Coming of Age
The bulk of stories in Rock Springs are told by male narrators looking back upon a singular moment that changed them somehow forever. Those that are not also to tend to feature stories about growing up—or, more often—not growing up. “Great Falls” takes off from the horrific scene of boy watching his father confront his wife’s lover with a gun, yet being helped to go through with any intention of vengeance. Another witnesses his mother breaking off for a relationship with a potential stepfather after a geese-hunting expedition details. Acts of actual violence mix with acts of emotional violence to create a moment at which something becomes different than it was before. However, because these narrators are older and looking back, the revelation is that it takes time and maturity for the younger self to come to grips with what exactly changed. And even with age such knowledge is not always forthcoming.
Fathers and Sons
The collection is comprised of ten stories and in more than half of them the word “father” appears. In fact, it is entirely possible that no other noun recurs more often in the volume than the word “father.” And what is a story about a father without a child? Except that in the case of Ford, fatherhood usually connotes male offspring. The most prevalent subject here is the relationship between fathers and son. Usually it is a relationship that is strained to say the least, but almost always the real issue driving the relationship is a confusion of roles, needs, and expectations. The men of Ford’s fiction are representative of the stoic stereotype of the west, but modernity has peeled back the layers to illuminate that such stoicism is out of step with the times. As such, Ford’s father and sons are equally seen as out of step, usually leading to aimless lives of eternal drifting.
Transience
Indeed, drifting through life in constant transit from one place to another—or one level of maturity to another—is another theme linking the stories. Transience appears in the form of time as well since so many stories are first person recollections from the past by a narrator firmly installed in a present set well after the events being recalled. Nevertheless, those past events also move through time to confer an effect upon the older narrator that in another might have occurred at the time. The world of these stories is populated by men drifting through life; sometimes they are the protagonist and other times represent an antagonistic intrusion. Ford’s first person narrator are prone to observations like that made by in “Optimists” who observes that “situations have possibilities in them, and we have only to be present to be involved.” Unfortunately for many of the characters here, they are often only physically present while emotionally in transit.
