Wildlife by Richard Ford
"Wildlife" by Richard Ford is a coming-of-age novel set in 1961 in Great Falls, Montana, that explores themes of alienation and the complexities of growing up. The narrative centers around Joe Brinson, a sixteen-year-old boy who must navigate significant family upheaval, including his father’s job fighting forest fires and his mother’s brief affair during his father's absence. This backdrop of the vast, often harsh Montana landscape serves as both a physical and metaphorical catalyst for Joe’s journey toward adulthood.
As he confronts difficult choices and the reality of his parents' lives, Joe grapples with feelings of isolation and disorientation, heightened by his family's transient lifestyle. The novel emphasizes the importance of decision-making in shaping one’s identity, suggesting that the choices one makes can lead to profound consequences. Ford’s nuanced portrayal of Joe’s struggles resonates with the universal experiences of adolescence, encapsulating the tension between the innocence of childhood and the burdens of adult understanding. The writing style is spare yet evocative, mirroring the starkness of the environment and the weight of the dilemmas faced by the characters. Overall, "Wildlife" offers a poignant reflection on the transition from childhood to adulthood, making it a relatable and impactful read for those exploring the challenges of growing up.
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Wildlife by Richard Ford
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1990
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The wide-open spaces, the mountains, and the forest fires in Wildlife serve not only as backdrops and symbols but also as catalysts for the action of the novel. The lives of four main characters—Joe Brinson, his parents, and the man with whom his mother has an affair—are shaped by their environment. The action occurs in 1961 in Great Falls, Montana, which for Joe is “a town that was not my home and never would be.” This sense of disorientation and alienation is central to the message of Ford’s novel.
Wildlife is a rite-of-passage novel in which Joe, remembering events that occurred when he was sixteen, confronts life, death, change, and truth. His father, who moved the family to Montana during an oil boom in hopes of bettering their lot, finds a job fighting fires in the mountains. During his absence, Joe’s mother briefly takes a lover. In an important passage, Joe considers the average youth’s ignorance of his parents, “which can save you from becoming an adult too early.” On the other hand, he believes that shielding oneself is a mistake, “since what’s lost is the truth of your parents’ life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.”
Faced with his mother’s infidelity and his father’s rage, Joe must make choices that most young people are spared. The significance of decision making in this novel relates Ford’s work to the existential belief that human beings create their identities through the choices they make. Without the aid of any authority, Joe alone must decide for himself, and his decision may be the wrong one, may even be fatal. His isolation is intensified by the mobility of his family and his consequent lack of longtime friends or other relatives in whom to confide. Alone, he faces unavoidable change, and with his new knowledge, he suffers the inevitable “fall” from the grace of childhood. Joe’s strength derives from what his mother terms “inquiring intelligence.” “Everything will always surprise you,” she tells him, and when he has faced his dilemmas and acted, perhaps wisely, perhaps not, he seems well on the way to shaping a meaningful life for himself.
In Wildlife, Ford strongly evokes the troubled and puzzling teenage years of a boy on the border of maturity. With a spare, carefully shaped prose style that reflects the setting of the action and the quality of the problems and choices Joe faces, Ford creates a character and situations with which many young people can, no doubt, identify.
Sources for Further Study
Chicago Tribune. May 27, 1990, XIV, p.3.
The Christian Science Monitor. July 25, 1990, p.12.
Commonweal. CXVII, August 10, 1990, p.461.
Library Journal. CXV, June 1, 1990, p.176.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. June 10, 1990, p.3.
New Statesman and Society. III, August 10, 1990, p.35.
The New York Times Book Review. XCV, June 17, 1990, p.3.
Newsweek. CXV, June 11, 1990, p.64.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVII, April 13, 1990, p.55.
Time. CXXXV, June 4, 1990, p.86.
The Times Literary Supplement. August 10, 1990, p.4558.