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Summary
VI. Five Statutory Questions
Joe O’Keefe has invited Joe Harland to his home for dinner, where Harland is uncomfortable. O’Keefe relates the story of George pulling the gun on Ellen in the club in Canarsie. Harland isn’t surprised since he knows that love or alcohol eventually catches up to everyone. Harland advises O’Keefe not to get too entrenched in the war news but to keep his eyes on the stock quotations. O’Keefe’s brother comes home drunk. Like so many other characters, he wants to leave New York and feels there’s nothing for him here. The two brothers argue as their mother enters the kitchen. She yells at her sons and throws Harland out of the house. As he leaves, Harland hears the voices of past employees floating through his mind.
Ellen wakes up and gets ready for the day. She ticks off everything she will do that day in her mind in an effort to distract herself. She has not seen Stan for a while. She meets with a lawyer to move her divorce forward. When the lawyer describes the divorce as a very serious step, Ellen disagrees. Harry Goldweiser and his sister arrive to have lunch with her, and Harry tells Ellen about a small part in “The Zinnia Girl” that he wants her to take. Harry says that Ellen has something that brings true success to a show. After lunch, the group goes to a rooftop bar, and she dances with Harry, who tells Ellen he’d do anything for her. He wants to marry her, and he knows that Ellen does not feel the same way. Suddenly, Stan appears, and he is accompanied by his new wife, Pearline. The two married in a drunken blur in Niagara Falls.
Jimmy is sitting near the waterfront, and someone begins speaking to him. It’s Joe Harland. Jimmy shares with him that he hates his job and is unhappy. Joe speaks highly of Lily, Jimmy’s mother, and warns him that his mother has big plans for him. Jimmy says what he really wants to do is leave New York and fight in the war, but he can’t seem to figure out how to make it happen. Jimmy and Joe walk off to get lunch together. Photos in the newspaper show that Ellen has taken the part in “The Zinnia Girl.”
VII. Rollercoaster
Stan drunkenly arrives at the Louis Expresso Association Annual Dance. Gus McNeil is there shaking hands and buying drinks. Stan is at the dance alone and finds himself singing at his own reflection in a mirror, repeating that he’s a married man. He stands on a chair and begins making a mock speech, drawing attention to himself. Others realize that Stan shouldn’t be there. He gets punched a few times before being tossed out on the street. The next thing he knows, he wakes up on a ferry. It is early morning, and the city is coming to life. Stan gets off the ferry and sits on a bench in Battery Park. He looks at the city and thinks about the materials used to build ancient cities and the steel, glass, and tile that is used to build New York. Stan knows that the future of the city is skyscrapers. He absentmindedly sings the lyrics to a song that Ellen sings earlier in the novel. Stan goes home, still drunk. Pearline is not home. Stan throws some furniture around and then climbs up on unsteady chairs to get a kerosene can. He pours it on himself and tries to light a match. He ends up on the floor in a puddle of kerosene and is finally able to light a match. Pearline is out running errands telling the shopkeeper how ambitious Stan is and how he wants to be an architect. When she arrives on her block, she realizes her apartment is on fire. A fireman holds Pearline back, telling her that Stan is coming down now, just overcome by smoke.
VIII. One More River to Jordan
George Baldwin and his friend Phil Sandbourne are on the subway. George isn’t used to traveling this way and Phil says it’s good for him. When Phil mentions that he has seen Ellen in “The Zinnia Girl,” George defensively demands that Phil shut down any rumors he hears about him and Ellen. He can’t afford a scandal right now. Phil wants George to invest in tiles and thinks that the entire city could change if tiles were used as a new building material. He thinks this would infuse the city with positive energy and there would be more happiness and less divorce. Phil doesn’t trust his boss with the idea, convinced that he would cut Phil out of any deal he makes. George has to turn Phil down as his financial situation is currently complicated. Without any investment, Phil knows that he is doomed to continue his monotonous life.
Ellen is in her apartment feeling very anxious. She makes plans with Harry for that evening when he calls but puts off other callers until the next day. Ruth and Cassie arrive, and Cassie offers her condolences regarding Stan. Ellen offhandedly says that everyone has to die sometime.
That evening, Ellen is out with Harry. He’s trying to convince her about what a wonderful team they could make on Broadway. She distractedly dances with Harry and then leaves, struggling in the taxi with the fact that Stan is dead and she’s having his baby. She meets Jimmy and other young men at a restaurant. Ellen asks Jimmy to walk her home when she gets up to leave. Ellen tells Jimmy that she’s going to have Stan’s baby, and Jimmy thinks it’s wonderful and brave. She disappears into her apartment building before Jimmy can tell her how he feels about her.
Ellen is out on a ferry with a man who has never appeared before, Larry. He’s a very successful businessman who wants to marry Ellen. He points out that he has waited until she was free.
An anonymous girl visits Dr. Abrahms for an abortion. She tells him she’s getting a divorce and needs to make her own way. The doctor says she should have a good husband and many children. After the procedure, the girl, perfectly made up but in a great deal of pain, hails a cab and heads to the Ritz for tea.
Analysis
These chapters revolve around desperate characters looking for escape, either from their commitments, their feelings, or their life. They have all created the difficult situations that they find themselves in, but none of them take responsibility. Ellen, for example, must deal with the fallout for not helping Stan confront his alcohol abuse. She will spend the rest of the novel feeling restless and throwing herself reluctantly into social situations. No matter how many plans she makes, she never stops feeling haunted by the loss of Stan. New York City offers endless ways for Ellen to keep herself distracted, but its superficiality and loneliness just drives her further into darkness. The threat of war still hangs in the air, but it does not factor into the book in a substantive way in these chapters. Not being focused on the war is in itself another form of escapism in which the characters take part.
Figurative language is common in scenes where Ellen appears, making them unique and giving portions of them an ethereal feel. In “One More River to Jordan,” Ellen is out with a group of acquaintances, including Harry Goldweiser. The group’s surroundings are personified, and its members are described in metaphors. The literary devices all serve to focus attention on Ellen. On this particular evening, Ellen is concerned because she has not seen Stan in days. She is already self-conscious, and the descriptions shine a light on her growing anxiety. To escape this discomfort, Ellen turns to a common defense mechanism from her childhood and retreats to her own world. She has a sort of out-of-body experience and looks in on the group she is with, including herself. Just as she does with George, if Ellen is not interested in someone, she finds it difficult to remain focused on them and escapes into her own mind.
When Jimmy runs into Joe Harland, it brings to mind young Jimmy from the first section of the book. His visit with Joe raises the question of how Jimmy’s life would be different if his mother were still alive. In losing his mother, Jimmy lost the most important person in his life and became stunted. It’s easy to imagine that in a world where Lily is still alive, Jimmy has direction and passion. The one time in the book when Jimmy knows exactly what he’s doing and what to do next is when he’s running errands for his mother or caring for her when she is ill. But as an adult, he flounders, never knowing how to move forward. Echoing his sentiments to Stan in “Nine Days’ Wonder,” Jimmy shares with Joe that he is unhappy in New York, but he also feels stuck there. He has no real direction—he just knows that he is not on the right path.
“Rollercoaster” is unique in that it is the only chapter devoted to one character. It is fully focused on Stan’s demise. In the past, he at least had a reason to look to a bright future. Now, he is married to girl that he does not love and he’s allowing himself to be fully consumed by alcohol. Once again, Stan is not getting help from those closest to him. Ellen and Stan discuss Stan’s drinking problem several times, but they never take steps to help him. Now, his wife Pearline takes the same passive attitude. While she is running errands the morning Stan dies, Pearline mentions to the shopkeeper that Stan has not been home in two days but downplays her concern. Like Ellen, she knows that Stan drinks too much. While she is in fact concerned that she has not seen him, or she wouldn’t have mentioned it, she is not concerned enough to find him and make sure he’s safe. As Stan stumbles around his kitchen in a drunken stupor, the furniture is described as moving on its own, as if it is not Stan throwing it around. This language has the effect of taking responsibility away from Stan, as if he just happens to be there and is not the one destroying his kitchen, or himself.
Beginning in “One More River to Jordan,” Ellen is forever changed. She will spend much of the rest of the book feeling anxious and distracted. Her anger for women flares again when she sees Ruth and Cassie. Ellen knows she’s pregnant and Stan is dead, so she is raw. Instead of losing her patience with the women, she forces herself to put on a happy face, makes light of Stan’s death, and goes out. Her anger towards Ruth and Cassie is not only fueled by the provincial way that these women choose to live. It also comes from the frustration and limitations that she feels as a woman. She had to marry Jojo, a man she did not love, in order to move her career to the next level, she spends her time mindlessly socializing with people she does not respect to maintain her career, and now she will have a baby alone because it is the only connection she has left to the only man she’s ever loved. The stress of all of her poor choices is starting to weigh on Ellen and she does not know how to handle the fallout. She does not drink to excess and has a certain place in society, so she cannot give into all the self-destructive tendencies that other characters have. She only hurts herself with her bad choices.
