SOURCE: “Three Consciousnesses in Wright Morris's Plains Song,” in Western American Literature, Vol. XXXI, No. 4, Winter, 1997, pp. 291-318.

In the following essay, Hall discusses the three varieties of consciousness he sees represented in Morris's work.

Wright Morris's forty-year career as a novelist has been haunted by the loss of a distinctive rural life, a loss which occurred for the most part during his lifetime.¹ One result is that the search for meaning in Morris's characters nearly always leads back to the home place, usually a Nebraska farm, symbolically at “the navel of the world” (Madden 47, 131). Yet, when characters think about returning or actually arrive at this source, the results are as ambiguous as the Morris phrase, “Real losses, imaginary gains.” “Real losses” are the irreplaceable losses of people, places, or times—especially the home place. “Imaginary gains,” however, can mean either changes for the worse that we only...