Miracles on Maple Hill

“Hemlocks were like frosted green.”

The author incorporates lush descriptions of the natural world to highlight the thematic significance of nature in Marly’s life. As she gets her first glimpse at the bucolic environment surrounding Maple Hill, its beauty enchants her. In this quotation, the author uses a simile to more vividly describe how the snow drapes on the trees like frosting on a cake.

“It looks like the old witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel.”

In this quotation, the author makes an allusion to the classic fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm about two children who venture into the woods and become lost before finding a house inhabited by a witch who bakes them in an oven. Marly uses the allusion to describe Mr. Chris’s sugar camp to Joe.

“Everywhere the crusted snow began to shine like Christmas cotton.”

The author uses figurative language in the form of a simile to compare the sparkling snow to cotton, once again demonstrating a sense of reverence for all aspects of the natural world. Everywhere Marly looks, she sees a winter wonderland. In this way, even the most offhand descriptions of the novel highlight the importance of Finding Hope and Healing in the Natural World.

Bubbles like amber jewels tumbled up and up and up, breaking and rising and breaking. The wonderful smell seemed to rise with them and fly out to fill the night.”

Many things feel like magic to Marly at Maple Hill, but none more than the process of turning the clear sap into sweet, amber-colored syrup. The sensory language conveys how the boiling cauldron looks, smells, and sounds and the vividness of the descriptions is designed to transport readers to the sugar camp with Marly. The bubbling makes the syrup appear as if it is coming alive.

“The wide fields blinked under a moon.”

Throughout the story, the author emphasizes light and dark imagery. In this quotation, by personifying the fields, the author makes the nighttime appear welcoming and even playful as the moonlight brings the fields to life. This scene represents a key moment in which even the “darker” aspects of life in the country shift in the eyes of the protagonist; rather than being threatening, the various aspects of the nighttime landscape are now understood to be familiar and even kind.

“She knew what he had meant: There were important things, and then there were things not so important after all.”

Mr. Chris teaches Marly many lessons about plants and syrup-making. However, he also teaches her about the value of a simple life devoted to working hard and caring for others. The longer she stays at Maple Hill, the less she cares about the frivolous life of the city and the more she longs to soak up the simplicity of nature.

“But it wasn’t because of the fire she was crying. It was as if something all wound up in a ball inside of her had let go at the sight of him just that minute. She felt it all go soft inside.”

The long-term effects of Dale’s wartime trauma impact not only him but his family as well. Everyone has been living on the edge since his return, being careful to avoid upsetting or angering him. In this scene, however, Dale responds to Marly’s mistake with the oven with gentleness instead of rage, and Marly knows that he is finally healing. Being met with understanding when she expected to be met with anger heals something inside her as well.

“The flowers had to push their stems up through layers and layers of old brown leaves, and sometimes one of the leaves was extra tough and wouldn’t move off, so the poor flowers were stuck tight together and couldn’t open.”

Watching the new blossoms struggle to push up through the decaying remnants of the last season teaches Marly a valuable lesson about change and growth. Her family has endured a lot of pain, and they are blooming into a new season, but transformation does not come without its challenges. Sometimes healing and growth can be a painful struggle.

“Their eyes were like footlights, and she was right in the very middle of the stage.”

Marly’s encounter with the cows is an important moment for her character growth. Once again, the author makes use of simile and metaphor to describe the cow’s large eyes and the anxiety Marly feels as they stare her down. However, after the encounter, she learns that cows are mostly harmless, and she can trust herself to venture out on her own without Joe or Mr. Chris.

“Like a giant, the great tree fell. Its immense dead limbs struck the ground first and broke, crashing, and it sagged and roared and seemed to fight with the air. For a minute it lay trembling all over. Then it was still.”

Mr. Chris has an affection for his old trees that have reliably given him sap year after year. To build upon this connection, the author anthropomorphizes the tree as it falls to the ground, thereby emphasizing the sadness of its loss. However, the death of the great tree symbolizes the circle of life in the woods as the logs and limbs of the tree will be used to fuel the fire for sugaring season.

“She felt a glow everywhere, a happiness that was like suddenly running out of the cold into a warm, bright house.”

Marly feels intense joy when Joe invites her to come with him to save the foxes. Not only does his act show empathy for Marly’s love of animals, but it also shows that he feels she is old enough and strong enough to help him complete the task. Working together to save the foxes brings them closer in their relationship.

“The moon seemed to nod at her through the leaves of the vines that hung from the eaves around the porch.”

The author portrays nature as a comforting and welcoming presence to Marly. Even the vines hanging from the porch appear friendly. The author again uses the moonlight as a friendly presence instead of the night being something sinister or menacing.

“As he went off, Joe sat on the step and watched. For a long time, he just sat there, swinging the chain in his hand.”

The emergence of Harry the Hermit in Joe’s life is a turning point for him. Before meeting Harry, Joe does not exactly hate life at Maple Hill, but he doesn’t love it, either. By befriending Harry, Joe learns what it means to truly live off the land and gains a deeper understanding of nature and an appreciation for a simpler way of life.

“I feel like Joseph in Egypt getting ready for the lean years during the fat years.”

As Mother is working to can the summer bounty of their garden, she refers to the Biblical story of Joseph. In the Biblical account, Joseph has a prophetic dream predicting that a famine will strike the land. He tells the pharaoh to store extra grain, and when the prediction comes true, he wins favor with the pharaoh and becomes a powerful leader in Egypt.

“Why should I explore the world when there is so much to explore between that road and my own doorstep?”

Mr. Chris quotes Henry David Thoreau, a 19th-century thinker, writer, and naturalist. Thoreau is most widely known for writing Walden, a book detailing the years he spent living in a spartan cabin alone on the banks of Walden Pond. Mr. Chris identifies with Thoreau’s simple approach to life.

“Flakes pricked at the panes and made little whispers together.”

As Marly and Mother wait anxiously to hear if Daddy and Mr. Chris have found Joe, it begins to snow outside. The author uses figurative language to personify the snowflakes and provide a vivid sensory perception of what snow sounds like as it hits the window. 

“The worry settled over again like a fog.”

Fog is often used in literature to connote disorientation and unease, for by its very nature, it obscures and makes a mystery of what might otherwise be clearly visible to the naked eye. Just as fog obscures the landscape, worry obscures the truth of what may have happened to Joe, and the emotion infects every aspect of the house on Maple Hill while Marly and her mother wait for news. The author compares their feelings to the oppressive feeling of fog.

“Marly knew it as they went in the little old road, every rut of it practically, as she might know the face of an old friend.”

When Marly and her family first arrive at the house on Maple Hill, the new landscape feels foreign to her, but after a year of living there, it has become intimately familiar to her. Maple Hill has become her home. In the fond, affectionate tone of this particular quote, Marly’s love for her new home glows.

“She leaned forward against the table and began to cry. Not loud, just steady, steady, steady, like the sap into the buckets.”

Marly is a sensitive child, but she has kept her grief over Mr. Chris’s illness hidden as they focused on bringing in the sap. However, when his condition does not improve, she can no longer keep her emotions at bay. In this scene, the author makes adept use of the image of sap dripping into the buckets to invoke the nature of Marly’s surreptitious tears in the midst of the work.

“It was a kind tiredness, all soft instead of sharp and mean.”

Living at Maple Hill has completely changed Dale. The exhaustion he feels now is not from anxiety or depression but from working outside and exhausting his physical body. He is no longer mentally frayed and can rest when he is physically tired.

“Well, they call me Annie-Get-Your-Gun!”

The truancy officer Miss Annie gets her nickname from the musical by the same name, which is a fictionalized account of the real-life Annie Oakley. Oakley was a famous sharpshooter and a member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the late 1800s. Miss Annie sees herself as being just as tough and sharp as the famous Annie Oakley.

“Marly, it looks like there’s been another miracle on Maple Hill.”

Miracles are a prevalent motif throughout the narrative. However, most of the miracles that Marly witnesses are acts of nature, such as flowers blooming or sap turning to syrup. In the end, Mr. Chris describes the way his neighbors and the community have come together to help him as a miracle.

“I guess it’s starting over, isn’t it?”

Mr. Chris’s statement refers to the first blooms of spring. However, the assertion can also relate to how he must begin again after being ill for so long. On a deeper level, the statement could mean that Marly is the future of Maple Hill, and with the knowledge that she has learned from Mr. Chris, the process begins again inside her.