Heartbroken by 'Angle of Repose'

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

John Mark G. Tayona, 17, of Antique is a freshman at University of the Philippines Visayas, taking up business administration. He likes drawing, reading, singing to himself, and watching Phineas and Ferb on TV. He was born in Guimaras and has traveled a lot with his “six crazy siblings” and his father who is a pastor.

They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met.” This meaningful line, taken from my favorite book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angle of Repose, beautifully written by Wallace Stegner, speaks of Lyman Ward’s grandparents, Susan Burling Ward and Oliver Ward, who seemed to draw me into their fictitious existence, their world so vibrant, so alive that I became attached to their whole being.

A retired historian, Lyman decided to write about his grandparents. And when he did, their history brought him to a new dimension, a generation vague to him before, but as he went on, remarkable things began to uncover. His discovery of their constant struggle to live a kind of life for which they had long aspired and finally achieved; their relationship, which started out as sentimental but later turned out to be unhappy and heartbreaking; their individual dreams, interests, and differences that magically kept them together for so many years touched me as well, in an astonishing way.

Angle of Repose is the moving story of Lyman’s determined search through his family, the lives of his sociologist son Rodman who does not show any interest in history and is so different from him, his wife who left him for a doctor, the lives of his grandparents and also the search within himself. It is an extraordinary novel packed with life’s beauty, vividness, candor, surprises and hardships, and it makes you wish that the characters were real, for you to share a world with them. A timeless work that stirred my passion for reading, all the more so because of its enthralling plot, it creates a roomful of drawings like those of Susan’s in your mind. They are drawings displayed in a haunting gallery that leaves a lasting impression in you, and of the book itself.

It is a novel that I never regretted picking up, for when I finished it, I could only smile at its brilliance. On the other hand, my heart was plagued by the stirring emotions imprinted in it. The feeling after reading the book was like stopping your pounding heart from falling into a vast and dreary deepness. Certainly, few books were ever as engrossing, rousing and heavy as this masterpiece by Stegner.

When you consider the characters’ attributes, you experience a feeling of awe at their greatness. Consider Oliver’s patience, dedication and faith in everything. Having such qualities helped prove his genuine love for his family, for Susan — if only she did not break his solid trust towards her, and his unmatched love for his delicate young daughter Agnes. After she accidentally drowned, he pulled the lovely roses which he had earlier planted to ease Susan’s loneliness and cheer her up. Susan cried for what he did because it made her remember forever her unforgivable mistake. Take Susan’s respect for her dear husband: even after she broke his amorous heart with her secret affair with Frank, a friend of theirs, she still lived with him until they passed on. The bitterness in Oliver never went away, though.

 Lyman’s will was one of a kind. He was really determined to stay in the old house and live like any other, rather than be taken care of in a retirement home. He did not consider his being a cripple an obstruction to his plans.

While Wallace Stegner’s book crushed my heart, there are, of course, important things that I learned from it. For one, reading it gave me a sense of history. It gave me a hint of fascination in looking through the past, and pleasure and knowledge in doing so. Understanding the difficult situations in life by looking ay history can prop you up with relief. I think Lyman could get through anything with Ellen — a lesson taught to him by his chronicling of his grandparents’ days.

Another thing about the book is that it helped me appreciate literature and art more as I was held by the ingenuity of the story. Susan’s being an artist motivated me, for I also love to draw. My stimulated mind worked like a painter’s, adding colors to his writing when I read it.

Most of all, there is a lesson in love and trust that teaches you the value of these virtues in a relationship. Heartstrings are drawn closer by the intertwining of two, and this produces a strong affection between lovers. There can be no more limits, no more boundaries, no more endings when you are tied by these heartstrings. But when you break one virtue in an intertwined heartstring, the other will not stand alone. It may still be a heartstring, yet it is of no use anymore. Love cannot be love when there is no trust, and you cannot trust when you do not love.

Although Susan and Oliver lived in the same house a long time after their daughter’s grievous death, only respect kept them together. It must have been very difficult for Oliver to accept what she had done to him — the possible cause of Agnes’ drowning, when Susan was with Frank, and the child was not looked after.

The book’s power to fill my core, especially with its rich and full language and the tremendous grief that it communicated in me, surpasses that of most others. There may be Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries, and many other good reads, but Angle of Repose is superb and incomparable.

Think of Lyman, answering so strongly when asked by Ellen why his grandmother is unhappy: “You want to know why? You don’t know? Because she considered that she’d been unfaithful to my grandfather, in thought or act or both. Because she blamed herself for the drowning of her daughter, the one Grandfather made the rose for. Because she was responsible for the suicide of her lover — if he was his lover. Because she’d lost the trust of her husband and son. Does that answer your question?”