Caleb Williams

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1794

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Volume 3, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Volume 3, Chapter 1 Summary

Caleb escapes using the alleyway and hides out not too far from the jail; he hopes that people will assume he kept running and will go further to look for him. He is proven right when two of the keepers pass by him (298). Caleb is too afraid to move, so he waits for hours and leaves right before sunrise. Caleb travels the roads and the forest but does his best to avoid people; however, a group eventually approach him on the road. When Caleb learns that they’re thieves, he tells them he “ha[s] not a shilling in the word, and [is] more than half-starved” (301), but they don’t care and try to take his clothes. Caleb fights back, taking a blow to his neck and shoulder that seriously injure him. However, before one of his attackers, a man named Gines, can take a second swing, one of the others stops him and reminds him that they are not murderers (302). The men strip Caleb of his coat, roll him into a ditch, and leave him there to die (303).

Volume 3, Chapter 2 Summary

Caleb uses his shirt to stop the bleeding. He sees a man walking on the road who stops to help him (305). The man takes Caleb back to his house and helps to clean him up (307). A group of men come in, and Caleb realizes that they are the same ones who hurt him and tried to rob him before. The man that helped Caleb is called “Captain” by the others (307). Gines cannot provide a reason for attacking Caleb, and the captain reiterates that their profession is the profession of justice: They are “thieves without a license at war with men who were thieves according to the law” (308). Captain Raymond votes to expel Gines from the group. Gines says that he won’t grovel and leaves (308).

Caleb begins to enjoy his time with the thieves. The only downside is how anxious the men are at being stuck inside because they are wanted. As he recovers, Caleb tells his story to the men, and the leader, Captain Raymond, says that it is just “one fresh instance of the tyranny and perfidiousness exercised by the powerful members of the community, against those who were less privileged than themselves” (312).

Volume 3, Chapters 1-2 Analysis

The thieves stop short of killing Caleb, which they say is because they are not murderers: The captain states that their “profession is the profession of justice” and that they should not “stain it with cruelty, malice, and revenge” (307). This contrasts with the actions of Ferdinando and others of higher status. Ferdinando is a murderer who also threatened to hurt Caleb and even pointed a pistol at his head. These are all actions that Captain Raymond would be against—yet only one group of men is on the wrong side of the law. Caleb’s remarks in jail about feeling freed from societal foreshadow this meeting with Captain Raymond and his thieves, who live outside of society but have more morality than those society approves of.

Darkness again serves to conceal during Caleb’s final escape; however, it also conceals the thieves from Caleb until he is too close to do anything. The primary action of the novel takes place primarily in darkness is the motif where all the big moves seem to be made in during the novel: Emily escapes at night, Caleb gets lost in the dark and ends up at Forester’s, Leonard is arrested for being out at night, etc. The use of darkness reflects the novel’s debt to Gothic literature, but where the villain of a conventional Gothic narrative might operate at night, here it is primarily the “good” characters who do so. This is because the primary antagonists, as wealthy men, enjoy high social standing and institutional support; men like Ferdinando don’t typically need to conceal their actions, even when those actions are immoral.