The Stolen Mercedes
In “Rock Springs” everything begins when the narrator steals a cranberry-colored Mercedes from a parking lot in Whitefish, Montana. The Mercedes represents everything that the thief wants and has never gotten in life. In addition, he targets the car because it represents everything he needs in the short term: comfortable, dependable, and good mileage. However, it turns out to be a junker just like every car he’s ever owned. The breakdown of the Mercedes commences the point at which everything really starts to sour in his life, becoming a symbol of his own failure.
The Hi-Line
“Children” takes place in a remote area of Montana near the Canadian border the narrator says is known as the Hi-Line. He further situates the Hi-Line as a place that can only be lonely to anyone but a wheat farmer and then suggests that place had as much effect on the event which he describes as the time. Although briefly mentioned in one other story in the collection, the Hi-Line becomes a symbol for much of what happens in the other tales. The other narrators are as much affected by time as the narrator here, but they are also equally affected by the loneliness of their surroundings as he is.
Geese
In “Communist” the narrator’s mother tells her on-again, off-again boyfriend that “geese mate for life” as he prepares to take her son on a hunting expedition. By the end of the story, several geese are as dead as the relationship between the two, much to her son’s chagrin since he is one of many young men in Ford’s fiction desperately searching for a father figure.
Jack Russell's Gun
In the story “Great Falls,” the narrator recounts the night he and his father discovered his mother in bed with another man. The man—younger than Jack—is named Woody and for much of the early part of the story he is standing outside with the muzzle of Jack’s pistol pressed against his face while he answers Jack’s emotionally inappropriate questions. Ultimately, he does not pull the trigger, Jack refuses to reconcile with his wife, he dies in an accident, and the son grows distant from his mother. Jack’s stated desire to kill Woody and his further admission that he feels helpless to think of a way to hurt him is powerful enough to stand as a symbol for most of the fathers in this collection packed with paternal relationships. The men here are all visions of the stoic stereotype of the man of the West stripped to reveal that sometimes the philosophy is just a cover for indecisiveness.
Rock Springs, Wyoming
The narrator of the story sharing its title describes Rock Springs, Wyoming as a place he will always recall as being filled with crime and disappointment in which he envisioned a gold mine, but lost the woman he loved. Although every other story in the collection is set literally in Montana, Rock Springs becomes its metaphorical location as most other character inhabit that symbolic setting of disappointment and loss.
