Notes on Montana 1948

Here are some notes on Montana that I have made they are not complete but will help give some insight into the novel.

Montana Notes
Story is told retrospectively gives an opportunity to reflect on the action as a whole and put it into some sort of context.
This is based a couple of years after the second world war, a time of great change and rebuilding for America and maybe a change of view and world consciousness.
The narrator sums up the main action on the first page, the section written in italics, sets the scene for us to explore what all these events mean and how they tie together.
Chapter one at the beginning sets the scene we get introduced to the town of Bentrock, and to the harshness of the Montana landscape. It appears to be a very unforgiving country, as the narrator mentions on page 15 ‘But all of northeastern Montana is hard country – the land is dry and sparse and the wind never stops blowing.’ We also are introduced to the idea of the Indian Reservation which is set on land described as ‘the rockiest, sandiest, least arable parcel of land in the region’
Instantly we get an idea of the position of the two cultures and that the Indians are seen as inferior and pushed out into the country. We also get the idea that the harshness of the land reflects the people, that the two are connected as such.
The narrator slowly introduces us to his family members, and the first introduced is his father, the first we hear from him is about his disability and the fact that he was not able to fight in the war. We learn that his father is the local Sherriff.
Whilst the narrator expects this to be an exciting job, this does not happen and this could be ironic in the fact that later the action that he so desperately yearns for ends up focussing on his family.
In the first couple of pages we feel that the narrator feels some disappointment in his fathers job because he doesn’t fit the archetypal picture of a sherriff, as he says ‘As long as my father was going to be a sherriff, a position with so much potential for excitement, danger and bravery, why couldn’t some of that promise be fulfilled?’
This is also reflected in the fact the his father doesn’t carry a gun, plus the narrator describes his fathers gun as ‘a small .32 automatic, Italian-made and no bigger than your palm’ pg17
The narrator describes his father as self effacing, on page 19 he talks about the fact that his father never wore his badge, the narrator thought this was because his father didn’t want to laud it over the rest of the community showing off the fact that he was the sherriff, the narrator later realises that there was another reason for this and this was because the badge was too heavy and would have easily damaged the shirt.
We also get an introduction to the narrator’s mother, in the fact that his father does not suit his mother’s ideal image. The mother’s expectation is that he would be an attorney, which he was trained to do.
We learn about the mother that ‘he would be happier if he practiced law and if we did not live in Montana’pg19. She believe that the father has been trapped into this life purely and simply because his father was the previous sheriff and was expected to carry on the family role. The mother want him to break away from this.
We learn in the next pages that his grandfather was sheriff for many terms, and would swap with Len the deputy Sheriff to get past the three term limit.
The grandfather is described as power hungry ‘ he wanted, he needed, power. He was a dominating man who drew sustenance and strength from controlling others. To him, being the law’s agent probably seemed part of a natural progression- first you master the land and its beasts, then you regulate the behaviour of men and women.)’
The suggestion is that when the grandfather retires he is able to retain some of his power and control by installing his son as the new Sheriff. We also learn that the family name is Hayden.
We get to see the clash between what the grandfather’s expectations are of his son and the family name, and also that the mother wants the father to be his own man.
The narrator also mentions that there was another reason for his mother wanting to leave Montana ‘and that reason had to do with me. My mother feared for my soul, a phrase that sounds to me now comically overblown, yet I remember that those were precisely the words she used.’