The Endured Loneliness

           It has been said by author Angelica Baker that All the Living “is essentially a study in human loneliness,” and I agree. Loneliness is a prominent theme throughout the novel in times where Aloma is separate from Orren, but also when she is with him. He spends all day dutifully attending to the farm, while Aloma runs the house. This increases the already large separation between them, they are both lonely but find no comfort in each other. Orren states, “you been gone a whole lot,” and Aloma is surprised he has even noticed her daily absence (106). In the same argument, Aloma states, “when I do see you, you don’t have anything to say,” proving that physical proximity alone is not a sufficient cure of her loneliness (106). Later, Aloma restates this, “It’s like you’re leaving me without leaving your own damn property,” to which Orren defends, “I’m just digging deeper in what you think’s an empty well, but all the while you’re looking out” (160-161). This theme of lack in their daily lives and the difference in their desires has led to this rift. Orren is concerned about their primary needs, such as providing food and shelter, while Aloma craves more. She craves true companionship, but also to play the piano, a desire he seems to never understand and provides her one with a sound “spoiled like a meat” (5). Orren never even bothers to watch Aloma play, therefore he “did not know this part of her” (99). They both resolve to endure the loneliness and expect nothing less from each other, Aloma watches Orren “disappear into the dark in a way that was becoming familiar” (62). Loneliness is further normalized throughout the novel, with Bell stating in his sermon that “nobody’s immune [to loneliness] after the cradle” and even cites Jesus’ loneliness in the desert (79).

Eventually, the lazy tolerance that both Aloma and Orren first live by fades into “more collision than cohabitation” (88). Their primary interactions shift to either fighting or sex, but even then “the door to him did not open” (109). No matter how close they physically are, the loneliness in both of them never subsides. Aloma wants nothing else but to escape to a place she does not know in search of her salvation which “was not in a location” (187) while Orren seems content to slave away on the farm, never obliging to her increasing desire to leave. Their resolution to marry still does not cure their loneliness, they begin fighting within the second they return for the first time as a married couple. Aloma has “settled in to endure” her loneliness (90). The novel suggests that loneliness may often never be overcome.

Searching for the Remedy for Lack

Throughout the novel, the dreaded and restless feeling of lack lurks not-so-subtly within many of the characters but is seen most profoundly within Aloma. The progression of the novel’s “plot” is driven by her sense of lack and subsequent efforts to resolve it: her decision to live with Orren because of her dissatisfaction with her current state and job, her work as the church’s pianist to appease her true passions and combat the boredom and imprisonment she feels within the house, her feelings for Bell because of the longing left unanswered by Orren, her decision to marry Orren because it has been a problematic missing factor even from the time she first arrived at the farm, and so on. However, despite her efforts, she still seems to be struggling to come to terms with this idea of lack by the end of the novel and rather than overcoming it, she resigns herself to it, accepting that any efforts to curb that lack would be futile or temporary because “the world [couldn’t] make her happy for more than a minute at a time” (197).  

            Part of me felt the slightest bit of hope for the characters towards the end; Aloma and Orren finally marry so perhaps things could get better for them, Aloma has hopes to rent a piano and offer lessons, rains comes to satisfy the crops and quench their thirst, and a new life is born in the form of a calf. Even amongst all of these things, however, I felt that that hope was an attempt to find some happy ending, no matter how small, in a novel perhaps not meant to have one, as if even I were tormented by the lack and looking desperately for any tinge of remedy to fix it. I thought, for a brief second, that I had finally understood why “a living dog is better than a dead lion” because what really matters is the hope that things will get better, the hope that one day the lack will fade into extinction.

Ultimately, however, all I saw were the negatives of those false positives: marriage is not going to change anything for Aloma and Orren, it “stirred up nothing new” for Aloma after all (193), her plans to offer piano lessons are really just plans until she makes something of them, rain cannot bring the promise of anything (profit, food, etc.) beyond the fact that the crops received water, and the mother cow ended up dying. She already seems to have lost hope in the idea of marriage changing her relationship with Orren following the fight on their wedding day, recognizing that her wish to not fight “this day or ever again” was a “useless” statement charged with “longing and futility” (196). The novel even concludes with Orren leading Aloma “back out of the woods […] and up to the old house” (199), away from the very woods she once found she’d prefer to stay in “for a long time before ever wishing to return to the house” (93). Maybe I am being too negative about it, and am missing out on all of the hope present in the novel’s conclusion, but I finished the novel wondering what the permanent and true remedy for lack is, if such a thing exists, and if the answer really is hope, can that really be enough?   

Bell Johnson- Aloma's (Temporary) Escape

When Bell is first introduced in the novel as Aloma goes to the church to look for a job, he is presented as a friendly figure. Bell's mother is distrusting of her while Bell seeks to at least give her a chance (64). He eventually offers her the job and becomes a source of happiness for Aloma. He not only gives her the financial support she needs by paying her, but gives her joy when he listens in on her piano playing. When she plays for him, he gives her a new kind of pleasure (105). In this way, I think Bell's initial role in the story is to serve as an escape for Aloma--an escape from Orren, the house, and her duties. Whenever she is with Orren, it is to perform her duty as the "wife" of a farm laborer. She forces herself to learn how to cook, clean, and it does not help that Orren is so focused on the success of the farm that he ignores Aloma. So given the troubles associated with Orren, the house, and her wifely duties, she finds happiness in escaping to the church to play piano. She beings to associate Bell with playing the piano, one of her only true passions.

Although readers might think that Bell is a more suitable partner than Orren, the novel is trying to make it clear that Bell would not be as suitable as one might think. One of the reasons is that Aloma does not act like herself around him--she puts on a fake persona of being more passive around him, evidenced by the fact that she "was struck with the feeling she was around him, that she could not find her normal speaking voice...she was shied by him" (88). Because of this, she is more compliant and unwilling to speak up for herself, whereas with Orren there are numerous instances when she speaks her mind. Another reason they are imcompatible is that Bell is happy with his life in isolated Hansonville. Bell brings Aloma to the mountain wall and points at the distant farms, saying "it's the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life."Aloma thinks to herself that she could not hardly stand that beauty (140). Earlier in the novel, we see that she hates mountains because they are a symbol of her entrapment in this life. Bell says to her that she "can't decide if she wants to run off or get took in." (141). It is true that the internal struggle Aloma faces is whether or not to use her piano-playing skills to find a job elsewhere and leave for a different life or to stay fully invested in Orren in the farm. The fact that she is even having this struggle is completely different from Bell, who is content with staying in this life. So I believe that Bell was meant to serve as a temporary escape from Orren, but not as a permanent solution to her problems.

The Desire for Family within All the Living

Throughout All the Living, both Aloma and Orren are filled with desires that they cannot possibly attain. The most important thing they both want is a family. Although Aloma and Orren are characters with drastically different backgrounds, both of their stories revolve around family or the lack thereof in their lives. The importance of family becomes evident even in the first thirty pages of the book when it becomes clear Aloma has never really had a family, describing her Aunt and Uncles attitude towards her as  “a middling impersonal way that instinctively reserved their best for their own”(12). These early childhood memories of not truly being wanted and being sent away to a boarding school is what leads Aloma to desire a real family that will love and care for her. While Aloma claims throughout the novel that all she wants is to “find a riseless place where nothing impeded the progress of the sun from the moment it rose in the east until it dies out easily in the west.” (13) it becomes obvious that Aloma actually wants a family and the “darkness” that is often symbolized throughout the book could be healed with the happiness of a traditional familial unit.

              Aloma’s desire for a family is the driving force behind her otherwise inexplicable decision to stay with Orren throughout the novel. When she moves into the house with Orren after the death of his immediate family, it is obvious that he has changed and is no longer the man Aloma loved. Aloma claims that it appears as if he has aged a decade in the few weeks since she last saw him, noting that he is reserved and no longer has his characteristic warm look. It quickly becomes obvious that their relationship is doomed. This is exemplified when Aloma says,” I don’t ever see you no matter that I live with you and then when I do see you, you don’t have anything to say.”(106). Orren and Aloma rarely even speak to each other, and when they do it usually ends in a feud. The desire for family is the only thing that maintains and continues this clearly broken relationship.

              Throughout this drama, it appears that Orren is looking to replace his mother rather than create a life with Aloma. As the novel progresses, Orren constantly compares Aloma to his mother, whether it be her inability to cook or her attempts to control Orren’s actions. It is clear that Orren is still grief stricken over the loss of his family and this drives his desire to establish a family in a similar fashion to how Aloma desires a true family experience. This shared desire is what drives Aloma and Orren to stay together throughout the novel.

The Grief of Having Nothing to Grieve: Selfishness

Throughout All the Living, Aloma proves herself completely incapable of understanding Orren and his grief, and it comes out as unadulterated selfishness.

All the Living is written from a third-person limited perspective, focusing only on Aloma's thoughts and feelings. Aloma's thoughts and feelings are rarely about Orren, the man she supposedly loves who has just experienced unimaginable trauma. From the beginning of the novel, Aloma's thoughts revolve around herself, her desires, her needs, and her lacks. Morgan begins All the Living: "She had never lived in a house before and now, upon seeing the thing, she was no longer sure she wanted to" (3). Morgan does not begin the book by revealing Aloma's first thought to be something even as casually un-selfish as "so this is where he lives" or "so this is where they last lived." Instead, it is about what Aloma has had and has not had, what she wants and does not want.

As the novel progresses, this behavior only intensifies. Aloma may occasionally believe she is thinking about Orren, but she only does so just enough so as to let herself believe she is not entirely self absorbed. For example, when she begins playing piano, she is offered "fifteen dollars a week" and alleges that she does not care much about the money by thinking "Orren will be happy, and she liked that" (Morgan 73). Aloma likes that it is convenient for her, in this instance, to make Orren happy. It allows her to consider something she is doing simply for her own pleasure a selfless act. Doing something one enjoys is no great sin, no matter how much grief his or her loved one is feeling. It's pretending that that personal pleasure is helping the one grieving that is sinful.

Aloma continues this behavioral trend later on. On harvest day, she ventures into the new house because she cannot stand to be anywhere else (Morgan 155). She excuses herself from the self-centeredness of her listlessness partially because she believes she would have helped with the harvest if she had only been asked (Morgan 151). She does not see that that in itself in selfish - not to swallow her pride and her emotions and even her sense of self and offer to help a man she supposedly loves on his first harvest day feeling alone in the world. Beyond that, she first thinks of extra income, which she somehow still believes matters more to Orren than it does to her, so she excuses herself from disrupting what Orren sees as some sort of shrine to his mother and brother (Morgan 155).

I don't know which is harder - to grieve or to watch someone who has become your whole world grieve and stand powerless to ease his pain. That's not the point. The point isn't that Aloma has it so easy, and she's just a terrible person for being so self-centered. I don't think she's a terrible person - at least I hope not, because that would definitely make me one too. The point, instead, is that Aloma is not the victim here, no matter how often she focuses on herself to try to make it seem like she is. Orren is the victim. He's the one grieving. She just can't face it.

Something Better

     Since going to the mission school, Aloma always looks to the next intended stages of her life that supposedly would be better than her current state. Her education provides her the environment to foster the ideas of a better life, creating expectations her life does not attain. These expectations and goals about finding a man and her lifestyle leads to unhappiness and frustration in her life after the mission school.

     While in school, Aloma read cartooned magazines, and “wondered what it meant to uncover a man’s feet” and “sleep in his bed” (13). These thoughts carried and were present when she meets Orren because he was the first person she had a relationship with. However, after being with Orren for a bit and even living with him she wonders “how it would feel to have someone else sleep beside her, or be inside her even, and if that would speak to her happiness, which she felt lay unborn within her” (127). From her expectations of what she wanted in a relationship, she picked the first guy that showed interest in her and let her escape her life by offering her to live with him. It wasn’t until she moved in with Orren that she realizes there could be a better guy out there.

     To move in with Orren, Aloma leaves her job as a piano instructor at the school. When she was a student at the mission school, she gets the opportunity to learn piano from Mrs. Boyle because she already took all the piano classes offered at her school. From this she learns about the “real world” that “promised such impossible pleasures, and all her pleasures so far had been such small lusterless things, that she found she could not imagine it all…so she counted the nowhere days of her growing up and she waited” (15). From school, an idea of going to college and joining a music program is implanted in Aloma’s mind, and that becomes her next goal towards her future career. Even when living with Orren, she thinks about “how one day soon she would audition for a music program and then Orren would be ready to go with her, or maybe not” (132). However, when she realizes that from helping Orren harvest, “with all the cutting and spearing she had completely forgotten to play piano” she becomes “disconcerted” because “it all seemed backward” (166). She was helping achieve Orren’s dreams and goals, even though her focus should be on her own goal to find a way to join a music program. While she still has some hope of moving on to the next, better stage of her life, she also reluctantly knows that what she expects might not happen.

     Since she was in school, Aloma believes “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” (13). This expectation sets up her disappointment when she moves in with Orren because it’s not a house, town, or environment she planned on living in. Even after a couple months, she feels “that no matter where she found herself, she would be nowhere” (154). She only wants to think of the town as temporary, a pit stop before moving closer to her goals. That’s why she felt a bit of panic as she realizes that “she wanted to escape all of it and mostly herself, a self she found to be increasingly shifty and desirous in ways that frightened her when she looked too closely” (166). These “shifty and desirous” characteristics, however, were developed during her time at the mission school along with her personality, goals, and expectations that overall made her the unhappy and dissatisfied person she is through most of the book.

Why does Aloma stay?

One of the most pressing questions I have from reading this novel, is why Aloma chooses to stay with Orren and on the old farm. Aloma is miserable throughout the entirety of the book, but seems to accept it rather than try to fix it. Aloma knows that there are opportunities beyond the farm. Additionally, she has no feelings for Orren, their relationship is strictly physical, so why does she stay? While she has insufficient funds to move anywhere she wants, she has money saved from her piano playing to give her some opportunity to leave, yet she stays in a place that she hates.  Bell even notices this and tells Aloma, “you can’t decide if you want to run off or get took in” (141).  The idea of leaving the farm is always lingering in Aloma’s mind, to the point where both Bell and Orren are able to notice, so why doesn’t she just leave?

The opportunity that Aloma has to play the piano is her escape from the farm and from her misery, but sometimes being at the Church playing is not enough. She knows that she would be happier elsewhere, not doing the monotonous chores around the farm, but cannot drive herself to leave. One of the ways she gets herself to stay is by looking down and not at the horizon, mountains, and the Earth ahead of her. Aloma can only grasp the thought of spending her life in the farm “So long as she did not look up” (110). When Aloma looks in the distance, she realizes that she could leave if she wanted to and that there are many other places for her to go other than this farm.

Moreover, Orren and Aloma are constantly spiting each other.  There is no sense of companionship, support, or cooperation in their relationship, it is strictly physical.  Even in their physical intimacy, Aloma still does not find herself emotionally connected to Orren. During sex, Aloma “felt she did not know this face, this stranger, not at all” (109).  Aloma also constantly blames Orren for her unhappiness and “she blamed him for her restlestness” (110). If Aloma has no attachment to Orren and blames him for her misery, why does she choose to stay? Both Aloma and Orren seem to get in the way of each other’s goals.  Aloma screws things up on the farm for Orren, such as the chicken incident, and Orren is technically the reason that Aloma gets fired from the church.

Morgan writes of Aloma, “no matter where she found herself, she would be nowhere” (155). Maybe for this reason, Aloma decides to stay in her misery. Perhaps Aloma knows that even in a world full of opportunities, she would not find herself belonging anywhere or content and so why bother to leave? Aloma has a “stupefied, grieved hate for her life,” but rather than do something about it, she chooses to accept it (158).  

The Grass is Not Always Greener on the Other Side

Aloma and Orren face various disagreements throughout the novel, most notably Aloma’s nomadic desire to leave the old house and Orren’s familial duty to stay. Aloma has never really felt bound to any one place or person in her life, since her parents died when she was very young and even the aunt and uncle who raised her only “cared in a middling, impersonal way that instinctively reserved their best for their own” (12). Starting from a young age, this detachment developed throughout Aloma’s life but shifted when she met Orren. He is the first person with whom she feels a true connection, both physically and emotionally. Yet once she is living with him at his family’s old house, those feelings of detachment resurface and she wants to leave.

Orren takes over his family’s responsibilities with a stubborn resolve to keep the farm running. Although his stubbornness leaves Aloma feeling spiteful and forgotten, she almost admires Orren’s strict work ethic. “She had never been driven by the imminent loss of something like a home. It was more a matter of what she did not have than of what she could not stand to lose. She had wanted to possess something and when she wanted a thing, she wanted it bad” (36). Aloma’s desires are intangible, such as her wish to play piano and make beautiful music; however, she is always looking for something more. Even her efforts to “line up her wanting with the same want that sent Orren out of the house each morning and kept him there until the sun fell” proved fruitless (37).

The incompatibility between Aloma and Orren’s wanting intensifies when Aloma develops feelings for the preacher Bell. She wonders about other men – “she wondered…how it would feel to have someone else sleep beside her, or be inside her even, and if that would speak to her happiness, which she felt lay unborn within her” (127). One night, she dreams of being with Bell and, frightened by her unconscious desires, she feels she has to “reassure herself that it was Orren she wanted” (168). This makes Aloma question her own happiness. “Here she was, on her side under white sheets the open sun lit brilliantly…and still she wanted something, still she was unsatisfied. When had she ever once been full?” (168-169).

This experience leads Aloma to appreciate what she has, rather than searching for more somewhere else. She thinks, “what a waste it was to ever think of going, how wasteful…wasteful of creation…to run and seek after another only to find that the gulf was there too…she had indeed been foolish, for thinking that the easy thing was the one worth wanting” (175). She knows she loves Orren, but realizes that they will have to work together at their relationship for the rest of their marriage. They have a ways to go but together they can strengthen their relationship and realign their desires to complement each other, rather than clash with each other.