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.
I agree that hatred and miscommunication are central motifs to All the Living. Throughout the novel, Aloma and Orren are constantly bickering with one another all because of their failure with effective communication. The rooster symbolizes their lack of understanding towards one another.
ReplyDeleteExpanding upon your ideas, the rooster can also symbolize Orren and Aloma’s naivete as they navigate through this new experience with a new person. When they first move in together, Aloma is only twenty and Orren is not much older. Aloma tries her best to fulfill her role as Orren’s wife despite her lack of experience by teaching herself to clean and cooking “vegetables she did not know the name of” (10). Meanwhile, Orren uses what his father taught him to single-handedly run the farm. Neither knew what they were doing job-wise, much less with their relationship.
Orren intended for the rooster feet to be an olive branch, demonstrating to Aloma that he satisfied her request. However, when Aloma freaks out, Orren is puzzled in her surprise as he had done her a favor and was trying to end their fight. His gesture represents how they know so little about each other and their lack of experience when it comes to marriage-like relationships. Being so young, Orren and Aloma are still figuring out themselves. Their disagreement with the rooster demonstrates how it will take time for them to grow occupationally and emotionally to finally reach harmony with one another.
Aloma's relationship with Orren throughout the book definitely plays a major role in how the two behave towards each other. They are both coming from broken places; Orren lost his entire family and Aloma never had one, and you can see how these losses play into their attitudes.
ReplyDeleteWhen Aloma and Bell are driving together Bell asks her about her family and how she deals with their absence and she replies, "I never even think about them. I don't feel anything one way or the other way" (137). Whether Aloma truly feels this apathetic about her family or she was just trying to act tough in front of Bell is irrelevant, but we know that she grew up without any real parental figure. Throughout the book we read about her confusion with Orren and his grieving process and how he won't rent the newer house or sell the farm even though it is too much work for him alone to do. Aloma becomes frustrated with his sulky attitude and she tells him, "They're dead" (157). Aloma doesn't fully understand why Orren is still grieving their deaths and why he has changed so much physically and mentally since the accident. She gets irritated with him because he won't continue his life the way it was before and she doesn't understand why he doesn't grieve like her.
This conflict of thought leads to tension between the two which spills into their everyday lives. The rooster and Orren's overall absence push Aloma to be angry, not necessarily from inconvenience but from misunderstanding.
For two young adults in their twenties, it is not surprising to see communication affecting their relationship negatively. Orren’s entire family had died and he was left to take care of the farm and the land that it sat on. Aloma went to live with Orren without a second thought, and took on the role of his wife, despite not being engaged and only dating for a short while. I can see their fight about the rooster very accurately displaying their relationship as two young adults who are trying to live the lives of someone other than themselves. In her embarrassed state, she uses manipulative words to Orren, saying “If you loved me you could do just one simple thing” (58). Orren, still a young man with fairly limited romantic experience as far as we know, does his best to cater to her wants, but ends up lashing out with his own anger by saying “Fuck you” to Alome and storming away (62). I believe that both of the characters have a lot of room to grow in terms of maturity within their relationship, and this scene only displays that more.
ReplyDeleteThe hatred in Aloma and Orren’s relationship is caused by fundamental miscommunication. As they talk about their dreams and aspirations in the beginning of the novel, Morgan writes “if these two strands were like roads that could never converge, neither Aloma nor Orren cared to notice” (21). It doesn’t really strike Aloma what sort of life Orren expects her to live at the farm, and when she shows up, she is disappointed. However, Aloma is stubborn and somewhat prideful, and so she throws herself into the work. She eventually chafes under her limited responsibilities, however, and Orren’s lack of communication. Later on, miscommunication causes the couple further material and emotional harm. While Aloma is given permission to feed the chickens, Orren never tells her to keep the feed dry and she ends up killing a large number of their chickens with fouled food. Orren is understandably upset, and Aloma also blows up and forcefully cleans the coop. This situation could have been avoided if Orren were simply more receptive to the idea of Aloma helping, and able to provide her basic instructions on what to do and what to avoid. Furthermore, later on Aloma spends her own hard earned money buying the chickens back – money that they can ill afford to spend.
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