25 pages • 50 minutes read
55 Miles to the Gas Pump
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Dangerous Effects of Isolation
From the story’s title to its final sentence, isolation emerges as a primary theme, with Rancher Croom and his wife living far from others in an unforgiving landscape. From his “handmade boots” to the “filthy hat” atop his meager hair, from his home’s “splintery boards” to the attic he keeps under lock and key, Croom lives a hard life he attempts to alleviate with dancing, drinking, and the serial murder of women. That he can stash the bodies in his attic and evade detection speaks to the physical and societal remoteness of the Croom homestead. The story’s last sentence confirms the impression, jarring and banal all at once: “When you live a long way out you make your own fun” (Paragraph 3).
This sentence in particular prompts speculation on the role isolation plays in Croom’s depravity. Living remotely allows him free rein over his darkest impulses. With neighbors and law enforcement likely as far away as the titular gas pump, he need feel no compunction about giving in to his urges. All he must do is keep his wife away from the attic, which he easily does with a padlocked door and, undoubtedly, threats of violence. His suicide and that final roar could suggest internal conflict regarding his crimes—i.e., feelings of guilt or even a means of stopping himself from killing again. This would make his violent death, though self-imposed, a kind of justice (perhaps the only kind of justice possible in such a remote area). Alternatively, he might have feared discovery and punishment or simply found himself unable to cope with the isolated, and isolating, nature of his existence as both a remote rancher and as a serial killer. The story elicits a wealth of questions concerning isolation and its effects on the human psyche but provides few answers.
Mrs. Croom experiences isolation in a different but also damaging manner. Married to a brute of a man in the middle of nowhere, she has no opportunity for “fun.” Her life as a cattle rancher’s wife is likely a hard one, filled with never-ending domestic chores and responsibilities over the livestock as well. There is no suggestion she is in regular contact with neighbors or female friends. With no healthy outlet for her curious mind, Mrs. Croom focuses on what her husband has been up to, with his “padlocks and warnings” to stay away from the attic.
As the story indicates, she suspected all along that he was up to no good—that he had “paramours.” When she finds the bodies, it is “just as she thought […] she recognizes them from their photographs in the paper: MISSING WOMAN” (Paragraph 2). With no one to whom she could voice her suspicions and likely fearing what her husband would do if he learned of them, she remained silent. The story offers two possibilities at once: that Mrs. Croom implicates herself in her husband’s crimes, and that she is a victim too.
The Violence of Rigid Gender Norms
Rigid gender norms emerge as another significant theme in the story. In the marriage of Rancher and Mrs. Croom, he rules the home, and she must comply. Descriptions of Croom paint him as a tough and volatile man, a “walleyed cattleman” who does what he pleases, whether it be dancing, drinking, or indulging in the serial murder of women. That he places the attic in his home under lock and key and forbids Mrs. Croom to go near it for 12 years indicates the extent to which he controls his home and his wife. Mrs. Croom refers to her husband as “old Croom” or “Mr. Croom” rather than by his first name, lending further insight into the dynamic between them: that they maintained a formality throughout their married life, that she was expected to defer to her husband, and that there may have been a significant age gap between them.
Beyond this power imbalance, the story hints at the very different spheres in which Croom and his wife moved. Proulx’s description of Croom is expansive; he dances, charges across open fields, “windmill[s]” his arms in the air, and finally “rises” as he dies. By contrast, Mrs. Croom’s movement is downward and cramped as she saws through the roof into the attic—i.e., further into the house. The contrast suggests that Rancher Croom has a life beyond the confines of his home, whereas Mrs. Croom remains relegated to the domestic sphere, remote from neighbors or friends.
Such rigid gender norms contribute to the violence against women on display in the story’s second paragraph. As Mrs. Croom peers through the hole in the roof and sees the bodies, she discerns that “all of them [had been] used hard, covered with tarry handprints, the marks of boot heels, some bright blue with remnants of paint used on the shutters years ago, one wrapped in newspaper nipple to knee” (Paragraph 2). The nipple suggests a sexualized naked body (i.e., that Croom raped his victims), while the remark that the corpses were “used hard” illustrates the extent of their dehumanization. To Rancher Croom, the women were objects to satisfy male desire, and they bear masculinized marks of possession—“tarry” smears and boot prints.
The detail of the blue paint evokes the legend of Bluebeard, a 17th-century French fairy tale in which a young wife enters a forbidden room and discovers the bodies of her husband’s former wives. In its early incarnations, the story likely served as an indictment of female curiosity, or a reminder for girls and women to obey their husbands. In more contemporary times, and in Proulx’s story, the implication seems to be that isolation and rigid gender norms can be a lethal combination.
Death and Mortality
With Croom’s suicide in the first paragraph and the discovery of the bodies in the second, the story presents death and mortality as another important theme. The deaths in the story are unnatural and violent, but while Croom’s suicide toward the end of the first paragraph may be shocking, it is not entirely unexpected. Up to that point, the narrative paints Croom as a ferocious man craving kinetic, visceral experiences, and he displays similar ferocity in ending his life.
The story has him “galloping drunk over the dark plain” (Paragraph 1), stopping at a cliff, dismounting to consider the rocks below, and then stepping over the edge. The paragraph’s final words speak to Croom’s energy even when dying. He “steps out, parting the air with his last roar, sleeves surging up, windmill arms, jeans riding over boot topics, but before he hits he rises again to the top of the cliff like a cork in a bucket of milk” (Paragraph 1). A life force such as his does not go down easily. The oblique, figurative phrasing even raises the possibility that Croom is not dead. The description may be metaphorical—e.g., it could be his spirit, memory, etc. that “rises”—but Proulx does not rule out an actual disruption of the laws of physics. The brevity of the story gives it the feel of a fairy tale or parable, where a “miraculous” event of this sort might occur.
The bodies in the second paragraph markedly contrast with this description of Croom’s death. Where Rancher Croom is active even in death, his victims are completely immobile—passive objects for Croom to abuse and his wife to observe. Further, where Croom’s suicide unfolds in such figurative language that readers can only infer that he has in fact died, Proulx describes the women’s corpses in literal and graphic detail:
[…] some desiccated as jerky and much the same color, some moldy from lying beneath roof leaks, and, all of them used hard, covered with tarry handprints, the marks of boot heels, some bright blue with remnants of paint used on the shutters years ago, one wrapped in newspaper nipple to knee (Paragraph 2).
The brutalized bodies reflect not only Croom’s wrath but humankind’s vulnerability to the passage of time and the workings of nature—the drying out, the mold. Like her husband, albeit to a lesser degree, Mrs. Croom looks upon death without pity or sentimentality, likely thanks to years spent living on the barren Wyoming landscape.
The juxtaposition of these very different views of death contributes to the sense of amorality that permeates the story and culminates in its final sentence. The story treats Croom’s dead victims with utter realism while depicting Croom’s final moments heroically. At the very least, the narrator spares Croom the indignity of describing his corpse; at most, it hints at an apotheosis, or divine status, that none of the murdered women enjoy. Although the nature of the story makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions, the suggestion may be that it is foolish to look to death for justice.
Unlock all 25 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 9,150+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Annie Proulx
