The Land in Winter

“He did not think of himself as that type of man, suburban, prissy, obsessed with possessions, but there was something voluptuous about the car he couldn’t quite get over. He would in time, of course. In time he would think of it as just a car.”

Driving on his morning rounds, Dr. Eric Parry reflects on his Citroën ID. The car symbolizes a more sophisticated and sensual life that conflicts with his self-perception as a practical, provincial doctor. The diction, particularly the word “voluptuous,” reveals a desire for a life beyond the mundane, foreshadowing the affair that serves as his primary escape. However, his internal assurance that time will dull his attachment to the car acknowledges that novelty does not provide long-term satisfaction—a recurring issue in Eric’s search for an authentic self.

“At some point Bill would be called over, would stand there in a rage of embarrassment at his father’s attempts to dress like an English milord […] All of this made his father unshakeably happy […] he might have begun to sing, one of those wavering and tearstained songs in the language he forbade his sons to speak a single word of.”

Bill Simmons recalls his father’s visits to his boarding school, a memory that encapsulates their complex relationship. The scene reveals a generational conflict rooted in assimilation and hidden identity; the father’s performance of Englishness is a fragile cover for an immigrant past he wishes his sons to transcend. This memory establishes the source of Bill’s desperate attempt to create an authentic life for himself as a farmer, free from his father’s legacy.

“Something breathless about the painting, a pause that had lasted hundreds of years, the question, the waiting, the sense that nothing can move forward until he drops his hand and says whatever it is he has decided.”

While alone in her bedroom, Irene Parry contemplates a print of The Arnolfini Marriage. Her interpretation of the painting serves as a direct commentary on the state of her own marriage, reflecting its lack of communication and emotional stasis. The artwork illustrates Marriage as a Failed Promise of Intimacy by highlighting the unspoken power dynamics and the bride’s passive waiting. Irene’s analysis of the painting reveals her sense of being suspended in a life in which she must wait for her husband to act or speak before her own life can proceed.

“The narrow voices had been waiting for her […] men’s voices, older men mostly. […] Little Rita Lee talking to the doctor’s wife. What a hoot! Little slutty Rita Lee. Filthy, child-murdering Rita Lee.”

During a moment alone in the bathroom at Irene’s house, Rita experiences an episode of auditory hallucinations. This passage starkly contrasts the warm, burgeoning friendship between the two women with Rita’s severe, hidden psychological trauma. The specific and cruel nature of the voices reveals a painful past involving sexual shame and a termination of pregnancy, burdens she conceals beneath a performed social identity. This moment of intense interiority exemplifies the novel’s focus on secrets and the deep, unhealed wounds that characters carry.

“He was not, he decided, much interested in the past. The war, the finest hour, his childhood. Those years were white ash to be dusted from his hands. If he wanted things he would have to take them—1963, for example. Why should it not be his?”

While standing in the abandoned WWII airfield, Bill’s internal monologue reveals a conscious attempt to reject history, a central conflict in the novel. This declarative statement is immediately undercut by the symbolic weight of his surroundings, creating a dramatic irony that highlights the unspoken burdens of post-war existence. The metaphor of the past as “white ash” suggests a desire to cleanse himself of an inheritance he cannot escape, framing his struggle for an authentic self against a backdrop of historical trauma.

“‘You know who’s up there, don’t you?’ […] ‘The asylum. The bin.’ She shook her head. She waited. She was oddly nervous. ‘Your new friend’s father.’”

During a tense evening, Eric reveals to Irene that Rita’s father is a patient at the psychiatric hospital, weaponizing the information in an attempt to damage Irene’s friendship with Rita. His use of the outdated term “asylum” and the derogatory slang “the bin” strips Martin Lee and the other patients of dignity and humanity. Eric’s revelation connects the domestic sphere to the “asylum,” a key symbol of confined trauma.

“‘He said he had lost faith in us. Human beings. He thought we were addicted to violence. That we were incapable of learning or changing.’ ‘We’re not,’ she said quietly. ‘Not what?’ ‘Addicted to violence.’”

Eric recounts the contents of Stephen Storey’s suicide note to his lover, Alison, distilling the novel’s post-war disillusionment into a philosophical exchange. Stephen’s note, as related by Eric, expresses a profound pessimism linking personal despair to historical catastrophe. Alison’s quiet, almost unconvincing rebuttal highlights the tension between overwhelming evidence of human violence and the fragile hope required to continue living.

“Before the feature there was a newsreel called An End to Murder. It was about the trial of the guards of the Belsen concentration camp. […] The fire burned the camp down but it could not take away what had happened there. […] it wasn’t an end to murder at all, that it would go on somewhere else, always keeping a little ahead of the cleansing fire.”

Irene’s internal flashback to a post-war newsreel is a direct confrontation with historical trauma. She recalls a formative realization about the persistence of evil that directly challenges the newsreel’s optimistic title. The metaphor of a “cleansing fire” that cannot erase the past encapsulates the novel’s core argument about the unspoken burdens of post-war existence: that such trauma is an indelible stain, not a historical event to be overcome.

“‘Which side does he sleep on?’ she asked.”

At the Boxing Day party, Alison poses this question to Irene in the Parrys’ bedroom. The line functions as a disconcerting act of psychological aggression, implicitly asserting Alison’s own intimacy with Eric to dismantle Irene’s sense of security. The incident highlights the theme of marriage as a failed promise of intimacy, as Alison hints at the deceit at the core of Irene’s marriage. Irene’s failure to acknowledge the subtext of Alison’s question illustrates the self-deception that contributes to the Parrys’ hollow marriage.

“In bed that night (in place, perhaps, of making love, to fend it off), he told her about Stephen Storey, chloral hydrate, his role in it all. Irene was wonderful. She defended him to himself, was rational, changed the nature of her touching.”

The blizzard creates a forced intimacy between Eric and Irene, leading to a confession that is both a moment of connection and an act of self-preservation. Eric’s partial truth, omitting his affair, highlights the theme of marriage as a failed promise of intimacy. Irene’s supportive reaction, born from incomplete information, creates a powerful dramatic irony, as her compassion is based on a deception that will soon unravel their relationship.

“They were quiet for a moment. Fear like a touch, a caress. And how strange, thought Irene, that she, who was going to have the child, should know so much less about it, the reality of it, than Eric, who was not.”

During a moment of connection with Rita, Irene reflects on her impending motherhood. The simile comparing fear to a gentle “caress” suggests an intimate, almost welcome acknowledgment of their shared vulnerability as pregnant women. This passage explores Irene’s sense of alienation from the medical and male-dominated knowledge surrounding childbirth, contrasting the experiential reality of women with the clinical power of men like her husband.

“She parted the lips, reached in, and drew out the single sheet of paper. She read it […] then read it a second time, looking for several seconds at the name and address on the embossed heading. After a third and final reading she returned the paper to the envelope and replaced the envelope back among the other things she had taken from his pockets.”

This passage details Irene’s discovery of Alison’s love letter in Eric’s jacket. The narrator’s detached, procedural description of her actions—reading three times, replacing everything—creates a tone of clinical shock that mirrors Irene’s internal state. This methodical process contrasts sharply with the emotional devastation of the letter’s contents, emphasizing the profound and permanent shift in Irene’s perception of her marriage.

“You go mad among familiar things. What you learn, you learn too quickly. And not some comical vileness about a woman in silk, a woman who writes it down, but about herself, her self-deceiving, her part in a farce.”

In the aftermath of discovering Eric’s affair, Irene’s internal monologue reveals a devastating moment of self-realization. The aphoristic statement, “You go mad among familiar things,” captures the horror of betrayal within the presumed safety of a home and marriage. Her realization shifts from anger at the affair to a deeper understanding of her own complicity and self-deception, framing her marital life as a “farce” and initiating her search for an authentic self.

“They started to shuffle around, two souls in hell. There was a mood of confusion, hilarity. Bill lay down and his father started to beat him with the twigs. […] Soon they were laughing, coughing and laughing. How awful, thought Bill, to be loved by such a man.”

This scene takes place in a steam room converted from a WWII air-raid shelter, a setting that physically grounds the narrative in the theme of the unspoken burdens of post-war existence. The bizarre, ritualistic beating with twigs blends pain and affection into a disorienting “hilarity,” capturing the violent and confusing nature of Bill’s relationship with his father. Bill’s final thought exposes the core paradox of their bond: a love that feels like a curse.

“Each of the men on the table had his shirt sleeves rolled, the material held out of the way with sprung metal bands. Each had a row of numbers on his forearm.”

While Bill and his brother visit a tailor’s shop, this observation abruptly introduces the Holocaust into a seemingly mundane scene. The visual detail of the tattooed numbers serves as a stark, physical manifestation of the unspoken burdens of a post-war existence, demonstrating how the immense trauma of the war is carried on the very bodies of its survivors.

“Freedom, she thought, would be comfortless. It would be like this room. It would not feel like home, or not like any home she knew.”

In this moment of internal monologue, Irene contemplates her future after discovering Eric’s affair. Irene expresses disillusionment with her marriage and with the entire concept of domestic security she once valued. However, the setting of the cold, institutional dormitory room functions as a metaphor for the bleakness Irene associates with independence, suggesting that the escape from false comfort does not guarantee a comforting alternative. The quote directly addresses The Search for an Authentic Self in a Prescriptive World.

“It was, he knew, outrageous to watch her, but how rare the chance to see someone sitting in the maze of herself, all unsuspecting, bare as a branch.”

As Eric secretly observes Rita through her window, his thoughts reveal a complex intersection of medical curiosity and voyeurism. The metaphor “the maze of herself” portrays Rita’s inner world as intricate and unknowable, a stark contrast to the external roles she performs. This moment of unguarded solitude highlights the theme of hidden lives and the characters' profound isolation.

“He had on a battledress blouse, camouflage trousers. From his left hand he dangled the longbow. In the other hand, an arrow.”

This description marks the beginning of Frank Riley’s violent confrontation with Eric. The juxtaposition of modern military attire (“battledress blouse, camouflage trousers”) with an archaic weapon (“the longbow”) creates a surreal and menacing image. This combination of the primitive and the contemporary suggests that the ensuing violence is both a modern consequence of suburban infidelity and an enactment of a more primal, timeless form of retribution.

“He pushed them on, the briefcase like a dead animal he had been tethered to in fulfilment of a curse, an archaic punishment, his free arm locked around his brother’s waist.”

Following a car crash, Bill struggles through the snow with his injured brother while handcuffed to the briefcase of money from his father. The simile comparing the briefcase to a “dead animal” transforms the money from a symbol of opportunity into one of a grotesque, inescapable burden. This image encapsulates Bill’s entrapment by his family’s corrupt legacy, literalizing his psychological and moral struggle against the hostile, indifferent backdrop of the winter landscape.

“He was, thought Eric, a man with as close to nothing as made no difference. […] Yet there was, in the thin light of his winter eyes, a certain slaty grandeur, as if failure had raised him up, had scoured him in a way one might almost envy.”

This quote captures Eric’s perception of Martin Lee, an “asylum” patient and former war photographer who documented the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. The paradox of a man with “nothing” who possesses “grandeur” speaks to the unspoken burdens of post-war existence, suggesting that immense suffering can forge a profound, albeit painful, authenticity. Trauma has stripped Martin Lee of all artifice, leaving a core self that Eric, who is trapped in his own deceptions, can “almost envy.”

“In her head she watched the film again. It expanded in her like one of those dried-sponge “magic” flowers children place in water, but this time, in its hollowness, […] the film addressed her with a directness she had not known since the fifteen minutes of An End to Murder, watched as a girl. It was like a word in a new language naming a mood she could not have experienced without the word, without learning it.”

Following a viewing of the film Vivre sa vie, Irene experiences a moment of profound internal change. The simile comparing the film’s impact to a “magic” flower expanding in water illustrates the sudden blossoming of a new consciousness within her, giving shape to previously unarticulated feelings. This epiphany marks a turning point in her search for an authentic self, providing her with a “new language” to comprehend her life and marriage beyond conventional terms. The experience moves her beyond passive suffering toward a more complex self-awareness.

“There was, he thought, something elegant about it as a solution. […] It would shift his identity from cheating husband to polar hero. It would give him the company of serious men, sober, intent. A community!”

As Eric considers taking a job in Antarctica, his rationale reveals a desire to escape the consequences of his actions and reinvent his identity. His framing of the escape as an “elegant solution” demonstrates his intellectual detachment from the emotional chaos he has created. The stark juxtaposition of “cheating husband” and “polar hero” exposes his focus on external perception and social roles. This fantasy of a new life among “serious men” is not a search for genuine connection but an attempt to adopt a more respectable persona.

“She slid her hand beneath it and raised it. I will dream of this for ever, she thought, I will never not see this. […] The way the spine was curled, like a fern or a fish, curled as she herself curled each night in the bed in the spare room above the garage. Was this what her baby looked like now?”

After Rita’s miscarriage, Irene finds the fetus in the toilet and lifts it out. This moment of intense intimacy with loss is rendered through visceral detail and poignant internal monologue. The simile, the spine “like a fern or a fish,” captures both the nascent, natural form of the fetus and its otherness. Irene’s immediate connection of its curled posture to her own sleeping body and her unborn child forges a profound link between the two women, transforming the symbol of pregnancy from one of future hope to one of shared, tragic female experience.