IX explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Nature and Fertility

  The wheat field symbolizes reality and fertility, contrasting with the vanished romance of the night; the earth is depicted as a mother sleeping after harvest, and the wheat as a force of creation and re-creation.

• The Mystical and the Natural

  Vanamee's transition from mystical visions of Angéle to her real, material presence in the wheat highlights the tension between the supernatural and the natural.

• Corporate Oppression

  S. Behrman's triumph in harvesting Los Muertos and the warning sign on Annixter's ranch ('By order P. and S.W.R.R.') underscore the railroad's oppressive control over the land.

Characters to notice

• Vanamee

  Reunites with Angéle in the wheat, embracing reality over romance; speaks of life and death as suppression, not extinction.

• Angéle Varian

  Appears to Vanamee in the wheat as a real, material woman, no longer a dream.

• S. Behrman

  Visits his new elevator at Port Costa to oversee the bulk handling of Los Muertos' wheat, savoring his triumph.

• Presley

  Surveys the desolate ranches, climbs the hills, reflects on the eternal force of nature, meets Vanamee, and later visits Hilma Annixter.

• Hilma Tree

  Now Mrs. Annixter, a widow in black, dignified and softened by grief; Presley offers her friendship and support.

Key passages

• “Romance had vanished, but better than romance was here. Not a manifestation, not a dream, but her very self. The night was gone, but the sun had risen; the flowers had disappeared, but strong, vigorous, noble, the wheat had come.”

  The romantic illusion was gone, replaced by something superior: Angéle herself, real and tangible, like the wheat that replaces night and flowers with strength and nobility.

  Vanamee's realization that reality surpasses romance, symbolized by the wheat.

• “Men were naught, death was naught, life was naught; force only existed— force that brought men into the world, force that crowded them out of it to make way for the succeeding generation, force that made the wheat grow, force that garnered it from the soil to give place to the succeeding crop.”

  Presley perceives that individual men, life, and death are insignificant; only the primordial force of creation and re-creation, embodied in the wheat, truly exists.

  Presley's philosophical reflection on the eternal cycle of nature and the insignificance of human life.

• “Life is positive. Death is only the absence of life, just as night is only the absence of day, and if this is so, there is no such thing as death. There is only life, and the suppression of life, that we, foolishly, say is death.”

  Vanamee argues that death is merely a temporary suppression of life, not an end, akin to night being the absence of day.

  Vanamee's metaphysical view on the continuity of life beyond apparent death.