40 pages • 1 hour read
Wallace StegnerCrossing to Safety
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 1, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 introduces more of Larry’s colleagues and their families at a party recounted from 1937 during Prohibition. At the time, Sally is worried about being able to fit in among this new social set, fretting briefly about whether the other women will be wearing long dresses. The party has special significance for the new world they are entering: “The mere prospect of a square meal could cheer me in those days, and here was much more—light, glitter, chatter, smiles, dressed-up people, friends, audience” (34). Larry is keen to be recognized as a part of this new society, which is as much a separation from his roots growing up in Albuquerque as his time as a student. Though he and Sally are the guests of honor, Sid and Charity are the hosts; Larry’s infatuation with the couple only intensifies. After dinner, they play the piano, and Sally reads from Homer. The party soon breaks up, leaving Larry with a memorable moment: “All of us felt it […] we fell into a four-ply laughing hug, we were so glad to know one another and so glad that all the trillion chances in the universe had brought us to the same town and the same university at the same time” (46).
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Chapter 5 includes recollections of Madison and conversations between Larry, Sid, and Charity. They speak about their respective families and the serendipity and opportunity that has brought them to the university. Larry says to Sid, “We are lucky in our parents, teachers, experience, circumstances, friends, times, physical and mental endowment, or we are not. Born to the English language and American opportunity (I say this in 1937, after seven years of depression, but I say it seriously) we are among the incredibly lucky ones” (50). The decision to pursue English Literature has different connotations: Sid's father disapproved of his decision to study English. For Larry, whose parents died when he was younger, there was little pushback. Sally, Larry, Charity, and Sid have a picnic, and Larry notices tension in Sid and Charity’s relationship. Later, they all go ice-skating, which worries Larry because Sally is pregnant. This anxiety enhances the sharpness of his final recollections: “Coming from the kitchen bringing the rum bottle and the teakettle for a fresh round of drinks, I see them there, and think how in those two women four hearts are beating, and it awes me” (60).
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Chapter 6 is Larry’s fictional account of Sid and Charity’s courtship. In this fictional episode, Sid visits Charity’s well-to-do family at their residence in Battell Pond. Charity’s family is initially critical of Sid’s modest appearance and Pittsburgh origins but are pleased with Sid’s politeness and earnestness. The description of Charity's Aunt Emily takes up much of this fictional account, as she reads from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha to a group of children: “The sound of her voice reading will condition how [the children] look upon themselves and the world. […] Nature to them will always be beneficent and female” (66). Larry remarks internally on how much the poem meant to Charity and reminded her of childhood. Although Sid makes a decent impression on the family, the meeting is still awkward. Only after he leaves does Charity let on to her family that Sid is of considerable means, though his dress and mannerisms do not reveal this.
Part 1, Chapters 4-6 Analysis
These chapters focus primarily on the deepening relationship between the Morgans and the Langs. The Langs represent the privileged and esteemed world that the Morgans are growing into as they move to a new town for a new job. Reflected in this infatuation is as much Larry’s idealization for the world of academia and its society, as his own anxiety for his humble origins in New Mexico and California. However, the feeling that Larry puts across in these chapters is the timorous satisfaction that one has “made it,” that one has finally achieved what was so long dreamt-for, it scarcely seems real. This is supported by the outsized and ideal character that Sid and Charity take on in these recollections. For Larry, their backgrounds and personas seem to exhibit plainly what he and Sally are not—an almost picturesque suitableness to the academic way of life, one which he feels he and Sally’s humbleness does not allow. However, the relationship between them is friendly and affectionate, made close by the women’s imminent pregnancies. All of this takes on a rosy tint in his recollections, one which he explicitly links to the work of his own imagination. In these chapters, Sally seems to be a minor character—although she is Larry’s wife and carrying his child, her thoughts and emotions are indiscernible, or simply not brought into the narrative in a decisive way. This has further significance for the plot in later sections.
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By Wallace Stegner
