Angle of Repose

“I am impressed with how much of my grandparents’ life depended on continuities, contracts, connections, friendships, and blood relationships. Contrary to myth, the West was not made entirely by pioneers who had thrown everything away but an ax and a gun.” 

There are two narratives in the book. There is the story of Lyman and the story of his grandmother, Susan. One of these is occurring within the other; Lyman is recounting the story of his grandmother’s life, and it is moments such as the above quote that validate this approach. As a historian, Lyman can interject wry observations and commentary into an otherwise detailed scene. These observations remind the audience of the narrative structure of the novel, while also adding depth to the story of Susan and her contemporary world. 

“I know as much about my condition as that overworked, unimaginative general practitioner.” 

This quote reveals the extent that Lyman’s arrogance and fiercely independent spirit serve to undermine him. His medical condition is complicated and demanding, but he feels that his research (backed by his skills as a historian) are enough to keep him as informed as a doctor. Not only this, but he disparages the doctor and his paltry advice, accusing the man of lacking in imagination (though he does concede that the doctor is overworked). Given the thorny relationship Lyman enjoys with many people, as well as his utter dependence on others, this attitude says more about Lyman than it does about those around him. 

“Susan Ward came West not to join a new society but to endure it, not to build anything but to enjoy a temporary experience and make it yield whatever instruction it contained.” 

Susan’s view of her time in the West is misinformed. The audience is already aware of the difficulty and the hardship that she will have to endure, creating a sense of dramatic irony when Susan reiterates her belief that the trip will be short-lived and temporary. The above quote suggests that Susan sees this brief westward excursion as a learning experience, something about which she can tell anecdotes at her New York cocktail parties. As such, the novel is setting up Susan’s expectations, only to have them dashed when she realizes the full scope of what her life will entail out West. 

“He had sunk out of the world, or into it, and she was beached in the interminable sunshine.” 

One morning, as Susan watches Oliver descend into the mine, she experiences again the dramatic pang of loneliness that defines her time at the mining camp. She watches Oliver disappear into the gloom at the bottom of the mine, knowing that he may not come back up for another 24 hours, and she will be all alone. There is contrast between the characters' respective environments and their emotional states: Oliver, a trained engineer, is very much at home in the hellish dark underworld; Susan, a child of the East, feels lost and alone in the “interminable sunshine” (115). Though she is surrounded by natural beauty, she feels herself more trapped than her husband. 

“They took this descent into Hades as casually as she would go down a flight of stairs.” 

For the first time, Susan is getting a glimpse into the world Oliver occupies daily. While she has been praised for her bravery, her true trepidation is revealed in the choice of language. They have descended into “Hades” (146); this is not only hell, but the Greek underworld. Hades is an allusion wrapped up in Susan’s literary classicism, her mind searching for the worst place imaginable and turning toward the old Greek myths to satisfy her fears. This is not the normal Christian hell, but something stranger and more other. This, she is discovering, is where her husband spends most of his time. 

“Standing outside of this casual revelation of how deep and violent were the divisions in the camp, Susan felt as a woman running an orderly quiet household might feel if she looked out the window and saw men fighting in the street.” 

The revelation about the true nature of the mining community shocks Susan. She had been ignorant of the bitter rivalries and harsh punishments that Mr. Kendall handed out. When Oliver tells her, she finds herself in shock. Suddenly, the pictures she had drawn and the articles that she has written feel hollow; her own ability to recognize human endeavor and emotion has been compromised. She now views the world with a newfound cynicism, forever changed by the dark underbelly of the local community that has been revealed to her. 

“If Grandfather had got his backing, neither he nor Grandmother would have become the people I knew.” 

Lyman’s role as a historian allows him to create a certain distance from his subject, but it is impossible in all family matters. In the instance outlined in the above quote, he is reviewing Oliver’s abandonment of the cement formula that would have made him a rich man (and, eventually, that wealth would have passed to Lyman). Though it was perhaps a foolish move, Lyman cannot bear to criticize his grandfather, as if history had occurred differently, then Lyman would not have had the relationships that he so treasures. Though Lyman tries to remain objective, in some matters his subjectivity shines through. 

“I don’t hate her. I don’t blame her. I think I understand her temptation. I’m sorry about her bad luck and her suffering. But I have nothing to say to her. Tell her so.” 

Though the audience knows that Lyman and Ellen are divorced and that Rodman is the only point of contact between the two, Ellen remains a mystery. Subtle hints like those in the above quote hint at the animosity between the two divorced characters. It functions as a juxtaposition against the marriage between Susan and Oliver that, while occasionally difficult, endured for decades. One of the reasons why Lyman is so obsessed with his grandparents’ marriage is because it might be able to inform him about the failure of his own marriage. 

“Every mining man has to see Leadville once.”

The arrival in the small town of Leadville is a strange disappointment to Susan. Though she is with the man she loves, their home is threadbare, and there is an ominous threat hanging over the town. For Oliver, the town itself is a spectacle. As someone who is tightly wound up in the mining industry, this is the cutting edge of civilization. Leadville is something special, but only to those who can fully comprehend its importance in a mining context. Susan’s time in the town will be defined by the tension between its importance as a mining hub for her husband and the fact that it is not a place in which she ever dreamed she would live. 

“With a sad, defensive certainty she saw that he lacked some quality of elegance and east, some fineness of perception, that these others had.” 

Every now and then, Susan is reminded of the stark difference between her typical social circle and Oliver. Here, gathered in her cabin, making playful jokes about serious issues, Oliver seems to lack the social finesse needed to navigate the situation. He may be entirely correct in his pressing of the issue, but Susan and the others can immediately detect a note of otherness in his tone, one that will permanently distinguish Oliver from his more successful peers. 

“It’s Leadville. It’s what I chose.” 

During the journey back to Leadville, Oliver dismisses the potential danger of the town by saying that it is typical of Leadville and that is where they chose to stay. Susan chooses to read a deeper meaning into this statement; she was the one who pleaded for Oliver not to join the survey as she wanted to stay with him as much as possible. She believes that Oliver is subtly reminding her that staying in Leadville was her choice. Even if that is not what Oliver is attempting to do, the quote functions as a manifestation of the guilt Susan feels for not allowing her husband to pursue his dreams. She reads the meaning into the words because that is how she feels herself. 

“Like the shaped stone, the fully formed architecture, the household with its routines fixed as holy offices, he represented a civilized continuity unbroken even by transplantation to a new country.” 

Having moved to Mexico, Susan is still struggling to come to terms with what it means to be civilized. She has experienced life in the confines of the New York high society and amongst the wilderness of the West, but Mexico is different. Her attempts to define it coincide with her attempts to draw their new home. This is how Susan makes sense of situations, processing their complexity through her art. In the above quote, she is wondering how best to portray the quintessentially Mexican version of authority she is witnessing via her American-informed perspective. The tension between these two worlds will need to be resolved if Susan is to understand Mexico.

“I did not occur to her, apparently, though it occurs to me, that he was more frustrated and sore than she was, and mainly for her sake.”

Lyman plays the role of omniscient narrator, both a historian and a writer who can attempt to convey the thoughts of his characters even when he does not have all the information. Though he has struggled to move away from pure objective fact, moments like this allow him to suppose without confirming everything. Lyman is increasingly invested in the story and the characters and is struggling to square this investment with his responsibilities as a historian. 

“What kind of wife is it who half wants her husband’s bad luck to continue so that she can stay longer near someone else? You.”

Susan is caught between two worlds. Whenever she is with Oliver, she wants nothing more than to make a life with him in whatever mining town they happen to occupy at that moment. Whenever she is reunited with Augusta, she longs to be with the New York crowd and the social scene that she associates with her best friend. Even recently, Susan wanted nothing more than to live in Mexico, now she hopes that Oliver fails so that she has an excuse to remain in the East. Susan does not know what she wants beyond her immediate circumstances. 

“It is strange to find ourselves people of consequence.” 

After so many failed projects, the irrigation plan is the first time that Oliver is succeeding in his work. As a result, he and Susan have found themselves to be important members of what little community there is in their surrounding locale. In the above quote, Susan notes how strange it is that they have found themselves to be important figures, but the words are dripping with sarcasm: They are people of importance in a dull, drab town where that means nothing. The irony of this newfound success is that, for the first time, Susan cannot imagine herself living in this place. The first place where they could stay is the first place that she has no interest in. 

“And yet of all our wild nesting places this is the wildest and sweetest, and made up of the most extravagant incongruities.” 

In her letter to Thomas, Susan describes the building of a log cabin as far away from civilization as she has ever dreamed. The cabin itself is a hodgepodge of juxtapositions. It is built at a time when Oliver has no money and is forced to rely on Susan’s publishing royalties. It is isolated and boring, though Susan has come to love it. It is part of the one trip that she really did not want to take, but it has become the home that she considers the sweetest of all. Part of this may be due to the format: Writing her letter, Susan might not be entirely honest. She may be wishing to convince Thomas and Augusta (as well as herself) that she is content and happy. The truth, however, might be entirely different. With another baby on the way and more time set to be spent in the cabin, it seems as though her delight in her strange circumstances is authentic.

“She mined and irrigated every slightest incident, she wrote and drew her life instead of living it.”

Quite by accident, Susan has become the chief breadwinner of the household. Her art is keeping the family afloat while they are in the camp, awaiting funding for Oliver’s irrigation project. At the same time, she is heavily pregnant but cannot afford to stop working. The choice of language in the above quote reflects the change in dynamic between Oliver and Susan. She is now the wage earner who “mines” the raw materials—the family's experiences—turning them into profit, much like Oliver does when he mines ore from the ground. 

“Doesn’t this story have anything in it but hard luck and waiting?”

At this point in the novel, the constant failure of Oliver’s projects is beginning to tell. Lyman, the ostensible narrator of his grandparents’ lives, acknowledges this and provides a meta-textual commentary on the nature of the story. It is a story being written within a story, in which the narrator of said story empathizes with both reader and characters. Lyman is the intermediary between the two worlds. Though he is also fictional, he assures the reader that the fictional world that he is creating (and that he himself is a part of) will provide resolution in the future. The text itself seeks to reassure the reader, promising an optimistic future, though it is one that is already evident by Lyman’s apparent good fortunes.

“Her discussions of Oliver and Susan Ward have this torque in them, they twist toward Lyman Ward too often.” 

Working with Shelly, Lyman recognizes in her an impulse to talk about everything. Even when discussing his book, however, she seems to drag theses conversations back to the present day, using them to make inferences about Lyman’s character. Lyman recognizes this and obstinately refuses to give her the satisfaction of doing so. It reveals something about his character: He can see what she wants but is determined not to give it to her; he is a stubborn man, unable to cross the generational divide between the two of them. The more they talk, however, the more he opens up to Shelly, even if he is unaware of doing so. 

“Within a half hour of seeing him again after more than a year’s separation, she felt imprisoned in his life, dragged after his warped buggy wheels.” 

Susan and Oliver have spent time apart before, and their reunions have always been loving and packed full of emotion. This time, their reactions are notably different. Rather than being delighted to see her husband again, Susan feels imprisoned, trapped by the circumstances of her husband’s life in a way she never has before. It demonstrates the difficulty they have experienced in their marriage; whether it is Oliver’s failures, his drinking, Susan’s relationship with Frank, or a myriad of other reasons, there is a cloud hanging over them. 

“It seems the logical conclusion of our effort to reclaim and civilize the West.” z

Everything that the Wards had invested in—whether it was money, time, effort, ambition, or dreams—has been ruined. The farm on which they have lived seems little more than a worthless dusty ranch. Of all their failures, this is the worst of all, leaving them penniless and in debt. That this is communicated through Susan’s letters shows that Lyman is allowing the raw emotion of the moment to speak of itself. He is not daring to speak for his grandmother but allowing her to admit the defeat to her closest and oldest friend. These are Susan’s words, expressing a distraught and despondent reaction to one of the worst moments in her family's life. 

“What went on on that piazza? I don’t know.” 

As the book draws to a close, Lyman is forced to admit that there are certain aspects of his grandmother’s life on which he cannot speculate. Though he has told Shelly that he does not want to invent sexual circumstances for his grandmother, he cannot help but speculate on this moment with Frank. He is invested not only as a writer and a historian, but as a man whose wife left him. He draws parallels between Ellen’s behavior and his grandmother’s behavior, searching for answers. When history lets him down, however, he cannot just give up the pursuit. Lyman is so invested in the story that he is stepping over the boundaries he previously outlined, determined to finish the story just like his grandfather was determined to create a successful life out West.

“As surely as that slug went through Frank Sargent’s head, it went through Susan and Oliver and Ollie Ward.” 

After alluding to the problem for most of the chapter, Lyman finally gets to the point: Agnes' death brought to a head all the suspicions and impropriety that had lingered over the household. In killing himself, Frank confirms Oliver’s suspicions of an affair and kills the marriage. Added to that, Ollie—his life already in tatters after finding his sister’s dead body—is old enough to piece together his father's suspicions. Susan—whether Oliver’s suspicions were true or not—feels guilty enough to recognize what the situation must seem. Frank's death is the killer blow, the act that finally destroys the family’s ambitions of a life out West.