I might be drawing a stretch with this blog, but I’ll do my best to support it so it’s not something abstract and absurd. In crude summary, I feel as though the rural setting is idealized and the city/suburbs as sites for chaos in Lucifer’s Hammer. Before the comet has even begun to be realized as a threat (and harbringer to the justice system) there are some agents of chaos introduced in Lucifer’s Hammer: Fred Lauren, a previously convicted sex-offender, and Alim Nassor, who is shown to commit robbery and murder. I won’t go into them, but I wanted to point out that chaos existed before the coming of the comet.
Of course, I am not trying to say the chaos only lurk in cities, but I am pointing this out because the rural setting in Lucifer’s Hammer seem to contrast this. One example is Harry (the mailman) description of the Silver Valley Ranch on page 66. He describes as a place where violence is “only” a threat – specifically, the rifles – a visible symbol of all-round deterrance and safety; and how Alice Cox, an eleven year old, would have nothing to worry about in a place like this. I also recall Harvey Randall making a comment on how he wished to have raised his boy in Silver Valley Ranch (a support for the rural as an ideal place) and a reference to a girl getting raped in the city. The rural is also shown to be a place not so much affected by the ever-changing hubbub of the cities as depicted poetically in the scene where Harry comments how he had been observing a pomegranate tree for half a year tended only by nature herself – and how nature’s course will play out, “Would they [the falling fruit] choke out the burrs? He had no idea. Harry was a city boy” (65).
I know injustice, evil, and chaos are indifferent to setting, but it’s very hard to deny thus far that rural is almost a haven in Lucifer’s Hammer. Even the suburbs are tainted, as shown in that passing comment by (forgive me, I couldn’t find the page), I think Harvey, who said something along the lines of the suburbs no longer being safe after the Mansons – a reference to the Manson Family and their chain of murders in the once thought, impenetrenable peace of the suburbs. As the comet nears, different characters begin to retreat into nature/rural. Jellison beginning to create a back-up plan just in case the meteor hits and Harvey deciding it’s best for his son to go hiking with Gordie are some examples. And in contrast, chaos surfaces in the suburbs/city: Alim Nassor devises a plan for looting abandoned homes and Fred Lauren carries out his horrid fantasy.
I agree: the novel sets up a serious divide between the city and the country (which is actually a common opposition in American literature since the 19th century), in which the countryside signifies purity and goodness while the city stands for squalor, crime, and immorality. The page you’re looking for is 124, in which Harvey tells Maureen, “Must be nice to live where the only thing to worry about is getting lost….last week a girl her age, about eleven, was raped in Hollywood Hills not more than half a mile from my house.”
Notice how it’s not just a rape — that crime apparently wouldn’t be bad enough — but it’s a rape of a little girl, just about the epitome of depravity. This also makes me think of all the references to Charles Manson and his “family” in LA and Hollywood. It’s almost as if the city spawned Manson (and Lauren) — people who would be (according to the novel) impossible in the mountains and valleys of rural America.