Reading Response 1-5

The Stone Angel is a story about the life of a woman named Hagar. It is written as she approaches death, and is a reflection on her life. Naturally, as person would do in her position, she is reflecting on who she was and the mistakes she has made in her life.

The opening passage to the story is describing the stone angel that sits in the Manawaka cemetery. It is a key passage to the novel because the angel is a metaphor for Hagar, so what is said about the stone angel is really a metaphor for Hagar. Through repetition, imagery, and most importantly diction, Margaret Laurence portrays Hagar and how she was during her life and the mistakes she made through the stone angel’s description.

In the opening paragraph of the key passage Laurence says that the angel was bought “in pride” to mark the grave of her mother who “relinquished her feeble ghost as I gained my stubborn one” (Laurence, 3). Right in that opening paragraph Hagars two major downfalls are revealed; her stubbornness and her pride.

In the key passage it can be seen that the angel is an object of pride because of imagery and diction Laurence uses. The very first sentence of the novel begins with “above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand” (Laurence, 3). This imagery of the angel above the town, standing over everybody else, is a metaphor for how Hagar stood above everybody else, smug in the pride that she was always right and always better.

We can see examples of Hagar’s pride many times in the novel. She thinks she is better than Bram because she is more educated, “This here! That There! Don’t you know anything?” (Laurence,71), and she thinks she is better than No-Name-Lottie because of her birth. Hagar feels superior over Lottie her whole life, even when she finds out Lottie did very well for herself and married a banker.

” “Such a homely boy he used to be”- I did not really want to say a word, but out and out they came- “and none too clever, either. He’s got there more by good luck than good management, if you ask me.” (Laurence, 133).  

And later on when Hagar goes to visit Lottie she continues to judge her, “It was full of ornamental trash as ever. She always put good things side by side with junk and gewgaws” (Laurence 209). Hagar must always judge people and find a way to make herself better than them.

This is shown in the key passage when Hagar compares the stone angel to the other angels in the cemetery. The angel is described as being “pure white marble” and carved from the “cynical descendants of Bernini”. The other angels in the cemetery are described as being “a lesser breed entirely, petty angels, cherubim”. There is so much importance placed on this angel; the imagery of her being pure white marble makes her stick out and seem better than the rest. She has so much importance placed on her, like her father, and you can see from the beginning how his pride was instilled in her.

It is showed how her father has so much pride because there is mentioning of the stone angle being a ``terrible expense`` and it being the ``first, largest, and certainly the costliest (in the cemetery)`` (Laurence, 3). There has to be this mention of it, like without mentioning it would be the end of the world. This relates back to stubbornness that Hagar has. She always has to have her way and she always as to get the last say in things.

When she was younger it was the stubbornness to keep up with Bram which she saw too late, and once John screamed at her ``Can`t you shut up? Can’t you just shut up?” (Laurence,133). Even when she is an old lady she always needs the last say. She mentions the girls black nail polish and why it wasn’t acceptable, and she passes judgement on the people in the nursing home, even though they are just like her.

        The key passage shows how Hagar and her father are alike and possibly it is saying that the first lessons in life are learned from the ones you admire. Hagar did admire her father in his hardworking and determination and perhaps that is why she inherited some of the traits she saw in him.
        After setting up character the key passage moves into repeating the motif of vision. The angel is described as “(having) sightless eyes. She was doubly blind” (Laurence, 3). The repetition of vision catches your attention, and you can see that important realizations in Hagar’s life are followed with references to sight “I could not speak for the salt that filled my throat, and for anger- not at anyone, at God, perhaps, for giving us eyes but almost never sight.” (Laurence, 173). This is when Hagar realizes it was her mistake and comes to terms with blaming herself for marrying Bram.

I believe when Hagar says she was doubly blind, she is referring to her blindness to emotions and blindness to reality.

The key passage shows she is blind to emotions because of how blunt it is. With diction such as bones, eyeballs, carved, and gouging, the atmosphere is set up as very blunt, sometimes to the point of harshness. It can be seen later on that this is how Hagar is with Marvin. There is also the repetition of the word stone. Stone is cold and unfeeling, and Hagar was always unfeeling towards Marvin.

        The second way Hagar was blind was to reality. The key passage says that the angel was also “unendowed with even a pretense of sight. Whoever carved her had left the eyeballs blank”. This imagery shows that the way the angel was made she would never be able to see the truth. The eye balls were blank, it didn’t matter what the angel saw because her opinion would never change. This was true especially when it came to John. She could see the situations but it didn’t matter to her because
        Hagar is doubly blind to emotions and reality, especially when it comes to her sons. She was most blind to reality with John. Hagar could see the truth but to her it didn’t matter. She didn’t confront John when he lied to her about who he hung out with or when he snuck around with girls because to her he could do no wrong. This was because John was hers. When she gave birth to him she was all alone and when she looked down upon him she saw
 “black hair, a regular sheaf of it. Black as my own, I thought…… Sometimes I used to think he’d be certain to die of some sickness, but that had nothing to do with any weakness in him- it was only because I cared so much about him and could never believe he’d be allowed to stay” (Laurence, 122-123).
Hagar is blind to John because he looked like her and later he looked like her father so she was more inclined to like him. Hagar also had legitimate feelings towards John. She could never care much before in her life, she couldn’t pretend to be Dan’s mother or show Marvin praise, but towards John she had real feelings. Because of that John was her favorite child. Later Hagar realized that John was not the perfect child she had always seen his as when she realized he had turned lazy and had been drinking and objectifying women, like Bram.

She didn’t try to hide that fact either and that was a big part of why she was emotionally blind to Marvin. Hagar had always been uncaring towards Marvin. When he was young and tried showing off his chores he received very little praise, there is little mention of him as he is growing up other than to say he helped out on the farm and got along well with Bram but did poorly in school. His childhood is missing from her and then he went off to the war. Even as he left for war Hagar didn’t say “good luck” or “be safe” or “I love you” to him, even though she wanted to. Later Hagar regrets this when she hears Marvin talking to John and realized “Marvin was the unknown soldier, the one whose name you never knew” (Laurence, 182). She regretted not paying better attention to him or showing him affection, but again she didn’t take action to fix this because she thought it was too late and she was never good at showing her emotions anyways.

With Marvin as well as with John Hagar realizes she was wrong too late. She is blinded by her pride and stubbornness and they prevent her from seeing things before it’s too late when it comes to her emotions and reality.  

        As it can be seen Hagar learns about herself through her father, Bram, Marvin and John. You learn about yourself from the people in your life, and it’s interesting to note that all the people in Hagar’s life have been males. Hager never had a female figure to guide her, it was always her against the world which is shown through natural imagery in the key passage when describing the angel. “Her (the stone angel) wings in winter were pitted by the snow and in summer by the blown grit” (Laurence, 3).
        The stone angels whiteness and expense set her apart from the other angels and she had to bear the world alone, much like how Hagar’s self-entitlement and pride set her to face the world alone too.
        Finally the diction of the angel “harking us all to heaven” is important because it shows Hagar’s animosity towards God. She blames god for what happened to John, and she was never able to get over his death. You can see that she blames God for what happened because when she is talking to Mr. Troy she says, “ ‘What’s so merciful about Him, I’d like to know?’… ‘I had a son, and lost him’ “ (Laurence, 121). For the longest time Hagar blamed God and her father and everybody else for her problems, but in the end she realizes she only had herself to blame.
        The key passage is a metaphor for Hagar and her life. The entire character development of Hagar can be shown in this passage, and I think it is interesting that because the book is written at the end of her life, Hagar’s characteristics don’t change much from the beginning of the novel to the end. The big character development of the book is just that Hagar realizes her flaws and learns to take blame, but if you understand the beginning key passage you will understand Hagar and why she was the way she was.