The vivid imagery of the land

The story of All the Living is a timeless and barren one. Information regarding the location of Orren’s farm, Aloma’s age, and the couple general appearances are all very vague and mysterious throughout the novel. One could even argue that the novel does not have a plot as well. However, the dry descriptions of the main characters and time are compensated by Morgan’s vivid imagery of the land. She does not hold back when he describes the land, and makes it feel organic to the readers. In a way, the land stands outside of time, at least relative to those who inhabit it. Regardless of time or individuals, it has supported the people who live on it, and it reflects their desires. Same applies to Orren and even Aloma. Morgan’s lack of lack of descriptions make the main characters extremely mundane, and their desires are instead shown through the exquisite imagery of the land.

The case for Orren is relative clear. The farm, and the land by extension, represents the need for his monetary desires on the surface. His need for money mentioned multiple times. For example, when Aloma asks him if they could go to the restaurant, he “cocked an eyebrow at her” and says, “No, Aloma” (50). He only agrees to go when Aloma brings up her lack of family and how she has never been to a restaurant before. He mostly likely sympathizes with her due to his current situation and agrees to take her to the diner. More symbolically, the land represents his longing for his family. He suddenly lost all of his family members to a freak accident. The farm, the house, and the land are the only remnants of his past. Bound by grief, he keeps himself busy by doing what his parents did. He even left the small house as his mother had previously left it. When Aloma steps into the room, she “stepped into the trapped air, tasted the dust and disuse there, and smelled the fading perfume of clothing absent its owner” (156). Later on, Orren says, “They [the accident] cut off my legs Aloma. They cut off my legs and you want me to run” (161). Orren desperately hopes that the land will provide him what he needs to get back on his feet.

At a glance, the land might seem to represent everything Aloma does not want in her life. The lack of the piano. The mountains that trap her. The environment “where every last thing wasted flesh into bone” (59). However, being happy with the Orren she originally knew is one of her ultimate desires. That desire is what makes it difficult for her to abandon what is obviously an unpleasant situation for anyone. On her way back from the “picnic,” she “woke to her surroundings…to the miscarriage of the summer, the ruth and pity of it. She suddenly desired the betterment of everything, for herself and Orren and every single thing that had ever died or would. And for a moment, just this moment, she wanted to be at the house” (122). The barren land reminds her of one of her core desires. There are other moments when she is content about the environment she lives like when the tobacco leaves first blossoms, and when she brings the eggs back to the house for the first time.

As the epigraph mentions, the land is “evil to everything that happens under the sun, that same fate comes to everyone.” For both Orren and Aloma, it is unforgiving and cruel to them. However, at the same time, it reflects their desires and provides the opportunity for them to find what they want: Orren wants the family he lost, and Aloma the Orren who was capable of smiling like she first met him. (the piano too, but I assume that will naturally come along when the financial strains are somewhat relieved). 

Compromise is Hard- Even to Read About

This novel’s conclusion intrigues me because its message seems somewhat austere and countercultural nowadays. I haven’t come across many endings like this one and so I’m not sure how I feel about it, although it does seem fitting.  A previous blog post expresses frustration with the ending, especially because it seems like both Aloma and Orren are making a poor decision by getting married and tying themselves to each other and the farm.  I think that Morgan argues that part of growing up and maturing is learning to be still and content in life, a task not accomplished by selfish thinking and putting one’s own interest first. 

            Early on we learn that Aloma desperately dreams of leaving the mountains and farm life, of studying piano in the “real world” and never looking back (15).  Aloma is incredibly restless, and people constantly tell her to be still, for example, early on when she asks Orren about a new piano (45).  What I find interesting is that Bell also stresses stillness in the sermon he gives about listening to the “small still voice” of God; Bell says, “Once I got my own voice all stilled, then I heard it” (80).  In Aloma and Orren’s relationship, Aloma is never still, always contemplating leaving, and always the one doing most of the talking.  She definitely seems more restless.  I sometimes couldn’t help but see a connection between Orren and religion, even though he is not himself religious.  Again on 91 when Aloma opens the Bible to a verse that describes exactly what Orren does: “better to visit the house of mourning than the house of feasting, for to be mourned is the lot of every man and the living should take this to heart.”  As much as I noticed this connection, I don’t necessarily think that Morgan idolizes Orren’s actions completely, because his firm commitment to misery and self-reliance causes problems for himself and his relationship. For example, this is what prevents him from saving the birthing cow, and it isn’t until after this incident that Orren reaches a turning point and admits loneliness and that he wants help. 

            Our modern culture often stresses the individual’s needs above all else, especially when it comes to making life and career decisions.  We are often encouraged not to let anyone hold us back from achieving our dreams.  However, I think Morgan might believe that the only way to deal with the continual feeling of lack in a morally beautiful way is to look outside ourselves and decide to love:  Bell says, “God asks us to be less so that others might be more” (80).   He also says, “I don’t think looking inside for a feeling is nearly ever the answer. It’s looking out” (138).  These concepts definitely go against many messages the idea that the individual must be happy and whole before she can relate to others and love others.  In fact, it suggests the opposite.  The type of love Morgan condones is difficult and requires compromise and relinquishing one’s own restless needs, but also is more rewarding and beautiful because of it.  I do think the ending of this novel is quite beautiful, however, I’m not sure if I read this as a moral suggestion, or if it is, I probably will not take it.

Surprisingly a Strong Relationship

The evolving relationship between Orren and Aloma continually intrigued me while reading All the Living. Their relationship begins through strictly physical interactions. Being that Aloma did not have her parents to raise her and her aunt and uncle had raised her in a “middling, impersonal way” (12), Aloma longs for a loving and caring relationship. She was always craving a chance to give and receive love, and “before she knew Orren, she waited for him” (14). Once she began having a relationship with Orren, it was strictly physical.   When they first began to have sex, Aloma felt a contradicting pain, “and when there was pain, she was also surprised she did not want to end it” (20). The pain in their physical relationship foreshadows the pain they would feel in their emotional relationship.  

The beginning of Orren and Aloma’s relationship resembles the rest of their relationship throughout the novel. No longer are they connected by physical attraction as they used to be. Instead, it is as if the only thing connecting Aloma and Orren is the land surrounding them. Orren’s main focus is saving the tobacco farm, and Aloma’s main focus is being able to play the piano. What distinguishes their different realities is that Aloma “had never been driven by the imminent loss of something like a home. It was more of a matter of what she did not have than of what she could not stand to lose.” The goals of Aloma and Orren and the reasons behind these goals could not be more different, which leads them to feeling more distant and alone than ever before.

Aloma then blames Orren for holding her back from her dreams of playing the piano. She loathes him for bringing her “to the sorry edge of the mountains, the one place in the world she wanted to leave behind her, where nothing worked, where every last thing wasted flesh into bone” (58) Aloma and Orren are not satisfied with their own lives, and because they are the only other person in each other’s lives, they continually blame one another for their issues. Also, they try to “one-up” the other in regards to the misfortune they have had in their lives. When Aloma tells Orren she “never had anyone to do Christmas,” he retaliates by saying, “well I don’t got nobody my own self” (84-85) The competition of who lacks the most shows how unstable their relationship is. Right after the accident when Aloma moves in, their emotional relationship is very strong and supportive, almost seeming unbreakable. As time goes on, they begin to realize the bond they once had as been completely taken over by their own desires and goals.

However, to my surprise, Orren and Aloma get married. In the midst of their fighting and arguments, Orren finally decides he wants to marry Aloma. I was shocked by the ending of the novel because, up until the ending, their relationship has been very rocky and unstable. Then, within the last five pages, they are married! While I never doubted that they loved each other, I thought they were in no place to get married. At the same time, many relationships thrive and bloom in hard times. Orren realizes that he has not had the right understanding in the sense that “it comes and goes” (186). The “it” Orren refers to is the hardships that he and Aloma have been facing for the past months. For the majority of the novel, I did not think Orren and Aloma were strong individuals. However, by the end of the novel, I realized that they are a few of the strongest characters we have read about this semester. They have endured extreme hardship together, and they are still willing to fight for their relationship, something many people today are not courageous enough to do.

Land of the Lost

The setting of All the Living is highly representative of the plights of its two main characters.  Clearly, Aloma’s greatest dilemma is whether she should stay with Orren or leave to pursue her independence as a professional pianist. The mountain just beyond Orren’s land represents her life with Orren, a life of rigid routine and obligation. Beginning at a young age, Aloma resents the mountain and what it represents:

Aloma lived in this dark place, a dark county in a dark state, and it pressed on her ceaselessly as a girl until she finally realized in a moment of prescience that someday adulthood would come with its great shuddering release and she would be free. Then she would leave and find a riseless place where nothing impeded the progress of the sun from the moment it rose in the east until it died out easily, dismissed into the west.  That was what she wanted (13).

The many lands she has never seen and explored represent the freedom that Aloma has craved for so long.  These lands make up a terrain as uncertain to Aloma as her potential future of independence,

While the land itself represents Aloma’s plight, the two houses on Orren’s land represent his plight.  Orren is grief-stricken at the tragic loss of his mother and brother, and his grief has left him seemingly dark, heavy, broken down, and empty like the old house in which he insists on staying.  The house is dated, and so are the roles Orren and Aloma play within the home. Aloma senses that Orren is bound to his grief and the old house when she looks at the photographs of his lost family members:  “It wasn’t fair…He was bound in perpetual motion to all of them. She watched their pitiless eyes and her mouth twisted.  She wanted to say, I’m defenseless before you, even if you are dead.  And they wanted to say back, Yes, yes, you are” (46).

Aloma feels that Orren has been taken from her by his grief and replaced with a shell of his former self, a shell containing only memories and obligations tied to the past.  The newer, smaller house on the property, however, represents the side of Orren Aloma once knew, a lighter side which is now closed off from her just like the small house.  She comments, “It’s so much nicer down here. It’s modern” (30).  The newer, smaller house also represents more modern relationship between Aloma and Orren, a relationship built on a mutual emotional connection and support rather than simply a working partnership. Both main characters are clearly torn, and the landscape reflects their conflicts.

Aloma's Trapped

I enjoyed All the Living, but I will admit I was frustrated with Aloma throughout much of the novel. When it first began, I had high hopes – she was an educated girl, with her skill in piano, and she had a dream to get out. However, when I read that after graduation she agreed to be the staff pianist for school “because she had nowhere else to go and no way to get there,” (15) I became very discouraged. It was as if all hope was then dashed for Aloma and her independence. 

Because she did not even try to go anywhere after school, I cannot take Aloma seriously when she talks about the future. While Orren in replacing a tire in his truck during one of their nighttime rides, she yells at him, “Someday I’m gonna be a great piano player and we’re gonna get out of here” (23). The fact that Orren merely nods back confirms that he does not believe it either. On a separate occasion, when Aloma reminds Orren that she wants a new piano and the chance to get a higher education, he tells her ‘maybe someday,’ but, “she saw the lie in the way he moved, heard it in his overearnest words” (45). The book reinforces through interactions such as these that Aloma will never leave or achieve her dream of becoming a great pianist. 

We realize her final defeat when Aloma tells Orren, “I think I have enough money saved now to rent a piano and I might could teach lessons up at the house. I’ll make us some money that way” (192). In these words, Aloma is officially giving up her dream. She is now married to Orren and her new focus has become a way to help the household by bringing in extra cash. She had lost the one passion that made her independent and now is bound to Orren forever. 

Now I’m irritated because with the ending C. E. Morgan provides us, there is no chance for any advancement for the characters. We know that Orren and Aloma will be on their farm, playing house, for the rest of their lives. They may have children and they may have more successful years in the future, but Aloma will never become a renowned pianist and Orren will never leave the farm, which is all that is left of his family. I personally found this ending of All the Living to be tragic, not only because of the circumstances but also because I imagine this situation of becoming tied down is very real for many people today. What are other people’s reactions?

A Realistic Love Story

The reason that I have really enjoyed this novel is because it isn't an ooey-gooey love story. Normally with romances, the reader can follow a plot formula and predict the ending. However, with this novel, there virtually isn't a plot, so the reader must divulge themselves into the characters and their reactions to others.

The novel, for me, doesn't have a "good guy" and a "bad guy". At first, the reader is leaned to liking Aloma more; however, throughout the rest of the book, the faults of the characters arise, and it is made clear that these people are ordinary people living a life similar to the reader's. Aloma tries to be a great life but isn't entirely realistic in the way that she has to live her life. She constantly wants things that she cannot have because she and Orren do not have the time or money for those things. Orren is a simple man, trying to live survive and provide for Aloma. However, through this process, he loses the romance and the love he feels for her and become very apathetic towards Aloma.

During the novel, the reader may find themselves asking, "Well, why don't you just leave him, Aloma?" But that doesn't prove to be entirely simple. When Aloma ends up marrying Orren and not running off with Bell, she says she has fallen in love with the normalcy that is Orren. "When I have you, when I have you like that even, it's not enough and I still want more of you. When you say something, I want to hear you say more and when you go someplace, any place, I want you to come back more than anything" (194). Aloma doesn't make any remarks toward Orren and how she loves him as a person; she says she's fallen for his position in her life and doesn't want him to leave.

The couple also fights on a very daily basis. They fight about important things, such as where each other goes during the day, and they fight about non-important things, like which soap to use.  Although they do fight more often than a normal couple in today's society, their disagreements are also what makes them normal. In many love stories, there is the one "climatic fight" that sets up the main characters resolution in the end. This isn't the case in real life, and it isn't the case for Aloma and Orren. They argue often, but that shows just how much they rely on each other daily. It's almost as if they didn't have the person to squabble with, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. Their resolutions are easy to relate to, as well,  as they always seem mad for a couple of days but then work it out seamlessly.

This is very important, because many people today live these lives as well. Stereotypically, young couples go through a happy "honeymoon phase" and then face the hardships of lack of money, business, and a working life. Aloma and Orren aren't the stereotypical love story couple, but they are realistic to everyday life, and this is why people may find this novel to be relate-able in more ways.

Isolation of Time

           One of the more peculiar elements of All the Living is the lack of time frame. Morgan neglects to provide the readers with any sort of decade or year within to place our characters – Aloma, Orren and Bell. This lack of time wasn’t very noticeable to me at first, but the more I got into the more the more it began to bother me. I became more aware of time indicators (such as the kind of groceries Aloma purchases at the beginning of the novel) as the novel went on. I believe this lack of information acts as just that – a lacking.

            There is so much lacking in this novel that it’s debatable if there is a plot at all. There is a lack of excitement in Aloma’s life; there’s a lack of money on the farm; there’s a lack of rain for the farm. This lack of time just adds to the list of things the readers are not getting from the novel. It also appears to keep Aloma and Orren trapped in their own little world without time. The first time Aloma manages to make it out of the house and into the city she notes the “dates engraved on (the store’s) doors that surprised her vaguely.” (50). This is an example of how isolated Aloma feels while working away in the farmhouse. There is an element of life and time that Aloma is lacking by being isolated in the house, and it isn’t until she starts playing the piano for the church that she begins to get that life back.

            The lack of time frame could also be seen as a way to keep any sort of civilization impeding on the two main characters and their life on the farm. They appear so desolate and dispossessed; this could be in part because of the lack of information we have on any life outside of Aloma and Orren. If the story were given any sort or periodical or historical context then we would have a frame of reference for life off of their farm. Without a time period to put with their story, it’s almost as if a life outside of their farm doesn’t exist.

            While Morgan’s choice to not include a time period for the novel is an unusual one, I believe it adds to the complexity of the novel by adding to the sense of lacking. There is almost nothing in this book, yet it’s still so perplex.

Communication

An interesting aspect of the novel is the development of Aloma and Orren’s relationship. It progresses quickly from the time the two first meet even though Orren is the first boywith whom Aloma becomes intimate. Their ability to come to know one another is hampered by a drive for physical fulfillment. Initially, on their first time out together, Morgan says, “She liked the way he was silent and attentive when she talked about piano, as though she were telling him about a country he had never seen”. After Aloma and Orren begin to have sex, it seems a good amount of the serious communication stops. Morgan says that the sex “brought the fact of Orren into a proximity she had not previously imagined”. Though they both knew they wanted different things out of life, she to leave the mountains and study piano and he to possess his own farm, they do not consider these distinct differences significant enough to be a problem when they move in together.

Even after Orren and Aloma begin to live together, they fail to communicate. Orren is deeply grieving the loss of his mother and brother, but he will not talk about this with Aloma, preferring instead to throw himself into his work and be moodily withdrawn from her. She doesn’t attempt to get him to talk to her but rather becomes offended and lashes out at him as well. They fight continuously but never sit down to discuss and solve their problems. There is much the two don’t understand about one another. Aloma cannot fathom the attachment and duty Orren feels to the land. Morgan says Aloma “thought too of how Orren did not know this part of her, he’d not once seen her play piano, she believed he did not know what she was capable of”. It is amazing that this couple can live together and yet the two of them cannot understand such an essential part of the other.

One would hope at some point during their first three months living together Aloma and Orren would realize that their bond had not been created through communication, common interests, and desire for the happiness of the other but rather through sex and their desire to have what they want. Instead, they decide to marry during a rare and brief moment in which they are both in good moods. Immediately after the wedding, they are once again at each other’s throats. At the end of the novel Aloma begins to realize the mistake she has made as she comes to understand she has resigned herself to a life of endless conflict. Morgan says Aloma “had married someone who was fastened to this place, to these foothills, and she could not understand him no matter how hard she tried”. Aloma begins to wonder to herself if he is the reason she is not happy or if she is the cause of her own discontentment.

To Stay or Not to Stay? That Is Aloma's Question

Aloma's main conflict in C.E. Morgan's All the Living (besides dealing with Orren's callousness) is whether to stay with her husband on their Kentucky farm or to strive for independence elsewhere. While Aloma had a rough childhood and an unorthodox adolescence at a settlement school, she is initially inept to life on a farm...or at least that's how Orren sees it. So he takes it upon himself to do all the farm work while Aloma is stuck inside cooking and cleaning--and resenting him all the while. So why does she stay? I asked myself this question repeatedly while reading about Aloma's and Orren's aggressive fights and subsequent making-up. This does not seem like healthy behavior by any means, especially for a live-in couple who only have each other. If Aloma detests Orren's distance and anger so much, then why doesn't she leave? She does cook and clean, trying to make the old house new again, so she is capable of at least surviving on her own. Once she acquires a job as a church pianist, she proves that she can not only survive, but thrive independently of Orren.

Aloma's hidden desire for Bell the preacher heightens my questioning and wish for her to leave Orren behind her. After the Fenton family's accident, Orren and Aloma are both orphans, but Bell is the man who shows Aloma any sympathy. Of course, Aloma tries to play off her own parents' passing as a trivial matter, as if she doesn't need them or anyone, but Bell sees through her façade (137). She's not even sure what she wants, with which Bell confronts her. He says, "Sometimes you got a cagey thing about you. Like you can't decide if you want to run off or get took in" (141). Perhaps Aloma has been independent for so long that it's all she knows and is comfortable with. Or maybe she's tired of independence and is ready for someone like Bell to love her as she's always wanted to be loved. Unlike Bell, Orren does not seem capable of this love because of his immense pain from his family's deaths. Not that this is his fault, of course, but his quickness to shut Aloma out is detrimental, especially since she is damaged from her childhood as well.

Aloma and Orren met while they were still in school, and their immaturity shows in the way they deal with home life and with each other. "Bell was right, she was tenoned to Orren...She only knew that she had been foolish, for thinking that the easy thing was the one worth wanting" (175). In the end, Aloma stays with Orren, but why? Is it a matter of this convenience that she once found desirable, or has he really begun to warm up to her? By the end of the novel, Orren has begun to show a character complexity, especially with the calf's birthing. However, the two of them never seem to progress as a couple (aside from frequent sex even when Aloma is unwilling); Orren is too overwhelmed with the death of his family to provide a stable home life for Aloma. Since she hopes that he will change, Aloma chooses not to leave Orren for Bell and remains trapped in a relationship lacking in love.