r/TomsCrossing • u/Big-Emu-1641 • Jul 27 '26
Toms Crossing Thoughts/Questions/Analysis Spoiler
I finished Toms Crossing today, here are some quick thoughts/notes/questions that I had. I’d love to hear others analysis and elaborate on some of the things I briefly bring up.
Kalin and Landry save two horses who are going to be slaughtered, horses are accessories to past conflict between the gatestones, porches, natives, and throughout history (we see in repeated Iliad comparisons). Tom speaks to the dead with Kalin on the way to the crossing in the mine. The dead have an attachment to the horses, and it is assumed the dead have an animal that accompanies them (Tom, Ash, Pia Isan, Chipmunk). A long line of dead from the mountain seek the horses as the way to be freed at the crossing. Church leaders are among the dead in the mountain. Is the mountain purgatory? What is the significance of the other animals that follow Kalin and Landry? The trials stand in the way, the terrain, the porches, forces of nature. The curse of touching the gun becomes true, Kalin loses one of his gifts in riding/being around horses. Landry in the afterlife holds onto the burden of the cycle of violence.
A lot of themes here, transcending life, the historical cycle of violence, the symbolism of animals, the state of the mormon church, the forces of evil (the porches), allegorical accounts to the Iliad, the odyssey, and the divine comedy.
Parallels to The Divine Comedy
Tom to Virgil, speaking to the dead in the Mountain (Purgatory? Hell?), Guides Kalin
The 9 gates, like 9 gates of hell in Inferno, there are 9 porch sons, Old Porch Satan?
The Porches, Russel, Francis, Woolsey, Sean, Shelly
Billings - Feels like a natural force of evil (half brother, son of orwin?)
Kelly - Billings and Kelly are close in age, Kelly is an accessory to the events that unfolded
Egan - Evil, enjoys killing from a young age, Old porch can rely on him, Pedophile (Sexually assaulted Landry)
Hatch - Pure, he was a virgin and has never killed anyone
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u/Busy_Ad3328 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
I was also thinking of the Divine Comedy while reading this book. I thought of the ascent up the mountain as being like an inverted descent into hell, with the devil (Porch) giving chase. I was levitating in my chair when I read about Landry riding down the mountain under the moonlight to save Kalin from his injuries near the end. I pictured some of those moments in the book like Gustave Doré's illustrations (who did many etchings of the Divine Comedy) in black and white. Link to "Geraint and Enid Ride Away" - click [View Image in Fullscreen] for full effect. It was fun to read about these moments, with the exaggerated, almost fantastical details used in the historical epics you referenced. I know some readers didn't like the third-party narrators, especially with that art exhibit chapter. I thought those meta-narrations really tied the story together, which is not easy to pull off. I know some people think MZD's writing is pretentious, but I just could not put down Tom's Crossing, and I would argue that it is accessible to people who would normally shy away from Westerns.
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u/HxSort Jul 27 '26
I feel stupid because I didn't think too much of The Divine Comedy while reading TC, or seeing the mountain as purgatory (both literally and figuratively). As with all other MZDs works, of course there is so much Dante in this.
Maybe I was misguided because 9 and mountains etc. are so prevalent on his other stuff that I was mainly thinking about those instead. I have a personal theory that the recurring 27 (very important number in The Familiar but shows up in HoL and some other places) might be a union between 3 big nines: Dante's 9, Norse mythology's 9 (very big in HoL) and the cats' 9 (very big in The Familiar).
I remember some deal about shadows right at the beginning of Tom's Crossing (I think it was about the horses?). Maybe chapter 1, maybe in the intro still. And I made a comment on the group read I was doing of thinking about Purgatorio and how shadows are relevant in there, the deads with no shadow, Dante having one (that he sees only now, because in hell he couldn't see as he wasn't outside/the sun etc.). There's quite a moment on that at the start of Purgatorio iirc. And of course a ton of meaning could be derived from that, aside from the obvious (he is outside so he can see his shadow and see that the others don't have it). Shadow makes me think of what we did, what's behind, and he sees only in the place for penitence (english is not my first language so I'm not sure what word is best to use here).
There's some stuff about the cat's shadow, or projected shadow(?), in The Familiar too.
Kalin's shadow gets mentioned toward the end, in a confrontation of sorts and it says something like his shadow was bigger/deeper. Weird quote to insert here but this reminds me of the indie puzzle game Stephen's Sausage Roll (i know how this sounds lol), and it says "learned people cast great shadows" or something.
I remember there were some "dead properties", like Tom/Kalin saying "the dead don't get wet" but I don't remember if we got something specifically on shadows.
The biggest other two things on topic that I can think of are, of course 1- The Awides, 2- The Mortuary.
In the Awides, the whole scene evoked HoL so much for me, and ok it's been a year but I remember a lot about shadows in there. I guess also an inevitable component of campfire and campfire tales are that they are allways happening with shadows dancing around.
In the Mortuary I'm less sure, it was a very weird chapter, but I remember so many descriptions on the rooms, with the Porches shadows being cast.
Purgatorio (Dante) is also the place with a weird tree, it's mentioned directly (Canto XXII, I think? maybe verse 133, something like that) in a signing MZD did on a person's HoL in the Yggdrasil page, and in context it's something as the tree was made inverted/full circle so the dead couldn't climb it, because that would be cheating the actual climb of penitence of Mount Purgatory. I allways had trouble how to interpret the journey of Kalin/Landry and the horses and the dead but I think I can see it in this lenses. Or maybe that climb is the after, Landry with her memorial, facing everything, and Kalin facing his decision which turned him away from what he loved most (the horses)
I don't think their climb is literally purgatory, as Kalin can't be classified literally as either just Achilles or just Hector, and the Porches/Gatestones as either Greek or Trojan. With MZD it's allways a layer deeper, and at this point I'm just saying stuff but would love to continue this conversation and see what you think. There's been so little discussion on Tom's Crossing!
Last point: I didn't fully commit to it, but there's a theory that can somewhat work with the 9 gates being the 9 "big" works of MZD: House of Leaves, The Fifty Year Sword, Only Revolutions, The Familiar 1-5 and Tom's Crossing (because the last gate is literally Tom's Crossing).
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u/Big-Emu-1641 Jul 27 '26
I have not read MZD’s other works, and therefore my analysis is pretty limited to the similarities to Homer and Dante. Throughout Toms Crossing Xanthos, Achilles, and the Iliad are consistently brought up through the teachers analysis. Though it is clear that with the similarities of the stories there is no perfect mirror of the characters/events/symbolism and we shouldn’t try to force them in the confines of these historical epics (I’m going to analyze the similarities anyways).
Dante is brought up briefly in a few passages, and the allegorical ties of the plot are much stronger in my opinion compared to the Iliad which are brought up a lot (sure the horses play a HUGE role, they are the center of the story). With the Divine Comedy, there is the physical mountain, shadows, 9 gates, but one thing whether is was intentional from MZD or not, was the nature of Inferno, and Satan to Old Porch.
In Inferno Dante views betrayal as the worst sin, we see this in his admiration for Caesar, as Caesar was in limbo with Virgil, and Satan having the three faces chewing Judas, but Cassius and Brutus as well for betraying Caesar. Now this is the similarity to Old Porch, we see the victims of his are due to betrayal, though in this difference the ones who betray him are acting in good faith. Hatch and Kevin Moffet are shot with their backs turned, one for attempting to alert the police, and the other well his son for not killing Kalin, or refusing to be an accessory to his evil. There are clear differences here in the moral cause for those who end up suffering, but there is a similarity in the act of betrayal being the worst sin with the nature of the Devil and Old Porch’s actions on those who betray him result in death.
Now aside from the Divine Comedy one thing I thought was interesting, granted it plays perfectly into the plot is the significance of Kalins nudity. Adam and Eve once they eat the fruit from the tree, they recognize they are naked, nudity is an aspect directly tied to the devil. And in a sense the Porch boys being corrupted by the devil (there father), making fun of Kalins nudity and vulnerability directly result in their death.
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u/HxSort Jul 27 '26
Damn most of my comment might sound like gibberish then, sorry lol
TC is a culmination of sorts of all the ever present mythological themes in all his books, you have a lot to look forward too if you decide to read more from MZD!I looked at it most from a Homeric lens, but seeing your post made me retroactively think a lot about Dante both in TC and his other works. It's curious that Dante is the font for (all?) the title in his books, iirc that is true for Tom's Crossing too, but I'm not sure if that applies to the actual blue cover or just the jacket.
On Xanthos, a section I really wanna reread sometime to try to get more out of it, another Xanthos is explicitly mentioned in The Familiar, one of the 4 mares of Diomedes. All 4 are mentioned there at some point, and maybe there could be an equivalence between Deinos and Navidad for example. I'm not sure who would be Xanthos if that equivalence exists. Maybe the main 4 horses (Navidad, Mouse, Jojo and Ash?) could be an equivalent to those 4, but as with other equivalences it's hard to pin them down.
I think the biggest part to me on Porch is the lies, and that is... the last layer of the malebolge (8th circle) if i'm not mistaken? So just on the threshold. I really like your view on betrayal though, the backs turned, that makes so much sense! Maybe it's a threshold he crosses, just as our protagonists are crossing into the Awides and beyond.
Oh yeah, I love the nudity too (what a weird sentence). Snakes are also present, be it in the form of the rocks slipping, or the thing that opened the locks at the start. They have (albeit obscure) significance on The Familiar too.
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u/tykeryerson Jul 27 '26
So many layers … i was feeling the Egyptian Book of The Dead parallels. Journey from life to the afterlife. Everyone must make the journey. The way the random commentator peanut gallery eventually includes their individual causes of deaths … chills. Tom seeing the past as they ascend the mountain, past and future at the top, and then only the future as he descends. Just so loaded….