Summary
Hagar wakes up the next morning feeling parched and momentarily contemplates leaving and trying to get back home. She quickly decides against this, feeling too proud to admit she was wrong. She finds some rainwater to drink in a pail outside and takes a walk to the sea. At the beach, there are a little girl and boy playing. Hagar approaches them, offering them food, which frightens them—they run away. Hagar then falls while walking and is left on the beach, in pain and helpless. She becomes angry, which gives her the strength to pull herself back up.
Hagar remembers telling Mr. Oatley that she will stay a few weeks more in Manawaka after Bram’s death. She doesn’t want to leave John alone. She spends her time there cleaning the house and, one time, finds a small box that had belonged to Bram’s first wife, Clara. Hagar brings the box to her daughter Jess’s house and is surprised to find John there. She overhears them speaking about Bram, and Hagar is angered that Jess has taken on a sort of motherly role with him.
John is often going out with Arlene and drinking a lot of alcohol. One night, Arlene brings him back to the house, and he is extremely drunk. Hagar is ashamed of him, mostly because she is worried that others in town have seen him in this state and that her reputation has been ruined. Hagar goes back to the coast, to Mr. Oatley’s house; she tries to persuade John to join her, but he refuses. Hagar returns to Manawaka the following summer while Mr. Oatley is on vacation and sees that Arlene is now spending time at the Shipley house, often cooking for John. Neither of them has a job or money. Hagar has an argument with Arlene after warning her that John is not right for her.
One night, Hagar overhears a conversation between John and Arlene where they talk about how they will get married once Hagar leaves in two months. Arlene also tells John she wants to have his baby, but he reminds her that they are broke. Hagar is unable to move, lest she is caught eavesdropping, and has to overhear them making love. Later, Hagar finally pushes herself to go talk with Lottie Dreiser about John and Arlene’s relationship. The conversation starts off with both of them undermining the other with snide remarks, but they quickly realize they are in a similar position: they both care about their child’s future.
Back in the present, Hagar makes her way back from the beach and decides to stay in the old cannery instead of the abandoned house. The cannery is full of old things and Hagar makes herself at home, finding a blanket and a table at which to eat. She sees dead June bugs that have pretty colored backs, and she puts them in her hair. There is a seagull trapped in the house and its panic disturbs her. She throws a crate at it and injures the bird; she only feels annoyed. She hears dogs barking loudly outside and fears they will come to get her.
Hagar then hears someone enter the cannery. It is a man named Murray F. Lees. At first, Hagar is sure that he has been sent by Marvin to get her, but Murray assures her that he has just come to the cannery to get some peace and escape the dogs. He informs her that the dying seagull served as bait for the dogs and allowed him time to run away from them. Murray settles in and shares some wine with Hagar. He speaks on and on about his life, but Hagar finds his voice soothing. He says certain coarse things that rub the Hagar the wrong way, but she continues to listen, drinking more and more wine and starting to feel lighter. The drinking softens her attitude towards Murray.
Murray tells Hagar the story of he and his wife’s dabbling in an apocalyptic Christian cult and how they put their lives on hold, believing through this cult that the end of the world was near. One night, Murray and his wife left their baby son at home to go to a church meeting. Murray returned home from the meeting to find that their house had caught on fire and their son had been killed. When he expresses this to Hagar, there is a quiet moment between them and she reveals that she has also lost a son. Hagar reassures Murray that there is no one to blame for the situation.
Hagar flashes back to when John told her that Arlene was moving east to work in the house of a family member. One night before Arlene leaves, John takes the truck out to see her and never comes back. Henry Pearl appears at the house to inform Hagar that John has been in an accident after making a bet. He drunkenly drove his truck across the trestle bridge and was hit by a freight train. Arlene was also in the truck with him and died. Hagar suddenly realizes that such an incident is no one’s fault: it is merely fate unfolding. She sits with John in the hospital as he is dying. In pain and slowly dying, he asks her if she can do something for him, but he quickly realizes she cannot.
Back at the house, Hagar cannot even cry and realizes at this moment she has been transformed into stone. After John's death, she can’t bear to go to the graveyard and see where he was buried. She eventually sees Lottie, but their relationship is now broken and Lottie is in deep grief. Hagar sells the Shipley place and returns to Mr. Oatley’s house on the coast. World War II starts and Hagar reads in the newspaper that many of the boys in Manawaka are killed in battle.
Back in the present, Hagar embarrassedly realizes she has told the whole story of John’s death aloud to Murray. He reassures her that it is good to get it out. Hagar emphasizes how pointless his death was. Murray and Hagar fall asleep and in the middle of the night. Hagar wakes up, feeling sick. She has thrown up due to all the alcohol she consumed. Woozy, she wakes up Murray and talks to him as if he were John. Murray comforts her, and they fall back asleep.
Analysis
Death and tragedy mark these chapters of The Stone Angel. As Hagar makes her home away from home, she delves into the heavier parts of her life’s story, which are mirrored back to her by the equally tragic story of Murray Lees. When Hagar first meets Murray, she goes into her usual egotistical defense mode, such as when she judges Murray’s mother for the very behavior she has been engaged in throughout her life (i.e. worrying what other people are thinking).
Yet, as Hagar drinks Murray’s wine, she begins to soften and open up a bit, sensing the goodness in the man beyond what she first perceived to be a coarseness. There is a genuine moment between them—perhaps one of the only emotionally intimate moments Hagar has ever allowed herself to have—when Murray reveals to her the death of his infant son. Here, Hagar is able to demonstrate real maturity when, rather than butting in with her usual opinions and judgments, she is able to simply listen and empathize, sharing her own experience of loss.
Several potent symbols occupy the pages of Chapters 7 and 8, especially in the present tense scene of the cannery. First, Hagar comes across dead June bugs, which she admires for their vibrant colors and subsequently fixes in her hair. Despite the insects being dead, they have still retained a sign of life. We can infer that this brings a sense of comfort to Hagar, who wishes to hang onto a sense of dignity as she approaches her own death, even as she occupies an abandoned cannery in a helpless and forlorn state.
The seagull that she injures is also exemplary of Hagar’s general attitude towards others. She throws the crate at the bird as if to stop it from bothering her—to have temporary peace of mind. Yet her quick and careless actions end up taking the life of the bird, and only then, after the fact, can Hagar feel a drop of remorse. It is the same way she has been impulsive throughout her life, often blurting out her first reaction without regarding how her words or actions affect others. It is only now in her old age that she is able to have a bit of distance and reflect, to see in some small way that she has made a mistake.
Yet it is clear that The Stone Angel goes beyond merely casting Hagar as some sort of villain. We are made to feel deeply for her, not merely blaming her for her frequent selfishness and cruelty. This is underscored in the way Hagar realizes, upon the death of John, that there is no one to blame for the tragedy—a truth that she also imparts to Murray when he tries to analyze whose fault it is that his son died. Although there are always events that lead up to tragic moments, no one can pinpoint the root cause of such incidents or definitively place them on the shoulders of another. Everyone is, in some way, a product of circumstances that have often been out of their control. Hagar may be a bitter woman, but we can also understand, through her upbringing and many tough life events, why this is so.
Through hearing Hagar’s constant inner monologue, we come to see that, whatever mistakes she has made, it is she who has suffered the most, constantly ruminating about the minuscule details of her life and wondering if she could have made more of it, rather than accepting how events have actually unfolded. Yet it also lies in Hagar’s hands to make a better choice for herself: to realize the humanity of herself and others and soften the stoniness of her spirit that has only alienated her from others, as well as from her own soul.
