The Big Rock Candy Mountain: Analysis of Setting
"The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a novel by Wallace Stegner that explores themes of home, ambition, and the complexities of family life against the backdrop of the fictional town of Whitemud, Canada, which mirrors the real-life Eastend in Saskatchewan. The setting of Whitemud serves as a crucial emotional anchor for the Mason family, particularly for Bruce Mason, who experiences the duality of childhood adventures and the desire for a stable, nurturing home. The town is depicted through the contrasting perspectives of Bruce's parents: Bo Mason views Whitemud as a temporary step in his quest for wealth, while Elsa sees it as a place for a respectable life. The narrative contrasts this aspiration with the harsh realities of Bo's illegal activities and their impact on family cohesion, eventually leading to a series of relocations that disrupt their lives.
Stegner’s work is enriched by the mythical concept of the "Big Rock Candy Mountain," a land of abundance that stands in stark contrast to the Masons' struggles, serving as a critique of the American pursuit of wealth at the expense of community and family ties. Through richly detailed settings, the novel delves into how these environments shape personal identities and relationships, particularly in the context of the American West. The lyrical journey to the Bearpaw Mountains symbolizes Bruce's longing for stability amidst his father's erratic ambitions, highlighting the intricate relationship between place, aspiration, and belonging.
The Big Rock Candy Mountain: Analysis of Setting
First published: 1943
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Historical realism
Time of work: 1905-1932
Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Places Discussed
Whitemud
Whitemud. Canadian town, based on the real town of Eastend, in southwestern Saskatchewan, Canada, where Stegner lived for about five years when he was a boy. The real town’s name derives from its location near the eastern end of the Cypress Hills, a prominent geographical feature that lies parallel to the U.S.-Canada boundary. In the fictional Whitemud and at a nearby wheat-farming homestead used only during the growing season, the Mason family has its only long-lasting home and experience of community.
The family’s Whitemud home is a two-story, eight-room house built by Bruce’s father, Bo Mason, in an attempt to salvage his marriage to Elsa, whom he had earlier deserted in Washington State. The theme of the importance of having a lasting, secure and affectionate home is the emotional core of The Big Rock Candy Mountain, and the five years the Masons spend in Whitemud are the center of the novel’s exploration of this theme. Bo chooses the town simply as the latest target of his ambition to get rich quick. He regards it as a dirty little “dung-heeled sagebrush town,” but Elsa views it as a place to settle down and live respectably, if modestly. For Bruce and his older brother, Chet, Whitemud is the site of typical childhood adventures, but for Bruce, especially, it represents society and civilization, a warm place in which his precocious intelligence is molded both by culture and the natural world.
In the novel’s most lyrical episode, Bruce and his parents spend a day making an automobile trip from their homestead to the Bearpaw Mountains, which lie sixty miles to the south across the international boundary. Although the Bearpaws are actually only modest in height and extent, to the nine-year-old Bruce they seem like “Mountains of the Moon.” The day’s journey is a holiday not merely from the routine of homestead life but also from Bo Mason’s chronically bad temper brought on by the failure of his money-making ambitions.
*Salt Lake City
*Salt Lake City. Utah city founded by Mormon pioneers in the mid-nineteenth century, to which Bo Mason takes his family after turning from various failed legitimate ventures in Saskatchewan to an illegal liquor business. When his bootlegging ambitions finally outgrow Whitemud, he uproots his family, moving first to Great Falls, Montana, and then to Salt Lake City. There he thrives on the margins of respectable life in a city widely known for its upright character. Though he accumulates money from his illegal activities and sometimes invests it sensibly, he remains incapable of sharing his wife’s yearning for a stable home and family life. His shady business and heedlessness corrode the family, with only Bruce surviving a decade of constantly moving from one dwelling to another in advance of the authorities.
Stegner later published Recapitulation (1979), a novel that continues Bruce Mason’s story. Like The Big Rock Candy Mountain, it is semi-autobiographical but embraces a greater range of Stegner’s own experiences as a teenager in Salt Lake City.
Big Rock Candy Mountains
Big Rock Candy Mountains. Mythical land of plenty. Stegner’s characterization of Bo Mason is aimed at analyzing and discrediting an aspect of America’s westward migration, in which many people sought not merely opportunities but excessive wealth and advantage, at the expense of resources and other members of their communities. A gentle parody of these attitudes appeared in a song that became popular in the 1920’s titled “In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,” and Stegner adapted the song’s title to his novel. The song celebrates a place where the “hand-outs grow on bushes” and a bluebird sings to a lemonade spring. Stegner’s novel shows in painful detail how a quest for an easy land of plenty can drive wedges between a man and his wife, between a father and his children, and between an individual and his community.
Bibliography
Arthur, Anthony, ed. Critical Essays on Wallace Stegner. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. Includes two reviews of The Big Rock Candy Mountain written when it was first published and several critical essays that analyze themes, point of view, and autobiographical influences.
Lewis, Merrill, and Lorene Lewis. Wallace Stegner. Boise, Idaho: Boise State College, 1972. A brief overview of Stegner’s life and work.
Robinson, Forrest Glen, and Margaret G. Robinson. Wallace Stegner. Boston: Twayne, 1977. Includes biographical information and a discussion of Stegner’s fiction and nonfiction, including The Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Stegner, Wallace, and Richard W. Etulain. Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983. Stegner discusses his life and his writing as well as his views on literature and history.
Willrich, Patricia Rowe. “A Perspective on Wallace Stegner.” The Virginia Quarterly Review 67 (Spring, 1991): 240-259. An overview of Stegner’s life and work. Discusses the autobiographical material in his writings and his role as a Western writer.