SOURCE: “Wright Morris' The Field of Vision: A Re-reading of the Scanlon Story,” in Journal of American Culture, Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer, 1991, pp. 53-7.

In the following essay, Hall offers an allegorical interpretation by using a character's story in Morris's novel The Field of Vision.

Interpreters of The Field of Vision agree with characters in the novel in dismissing Scanlon as “a mummified effigy of the real thing,” more dead than alive (The Field of Vision [hereafter abbreviated as FV] 101).¹ While these descriptions are correct, they fail to account for Scanlon's nevertheless remembering a tale which conveys the core of the creative western myth. This core is the vision of new possibilities open to those heroic enough to make a dangerous journey through unfamiliar territory.

Critics usually think of Boyd as the central voice in the novel, partly because he is the contemporary artist and the only adult character...