In the Distance

The novel’s first section outlines the story’s premise: A Swedish boy leaves home and becomes an adventurer in America. The Prologue sets up the story’s frame narrative and begins the novel’s subversion of the Western genre. In keeping with a classic trope of the genre, Diaz creates raw and majestic settings for his solitary hero to wander through from the novel’s opening lines: “The hole, a broken star on the ice, was the only interruption on the white plain merging into the white sky. No wind, no life, no sound” (1). In addition, Håkan looks the part of the main character of a Western. He’s a larger-than-life figure with the physique to match. Diaz paints his protagonist in language that is at once spare and striking: “He looked like an old, strong Christ” (2). His colossal figure is made all the more intimidating by his patchwork coat sewn from “the skins of lynxes and coyotes, beavers and bears, caribou and snakes, foxes and prairie dogs, coatis and pumas, and other unknown beasts” (5). While the rest of the men huddle aboard the Impeccable, Håkan takes an ice bath surrounded by glaciers. Of course, the character is not trying to prove that he is a cut above the others in terms of strength and grit. For the Swedish man, the ice bath is a cultural practice and a reminder of home.

The passengers’ stories introduce the theme of Myths of the West and set the stage for the frame narrative—the elderly Håkan telling his own story. The men know many legends about the fierce and fearless Hawk. However, as the novel unfolds and Håkan relates his life story, he untangles truth from rumor and steadily deconstructs the grandiose and gory tales they’ve heard of him. Through this process, Diaz subverts the Western genre’s tendency to romanticize individualism. The opening of Håkan’s story introduces another major theme, Isolation and the Search for Belonging. The Hawk is both a mythic title and a mark of Håkan’s loneliness because no one knows the immigrant’s real name. On the Impeccable, Håkan feels set apart from the other men, yet some part of him still longs to belong and to be understood, as evidenced by his invitation to stay and listen to his story. Perhaps for the first and last time, he has the opportunity to explain his fabled life in his own words.

Håkan’s acute sense of isolation takes root even before his separation from his brother. The Söderström family “lived like castaways” because of their landlord’s avarice (11). Throughout the novel, the author explores the evils of greed, which motivates many of the story’s antagonistic characters. Diaz characterizes Linus as a storyteller whose imagination and adventure stories keep Håkan alive during his bleak childhood—a touchstone that turns into a tribulation when he eventually becomes the subject of many such Myths of the West. In addition to poverty, Diaz explores other difficulties faced by immigrants in Chapter 1. For example, the language barrier exacerbates the brothers’ predicament when they become separated in Portsmouth. Håkan ends up in California, and Linus hypothetically lands in New York. Thus, Chapter 1 establishes the novel’s premise and gives the protagonist his motivation. While he is lonely and confused when he reaches America, he quickly becomes determined to find Linus: “Although it implied traversing a whole continent, he concluded that the quickest way to reunite with his brother would be by land” (16). This quest drives the narrative action over many decades of Håkan’s life.

Chapter 2 expands the novel’s cast and introduces the story’s third major theme: The Wilderness as a Source of Transformation and Growth. James Brennan’s character arc provides evidence that this metamorphosis is not always positive. When James first appears in Chapter 1, he and his wife tend to an ailing Håkan “as if he were one of their own children, gently forcing him to eat and nursing him back to health” (14). However, financial hardships and the difficulties of traversing the unforgiving landscape change James: “The kind Irishman who had boarded in Portsmouth was vanishing […] he had darkened with disappointment and was quickly being reduced to an angry and distrustful shadow of his old self” (20). The discovery of gold only intensifies this troubling transformation, and his former personality is replaced by greed, suspicion, and cruelty. James treats Håkan as little more than a beast of burden, and the main character’s docility subverts the Western genre, which traditionally romanticizes both greed and rugged masculine individualism as noble and heroic traits.

The exploitation, mistreatment, and violation Håkan experiences exacerbates his sense of isolation. Although his circumstances change, the protagonist’s lack of agency continues when he goes from servitude under James Brennan to imprisonment in the predatory amber-haired woman’s inn. The woman rarely speaks; instead Diaz reveals her character through the setting. Her room contains a vast display of “[d]iptychs, cameos, enamel eggs encrusted with jewels, and all other sorts of baubles” (35), suggesting that she sees Håkan as another pretty trinket for her collection. The author provides clues that the woman is a widow when she dresses Håkan up in elaborate suits as though pretending he is her deceased husband. The woman adorns him with the other man’s artifacts: “A case with a greening saber, dusty epaulets, ribboned medals, wax-sealed letters, frayed aiguillettes, and an embossed snuffbox [that] occupied a place of honor” (33). Håkan’s imprisonment heightens the urgency of his search for belonging. He spends most of his year in Clangston confined in his room alone, and the sexual abuse he endures during his encounters with the woman increase his loneliness rather than providing a source of connection, making him feel “that he [is] gliding upward, into a new, lonelier region” (36). In some ways, his imprisonment in Clangston compares to his mythical status as the Hawk. In both cases, he is cast in a prescribed role against his will.

Throughout the novel, Diaz uses dialogue sparingly to reflect Håkan’s limited understanding of English. This stylistic decision adds to the story’s suspense and also helps the reader better understand how the protagonist’s immigrant status isolates him. For example, during the exchange between Caleb and the amber-haired woman, the narrator describes the characters’ tone, body language, and actions rather than providing their words: “In an attempt to match his cadence to her mien, [Caleb] now seemed to be recalling pleasant memories or invoking a promising future. He even managed a smile himself. Then, out of nowhere, she produced a small ornate pocket pistol” (45). By the time the woman’s former employee grants Håkan his freedom in Chapter 4, his English has improved, but he still doesn’t know the story behind the bewildering drama that plays out in Clangston or the names of its cast.

Chapter 5 depicts Håkan’s suspenseful flight across the desert and demonstrates the protagonist’s determination to live, and also introduces The Wilderness as a Source of Transformation and Growth. Håkan does whatever it takes to survive, even if that means doing things he wouldn’t have done before such as drinking animal blood. This is the first time that Håkan faces the wilderness alone, and his despair and delirium are heightened by the dangers of the rugged terrain: “The sameness of the landscape only add[s] to his derangement. He [goes] in and out of consciousness and [finds] himself in midstride, marching through a country identical to the one he had seen before his spell” (54). Even when he is free to roam the vastness of the wilderness, his solitude is a sort of confinement.

In Chapter 6, Håkan is rescued from his isolation and from certain death by a friend who adds an additional layer to the novel’s discussion of transformation and growth. Admiring how John Lorimer’s “hair had been flattened and tamed by dirt,” Håkan feels that he has at last found “a man who ha[s] been improved by the plains” (56). The naturalist further advances the theme of growth by proposing that humanity is engaged in a process of continuous transformation stretching back millennia. The scientific lecture in which the effusive Lorimer expounds his theory stretches on for pages and contrasts with the narration’s otherwise stark tone. Lorimer’s discovery also clashes with the protagonist’s “limited knowledge of the Bible, his common sense, and, above all, his own humanity” (66), but he becomes an ardent believer in the scientist’s work, which transforms his understanding of the universe and his own place in it for the remainder of the novel. After a year in confinement, Håkan emerges into a world where change is possible and finds solace from his loneliness through friendship.