The Story Archive

Postcards

Annie Proulx · 1992 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Loyal Blood walks off his family's failing Vermont hill farm in 1944 and keeps going west, taking work as a trapper, a uranium prospector and a bone hunter, unable to settle anywhere or to be near a woman. Postcards in his hand and in other hands punctuate the decades while the farm is sold off in lots, the barn empties and the family comes apart at a distance. Proulx's first novel, and the first by a woman to take the PEN/Faulkner Award.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalHistorical
Theme
Exile & HomecomingGuilt & ConscienceIsolation & AlienationNature vs Civilization
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
WandererEverymanScapegoat
Plot structure
EpisodicChronicleEpistolary
Symbol / motif
The LetterThe EstateThe HarvestThe Journey
Conflict
vs Selfvs Nature
Mode / tone
RealistElegiac
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

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