How Far She Went

Edmun Lovingood is the traveling blues musician about whom the protagonist fantasizes. When she whispers to him, “I want you to have a friend!” (11), what she is silently screaming is that she sees Lovingood as her salvation. In the idea of Lovingood choosing her to be that friend—allowing her to save him from the lonesome road he travels—lies the hope of authentic companionship.

What is appealing about his “inert sadness, his whole figure without elegance, unkempt, boots run-down” (5), is the sensation that comes from having someone broken whom she can fix. The isolation of going from town to town and woman to woman gives Lovingood his hope. It is the longing for something intangible—an eternal hope out of reach but made eternal in singing the blues—that brings him solace.

The female protagonist of “Solomon’s Seal,” like the female protagonist of the first story, has no need for a name. She endures 40 years of loneliness and anger in a marriage that is only real on paper. Certain that pretending to have a life—despite the fact that it is killing her—is both acceptable and inevitable, she is surprised by her husband Carl’s request for a divorce. Her angry isolation is the same before and after the divorce, and she surrenders to the notion that she will simply never get things right.

Carl is as angry and alone as his wife. His dogs are his only true companions, and their deaths trigger his decision to divorce. Carl represents another piece of the protagonist’s hope chest—something to have despite its uselessness. For his wife, he represents the appearance that she is not alone.

Old Man Teague is dead at the start of this story. His death is treated in a matter-of-fact manner—his corpse lies in the background like a lamp, part of the scenery around which everyone tends to their business. In Thomas’s painful, childhood memory of how the old man is precisely the opposite of being “a man among men” (30), the story reveals the bitterness and loneliness hidden under the surface portrayal of a respectable, Southern family.

The only authentic feeling the old man has is for his loyal dog companion, Smokey Dawn. He remains isolated all his life while surrounded by family and friends. The old man’s inability to cherish life and family renders the adult Thomas incapable of any authentic feelings towards his father’s death.

Thomas is the protagonist of “A Man Among Men.” He is the town’s law enforcement officer and a loyal son, husband, and father. He represents all of the things expected of a good, Southern man in the eyes of an upright, Southern town—all of the things that make a well-written obituary. However, the memory of being his father’s unwanted son leaves him struggling to feel emotion for the loss of his father, whose only reason to live was a dog.

The rebellious son of Thomas, Dean is disrespectful and acts in ways that are the opposite of what the township would consider being “a man among men” (30). It is precisely this character flaw that makes him authentic and capable of genuine emotions. He is the only one able to show emotion at his grandfather’s funeral and the only one able to trigger authentic feeling from his father.

Elizabeth is the quintessential country girl in a quintessential country town—not only for the visitors and pilgrims to the town, but to the story itself. She takes her proper place in the family, plays the proper role in the annual family reunions, and maintains the proper set of hopes and desires to remain on her porch and maintain the status quo.

As the writer portraying the Georgian pastoral of the Inglishes’ hometown, Paul Montgomery represents the eyes of the outside world viewing the freeze frame of the archetypical Southern life. As the man who also drives away, however, he elucidates the reality for those in the town who do not drive away, those who choose to freeze themselves into the eternal cycle of their own pastoral portrait of a life well-lived.

In the eyes of the granddaughter, the protagonist’s face is “a perpetual eclipse of disappointment” (68). In the eyes of her dog, she is the excitement of the simplest things as adventure. She lives in the regret of rejecting her daughter—a regret that comes with the belief that nothing good can follow someone brought into the world without love.

Her story marks an evolution from the first four stories, in which the characters simply accept emptiness as matter of fact, to a character who truly believes her rejection and lack of love have generated her own fate. It is with this resignation that she sees the killing of her dog as the required bearing of the burden of her granddaughter.

The girl represents evil in the grandmother’s eyes—an evil that the grandmother created. She is one with the bikers—the collective anger that comes to punish the woman with the death of her dog at her own hands. The girl represents what the grandmother believes to be the inescapable fate of loss and death that she brought on by rejecting her own daughter.

The single character in the first story following the violent climax of the title story is both protagonist and villain. He is a fugitive who has discarded a life well lived by committing crimes outside of the acceptable. Like the characters in the first four stories, he lives the quintessential life deserving of applause with the same resignation and complacency on the outside. The difference is that behind the scenes, he acts out a taboo. When he is finally confronted by the voiced collective, he abandons that resigned acceptance to suffer—and instead embraces a resigned acceptance that the only other choice is to die.

As protagonist of “Manly Conclusions,” Carpenter Petty teaches his son, by example, how to conclude things in a manly way. He refuses to ignore the dark side of his Southern town and rejects the pastoral symbols of Southern comfort as enough to feign that all is well. In doing so, he enables his son to see past the veil of the prim and proper way to do things. The irony is that the manliness, too, is simply another mask that, when donned, has fatal consequences.

Carpenter Petty’s wife, Valjean, is the quintessential country wife. She makes the best homemade rolls from scratch and whispers prayers of fear when her husband’s temper is provoked. Her presence offers a foil—the opposite mirror reflection of Southern charm versus Southern vengeance—and thus provides a looking-glass into the polar energies at battle throughout the story.

Dennis Petty, Carpenter’s son, represents the resolute mindset of the characters in the second half of this collection. Not only is he able to reason through the manly conclusion that if Lady was shot in the face, it must have been by someone she trusted, but he also moves beyond a complacent understanding of this atrocious event and beyond the idea that simply mourning the tragedy is how to respond. Dennis tangibly enacts a manly conclusion, taking his father’s gun and seeking Lady’s killers.

The protagonist of “Hindsight” represents an evolution of the characters from the start of this collection to the suicide attempt of the final story. She plays the game of the early characters—accepting alienation, abuse, loneliness, and suffering—but unlike the early characters, her hindsight allows her to understand that she is acting. Like the central story’s character, she is aware of her burdens and does what she has no choice but to do. Unlike the granny, she does not allow herself to be destroyed. From her rearview mirror, she watches her mistakes ride away.

Not until this final story is the protagonist named. She shoots herself, seizing control of the misery behind the façade of a happy live by attempting to end the trap—abruptly and violently. She fails to fatally wound herself but succeeds in claiming an identity.

Angelina refers to her daughter and dog as her two children: “Without JoJo, Bonnie would be an only child” (116). The statement reveals the importance she attributes to JoJo. While Bonnie represents the expectation to keep up the façade of Easter and picnics and happily-ever-afters, JoJo represents the authentic happiness of genuine contact and unconditional love. Angelina tries, repeatedly, to continue to live—to fight the inexorable progress towards death as if there is meaning to her life. Nothing that Bonnie does or says succeeds in giving Angelina a glimpse of happiness for these efforts. Everything JoJo does helps her forget how unhappy she is.