Final thoughts on 'The Maytrees'
It's hard to imagine another novel where setting is as important as it is in The Maytrees. It seems that setting is vital to all of Dillard's work. Places function as so much more than backdrops for stories and discussions. Places carry ideas. Her works are as much the place where they take place as they are about whatever they are about. The Maytrees is as much about Provincetown as it is about Lou an Toby Maytree.
I find that no matter what way I read it, there is something to get out of Dillard's work. The Maytrees is about yearning, betrayal, forgiveness, and lifelong love. It's characters are stubborn and look for philosophies to fully explain themselves and the world around them. But I don't think the book has to be about any of these things. Dillard takes advantage of the opportunity to ask questions about every aspect, every moment of the human lifespan. She gives her characters space to ponder the questions of falling in love, watching children grow up, watching ones home change almost beyond recognition, growing older, living what feels like two lives, dying, watching ones partner die. She wastes no time concentrating on one point. She writes for the whole life.
Perhaps my favorite moment in regards to all these questions, all this knowledge of life built up, come in the last chapter, when Toby Maytree is on his deathbed. His wife Lou wonders what will become of his life's reading, his questions, his "information."
"Would filaments of learning plant patterns on earth? Would his brain train the sinking plankton to know their way around the sea floor from here to Stellwagen Bank? Her brain would deliquesce too, and with it all she had learned topside. Which was not much, she considered, nor anywhere near worked out. Bacteria would unhook her painstakingly linked neurons and fling them over their shoulders and carry them home to chew up for their horrific babies."
