Crossing to Safety

As their life grows more complex in Madison, many things change for Sally and Larry. Larry’s darkening fortunes at the university are the biggest single event in these chapters and one whose anxiety permeates everything. When he learns that the university will not promote him, Larry begins to divert more of his energy into writing novels as a distraction. His sincere belief is that his talent and hard work will win out in the end. His view is naive and myopic, given the atmospheric conditions of the Depression. Despite this, it represents a certain comingling of arrogance and optimism in youth. He and Sally do their best, but a rift develops between them, worsened by their economic situation. Work has been a refuge for Larry in these years, fostered by the belief in his own potential to be discovered through it. However, these recollections intimate the opposite. The details of Larry’s work, both academic and artistic, are sparse throughout the narrative. Larry writes novels with tremendous speed and seemingly little notice. Although he is conscious of their value to his career, in retrospect, he takes little notice of what they mean to him as work. This duality intensifies throughout these chapters as the tempo of Larry’s work amplifies, though it appears as only a diversion from the perspective of the future. This presents a more subtle, complicated vision of Larry than what we have at the beginning of the novel.