount the early days of the epidemic through its end. Beginning with the voices of enslaved people headed to Philadelphia and encyclopedia-like entries that describe contemporary medical knowledge of the fever and its transmission, the narrative then returns to 1793. It features a range of narrative perspectives, including the anonymous communal voices of free and enslaved Black people, as well as historical figures such as Dr. Rush and fictional figures such as the Jewish merchant Master Abraham. Wideman’s main character is Richard Allen, a famous formerly enslaved person, minister, and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church who served as an assistant to Dr. Rush in the aid and autopsy of fever victims. Throughout the story, Allen works alongside Rush and observes the city ravaged by fever: from the graveyard, to Rush’s home, to the autopsy of the fever’s victims, and finally to the dilapidated housing of poor Black people. 

Allen eventually reaches Water Street, where the poorest and most desolate are found in cellar apartments, among them a dead couple from Santo Domingo. Interwoven with Allen’s journey are retellings of an insurrection of enslaved people that occurred during the Haitian Revolution, an event that spurred enslavers to capture self-liberated people and bring them to the port of Philadelphia. An enslaved man narrates his experience in the hull of a ship; the perspective then switches to a mosquito that carries the yellow fever to Philadelphia. Allen recalls a second-hand account of the burning of Cap Francais in Haiti. An omniscient narrator suggests that the cause of the epidemic is not the Black population nor the enslaved Santo Domingans but the institution of colonial slavery itself. Wideman writes, “Fever grows in the secret places of our hearts, planted there when one of us decided to sell one of us to another. The drum must pound ten thousand thousand years to drive that evil away” (133). 

Allen wonders about his role in this historical event—aiding Dr. Rush—even as “his people” are wrongly blamed for the epidemic and negligently abused by Philadelphian society. As he bears witness to widespread suffering, he recalls the ways that Black refugees, escaping slavery in the Southern US or elsewhere, have been met with contempt and condemnation. Now, called upon to act as the city’s saviors, Allen is pained by the city’s betrayal and wonders why he continues to meet its demands. While Rush and other doctors dispassionately examine and autopsy dead and decaying bodies, seeking out the secret or hidden truth about the cause of the fever by using the metrics of science, Allen wonders about the cosmic indifference and injustice of the fever. He “wonder[s] for the thousandth time why some [are] stricken, some not” (145). 

The experience prompts Allen to meditate on the tenuous nature of the institutions that maintain racial inequalities. The fever undermines the social structures that make Black people like Allen selflessly serve the white population of the city, and in this state of anarchy, Allen realizes that there is a possibility for unprecedented freedom. He thinks, “To be spared the fever was a chance for anyone, black or white, to be a king” (151). Allen’s realizations about the fever’s liberating potential are echoed by Master Abraham, who challenges Allen to “see beyond these shores” (151), return to his family, and abandon the mission to aid Dr. Rush. From Abraham’s perspective, there is nothing to be gained by maintaining the status quo and by sublimating Allen’s interests to the greater good. 

The story ends in contemporary Philadelphia. A Black nurse and the city’s first Black mayor, Wilson Goode, implore readers to “put the past behind [them]” (161). The Black nurse, echoing Allen’s anxieties about his resignation to the status quo, admits that the work is unpleasant and underpaid but concludes, “I’m free. It ain’t that bad, really” (160). The nurse’s statement is sharply undermined by the story’s conclusion. 

The narrative blends the final days of the 1793 epidemic with the 1985 bombing of Osage Avenue, drawing a comparison between the city’s mayors, past and present, who similarly minimize the significance of the suffering. Mayor Goode, who ordered the bombing of a row home in West Philadelphia, assures readers that “extreme measures were necessary as [they] cleansed ourselves of disruptive influences” (161). In this final section, Wideman portrays the gridlines of the city, the relationship among institutions and citizens, and the contempt for Black life.