SOURCE: "Expanding Circles: Inductive Composition in Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place," in Malcolm Lowry Eighty Years On, edited by Sue Vice, Macmillan, 1989, pp. 70-91.

In the following essay, Head explores the motif of expanding circles in the short stories of Hear Us O Lord, maintaining that it affects Lowry's use of language and functions to link the stories.

The stories in Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place have a special significance in the Lowry canon, a significance that has not been fully acknowledged. Usually it is only Under the Volcano that is deemed, without serious qualification, to exhibit a highly sophisticated and innovative formal control. There is, however, a similar innovation operative in Hear Us O Lord, and this essay is primarily concerned with this element of textual tectonics. The design of each story conveys a sense of closure and this...