40 pages • 1 hour read
Wallace StegnerCrossing to Safety
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Friendship and Love
The novel presents a picture of friendship and love over several decades, complicated by patterns of both physical and emotional distance. In this paradigm, resentment and idealization—harboring negative feelings for others and treating others as imaginary entities, rather than real people—work hand in hand, contributing to the distance created between the Morgans and the Langs.
Larry at first idealizes the Langs for what they represent: a sophisticated, upper-class life apart from his own humble beginnings in New Mexico. Both Sid and Charity stand for a rarified idea of culture, breeding, and sophistication—everything that Larry is afraid he doesn’t have. At first, Sid and Charity intimidate Larry, but his opinion of the Langs changes as he gets to know them in both positive and negative ways. The argument is twofold: As Larry gets to know the Langs as real people, he is unavoidably disappointed at their failure to live according to the ideals he has pegged them to—or, in the case of Charity—put off by the cost of living according to these ideals. At the same time, as Larry grows more confident in his abilities and his anxiety wanes, his inferiority complex toward the Langs similarly wanes. This frame of independence enables Larry to see the Langs and all their faults.
However, Larry is most critical toward Charity. He believes that Charity is callous and unconsciously cruel in how she treats Sid. To Larry, Charity doesn’t respect poetry, and as such, doesn’t respect Sid. Larry chalks this up to Charity’s inflexibility toward what is valuable and what is not in her life, inherited from her family and cultured through her upbringing. Larry resents Charity’s unwillingness for change—even when diagnosed with terminal cancer—for anyone, and instead her insistence that everyone follow her. In this scheme however, Larry puts the blame on Sid for essentially abandoning his poetic ambitions, rather than hold Sid accountable for his own decisions, actions, and inactions.
Sid’s decision to pursue poetry was not Charity’s fault, and she did not prevent him from becoming a poet. Instead, Sid’s desire to do right by Charity, combined with his own insecurity and anxiety, led him to accept her opinion and resent it, opposed to standing up for himself as a committed, equal partner. Over the course of the story, Charity becomes a scapegoat for Sid’s own misgivings about his poetic talent. This scapegoating also mirrors Larry’s growing disillusionment with Sid, viewing him as an intimidating, almost mythic figure at the beginning, to a “fumbling man” at the end. It testifies as much to Larry’s failure to make a real intervention into his friend’s life, as it does any trouble with his marriage.
The dynamics of Sally and Larry’s relationship are much different. Sally is relentlessly committed and supportive of Larry throughout the uncertainty and tumult of the Madison years and the beginning of Larry’s literary career. While Larry does not—and did not—ignore her selflessness, he feels disempowered to return her devotion. However, the onset of Sally’s polio creates the occasion for Larry to return the devotion she has shown him, against his will. He does, and their marriage grows stronger. At the onset of her contracting polio, Sally feels guilty for needing so much care; eventually, she and Larry trust each other more and stay honest, which abates the guilt. However, as Sally makes clear, Larry himself neglects to remember exactly how devoted and committed the Langs were to them—particularly Charity—when Sally was in an iron lung due to polio. It is this kind of involuntary realization that spurs Larry to reconsider how he has contributed to the distance between him and his friends, and what he might do to remedy this in the little time they have left.
Memory and Imperfection
Memory plays a subtle, yet dramatic role throughout the novel. A large part of the novel reflects upon what is lost and distorted. Larry refers to his memories as “fragments,” owing to their disorganized, essentially partial character. At times, Larry simply invents episodes to relate events whose memories are lost; these episodes do more to describe Larry’s feelings and intentions than to relate information. Even in moments of relative neutrality, Larry’s habits and emotions affect the selection and coverage of events. For example: Both the boating mishap and Sally’s delivery are not only difficult and stressful episodes, but the high anxiety and strain has affected Larry’s ability to recall their details, as if his memory—in the capacity of a record-keeping instrument—has itself been damaged beyond repair.
Reflecting on the process of Larry’s imagination, we learn as much as we do from his direct statements and accounts. The way Larry remembers these events, and how he puts them together, provides critical insights into his feelings and motivations. We can witness the change in Larry, as the earlier idealism and enthusiasm of his younger self gradually, imperceptibly changes into a more indifferent, even pessimistic mood. In the beginning of the novel (the end of the narrative), Larry is disaffected, even detached, from his earlier passions and ambitions, feeling adrift at the onset of old age.
The action of memory allows the reader to observe how Larry’s values change indirectly. The way Larry describes his younger self sheds light on how these personal conflicts and anxieties take shape. This is difficult to track in the novel, as Larry’s evolution is not an exchange of values, shifting from one side of the aisle to the other, but a gradual reinterpretation, and within that, distancing. Positively, this can be described as “perspective,” while in a negative sense, it bears all the hallmarks of self-alienation. While his indifference toward the events of the Second World War and the turbulent post-war period are characteristic of the self-reclusion of academics and intellectuals, what is notably absent throughout even these recollections is substantive accounts of his academic or creative work. While this can be partially explained by Larry’s conscious choice to focus on his family and relationships for these recollections, it is not until the end of the novel that this hypothesis is proven to be incomplete. In the closing chapters of the novel, Larry makes the decision to write about his friends, exposing the unconscious divide he has maintained between his life and his work.
Culture and Elitism
The novel is as much a story about academia as it is about friendship and the particularities of recollection. Critical to our understanding of this novel is the place of culture in the minds of its characters. For them, culture is as much a subject of the imagination as it is a guide for life and a resource of one’s “true” identity. The novel contains both lofty idealism about the meaning and potential of culture and pretense about the entitlement and acquisition thereof. However, as the novel proceeds, this fixation slowly and subtly begins to wear off as the glow the characters once carried for this enterprise becomes worn, and they become disaffected.
For Sid and Larry, “culture” is not just a body of works and objects or an observed way of life, but a source of identity and meaning. The belief is that immersion in “culture”—that is, entering academia and higher education—automatically offers one a more meaningful life. Both characters, due to several personal shortcomings and unavoidable circumstances, still struggle to find purpose and meaning. A big part of this view is the elitism and entitlement of the Ivory Tower-mentality. Early in the novel, Larry believes that he and his colleagues are an elect, who with talent and hard work have earned the right to consider themselves enlightened and sophisticated. Underlying this conceit is the belief that they are, and must remain, separated from the rest of society and its concerns. When the Langs and Morgans take a joint trip to Italy, they believe that they have finally found their “true” selves in this old culture, which represents the height of this idealism. However, the elitism and entitlement of this view become clearer as the novel progresses, yet the real consequences for Sid and Larry are more personal, rather than social.
Although Larry and Sid exhibit persistent indifference in historical matters, this cloistered mentality does not represent the consequence of these attitudes, which is self-detachment and disaffection. For them, academic work quickly becomes a means of separation, not from other social classes or historical and political events, but from expectations outside of the roles given to them. For both Larry and Sid, academia and literature are narrow niches, which they ultimately outgrow and come to resent. However, the discontentment they feel in later years reflects more their overattachment to these professions. Details of their professional lives are conspicuously sparse, as if to suggest that they are irrelevant.
Finally, between Larry and Sid, there is an important distinction: Larry quickly loses his position at the university in Madison and must believe in his literary talents, working hard to support himself and his family. Sid, however, is secure and comfortable; he can remain at the University. The difference between these two fates testifies to a peculiar truth: Adversity and uncertainty do more to stimulate risk and growth than complacency and security. Larry, in having to believe in himself and hold himself accountable, fosters his talent. On the other hand, Sid is internally discomfited but remains in the role decided for him. Although Sid has a larger family to support, he chooses not to grow beyond this role and regrets it. Even Larry, who has made the leap to define his own future, settles into another niche and comes to doubt what his life has become.
Thus, the novel is a critique on an idea of culture in which individuals passively receive purpose and meaning, or in seeking after it, are entitled to a kind of privilege and wholeness suited to their talents. Instead, for the characters in the novel, culture does not provide any such answers. Even for those who pursue it industriously and faithfully as Sid does, its rewards are limited and always perishable.
Related Titles
By Wallace Stegner
