What Comes After

“My wife longed for escape: from the East Coast, shattered romances, a painful teenage history. All the topographies of her life.”

The diction in this passage connects the concepts of maps and land to life events via the use of “topographies.” This connection between human experience and the earth is echoed in the unity that Jonah and Isaac feel at the end of the novel.

“It was just a feeling. A sense of something alive and lurking in the darkness overhead.”

The narrators describe the upstairs of Isaac’s house as haunted several times in the novel. It’s metaphorically haunted by the ghost of how Daniel was seen, or not seen, by the other characters. The “feeling” that Isaac experiences regarding the upstairs represents his failure to see Daniel’s faults.

“Within seconds, a warm, musty smell rose, and she imagined the months—or had it been years?—of dust and mold, desiccated remains of insects, and flakes of dead skin the vent had been storing, remnants of past lives released once more into the room.”

The imagery of deadness being blown into the air evokes the deaths, both literal and figurative, that the house contains. Those deaths equate with past lives, connecting the novel’s structure to an overarching metaphor of unity, which comes to fruition at the novel’s end.

“True, there was a lot of judgment in him. The boy was arrogant as hell. Ugly edges. But that was a given, wasn’t it? If anywhere there existed something pure, she’d never found it.”

This passage portrays Daniel as having “ugly edges,” hinting at the cruelty that resulted in his murder. It also introduces Evangeline’s cynicism and her desire to believe in purity yet her inability to see the positive in the world.

“I’m not sure what Daniel saw, but I met something that knew me, had known me before I existed—a puzzling, formless knowing that had taken on a dog disguise and drawn me to it.”

In this passage, Rufus demonstrates the unity of life reflected in Quaker belief and the actions of the Divine in the world. Isaac’s description of Rufus as “a puzzling, formless knowing” reflects the mystery of the Divine while connecting that mystery to the physical world.

“People’s fear of hurting me caused them pain and confusion, and their suffering added to mine. I wanted to spare Friends my presence. Besides, what was left for me there? Certainly not Divine connection. God had reduced me to rubble, had stolen Katherine and my son. God, it seemed, had taken even the girl and the promise of her baby.”

Isaac questions God throughout the novel, just as he questions himself. Although this passage seems to indicate that he has lost faith, he still believes despite feeling betrayed, which thematically demonstrates The Complex Nature of Belief.

“Nothing made sense. And for every mystery Samantha held, Evangeline, behind her curtain of lies, held a dozen.”

Isaac’s comparison of Samantha and Evangeline connects them through their relationship with Daniel and through their tangential roles in Daniel’s and Jonah’s deaths. Thematically, this passage directly links Evangeline’s problematic relationship with the truth to The Complex Nature of Belief by equating her stories with mystery rather than simply deceit.

“She ran past house after house, everything spooling out behind her, the weeks and months of trying to live any way she could, the fear of being caught as she wandered strangers’ halls or darted out the backs of stores, the eyes that landed with hunger or pity or disgust, that turned her limbs and breasts into meat to be judged.”

The imagery in this passage shows how Evangeline feels reduced, in the absence of love and protection, to an object. Her fear and her cynicism have created a shell of protection around her, but as she begins to trust Isaac, that protection is cracked, and she must acknowledge and feel the things she has been avoiding while trying to survive.

“You don’t catch wild things by running after them. I waited ten minutes, then another ten and another, thinking she might find her way back to me, that if I were quiet and still and patient, she might light on me like a bird on a branch.”

This passage reflects the wildness in Evangeline that connects her to nature. In addition, it demonstrates that Jonah understands and respects nature, which links to his mysticism in Quaker meetings: He has an innate sense that all life is connected, which the novel’s last chapter confirms.

I reveal this because there is no point to the telling if I hide what causes me shame. If it repels, so be it. But I wonder whether urges—urges we refuse to act upon—make us worthy of contempt. Doesn’t evil and its violence stalk us all, forever seeking points of entry? Shouldn’t our resistance to these atavistic urges be the criterion upon which we are judged?”

This passage highlights the importance and necessity of the self-examination that Isaac engages in and thematically ties that process of self-examination to The Natural Explanations of Violence: Only through honesty with himself can Isaac avoid evil. The diction in this passage suggests that Isaac’s transformation isn’t simply internal but seeks some audience, which could represent a breaking of the fourth wall (making the narrator aware of the reader) or the thematic extension of The Complex Nature of Belief.

“I used to dream of Lorrie, of holding her that day, the mist dissolving the dirt on her face. And then she, too, would dissolve, her fingertips and hands, her feet, then legs, her hair and face turning to a soft glow, until I was alone in those brambles, a mangled dog at my feet.”

The imagery of Lorrie “dissolving” into “a soft glow” links Isaac’s and Lorrie’s connections to the Divinity, which Isaac has been avoiding. The dream acts as a counterpoint to Isaac’s desire to blame Lorrie for Daniel’s death rather than acknowledging his own role in the violence.

“She searched out the edges of her fear like a tongue worming to a pulled tooth. It was a controlled fear, like a controlled burn, and it amplified the exhilaration of returning to a warm, lit house.”

The imagery of the “pulled tooth” and “controlled burn” juxtaposes the “warm, lit house,” lyrically demonstrating Evangeline’s central inner conflict. The violence and fear that she experiences on her own contrasts with Isaac’s house, which symbolizes safety and familial love to her. This passage presents the potential for unity between those experiences by suggesting how the house can provide a balance that allows her to build her strength.

“But even at that lofty height, I believed with unquestioned certainty that a boundary could be drawn around a small group of people and labeled a family. My family. Yours. Except mine no longer had a past to which I could return, nor a future beyond my own depleted life. There was only my aunt’s disintegrating mind and a grave barely a month old.”

This passage shows the start of Isaac accepting his inner light and the value of building community and family. The contrast between his belief, his “certainty” that a family can be built, and his despair at the reality of his present life thematically underscores The Complex Nature of Belief.

“But my mom is like that herself. She can look like one thing from a certain angle and something completely different from another.”

Jonah’s description of his mother as multifaceted and mutable mirrors the image of Evangeline shifting from animal to human when Isaac discovers her. The two descriptions connect Evangeline to Lorrie in their fundamental nature. The importance of perspective here thematically highlights The Complex Nature of Belief with respect to knowing another person.

“I could picture my young Daniel so well, his joys and disappointments, his irritations and affections. But I’d lost sight of his inner life these last years. There’d be glimpses here and there. I knew he suffered. […] A hidden life under that surface beauty, a life with longings and losses, with passions that could explode.”

As Isaac reflects on Daniel’s most recent years, the image of an inner life held under pressure thematically connects to The Natural Explanations of Violence. The combination of Daniel’s familial trauma, his external attractiveness and popularity, and the hormonal surges of adolescence created a “hidden life […] with passions that could explode,” which led to Daniel’s violence and cruelty.

“She’d spent years contorting the facts of her life into new shapes so as to cause herself less pain. Years denying what was true. But she wasn’t in the woods anymore. She was safe in this house with a man who wanted to hear what she had to say. That was the truth of her life now.”

Evangeline’s complicated relationship with truth combines here with the importance of perspective. The conflict between trust and self-preservation in Evangeline thematically emphasizes The Complex Nature of Belief: Her denial of facts to reach a deeper truth as a self-preserving act makes it difficult for her to accept her new security with Isaac.

“I was born with the potential to explode. She had seen that. As for the fuel that propelled me into the air? It had been loaded over the years, one tiny drop at a time.”

The novel introduces the metaphor of an explosion in connection to violence in Isaac’s earlier description of Daniel. Here, Jonah’s description of himself continues to develop that metaphor. Simultaneously, his explanation of the pressure within him that led to him murdering Daniel thematically encompasses The Natural Explanations of Violence.

“‘I see only Katherine. She’s beautiful and horrifying. I don’t mean so much as a woman, though that way too, I suppose. But she was beyond that. She was this explosion of love and violence. Pure, unconstrained…’ I searched for the word. A minute passed, then another. ‘Life. She was life.’”

This passage contains another metaphor of explosion in connection to violence—this time, in Katherine’s willingness to take risks to protect Daniel. The difference in the action and violence in this passage from the earlier passages thematically demonstrates The Natural Explanations of Violence: In this case, Katherine’s violence is the natural “explosion of love and violence” of a mother preserving life and embodying life.

“Finding the girl’s once-cluttered medicine cabinet now bare, I slammed it shut, the mirror cracking down the middle. I opened and slammed it again. Then again. And again. I slammed it until glass broke free and sliced the air in arcs of fragmented light. I slammed it until the last shard exploded in the bathroom sink.”

Isaac’s expression of rage at losing Evangeline combines with the earlier metaphor of explosion to include a literal explosion of glass. The symbolic image of light reflects in the shattering glass and in the release of Isaac’s anger, thematically underscoring The Natural Explanations of Violence.

“My son was everything I was not. He was an alpha animal, a strong, muscular being who took what he wanted. He fought with everything in him on the football team, wrestling, at the gym. He battled for primacy in all aspects of his life. When I’d witnessed him exerting dominion in small, cruel ways, I saw him as one would a panther, beautiful and powerful and fierce, taking what was his.”

The extended metaphor in which Isaac compares Daniel to a wild and powerful animal highlights the natural aspect of violence. Isaac’s admiration of his son’s strength reveals why Isaac was willing to ignore the negative impact of Daniel’s cruelty and therefore why he didn’t intervene.

“I ignored the evidence before me and held him in the Light, pictured him glowing with the Divine that still existed in him. And he changed over those minutes, a falling away of the layers of not-God, not-love, of man-made cover, of an ego’s false protections. Then he was weeping. Silently shaking as tears spilled onto his cheeks.”

In this scene, Isaac embraces the internal goodness in Peter, releasing judgment and condemnation to focus instead on “that of God” in Peter. The “glowing” that Isaac creates in his imagination begins his journey back to an understanding of the unity of life—the symbolic light that connects all beings.

“For the first time in her life, she could feel in her chest the hearts of others—both Isaac’s and Lorrie’s—with such consistent clarity that she was willing to pay the awful price of truth. Their pain, their need, now hers. It was a wonder—a painful, horrible, terrifying wonder—this unexpected understanding of love.”

In the process of preparing for motherhood, Evangeline can finally see and acknowledge the love that others have for her. Her recognizing the risk to herself in telling the truth but choosing to tell the truth anyway demonstrates her development as a character and thematically connects her characterization to The Complex Nature of Belief.

“She wondered if this is what it meant to be a mother. To ache for a life that was not your own, to long for a child who could, without the slightest input from you, fall completely out of view.”

The potential for loss inherent in parenthood is a secondary theme throughout the novel that the emotional imagery in this passage clarifies. Lorrie and Isaac’s loss becomes palpable to Evangeline, which forces her to empathize and understand while remaining firm in her insistence that her child have the best chance at everything life has to offer—a choice that her mother never made.