An Analysis of Russos Empire Falls :: Empire Falls Essays

An Analysis of Russos Empire Falls The characters in Empire Falls go through galore(postnominal) changes through out(a) the novel. By the end of the novel Miles is changed drastically. He begins the novel as a slow moving, trusting, somewhat depressed individual. By the end of the novel, Miles has achieved an epiphany. No overnight letting the world step on his dreams, Miles goes after with a roar the dreams and desires that have lain dormant for twenty years. His ex-wife, Janine, also engenders to realize that the dreams she thought she had are non necessarily what she wants after all. Janine comes to accept herself for Janine, instead of flailing around wildly trying to find herself in outward appearances. Tick has learned a lesson that we all come to at some point in our lives, that people are not always good and there is danger in the world.Charlie Mayne tells Miles that in that respect are things that gr deliver-ups destine and want to do, but somehow just cant. (p. 472). In all of Empire Falls, this theme is echoed. There are dreams denied or put on hold. There are characters desperately trying to do what they think is right but failing miserably. The entire town is moving in slow motion toward their own individual explosions. The novel itself meanders along, like the Knox River. Russo says in the Preface, What water wanted to do was flow downhill by the straightest possible route. Meandering was what happened when a rivers shell intentions were somehow thwarted. This is what the population of Empire Falls has been doing for twenty years meandering. To emphasize this theme, Russo himself meanders, oftentimes leaving the reader wondering when something dramatic would happen. In life, this is what so many people do also. People are always waiting for something to happen, always hoping that their waiting is the right thing to do and everything will come out right in the end. But all this attitude does is cause a build up that explodes when the dam bu rsts, as can be seen in the events that lead in the last chapters of the novel. Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Empire Falls. The paragraph above emphasizes the main reason that I find for the novel being such a success. The manner in which Russo is able to actually weave this concept of waiting into his story by creating a feeling of time moving slowly, of anticipation.