Stanford University

Stanford University, founded by Leland Stanford on his Palo Alto farm, is the institution where Aron Trask enrolls after a year of accelerated study. For Aron, the university is less a place of learning than a stage for a painful collision between his romanticized vision of academic life and the gritty, unglamorous reality of a young man struggling with homesickness and a fragile sense of self. His brief time there becomes a crucial turning point, accelerating his flight from the world he cannot reconcile with his inner ideals.

Aron's Idealized Expectations and Disillusionment

Aron arrives at Stanford carrying a picture of academic life that is vague and beautiful, drawn from sources like Doré's illustrations of Dante's Inferno—a vision of clean-eyed young men and immaculate girls in academic robes, converging on a white temple on a wooded hill in the evening, their faces shining and dedicated. The actual Leland Stanford University is nothing like this. He finds a formal square of brown sandstone blocks set down in a hayfield, a church with an Italian mosaic front, and classrooms of varnished pine. The bright angels of his imagination are replaced by youths in dirty corduroy trousers, some study-raddled and some learning the small vices of their fathers. The natural noise, fuss, and horseplay of undergraduates horrify him after his dream. Aron's response is not to adapt but to retreat. He leaves the college dormitory for a dreary furnished room in Palo Alto, walking the mile to and from campus each day, cutting himself off from university life. He attends his classes only to leave as soon as possible, living instead in a world of newly found memories, where the house next to Reynaud's Bakery becomes warm and dear, Lee the epitome of friend and counselor, his father a cool, dependable godhead, and his brother clever and delightful.

The Creation of an Idealized Abra and the Decision to Leave

In his isolation, Aron creates an immaculate dream of Abra Bacon, falling in love with his own creation. He pours his longing into nightly letters, setting down every evil thought and renouncing it, going to bed purified. These letters, dripping with high-toned longing, make Abra uneasy, as she cannot know that Aron's sexuality has taken a not-unusual channel. He makes a compact with himself: at Thanksgiving he will go home and be sure. He remembers Abra's suggestion that they live on the ranch, and this becomes his new dream—a life of purity and peace in the little draw, cut off from ugliness, where he can hide in the evening. His decision to leave Stanford is already forming before he returns home for the holiday.

The Thanksgiving Revelation and Final Departure

During the Thanksgiving visit, Aron reveals his plan to his brother Cal. He confesses that he does not want to go on at college, that he just does not like it. He wants to take over the ranch, a plan Abra had suggested long ago. Cal tries to persuade him to finish the term, but Aron's mind is made up. The decisive blow comes later that same Thanksgiving night, when Cal, in a fit of jealousy and anger, takes Aron to Kate's place and reveals their mother's true identity. The shock shatters Aron's world. He runs away, and the next day, instead of returning to Stanford, he goes to San Jose and enlists in the army, lying about his age. He sends a postcard to his father from the training camp, saying only that he is in the army and not to worry. His departure from Stanford is thus not a gradual withdrawal but a violent rupture, a direct consequence of the revelation he could not bear. The university, which was to be his path to a new life, becomes merely the first stage of a flight that ends in his death in the Battle of Cantigny.