Yet, this is simply bitterness. The loss of their farm is emblematic; their farm defined Alice and Howard to themselves and the world; it provided them with a mission. Their farm was the body to the soul of Alice and Howard's family/marriage. After they move away, Alice laments "the farm was not as dear to me as flesh, but nearly so...the ground was something that I could have knelt down on and kissed, tried to embrace"(323-324).
The farm and her family, its demands and responsibilities, serve to bind and steady Alice. Early on in the story, waking up to the smells of the farm and her home, she experiences "a brief glimmer of truth....the stink and mess, the frenetic dullness of farming, our marriage, the tedium of work and love-all of it was my savior. Half the world seemed to be scheming to escape husbands or wives, but I was planted firmly enough, striving, striving, to take root(5).
Beyond this, the farm with it's unvarying routines, its ancient patterns,its mix of dirt and order, expresses for Alice the solidity and certainty of Howard. She finds the one in the other and both offer her an existential reassurance. Identifying the two, Alice observes "[Howard] was so good at fixing and managing, tending to details," and then adds, "the barn was as beautiful and clean a barn as could be found in all of Christendom"(88).
At one point, Alice restates the connection between Howard and the farm. It is becomes more than simply an expression of Howard. Instead, he is figured as a part of it, and through him, she gains a connection to something transcendental. For Alice, Howard provides a connection to a whole: "When Howard farmed he looked as if he didn't have to do anything much more than pick up a shovel and start digging to be part of the landscape. I don't mean in a pictorial way, but actually part of it, part of the dirt, the sky, the growing things"(323).All of this is concisely expressed in the opening pages of the book in which Alice recalls the last morning before disaster strikes. On that day, she awakes to a siren. Uncertain as to its origins or meanings, she gains her bearings by picturing in her mind "Emma and Claire [her children]...asleep in their beds, and my own heart seemed to be beating regularly. If the barn was out the window,clean, white, the grass cropped as close as a golf course, the large fan whirring in the doorway, then my husband Howard was alright." Then, untrusting soul that she is, Alice raises herself up to "to take a look. It was still standing, just as I supposed it would be," and jokes to herself "Everywhere that barn goes, Howard, you are sure to be close behind"(1).
The novel explores the possible connection between place and character. Claiming it as a truth, Howard expresses an idea that is central to the novel: "all our meanings are put upon us from the outside. There's nothing much inside that belongs to us at the start, or even along the way. We are shaped, time and time again, by luck, the prevailing winds. I had been formed and reformed a dozen times, according to the personalities of my housemates"(219). At this point, Howard is trying to continue on the farm without Alice, so he equates the "outside" with "housemates." However, I think that the novel has a wiser and more expansive notion of place, one which encompasses landscape, work/institutions particular to a landscape, and the people who inhabit the landscape. In considering the connection between place and character, Hamilton is concerned with the way this broad idea of place affects character.
In particular, Map of the World contests the wholesome effects of life on a family farm. Of course, the whole question might be moot. Hamilton suggests as much. Alice and Howard's farm is pictured as vestigial, surrounded by suburbs. Also, it is not a true family farm. Despite his best efforts to claim the history of the farm, the history he's at pains to know and preserve truly belongs to the family that he bought it from and who farmed it for three generations.
Still, the notion of life on a family farm as a crucible of character and virtue persists in the world of this novel. Despite the fact they're in desperate need of money, Alice's lawyer Rafferty strongly advises Howard and Alice against selling the farm to raise her bail money. Howard and Alice as farm owners is crucial to his defense, "the one thing that should prove to the judge the quality of [their] citizenship. [Rafferty] used the words synonymously: upstanding, moral, hardworking, four hundred acres, sixty head of cattle"(239).
However, the family farm is not really possible or salutary without the family. When Alice is arrested, Howard quickly realizes he "couldn't farm without a wife, that there wasn't any point in farming without a family"(239). Again, Howard realizes a central idea of the novel. Any given place is determined by its people and loses its force and unique stamp if it loses any one of its constituent parts.
Howard comes to this truth gradually. After he loses his wife, he leans on other aspects of his place in an attempt to recapture the solace and blessings of his former life. He throws himself into work. He attempts to find a replacement wife in Theresa. Nothing satisfies. Nothing allows him to regain a shred of the old place he occupied before.
Built into the conception of the family farm as virtuous is the notion of hard work as virtuous. Hamilton's book contest this truth as well. Work is pictured ambiguously throughout the book. In the passage above where she speaks of the farm as her savior, Alice is clearly alluding to all the work that is involved in running a farm. However, as Alice rightfully observes, work might be both cure and curse. In the days just after the accident, Howard finds relief in the demanding work of the farm; "he had his blissful routine, hours in which work was rest"(52). Howard exhorts Alice to follow his lead, demanding she "Bear up...Go get breakfast. Keep in motion, for the sake of Emma and Claire. Keep in motion"(89). However, Howard pursues hard work as a means of escape as well; throwing himself into the routine of the farm shields him from thinking about the horror of the accident. It makes him unavailable to his wife who is unable to follow his lead and is in dire need of his sympathy.
In the book, motion of all types is often viewed with suspicion: a means of escaping pain, hurt and suffering. We foul our nest and in a rootless, modern, post-agricultural world, we simply pack up the car and start anew elsewhere. Howard clearly harbors such notions when he tells the girls that "[they] were going to pack up everything and then pretend [they] were hobos, living in freight trains, eating out of tin cans, singing all the day long, sharing one towel, living the carefree traveling life"(250). Obviously, Howard offers this largely in jest. Yet, his joke contains his fears and hopes, albeit in an exaggerated fashion. Deep down, he's tempted to think that if he launches out on a new life, he will forget the old and shed it's hurt and pain. Ultimately, Howard comes to "realize that...the only thing you really need bravery for is standing still. For standing by"(259).
Howard's sentiment is nostalgic, suggesting people were once better people because they led less mobile and busy lives. The roots a family farm imposes may be a mixed blessing, but still they bless. There is a virtue to being stuck in a place, and a farm will fix you to a place. Attached to the land, a farmer is unable to simply escape tragedy and disaster by packing up and leaving. It's worth noting, how Howard and Alice are 'stuck' in Prairie Junction after the accident while Dan and Theresa go off on a long trip. The novel would have us believe that this rootedness is central to a person's coming to grips with the realities of life, most especially the difficult and seeming senseless realities. At the end, it raises the question of where we find something that will anchor us.
Both Alice and Howard yearn to recapture a way of life. This way of life occurred on the family farm where they first moved after being married. They are stripped of the farm. They can't return. Yet, both hope that somehow, they can recapture their way of life. They ultimately stake their hope of doing so on each other. In part, they stick with the other because that other remains the only element of their former life that they any longer have access to. This book has an open ending but a sad one. Neither Howard or Alice seem confident that together they will be able to regain the place nor the selves they once inhabited.
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