Empire Falls

Running through the center of Empire Falls (the community) and Empire Falls (the novel) is the Knox River, flowing both literally and symbolically. The omniscient narration allows for multiple points of view, like tributaries off the main waterway. Thus, protagonist Miles Roby’s perspective anchors the narrative, while Janine, Tick, Father Mark, Max, Jimmy Minty, and C. B. Whiting, among others, also have their say. In addition, the structure of the book, framed by italicized memories recounted by the living and the dead, mirrors the topography of Empire Falls. On one side of the river’s meandering narrative are the memories of C. B. Whiting, erstwhile scion of the family dynasty; on the other side are the recollections of Miles Roby, struggling middle-class, middle-aged father. In between are the happenings and thoughts, both large and small, of the residents of this slowly decaying town.

The river is also a vibrant metaphor for family genealogy: In the prologue, C. B. Whiting is “mistaken for his father on the street” (7), which leads both to an acceptance of his family heritage—including the inheritance of a disastrous marriage—and to a rejection of the “life of enforced duty and chastity in Empire Falls” (11). This rejection will first lead to suicidal ideation, as the river beckons him in its burbling voice, and ultimately to suicide itself; this will be a death not merely of the self, but also of the family lineage—the Whiting dynasty. Cindy Whiting is female who happens to have both physical and psychological conditions, and therefore C. B. Whiting does not consider her a viable heir.

With regard to the Roby clan, as Charlene tells Miles, all of the tributaries must contribute to make a functioning river: “David has this theory that between your mom and dad and him and you there’s, like, one complete person. Your father never thinks of anybody but himself, and your mom was always thinking of other people and never herself. David thinks only about the present and you think only about the past and future” (226). Making choices, taking chances, coming to conclusions—indecision and incompleteness are themselves tributaries to the river of anxieties inherent to the middle class and the middle-aged in middle America. It is as if T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock, the archetype of mid-life crisis, has taken up residency, with his “hundred indecisions” and time for “a hundred visions and revisions / before the taking of toast and tea” (Lines 33-34).

The river is also a boundary—the barrier between classes, between families, and even between “real life” and irretrievable memories: “His mother’s real life now lay across the river with Mrs. Whiting and her daughter” (391). Grace tries to explain to Miles, when he leaves for college, why she is so insistent on his going away, and why she wants him not to “’come running back to Empire Falls’” (394): “It was as if she’d come to see crossing the river each morning as a deeply symbolic act, and his failure to see the necessity of it illustrated just how little he understood about her, about the river and life itself” (395). The “river of life” is a common trope, and, ever since Caesar’s army infamously crossed the Rubicon, traversing rivers carry freighted meaning. Betrayals and allegiances, and territories and tragedies, are demarcated by bodies of water.

Ultimately, the river is rendered a character unto itself. First, there is its personification in beckoning to C. B. Whiting, its watery voice whispering, “Come…come…come,” an unmistakable “invitation” to suicide (11). Second, there is its ominous presence, dividing families and characters from each other, and driving events forward with an unstoppable current: As Mrs. Whiting puts it, “Lives are rivers. We imagine we can direct their paths, though in the end there’s but one destination, and we end up being true to ourselves only because we have no other choice” (163). No matter how much control one thinks one has—and this eventually includes Mrs. Whiting herself—the river will return “to doing what it wants” (163). This is indeed what happens to Mrs. Whiting, whose death is a comeuppance for forgetting her place: “Why Francine Whiting was in [the gazebo] at the time, of course, was impossible to know. Perhaps she imagined that so long as she herself commanded this stage, the river would never have the temerity to approach” (482). But it does, and it successfully carries her away—from Empire Falls and from life itself.