Crossroads

Russ Hildebrandt, associate minister of First Reformed Church, is probably the character who is condemned most harshly by the other family members. In many ways, their condemnation is justified. Clem sees his father as a moral fraud—a person who pretends to care about the underprivileged but actually only cares about himself. Becky sees him as a person who does not excel at practicing the faith he preaches. Perry sees him as someone whose first priority is having an affair with Frances Cottrell. Marion sees him as someone who has stopped loving her because she gained weight.

Some of these assessments are more accurate than others, but none is categorically wrong. Russ genuinely cares about people who face discrimination, but he is also guilty of occasionally grandstanding about his deep respect for such communities, showing off his liberal bona fides. Moreover, he is sometimes guilty of trying to turn people of color into instruments for his own ends—like when he tries to convince Clyde, a young Native man, to educate his Crossroads crew about Navajo struggles despite Clyde’s obvious disinterest in acting as a prop for white teens’ enrichment. Meanwhile, Russ has a relationship with God, but he also sees himself as a victim of God’s unfair preferences. In Rick’s office, he tells Rick that he perceives God as having arbitrarily chosen Rick to be gifted with leading kids, while he, Russ, did not receive this gift. Rather than relating to God by trying to obey God’s laws, Russ prefers relating to God by wallowing in guilt, thereby plunging himself into the depths where he most needs God’s mercy.

Russ’s first priority is indeed having an affair with Frances Cottrell, as Perry suspects, because he stopped loving Marion after she gained weight—though he also resents her for other reasons. When faced with the choice to prioritize his family life or attempt to start an affair with Frances, he chooses the latter, leading to his downfall and a rift in the family that remains unresolved at the end of the novel. Despite flagrant warning signs of Perry’s drug use before the spring Arizona trip, Russ chooses not to address his son’s problems in any way, take him on the trip, and not monitor him at all, even letting him join the group going to an entirely different work site. As a result, Perry gets himself into a situation where he is robbed and abandoned on the side of the road, which ultimately leads to him accidentally burning down a building when trying to start a fire for warmth. Afterward, Russ realizes his folly, repents, and gives up the affair, recommitting himself to his wife and family. By this point, however, he is too late to have prevented tragedy, and Russ must live with the knowledge that his restless pursuit of Frances played a significant part in his family’s economic distress and a long-term conflict with Becky.

The oldest Hildebrandt sibling, Clem holds both himself and others to high moral standards. Although he does not subscribe to his father’s Christianity, he nevertheless lives by a strict set of principles. He also has a strong sense of self, not caring about popularity but still glad that his sister is so well-liked.

The high standards to which Clem holds people sometimes result in severe judgments. When he sees his father jockeying for favor among the popular gang at Crossroads and later giving in to their demands, he is severely disillusioned. Thereafter, he sees Russ as a moral coward and begins to realize this fault extends to other areas of Russ’s life in addition to Crossroads. Clem’s assessment is correct, but he feels so strongly about his moral condemnation that he cannot dredge up any love for Russ at all, even when Russ expresses his own deep love and admiration for Clem.

This inflexible attitude is Clem’s major internal conflict throughout the novel. When he decides to give up his student deferment, he makes the decision on abstract moral grounds. His loved ones’ feelings are not a relevant factor. By the end of the novel, he learns that he cares more about maintaining relationships than about achieving perfect moral consistency. Ultimately, he undergoes this change for the sake of Becky, the person he loves most in the world. Although he does not agree with her choices in shutting out Russ, Marion, and Perry, he respects her wishes to not challenge the boundaries she has drawn, thereby proving he no longer prioritizes moral consistency above all else.

Becky, the second Hildebrandt child, is widely known in New Prospect for her beauty and popularity. She is both popular and kind, recognizing that people will like her more for being inclusive than they will for being cliquish. Just because she is kind to her classmates does not mean she is unaware of her power, however. She knows she has a knack for quickly and easily gaining adults’ trust. All the Hildebrandt siblings can see she is both Aunt Shirley’s and Russ’s favorite child in the family. Rick Ambrose also almost immediately takes her into his confidence when she joins Crossroads. All of this favoritism seems to accrue to Becky simply because she is pretty; she is undoubtedly kind and friendly, but not remarkably kinder and friendlier than the average person.

Throughout the novel, Becky goes on the standard teenage journey of establishing an identity separate from her family. She does nothing wildly rebellious; she tries marijuana only once and waits over a year before having sex with her boyfriend, Tanner. She does, however, start disengaging from obvious family tensions like Russ’s distraction, Marion’s sudden changes, Clem’s deferment decision, and Perry’s drug addiction. Rather than concern herself with these problems, she turns her attention to Tanner and to her renewed interest in faith. While Christianity may not seem like a normal outlet for teenage rebellion, Becky’s pursues it apart from her father, the associate minister, and cultivates a close relationship with Russ’s enemy, Rick Ambrose.

After Perry’s arrest and suicide attempt, Becky must decide whether she will take part in bearing her family’s burdens or separate from them completely. She chooses the latter, and her choice is one of the most morally ambiguous in the novel. On one hand, she seems callous toward her brother’s genuine mental health crisis and the extent to which it will dictate her parents’ lives for potentially decades. On the other hand, her parents completely derailed her college plans by first persuading her to split Aunt Becky’s inheritance with her brothers and then taking what was left of her portion to pay for Perry’s legal troubles. The end of the novel finds her aware that she wields power as the aggrieved party and as the mother of a new grandchild Russ and Marion want to have a relationship with. While her feelings of betrayal are not unwarranted, she still has lessons to learn about using her popularity and influence graciously rather than punitively.