Setting and Landscape in Wallace Stegner’s The Big Rock Candy Mountain

I

For some authors, setting is merely that: the place the story they are telling is taking place. Nothing more; nothing less. For other writers, it is even less than that. William Gaddis, in JR, dispenses with setting altogether, using only dialogue to tell his story. Certainly there is setting, but only in reference during the characters’ conversations. Wallace Stegner, on the other hand, uses setting as if it were clay in his novel, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, molding and shaping it to serve his needs. Unlike other writers, who could set their stories down in any landscape, Stegner's novel must take place where it did. For him, setting has many purposes. He uses setting as "protagonist." This is to say, the setting is used as a positive force in the novel. Conversely, he uses setting as "antagonist." In these situations, and there are many in The Big Rock Candy Mountain, the setting is the main opponent of the characters. At times, setting is used as "minor character." Here Stegner uses setting as most authors do, as a backdrop for the main action of the novel. The interplay of the characters takes precedence in these instances, but this will not be examined in this paper. Finally, Stegner uses setting as a representation of theme. When Bo Mason, the father of Bruce, the main character of the novel, is subject to the vagaries of fortune and fate, the settings of the novel mirror the discord of the action.

Many writers have used the West as their setting. One must examine how others have used it to fully appreciate the craft of Wallace Stegner. In American literature, the West has most often been mythic. Even before Leif Ericson, or Columbus, or the Pilgrims landed, European eyes were focused on the West. After Europeans landed on the Continent, the West was anything beyond the clearings of their settlements. As population increased the definition of the West evolved, it was pushed further and further. The demarcation of the West was first the Allegheny Mountains; then it was pushed to the Appalachians, then the Mississippi River, then the Rocky Mountains, and finally, past the inland deserts of Utah and Nevada to the Pacific. According to Edwin Fussell, this longing for the West has its genesis in the Christian tradition, because St. Matthew said that Christ foretold that "...the Son of Man would spring from the East and flash across to the West," (5). Besides the spiritual longing for the West, Fussell also equates the West with the Frontier. This, ironically, lets him include such writers as Cooper, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, and Thoreau in the writers of the West. Fussell justifies this by saying, "The simple truth is that the American West was neither more not less interesting than any other place,...,until by interpretation the great American writers–all of whom happened to be Eastern–made it seem so," (13). Stegner mirrors the classic writer’s perceptions and beliefs about the West, when he says, in his book of essays, The Sound of Mountain Water, "It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such a wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into...," (150).

The difference between the writers listed above and writers like Stegner is revealed also by Fussell, when speaking of Hawthorne, he says, "Almost from the beginning, Hawthorne was involved with the West," (73). Unlike true Western writers, the writers from the east are merely "involved" with their setting, as opposed to being immersed in the West. Some of the Eastern writers barely made it past the Mississippi in their travels. To call them writers of the West is a travesty. However, because they were writing as the West was being opened more fully, what these writers have to say is quite relevant. Fussel notes this problem when he says, "...when too detached from their Western source, the doubled metaphors were often perfunctory or implicit, and it is difficult to estimate what kind or degree of vitality lay behind them, or even whether the author knew they were there," (121). Further along, Fussell observes of Bronson Alcott after quoting an extended passage of Alcott’s about the West, "The wild country belonging to this old explorer had no particular connection with the actual West, except by way of initial suggestion and subsequent reaction," (190). Herein lies the difference between Stegner and the other Western writers who came before him, he is a man of the West, immersed in it, while the Eastern writers, for the most part, can only speculate about it.

Fussell says of Walt Whitman, "Whitman as a poet was formed by his idea of the West, and his poetic talents were consecrated to that idea," (397). He goes further saying, "...in the early years, Whitman was wonderfully superficial, conventional, ...about the geography of Western America," (397) meaning that at the time, the 1840's and ‘50's, Whitman was rather cavalier in his writings of the West. Contrast this with what William Baurecht says in his essay, "Within a Continuous Frame: Stegner’s Family Album in The Big Rock Candy Mountain," "...Wallace Stegner wrote about a ‘genuine West," a West of the past but not of the distant past," (98). Instead of manufacturing his image of the West in his mind, Stegner conceptualizes the real thing and makes it real for his readers. When writing of "Pictures," an unpublished Whitman poem that preceded Leaves of Grass, Fussell says, "Whitman included the West he had seen with his own eyes, and then moved on to the West which that seeing enabled him now to imagine, or at least image that he imagined," (404) which moves Whitman further from any connection to the reality of the West. Rather than deal with that reality, Whitman, and the other Eastern writers of the 18th century, dealt with the themes that were implicit in the West: manifest destiny, the American inferiority complex, which evolved over time into a Western inferiority complex in relation to the East, and "...the metaphor of the frontier..., nature in the neutral territory changing civilization while at the same time being changed by it," (Fussell 126). These themes are evident in The Big Rock Candy Mountain as will be seen.

John Lynen, in The Design of the Present, examines the use of time in American fiction. In this explication, he discusses how Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper used the landscape in their stories to transcend time, or bend and shape it to their own designs,. It is his understanding that landscape in Irving’s Rip Van Winkle functions in several ways. The first of these is as a parody of "travelogue literature," (162). Lynen also sees landscape as a comic fable because, "...we do not doubt that (the landscape) is what we see–we wonder what it is," (163). This setting becomes illusory, "...an instance of immediate, present perception, but the scene is os various and inclusive that to grasp the reality we behold in the present, we must look beyond the moment of experience," (163). However, Lynen does stipulate that Irving’s, and for American writers in general, use of landscape is "unremittingly problematical," because, "Instead of feelings of reconciliation and self-fulfillment, it induces detachment and a coolly speculative attitude," (165). This contrasts with Ahern’s view of The Big Rock Candy Mountain when he says, "...its scope allows Stegner to examine the influences of the West from several points of view...," (111), a far cry from Lynen’s "detachment."

II

The Big Rock Candy Mountain was received with critical acclaim. Howard Mumford Jones said in The Saturday Review, "In a lean year this is a major novel. It would be a major novel even in a rich year...," (17). He goes on to say about Stegner’s use of setting and landscape:

In the New York Times Book Review, Joseph Warren Beach said, "Wallace Stegner’s latest book shows great advance in power and grasp over the shorter novels for which he is chiefly known, and is a much more satisfying example of regional fiction," (19). The latter review reveals one of the problems in dealing with Wallace Stegner: He is often relegated to the position of regional writer. Where writers like Faulkner and Steinbeck have surpassed the title, "regional writer," Stegner is most often perceived as a "Western" writer, even though his novels have won a Pulitzer Prize, Angle of Repose, and a National Book Award, The Spectator Bird. Of landscape and setting, Beach notes, "Mr. Stegner has felt the spell of mountain and prairie, of drought, flood and blizzard; he can...give us the feel of frontier life...," (19). Baurecht, in a later critical essay, refutes this regionalization by saying of The Big Rock Candy Mountain, "...it surpasses regional categorization...," (98).

While there is much critical examination of Stegner’s work, most of it concentrates on his characterization, and on his later incarnation as an environmentalist. For example, Jackson J. Benson, in his book of essays, Down by the Lemonade Springs, has an entire chapter devoted to "Artist as Environmentalist," (32). Much of this criticism is based on Stegner’s many non-fiction works, but, of The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Benson notes, "...his fiction often revealed the values and attitudes that became the foundation of his environmental activities," (41). He continues, "In The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943) he tackles the American Dream, finding it far more damaging than does Dreiser...or Fitzgerald....Almost alone among major writers of our time, he realized that the dream has not only twisted our lives and corroded our values but also despoiled the very land...," (41).

Much of the critical literature focuses on the theme of rugged individualism. Stegner, in the introduction to Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, wrote of The Big Rock Candy Mountain, it is "...my first and most heartfelt commentary on western optimism and enterprise and the common man’s dream of something for nothing," (xxi). Kenneth Mason explores this American Dream theme extensively in his essay, "The Big Rock Candy Mountain: The Consequences of a Delusory American Dream." He defines the dream as "the myth of raw, unrestrained individualism," (35). In the essay, he examines the character, Bo Mason, and his lust for power, Elsa and Chet Mason, whom he terms "victim of the delusory dream," (38), and finally, Bruce Mason as the "survivor" (40) of the dream. Kenneth Mason does look at setting, but in a cursory way, and only in relation to the characters of the novel.

In his character analysis, Steven Hatcher also concentrates his analysis on Bo. He sees Bo as the "anti-hero" of the novel, especially in the context of Bo’s bootlegging. Instead of focusing on the literal isolation of the family, Hatcher chooses to address the social isolation of the Mason family. However, as will be shown, in many cases, this is due to the physical isolation. Granted, when the Mason’s move to Salt Lake City, they are socially isolated, but prior to that, they are isolated in distance, and by the elements. Hatcher’s treatment of the landscape is always in terms of, "The deluded who believe a landscape possesses an inherent monetary quality available with little human intervention or manipulation....," (124). And, this is Bo’s perception of the opportunities that present themselves to him, the bunkhouse for the railroad, the wheat farm in Saskatchewan, and the tent restaurant in the Oregon forests. But, this limits Stegner’s use of landscape in the novel.

Another angle of investigation by critics is that of the Stegner’s use of history. Barnett Singer, in his essay, "The Historical Ideal in Wallace Stegner’s Fiction," looks at just this. He calls The Big Rock Candy Mountain, "Stegner’s David Copperfield," (125). Singer compares the novel to the work of Bernard DeVoto, who "embraced the moment over obligatory minutiae whenever he could," (128). Where other critics lauded Stegner for his environmentalism, Singer does the same for "his historical idealism," (168). According to Sid Jenson, Stegner himself refutes this view in his book, Wolf Willow, when he said that he "ranks fictional and poetic truths a little above that of historical truth," (166). Richard Etulain says that "there is a noticeable tendency among many western novelists to search for a useful or usable past," (148), but, Stegner does not have to search, since this past is his own.

So, while many critics have explicated Stegner’s characters, his environmentalism, and his use of history, few have looked at the function of setting in The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Writing generally, James D. Houston said of Stegner and his use of "a sense of place," "This sense of place and of the West as region involves a good deal more than setting, a good deal more than the skill to evoke a landscape or the feel of a town...," (7). This statement barely scratches the surface of Stegner’s use of locale. Houston goes on to write, "Wallace Stegner is a regional writer in the richest sense of that word, one who manages to dig through surface and plumb a region’s deepest implications, tapping into the profound matters of how a place or piece of territory can shape life, character, actions, dreams," (7), which begins to explore the depths of Stegner’s work.III

A protagonist is defined loosely as the major character in a work of literature. If the environmental critics are correct, the landscape is one of Stegner’s principal protagonists. Indeed, Stegner says of the people who live in the West, "It is not an unusual life-curve for Westerners–to live in and be shaped by the bigness, sparseness, space, clarity, and hopefulness of the West...," (Lemonade Springs 20-1). Here lies the parallel between setting and the protagonist. Even though the protagonist is typically a human, they are in flux throughout the work; they evolve as the fiction progresses. The Big Rock Candy Mountain evolves from the barren plains of North Dakota, populated by frontiers people to urban Salt Lake City, from the horse and buggy to automobiles. Stegner opens his novel, The Big Rock Candy Mountain (TBRCM) with, "The train...rocking through wide open country...," (TBRCM 1). Elsa is escaping her tyrannical father and his new wife, her best friend, traveling from Minnesota to her uncle in Hardanger, North Dakota. This is the first mirroring of character in the novel. As Elsa frees herself of the familial bond, the landscape also becomes more free. The first landscape the reader encounters is, as noted, "wide open," but, Elsa can see "the telegraph wires dip, and dip, and dip from pole to pole, (and she) watched the trees and scattered farms, endless variations of white house, red barn, (and) tufted cornfield," (TBRCM 1). However, by the time she arrives in Hardanger, "The country about her was flat as a floor and absolutely treeless," (4). Contrast that with the end of the novel where Bruce returns to bury his father:

Though the landscape is still bleak, it is far more populated for Bruce than in the time of his mother.

A synonym for protagonist is hero. Joseph Campbell delineates the heroic quest as being: "separation–initiation–return," (30). He writes, "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder:...a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man," (30). While the landscape, being inanimate cannot follow this journey strictly, in The Big Rock Candy Mountain it can follow it loosely. In The Big Rock Candy Mountain, perhaps the best example of this is the farm outside of Whitemud, Saskatchewan. What begins as virgin prairie is transformed by Bo Mason into a wheat farm (separation), which in its first years produced abundance (initiation), began to flounder (return). "So the year that began in hope ended in bitterness. The rains that came after the blistering winds were ironic and unwanted, the crop was ruined, the prospect of a hard winter was there again, like an old, unwanted acquaintance come upon around a corner," (TBRCM 229). After the failure of the crop, the Masons return to Whitemud, abandoning the farm, returning it to its natural state.

Landscape and nature as antagonist is the stock-and-trade of literature that features man vs. nature as its main conflict. In the West, it has often been the major conflict of settlers. A prime example of this is the Donner Party which met its grizzly end in the pass through the Sierra Nevadas that now is known as Donner Pass. In The Big Rock Candy Mountain, there are several such battles. The first of these occurs just as Bo and Elsa decide to wed: "Outside the wind had risen, and pebbly snow lashed at the storm windows," (TBRCM 70) the precursor of a winter blizzard. Bo, to rescue Elsa’s Uncle Karl, ties himself to a rope and braves the storm to go across to Karl’s store and bring him home. "He must have run, she decided afterward, all the way to the store, taking a direction and plowing ahead blind....Karl, his face muffled in a felt cap with earlaps and a broad chin band, with a yellow icicle in each nostril and his eyebrows stiffly iced, stumbled in, (TBRCM 74).

Later in the novel, after the wheat farm fails, Bo resorts to bootlegging to feed his family. In addition to the harsh winter weather, Whitemud, and the rest of the continent, is combating an influenza epidemic. As Bo gets ready to leave on a "mission of mercy," to secure quantities of "medicinal" whiskey, "The wind had blown from the north all night, and the dugway up to the south bench was almost bare. But on the bench the snow lay in long, ripple-marked drifts, not deep, but deep enough to hide the road in spots," (TBRCM 256), and so begins a perilous journey. Bo has to combat not only the winter elements, but the fear of the influenza in the people he encounters. So, here the landscape and nature combine to be doubly antagonistic. It is difficult to tell which is more so. As his journey continues, "The snow was deep in the coulee bottom, too deep. So it was go around. He cramped the wheels to the right and bucked drifts along the top till he got to the rounded, windswept edge wehre the grass was bare, (TBRCM 257). Once Bo makes it to Chinook, Montana, he faces the hostility of a population that is under siege of the influenza. Talking his way into a supplier and loading up his car, he tries to follow his tracks back to Whitemud. After rescuing an isolated farmer who has contracted influenza, Bo continues, "his eyes glued on the flowing, dirty-gray-white world ahead. In an hour, he was on and off the road a dozen times," (TBRCM 270). It seems as if the landscape is winning this battle, but Bo persistently continues to fight, until, "The Ford shuddered, swung, skidded, caught, hit something big and solid under the drift, and very slowly, as if careful not to hurt or break anything, turned over on its side," (TBRCM 271). Bo, it seems, has lost.

Meanwhile, Elsa is fighting a battle against the elements too. She not only has to combat the weather, but her fear for her husband as well. This takes the form of flights of imagination, such as, "For one catastrophic instant she saw the image of cattle fozen by the roadsides in the spring, still frozen but bloated, horrible obscene as the spring thaws softened them for the final decay...," (TBRCM 274), almost as if one of those steer were her beloved Bo. But, just as she reaches the pit of despair Bo returns home. It is not the triumphant return of many warriors, but far more humble, "She was noticing twenty things at once–the rattling icicles beaten into the hair of the dogskin coat, the monstrous hulk of Bo’s shoulders, the harsh jut of brows and nose from the fur cap, ...,the telltale white patches on cheeks and nose," (TBRCM 274). Bo and Elsa defeat the landscape this time, but when they are ultimately defeated, they retreat to the comparative civilization of Great Falls, Montana. Once the Masons reach the relative safety of "civilization," setting and landscape become less antagonistic, though as Elsa lies dying of breast cancer, Bo reprises his epic drive by driving from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City in record time, not even stopping to sleep.

According to Kenneth Mason, one of the predominant themes of The Big Rock Candy Mountain is the pursuit, however misguided, of the American dream (35). No scene better describes this than the following description by Pinky Jordan, a passing traveler, fresh from the minefields of Alaska:

Instead of this Eden, Bo finds hardship and loss. He never actually makes it to the Yukon, but is sidetracked in the woods of Oregon where he runs a restaurant. It is in the restaurant that he hears of the Peace River country in Saskatchewan. When Elsa tries to disabuse him of the notion, especially since she is on her own quest for a stable home, Bo tells her:

Here is the American Dream of Kenneth Mason, "Easy Street." Bo, again, is looking for the Lost Garden, but, as has been noted, the landscape, and nature, gets the best of him. Hatcher calls him, and those like him, "The deluded who believe a landscape possesses an inherent monetary quality available with little human intervention or manipulation...," (124). For Bo Mason, the Big Rock Candy Mountain is real. All he has to do is find it.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain is a mythic place. And though Stegner does call the sanatorium Bruce’s mother goes to after her break down, Big Rock Candy Mountain; it bears little resemblance to a place where, "...there ain’t no snow/Where the sleet don’t fall/And the winds don’t blow...," (McClintock), it is often a metaphor for the West. In the eyes of many, including the Okies of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the West is the land of plenty, the promised land. While there are many more scenes that could be explicated in regards to protagonist, antagonist, and theme, those shown make it clear that setting, for Stegner, is a multi-purpose tool.

List of Works Cited

Last Updated on 07/06/06 © t. mooney