Too Far to Go Literary Elements

Fiction (short story cycle)

New York, New England, Rome stretching from the mid-1950’s to the mid-1980’s

Primarily told by a third-person objective narrative with the except of a couple that are related in the first-person from Richard’s perspective.

The third-person narrator establishes a tone of direct observation without judgment with the opening words of the first story and then proceeds to repeat this matter-of-fact quality throughout so that first person narration by Richard stand out as distinctly different all the more. Despite the deceptively light mordant quality of irony which occasionally underlines the matter-of-fact presentation, however, the overall mood of the stories as a connective whole is sincerely—but not melodramatically—tragic.

This is the rare case of the duality of the protagonist/antagonist dichotomy being subject to ambiguous reversals of roles. The protagonist of the stories is Richard Maple and the antagonist is Joan Maple. At the same time, the protagonist of the stories is Joan Maple and the antagonist is Richard Maple. Both are to blame and both are victims of the failure of their marriage.

The major conflict at work here is not really that between Richard and Joan. They do not seem to be any more incompatible than the average couple and deal with the disintegration of their marriage and subsequent post-divorce relationship in a more mature way than many. Always hanging over their story, in a very subtle but spectacular fashion, is the zeitgeist of the times: the movement from traditional conservatism of the 1950’s into the radical experimental counterculture of the 1960’s and the Me-Decade flirtation with relationship fads du jour of the 1970’s. It is the evolution of American society that is in conflict with the Maples.

Although the Maples do eventually wind up getting a divorce, the real climax of the tales occurs at the moment in Rome when they both realized they had parted emotionally forever and the “marriage let go like an overgrown vine whose half-hidden stem has been slashed in the dawn by an ancient gardener.”

The rest of the story of the marriage of the Maples is foreshadowed at the end of the story which introduces them, “Snowing in Greenwich Village.” Richard, at the behest of Joan, has walked his wife’s pretty friend Rebecca through the snow to her home where something almost occurs between them, but doesn’t. The foreshadowing is contained in the final words, expressing the thoughts of Richard: “Oh but they were close.”

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Traversing the dark forest of marriage is compared a few times throughout the stories—ironically, of course—to a fairy tale as a kind of sardonic commentary on the lack of expectations for a happily ever after. One of the most effective is the allusion to a certain pair of siblings rather than prince and princess: “Richard felt like Hansel orphaned with Gretel; birds ate the bread crumbs behind them, and at last they timidly knocked on the witch’s door, which said BLOOD DONATION CENTER.”

Imagery derived from allusions to artists with a distinctly recognizable style: “Her face was pale, mottled pink and yellow; this accentuated the Modiglianiesque quality established by her oval blue eyes and her habit of sitting to her full height” and “Rebecca, too, was pale, but in the consistent way of a drawing, perhaps – the weight of her lids and a certain virtuosity about the mouth suggested it – by da Vinci.”

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Parallelism is utilized throughout the stories in various ways, but one particular notable example is the description of Joan after all the other members of the family have been described according what they love. For Joan, the description flips to how she is loved: “Love slows her footsteps, pours upon her from the radio, hangs about her, in the kitchen…Her husband cannot reach her: she is solid but hidden, like the World Bank; presiding yet impartial, like the federal judiciary.”

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An unusual form of personification occurs in a long paragraph about the cats owned by the Maples, Esau and Esther. The narrator observes “that Esau still loves Esther, while she merely accepts him” and then shortly thereafter punctuates this observation by noting that “Mr. Maple loves Mrs. Maple.” In this parallel, the feline couple (despite being brother and sister) are personified into representations of the human couple.