47 pages • 1 hour read
Wallace StegnerAngle of Repose
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Conversation Between Past and Present
The novel is the story of a historian examining his family’s past in order to help explain his present predicament. The reason Lyman becomes so heavily invested in the story of his grandparents is that he finds himself stuck: He is stuck in a wheelchair; he is stuck depending on people; and his wife has abandoned him. He is out beyond the pale of society and feels drawn to the story of the couple who ventured West at a difficult time and endured many hardships before eventually settling down together for life.
As a historian, Lyman understands the importance of looking to the past to answer problems in the present. He has written often about the American West and is considered something of a leading expert, but he has never written a story so personal. Thus, the conversation, parallels, and contrasts between his life and that of his grandparents become more important. Shelly is a useful character in this respect. Not only does she encourage Lyman to scrutinize Susan as a person (rather than as Lyman’s grandmother or the famous literary figure), but she also represents a different generation. Lyman and Shelly discuss the differences between the generations: When Shelly talks about traveling to a commune, Lyman provides her with a list of historical precedents. When she asks him his opinion on the matter, he turns again to these precedents and discusses them as a historian. Lyman uses the past to inform the present, but Shelly asks him what he really thinks about the matter. Shelly drags Lyman out of his comfort zone and forces him to abandon his credentials as a historian in order to take more from the story of his grandparents.
Thus, the resolution of the novel comes at the resolution of the conversation between past and present. Lyman states that he has no interest in the lives of his grandparents past 1890; this is because this is the moment when everything falls apart, and he hopes to use this moment to inform his own present. Once he has come to accept his grandmother’s likely infidelity and her existence as a fully-realized sexual being rather than a figment of Lyman’s nostalgia, then he can truly understand his present. Lying in bed after a nightmare, Lyman accepts that he may have to call Ellen. He has understood how Oliver and Susan mended their differences; the life they led was not happy, but it was not unhappy, and he now knows that he can do the same. The conversation is complete.
Home
Susan's journey into the West is the journey of a woman searching for a home. Living close to or in a series of mining camps and engineering projects, the homes that she builds are gradually filled with the elements of her family life before they are abandoned and forgotten. These homes are filled with love and care, whether it is a log cabin, a small cottage, or a ranch on a dust-filled plain. Ironically, the longest-lasting and most enduring home of all is the one that is devoid of love, the house in which Lyman now lives.
The West is a difficult and harsh place but represents potential fortunes to be made. Susan is a creature of the East, but she travels West with Oliver under the pretext that they can build a life together. To do this, Susan decides that she needs to find herself a home. The first of these is a cabin, built with all the money Oliver has in order to make his wife happy. Susan decorates the home, and Oliver engineers rockers for the baby and rooms for the hired help. They turn the house into the envy of everyone in the camp, entertaining famous, important people on a regular basis. No sooner has Susan finally built herself a beloved home than she must leave it behind. Oliver quits his job, they pack as much as possible into boxes, and then sell off the home to whoever will buy it. This is the first time Susan experiences the pain of building something and losing it.
Susan and the family have similar experiences in the log cabin and the tents beside the irrigation project. The ever-expanding family moves in, incorporating friends and hired help, and they build a loving environment. Though they might struggle and fall on difficult financial times, Susan always endeavors to perfect her living environment. To her, these homes become the embodiment of her family’s success: If they have somewhere they can live together happily, then they have succeeded—but these homes are lost every time.
The two homes that stand apart from the others are the brief interlude in Mexico and the house by the Zodiac mine. The first is only a fleeting dream: Susan falls in love with Mexico and begins to imagine the life that she and her family could lead south of the border. She even has nightmares about how difficult it would be to entertain all her guests in such a house. The home is abandoned before it is even begun. At this point, the theme of home is at its most fleeting and most impossible. This contrasts with the home near the Zodiac mine. Life for the family in this home is so enduring that Lyman still lives in the house. While the other homes were built on love, trust, and shared experiences, this home has none of that. Lyman experiences those emotions in the house as he has grown up in a loving family, but Susan and Oliver have broken their marriage by the time they reach this house. Though they are together, they are not as happy as they once were. Though more lavish, this house contains none of the warmth or joy that their smaller homes contained. The theme of homes becomes clearly pronounced here: Homes are not just physical spaces, but the emotional context in which they are built.
The Frontier
The frontier is the opposite to the life Susan knows. She is from the East in both a geographical and cultural sense. She is an aspiring artist immersed in the New York literary community. This immersion functions as a juxtaposition against her eventual life out on the frontier. If Susan spends her youth at civilized, refined dinner engagements, then the remainder of her life will be spent trying to scrape together a living in the unknown, dangerous, and potentially enriching West.
Susan heads West for her beloved husband, Oliver, an engineer who is not built for life in the East. He wants to conquer new lands, solve new problems, and test himself against the most trying situations America has to offer. Such experiences are only available in the West. Though Susan believes at first that their relocation is temporary, she moves willingly and begins to document the frontier in detail. Her writing and her art become the key ways that the people in the East begin to understand life in the West: Susan is showing the differences in lifestyle and the untamed nature of existence on the frontier. At first, it feels like an adventure. As time drags on, it becomes more of a burden.
Life on the frontier is dangerous: Frank becomes part of a vigilante death squad, and Oliver carries a gun and a knife with him everywhere. Even giving birth to a child is far more complicated than in the East, as the vast sprawl of the West means that fetching a doctor or midwife can take hours or even days. The lack of infrastructure, bureaucracy, and laws conspire to make the Wards' life more difficult. This difficulty is what feeds the theme of the frontier: Susan’s story is interesting, in part, because it is a classic “fish out of water” tale. She is the refined city girl taken out of her element and dumped amid the wild and dangerous frontier. Learning how to navigate this life—and constantly juxtaposing it against the lives of Augusta and Thomas, the embodiments of the East—drives the plot of the novel forward and turns Susan into the important figure she becomes.
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By Wallace Stegner
