All the Living - Hope for the Living Dogs

One theme seen very consistently in All the Living by C.E. Morgan was the theme of hope. This was seen in the preamble quote saying that “all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion” (Ecclesiastes 9:3). This quote is a particularly somber one, but helps outline the type of desperate hope that the Aloma and Orren in this book hold on to and find throughout their time on the farm. 

Orren seems like he has completely given up on life, and has no hope or aspirations left after his family dies. Aloma is seen to be very critical of this as she tells him that he does all this work on the farm for them, when they're already dead. Throughout much of the book i agreed with Aloma. I thought that Orren was hopeless and just on this farm as he saw nothing else that he could do with the rest of his life. However when he and Aloma were fighting, he said that he “never left a thing I [he] loved” (Morgan 162). Seeing his true love for his family and their work on the farm put his actions into a new perspective for me. It seemed that he had hope, but it was a sadder hope, where he thought if he ran and tended the farm, they would be proud of his work and he would make them happy, even though they were dead. 

The strongest form of hope seen throughout the book was Aloma’s hope to make it off the farm and into school for piano, where she could then make a career out of it. Aloma was itching to leave the farm as soon as she got there, and told Orren “someday I’m gonna be a great piano player and we’re going to get out of here” (Morgan 22). This dream was seen consistently throughout the whole book, as she took on a piano job at the church where she was able to make some money as well, and even by the end of the book where she lost the job at the church and she had to suffice to teaching kids at the house. Though unsuccessful in what she initially set out to do (piano school), Aloma is a very good representation of the living dog personality. Especially compared to the desperate hope that Orren experienced, Aloma lived out her days in a fiery pursuit to play the piano, making her overall a more optimistic and driven character.

Lack In All the Living

              Throughout the novel lack is an essential part to the lives of both of the main characters, Aloma and Orren.  I think it is the connection they both share that helps them to remain together even if at many times it seems they are both unsuited for each other and destined for a life of unhappiness should they choose to stay together, like they do at the end of the novel.

              Neither one of them seem to be truly happy with their lives during the entire novel.  They are completely devoid of the emotions that would render them to feel whole.  Aloma has a lack of grief and attachment to family due to her upbringing that is carried with her through her adult life and becomes the major struggle between her and her lover/husband who has just lost his family and is struggling through the process of grief.  This is touched upon lightly and then brought explicitly to the readers attention when Aloma is telling Bell about her lack of memory of her parents and the narrator states “As a child, she’d tried to invent the feeling of loss inside her.  But like the dead, the feeling simply wasn’t there.” (pg. 104) Orren has a lack of joy throughout the novel, as he appears to be battling with depression after the sudden loss of his entire family, leaving him feeling very alone with only a romantic partner that he doesn’t know very well emotionally, and has the inability to empathize with him.  These feelings that Orren does not express but seems to have is brought to a head towards the end of the novel when in the middle of an argument with Aloma and a spurt of anger he says “What about you?  You don’t know nothing about it, none of it.  You got no feeling.  All you care about is being happy.  I…I can’t have that, that ain’t a option.  You get me?” (pg. 161)

              In addition to his admission of unhappiness, it was also the question at the end of that quote spoken by Orren that struck as also important in the topic of lack in the novel.  There is overabundance of miscommunication and lack of understanding between Orren and Aloma but it is never brought up between the two of them.  They cohabitate but because they are unable to understand one another they are not able to live together.  Orren has this lack of understanding about the importance of piano to Aloma because he views it as her just doing something meaningless to make herself happy.  At the same time, Almoa views Orren’s obsessive attitude towards fixing the farm and trying to keep the spirit and the memory of his family alive as pointless since they are dead and gone and in her mind their deaths are just a life event he needs to get over and move on from.  I think in the end of the novel although it is unspoken they eventually feel this connection of lacking that brings them together.  When Aloma decides to get rid of the piano and Orren says that they need to get rid of the family pictures to me that appeared to be a submission by both parties that although they may not understand each other and their lives may not be fulfilled they have this deep connection of lack in their lives that they eventually brings them together and will help them stay together.

Life Is Suffering

In All the Living, C. E. Morgan consistently emphasizes the juxtaposition of suffering alone while surrounded by others throughout the entirety of the novel. As the fate of the three main characters begin to intertwine amongst the hidden small farms and sparsely populated back-country towns of sweltering Appalachia, it becomes ever more apparent that life is undoubtedly comprised of pain through which one must persist.Aloma’s character is introduced as someone who’s already experienced affliction through absent parental figures, being renounced by her remaining family and sent to a mission school, and lacking any sort of education towards successful life skills. Until Orren, Aloma never had someone who truly cared for her, even her aunt and uncle “cared in a middling, impersonal way that instinctively reserved their best for their own” (Morgan, 12). Even though she does have remaining family, and attends a school with other children, Aloma has always dealt with pain privately, like crying alone into her bedroom pillow her first night at the mission school (Morgan, 12). But through this lack of endearment, Aloma’s life is described in terms of withstanding until she can reach her dream of becoming a professional pianist and escaping the towering mountains of Kentucky. 

Yet, even her aspirations of escape fall short in the form of Orren, where a once shiny relationship transgresses into a combative, mostly physical exchange that is no longer enjoyed, but endured, “she felt she did not know his face, this stranger, not at all, but also she did not care then” (Morgan, 109). While the two share the same bed, Morgan still emphasizes that they suffer apart. Aloma is left to grapple with her heated confusion over Orren’s distant behavior and her own future while confined to the big house. Orren spends his days tilling the Earth, attempting to keep his family’s farm in working condition, afraid to let the last remaining shrine of his familial bloodline succumb to the hot Kentucky sun. 

It is within Orren, and even Bell’s characterization that Morgan reiterates no one’s life is free from pain - for everyone experiences death. Because of this one ultimate finality, life cannot be free from suffering. Orren pulls away from Aloma and buries himself into the farm, while Bell retreats from his congregation and mother. Aloma herself even experiences her first taste of death when Orren has to put down the newly mothering cow. While life will always be filled with torment, Morgan also seems to advocate for embracing such discomfort, “and it occurred to her then that he was the last one, he was the distillation of what had once been the complex and dilute lifeblood of a family. He was a family cut down to one” (Morgan, 122). Once Aloma understands Orren’s suffering from his point of view, the two are then able to reconcile and finally move forward together. Tto live means to suffer. And while the main characters originally suffer alone, their reconciliation allows them to view each other’s pain and finally move forward. 

The Sacrifice of Beauty for Strength--or Lack Thereof

In the midst of a book that seems to obfuscate all meaning behind a veil of confusion and distance, it’s almost comical to come across the line as you do, like it’s too obvious.

“You tear off the pretty parts to make it grow stronger,” says Orren to Aloma, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the blatant thesis statement the book was offering me (67). Morgan clearly wanted the message to come across as strongly as possible: if Aloma wants to be strong enough to survive life on the farm, she has to let beauty die. I expected, following this, a series of scenes in which she begins to put aside piano to help Orren with the farm, allowing her values of beauty to slowly die as she becomes a slave to the ideal of hard work. I even thought the book would end with a romantic comedy-esque expression of how Orren’s words aren’t true, and how you have to balance beauty and strength to truly succeed.

Somehow, none of that happened. It felt as though the concept was forgotten as I continued to read a book in which Aloma values beauty and Orren values work and neither of them ever compromises or gives up some part of themselves to help the other. Despite the novel setting up this obvious trajectory for Aloma, it never followed through. And despite how obvious it may have been, it might have been a better book if it had.

Morgan does well to write selfish characters who take selfish actions, and it becomes almost like reality television to watch Orren and Aloma duke it out in a battle of who can be the most self centered. But the problem with this is that you can’t connect with or truly hate either character, and so when the book ends with the both of them being some degree of unhappy, you can’t feel satisfied in their discomfort. By the end of the book, Orren hasn’t come to value beauty more—he still focuses deeply into work and becomes possessive and angry with Aloma for acting out of his wishes. He shows no growth or change from the way he was at the beginning of the book. Aloma, in juxtaposition, hasn’t come to value beauty less—she still, despite knowing that she is stuck on the barn, wistfully imagines a life where she isn’t “fastened to this place” (197). Despite the whole of the book, neither character has truly changed; in fact, they’ve remained almost completely static.

C. E. Morgan sets up the book to spark a question—must beauty be sacrificed for strength? This question could have been a desperately needed thread which tied the book together. However, the nonexistent character arcs and static, stubborn characters that she creates seem to dissolve this meaning right before the eyes of the reader, fading into a wash of vague wondering and obscurity.

Beauty & Desire in All the Living

Much of All the Living is about desire, and what Aloma seems to look for most in life is beauty and imperfection. When she first meets Orren, it is noted that he was common-faced and not pretty, but she notices his crooked finger that was once broken and not properly set and she liked the ‘wicked’ way that he glanced at her sideways (16-17). Despite Orren’s common face, when he and Aloma veer off an icy road and almost drive into the creek, Aloma watches him work on the car and thinks of him as beautiful and permanent (23).

Aloma also finds beauty in music and in playing the piano, but both Orren and Bell don’t take care of the pianos in their homes, leaving them untuned and decaying. Aloma becomes upset by this and wonders “why everyone let the best things pass into disrepair” (136). In Orren’s case, he was genuinely surprised when Aloma mentioned that his piano was unplayable, but she had expected more from Bell and this new discovery dimmed her attraction to him.

Moreover, Aloma couldn’t find beauty in the land that Bell and Orren thought was pretty. When Bell took her to his favorite place and showed her the stretch of farmland and coaled ridges, “the prettiest thing [he] ever saw in [his] life,” she found it hard to stand (140). When Orren looks out onto his fields and the mountains, Aloma doesn’t see what he sees, but she knows it pleases him (197). Aloma just sees the land as the dirt under her feet and when Bell shows her his farm and how close it is to the ridge, she gets ‘earthsick’ (134).

Nevertheless, Aloma is still attracted to both men and we see in Orren’s interactions with the calf why she is with him in the first place. His smile when he feeds the calf, laughs loudly as he wrestles with it, and sings, finally showing some appreciation for music, which Aloma loves (183-184). The way he acts after the calf is born is the way that Aloma remembers him; she had mentioned that he had changed and wasn’t laughing the way he used to (33). At the end of the novel, his playfulness and cheerfulness lead to his asking her to marry him, something she had been wanting for some time.

While neither man may be the right match for Aloma, she was drawn to them because of her perception of beauty and love of imperfection. Although she didn’t understand the beauty they found in the land or why they left their pianos to rot, she was attracted to both men and develops a long-lasting relationship with Orren.

Connection Through the Lack of a Date

Throughout the novel All the Living by C.E. Morgan, the main character Aloma often struggles with feelings of despair, wanting something better than the role she has become stuck with due to her gender.  In order to avoid the reader believing that those feelings that Aloma has are feelings from the past, Morgan does not explicitly state the time during which the story unfolds.

Almost all of Aloma’s problems stem from the farm and from Orren.  She longs for a different life, finding her only joy and “...control of herself at the keyboard” (Morgan 78).  Morgan wants the reader to connect with Aloma, who longs for something new in her life.  Every person can somehow relate to wanting something new or different in their own lives, whether it be a big change such as the for the one in which Aloma longs, or some small change such as wanting a different toy when one is little.  Even if the connection is small, it is better for the reader to make a connection than not understand the character about whom they are reading.  The lack of a date allows the readers to associate their wants with the wants of Aloma because they do not necessarily consider the time difference because it is not addressed in the novel. 

If Morgan were to include the date in her novel, then the connection readers can make with Aloma would be limited due to not necessarily understanding the time in which Aloma lives.  It is natural for a reader to picture the character close to something with which they are familiar if there are certain details lacking that would therefore indicate otherwise.  The lack of a date in the novel allows the reader to imagine themselves in the shoes of Aloma: cleaning the house, cooking, wondering why Orren acts the way he does.  Whereas the inclusion of a date to the story could give the reader the thought that they could not possibly connect with Aloma due to the story taking place so far from the time they live, rather than imagining the story in a time closer to themselves.

The lack of a date in the novel allows readers to connect on a deeper level with Aloma because they are more easily able to ignore minor differences between themselves and Aloma.

An Inevitability but not Worth Embracing

Throughout All the Living there is a constant theme of suffering. While this might seem like a melancholy view of life, this is the reality of many lives below the poverty line. Aloma deals with the struggles of those with meager means, and her life gives readers an insight into what a life with struggling life looks like.

The pain that we see in Aloma’s life is a representation of those who get dealt a difficult hand in life and are dealing with the ramifications of it. Aloma has no parents, lives with her aunt and uncle, and they ship her off to boarding school. Many young people living in similar situations end up in school and when they finish without a cent to their name, they end up working low end jobs like Aloma does in the missionary school. The only way that Aloma makes her way out of the missionary school is because she meets Orren who brings her home with him. However, this doesn’t diminish the pain that either of them are dealing with in life. Orren is dealing with the pain of his mother and brother dying and throwing himself into saving the farm that they were maintaining. Aloma deals with her suffering by throwing herself into the piano which she uses as an escape from her life. While the novel suggests that pain and suffering are inevitable in life, it does not suggest that it should be embraced. 

Pain is inevitable in everyone’s life. When looking at those in the novel who have more privileged lives, like Bell, there is still suffering in it. According to Aloma, Bell is a charismatic speaker who gets to be near beautiful things like the church and the piano constantly. But even in Bell’s life, there is suffering. Bell’s father dies and he has to start preaching at the church after that. Even in a life as beautiful and meaningful as Bell’s, there is suffering. However, the pain in the novel is not embraced by any means. Aloma doesn’t deal with the pain of not having a working piano by embracing her suffering, she goes to the church and asks for work. While Aloma is not a very proactive person when it comes to her happiness, this is the one thing she does to get out of her pain. She does not embrace the suffering in her life, she finds a solution to it. Only when Aloma is playing the piano does she truly find happiness. This example shows to readers that suffering is not meant to be embraced, but when the inevitability of suffering comes, one should break through it and work towards happiness. 

Hatred, Miscommunication, and the Rooster

     Hate and miscommunication plague Orren and Aloma's relationship throughout All the Living. Their hatred is not due to them being bad people, however. Orren and Aloma do not know each other very well, and they are terrible at communicating with each other. Their emotions boil inside of them until they manifest as hateful and nasty outbursts. The best example of such an outburst is the couple's fight over the rooster. Aloma and Orren's lack of communication turns an embarrassing rooster attack into a spiteful fight about Orren's inability to provide for Aloma.
      Early on in the novel, Aloma is hurt while escaping the rooster and begins to yell at Orren for not killing the rooster, saying, "I stay in here every day doing what all you want and all I ask you to do is kill one god-damned rooster. Why can't you do that one thing for me, Orren?" (Morgan 57). With this line, Aloma seems to provoke Orren into a fight purposefully. What started as an embarrassing run-in with a rooster is now a conversation about Orren's inability to provide for Aloma. Aloma's hatred toward Orren is not because he will not kill the rooster; it is because she hates staying in the house all day and feels unappreciated. Since Aloma and Orren never communicate, however, this hatred manifests in a fight about a rooster. Orren sees this fight as an attack coming from nowhere. He comes home, and suddenly Aloma is questioning his ability to provide. To Aloma, this fight is a long time coming, a culmination of days of hurt.
     After the fight, Orren kills the rooster and brings Aloma the evidence. When Aloma throws the rooster feet on the floor, "His face then was a tableau of confusion and irritation" (Morgan 61). To Orren, giving Aloma the rooster's feet is the perfect way to apologize to her. She started a fight with him about the rooster, and he solved the problem. For Aloma, the real issue was never the rooster, so she does not immediately recognize this as the grand gesture it is. Aloma throws the rooster feet on the ground because it is just a bandaid on top of the real issue. Orren does not know what the real issue is, so Aloma's disgust seems like the ultimate rebuke.

The Meaning of Rain in All the Living

One topic I find intriguing, and which I have a question about is the presence of rain in All the Living. Up until midway through the novel, Aloma and those around her are stuck in a drought which only becomes more and more of an issue, culminating in a dramatic sermon from Belle, “But, hallelujah, it’s going to rain…and the amens thundered out” (117). All of this emphasis leads me to ask about the importance of rain, and what it symbolizes within All the Living. 

The need for rain is established early in the book and becomes an increasingly pressing issue as the situation worsens for the characters. The drought is often brought up hand in hand with bad events, as showcased while Aloma and Orren argue about getting married and she calls their land a farm, but, “It took some effort not to call it the soil, the dirt, the dust” (43). As the drought builds up, so does the tension between Aloma and Orren. This is exemplified when Aloma discovers Orren’s parents’ initials carved into a tree, and how she decides to not share that information with him. 

Then, when the storm comes, Orren is so excited that he runs outside and gets soaked through his clothes as the rain comes pouring down. While standing out in the field, his description matches that overwhelming sense of release, “His face was light with relief. The rain washed his forehead and his hands, his lips parted” (125). The storm washes away not only the dirt from Orren’s body but all the worry that has built up inside him.

Afterward, the situation for Aloma begins to turn around. While her relationship with Orren doesn’t immediately become peachy and perfect, I feel as though she begins to settle further into her role on the farm. Aloma gets used to her duties in the house and hits her stride playing the piano - even receiving a key to the church so she can practice piano whenever she wants immediately after the storm. Despite further issues like killing the chickens with wet feed, she is able to replace them on her own, and feel a wicked sense of pride in doing so by herself, “Not seeing the look on his face only heightened the satisfaction of knowing she had taken him by surprise” (150). From this, I believe the rain is used as a turning point in the novel. While events are not perfectly divided into good and bad on either side of the storm, I would argue the suffering of the characters is shaped like one of the mountains Aloma despises, and the rain symbolizes that she is finally descending. Rain symbolizes hope in All the Living. When the rain comes, there is hope that better days are on the horizon, and that there is more to the world than lack.

The False Dichotomy Between Orren and Bell

           In All the Living, C.E. Morgan visibly contrasts Aloma’s two main love interests, Orren and Bell. Orren is Aloma’s boyfriend; he is a farmer who is described as “blue-eyed and common-faced” (Morgan 17), and he and Aloma live together on Orren’s farm. Orren lacks the ability to positively express his emotion, which causes the other love interest, Bell, to appear in Aloma’s life. Bell is a pastor at the church where Aloma plays piano. Bell is described as “a bigly proportioned man…[with] blackish curls” (Morgan 70), and he and Aloma connect on a different emotional level than she and Orren do. These differences are pushed forward by Morgan but undergirding all these differences is their focus on the dead and not the living which causes them to be permanently rooted in the Kentucky farmland of their heritage.

This connection to the past and the land is shown through Orren early and often. For example, he refuses to move into the nicer yet smaller house on the farm because that is where his mom and brother lived before they died. This connection to the past also ties him into the land; he will not let anyone else besides Aloma work on the farm until he cannot possibly pick all the tobacco by himself. This is done based on pride and not wanting to let the family down rather than being the most effective to make the most money now. In one of the final scenes of the book, this attachment to the land is put on display when “he looked out at the mountains and his face eased up just barely,” (Morgan 197). Since Orren constantly shows a lack of emotion, seeing this easing in his face allows the reader to see just how he enjoys the land.

               This entrenching in the Kentucky farmland seen with Orren is highlighted by Bell as well. In one scene, Bell takes Aloma up a hill to a graveyard next to a scenic lookout over a holler surrounded by mountains. Bell comments “that’s about the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life” (Morgan 140), to describe the overlook that Aloma is simultaneously looking at it as something that’s “beauty was a thing hard to stand,” (Morgan 140). Bell also derives his pastoral job from carrying on the family legacy and replacing his dad at the post. These similarities in the pervasive mentality of the area crop up throughout the book but are highlighted through the vivid descriptions of the land and the character’s responses to that imagery.

The Literary Tradition of Loneliness

What becomes most apparent at the end of All the Living is the preoccupation of Morgan. The readers see the expression of Southern American female loneliness in a manner in which so many of her predecessors did not or could not accomplish. In the line of literary history, Morgan follows in the track of other Southern writers, predominately those who are male. Her own affinity towards Faulkner is documented. In an article published in The Daily Beast, C.E. Morgan calls Light in August, William Faulkner's great American novel. It is not only particularly interesting to hear about one Southern American writer talk about another, but also because Light in August is one of Faulkner's most acclaimed novels to include a lead female character. It is precisely these sorts of historical developments that inform Morgan's writing of Aloma. The existential acceptance or surrender that is exemplified by Orren's proposal draws parallels to Faulkner's work, "He smiled. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead and they stayed like that until Aloma could feel the heat of his body mingled with the heat of the day, though it was not yet touching them, sheltered in the shadow as they were" (186). At such an abrupt, awkward yet integral story beat, the language that surrounds Aloma is isolating in and of itself. Her name is the only proper noun here and while this may seem small, the way in which the focalization of the text shifts from Orren ("he smiled...he leaned...and kissed) to Aloma ("could feel the heat of his body...") is another indication of a split. There is Orren and then there is Aloma. Separated yet deeply embedded into the main plot line driven by Aloma. She is the character that shares the feeling of abruptness the most in this scene with the audience, creating a more intimate and empathizing connection. What Faulkner failed to do is to maintain the focus on a female character. Light in August forces Lena to share her story with two other male characters. Not only in the sense that they are large characters in the story but also that the focalization of particular chapters becomes strictly dependent on their point of views rather than Lena. The female character is not given the same sort of limelight to preform within her loneliness as other male characters are.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ce-morgan-light-in-august-is-faulkners-great-american-novel

The Piano and how Aloma views herself

The novel All the Living by C.E. Morgan centers around the character Aloma and her experiences living as a poor farmer in rural America. Aloma is orphaned at an extremely young age and spends most of her childhood at a Mission school. While at the school, feeling alone and worthless, she finds something that she can attach herself to; the piano. Aloma develops an incessant passion for the instrument. As she describes: “She had never been good at anything - not rotten, but not gifted either… her new skill damped somewhat the sullen disposition her uncle had warned her teachers about” (Morgan 13).  After the discovery of this skill, the piano transforms into something else within Aloma's mind. It becomes a possibility of a way out of her lacking life, and represents something more than a mere hobby.

The best example of how Aloma views the piano comes after she lands a job at the local church playing for their congregations. The minister, Bell, allows Aloma to come in during the week to practice on the parish piano and soon takes an interest in her playing. She discovers, “how she played not quite as pertly, not as accurately, when [Bell] was not in the building” (Morgan 132). Bell’s interest in her playing abilities leads her to have an interest in him. As if his caring for her craft is an affirmation of his character. However, Aloma’s feelings regarding him soon sour when she visits his home. While inside she finds a piano that created “pitches sagging and unclean” (Morgan 135). Aloma thinks, after discovering the piano in disrepair, “she would have thought Bell a better man than that, a man who could care especially for something - a piano, an old house, a woman” (Morgan 136). Aloma is directly relating Bell’s ability to take care of a piano to his potential to take care of a woman. As if because of his inability to take care of this inanimate object, there is no way he could take care of her as his wife. Later, when Bell refers to Aloma as pretty she “Thought of the piano, she did not feel gorgeous” (Morgan 137). Aloma directly replaces the status of the piano with how she views herself. Since Bell is unable to keep the piano in working condition, unable to keep it beautiful, she can’t see herself as beautiful either. It is apparent that the piano is more than just some passion Aloma developed when she was a child. 

I believe that, to Aloma, the piano represents her self worth. This is why, upon discovering pianos in the story decrepit and forgotten, she often takes personal offense. How characters within the story, especially the men, treat the instrument shows Aloma how she feels they would treat her.

Motherhood in All the Living

Motherhood in All the Living

Mothers manifest in several ways in C. E. Morgan’s All the Living, both living and dead, human and animal. The similarities between these different mothers communicate three main ideas about motherhood. The novel illustrates that mothers are protective, make sacrifices, and provide hope for the future.

Both Bell’s mother, Mrs. Johnson, and Emma protect their sons (for better and worse). For example, Mrs. Johnson seems to prevent Bell from pursuing romance. When Bell brings Aloma home, she asks, “How come you to be here” (136)? Her question challenges Aloma’s presence both in her home and in a town where she clearly does not belong. Additionally, Mrs. Johnson tells Bell about where Aloma lives, ultimately ruining her chances at a relationship with her son (172). In life, Emma protected Orren and Cash from certain aspects of running the farm. Orren’s lack of knowledge appears first during the tobacco harvest, but most prominently during the birth of the calf. By not burdening him with responsibility and information, Emma left Orren less prepared for the future.

Not only does the birthing scene illustrate Orren’s inexperience, it also provides a perfect example of maternal sacrifice. The calf tears its mother during a difficult birth, and Orren has to shoot the cow. While death is extreme maternal sacrifice, Emma also makes sacrifices to take care of the farm after Cassius’s death. Orren acknowledges her endurance, stating, “Mama worked the most, though. I’ll give her her due” (36).

Mothers play a third important role in the novel: providing hope. During the dry spell, Aloma tells Orren that the rain will come and that he needs to have faith. One of the more intimate scenes between Aloma and Orren follows. “With his thumb against the dimple of her chin, he turned her face first to the left, then to the right as if seeing the architecture of her face for the first time, studying on the prospect of shelter to be found there” (114). He then compares Aloma to his mother and calls her faith “worse than silly” (114). Despite this dismissal, Orren seems to need this faith, as he looks for the comfort and support in Aloma that he got from his mother. The broody also serves as a symbol of hope, as her bunch of chicks could mean they get by without their rooster for a while (112). This idea of getting by, relying on a maternal figure ties again back into Emma’s role in continuing the farm after Cassius dies. Emma embodies the hope that her sons and the farm in the same way the broody’s success tells whether Aloma and Orren will survive.

Aloma's Enduring Piano Frustrations

Throughout the novel, Aloma constantly seeks to escape her surroundings. Her only desire is to play the piano, a skill she cultivated through her mission education. Despite seemingly being a talent that brings joy to her world, her education in the art of piano compels her to a life of frustration, one which she will never escape. Aloma had “exhausted all the piano the school could offer and she was sent twice to a woman in Perryville,” (14). Her talent was apparent in her time at school, but she is never able to capitalize on an opportunity to advance her life into the real world. “After all that dreaming, when her final year arrived, she stared down her future with an unblinking eye. She had no money, no people to speak of …she agreed [to stay on staff], because she had nowhere else to go and no way to get there” (15). From the earliest points in the novel, Aloma expresses an intense desire to further her education as a piano student. In fact, she feels most comfortable at the keys, but she simply has no way to use these skills to escape her life in Kentucky.

Even if leaving her home would have been impossible with her education, her skills still frustrate her as she lives her life with Orren. While the prospect of marriage to Orren initially sounds appealing to her, life on the farm proves to provide her with nothing she truly wants. Morgan writes, “I want to not be murdered by birds! I want somebody to show me how to cook something! And I want to play piano again! I want a piano that work, one that’s not ruined!” (58). Aloma’s requests are simple, yet Orren proves incapable of truly providing the thing she wants. She is unable to utilize the education that she earned with the mission, and she therefore spends most of her time frustrated by this. Her frustration is compounded with her lack of resources to do anything other than play the piano; she becomes wholly dependent on Orren to sustain her life.

            Though a good portion of the novel centers around Aloma’s desire to return to playing the novel, Aloma is finally able to accomplish this through Orren’s suggestion to play for the church. This initially proves to be sufficient for her, as “she had not played in well over a month, but she did not hesitate, she felt nothing but eagerness,” (72). Aloma most likely would have been satisfied with playing the piano twice a week at the church, but her passion and opportunity to play the piano is complicated by her connection with Bell. Aloma knows she cannot explore her feelings for Bell since he is a religious man, and her time playing the piano comes to an end when he fires her from her position as pianist of the church. Morgan writes, “I’ll go, she [Aloma] said quietly, finding her voice, surprised that it didn’t tremble” (172). Her sole opportunity to capitalize on her education and begin to cultivate a real-world experience falls apart in a moment. In the end, Aloma is unable to fight for the instrument that she loves and is relegated to her role as housewife on the farm.

Aloma’s education on how to play the piano only serves to frustrate her. She never meets a man who maintains his piano, and she loses her only opportunity to practice her skills. Aloma, by the end of the novel, has no choice other than to marry Orren, as her education will never help her escape her lackluster life.

The Pervasiveness of Land

In C.E. Morgan’s All the Living, it  can be difficult to tell where the land ends and the characters begin. The land shapes the lives of the characters, and their identities can revolve around it as well. Through the format of the novel and the setting being described like a person, and vice versa, the land feels never-ending and inescapable.

In the novel, Morgan does not use quotation marks. The dialogue is not set apart from the descriptions, which gives the scenery and the people an equal sense of importance. Without quotation marks to catch the reader’s eye, everything looks the same. It also causes the dialogue to come across like no one is really speaking because it loses the sense of action and just seems like another description. The novel is quiet, just like settings in the novel are described as quiet or silent. For example, when Aloma first arrives on the farm the “breezeless day was silent” (Morgan 4). Additionally, there are no chapters, so the novel feels sprawling, like how the land is often described through phrases like “a long view of the back property,” “far below,” and “into the distance” (Morgan 5). The format of the book mirrors the descriptions of the land in the novel, showing how much of a pervasive force the land is in the novel—even the style of the novel itself is not safe.

          Morgan also personifies, or just uses descriptors usually indicative of personhood,  the land and other inanimate objects that make up the setting. For example, the pews in the church were described as “dirty blond” (Morgan 71). Also, at the beginning of the novel, “the bottomland yawned into view” (Morgan 3). The sky was later described as looking “like the palm of a great empty hand” (Morgan 187). These description paint a clear picture of the dirty, run-down, lacking, lethargic world Aloma lives in, while also imbuing the setting with human traits. These human traits make the land like its own character.

          Characters are also described like landscapes. When Aloma was looking at Orren, she “saw the knobby ridgeline of his Adam’s apple” (Morgan 51). Bell was characterized by “the gravel of his voice” (Morgan 128) and “the blackish curls there and the white scalp beneath like snowy ground peeking through brush” (Morgan 70). The land is demonstrated to be part of the people. By describing people like places, and places like people, the two become almost interchangeable. This shows the connection that exists in the novel between the characters and the setting.

          The land affects the format and the characters in the novel. Setting is an integral part of the story, and Morgan uses these various techniques to represent that. The characters and setting blend together, and the distinction between the two categories is blurred. This demonstrates the power the land has over the characters’ lives, which is communicated through the story through the rain or Aloma’s inability to leave.

         

Where Do You Find Life? The choice is yours.

A major theme in this novel is lack. The characters lack possessions and money, the land lacks fertile crops, the crops lack beauty, Aloma and Orren lack a healthy relationship. We are made to believe that because of all this lack in the mountains of Kentucky, that there is no life worth living there. Instead, at first glance through the eyes of Aloma, it seems that true living only comes when you move away and chase your passion, just as Aloma wants to play the piano in a big city.

            Morgan points out places in the novel where others seem to find a more subtle kind of joy in life. For example, little things like the rain bring him life as described when Aloma “watched the unclosing of Orren’s face, which the sky had seduced from him” (pg. 125). Orren also find life in youth as he feeds the newborn calf and “when he turned, he was smiling” (pg. 183). Aloma seems surprised by the way Orren finds life, as if nothing on a farm could possibly bring life.

            Aloma looks for way to find joy in her new life as she gets a job playing piano at the church and creates interest in a person, Bell. However, she is never satisfied. Morgan makes it seem as though Aloma finds the beauty in everything and that she is the one that knows what truly living is like, but I would disagree with this. She is torn when it comes to deciding what is truly important in her life and what will satisfy her. As she walks around the empty house, Aloma thinks that it is “strange that she could want to be here (the farm) and at the church at the same time, yet feel that no matter where she found herself, she would be nowhere” (pgs. 154-155). She could be with chasing her passion of music at the church with her new man, or she could be at the farm, living a seemingly comfortable life with a man she has known, yet ultimately, she feels she would be nowhere in life. This makes it seem like Morgan is telling the reader that Aloma will never be with all the living; that she will never be living a life that truly fills her.

            There is beauty and life in everything: in sadness, happiness, loneliness, and company. It is up to each person to decide where they will find that beauty. Some people look in less obvious places, that seem lacking and boring, while others have big dreams and aspirations that call for change and uncomfortable situations. Both of these can fill a person with hope, joy, and a sense of life, but it is up to each person to choose. Aloma must choose where she wants to find life. Orren has found it on the farm with Aloma by his side, Bell has found it in his faith and his community at church and with his mother. It is up to Aloma now to pick how her life is meant to be lived.