as virtuous as he appears; he is merely suppressing his anger. Russo shows the consequences of this repression through Miles’s uncharacteristically violent outburst towards the end of the novel. When Mrs. Whiting attempts to sabotage his new business venture with Bea, Miles loses control. He arm-wrestles Walt and actually breaks his arm. Although Miles is not particularly athletic, it is the sheer force of his pent-up rage that leads to Walt’s injury. When Jimmy Minty tries to prevent him from seeing Mrs. Whiting, Miles attacks him as well.

There are parallels between Miles’s repression and the more extreme case of John Voss. John’s repression is so deep that he barely speaks, despite enduring a lifetime of abuse. When John’s anger finally explodes—just a day after Miles’s outburst—he doesn’t just injure someone; he kills three people. The reasons for repression in these cases vary. Miles’s repression is partly due to his Catholic upbringing and his need to keep his job at the Empire Grill. John’s reasons are likely more complex; he may have learned that silence was the safest response in an abusive environment. Both Miles and John, however, fear the consequences of fully expressing their intense emotions.

It’s possible that Francine Whiting shares this fear. Surely, a woman as composed, measured, and calculating must be suppressing more volatile emotions—such as rage, grief, or remorse. If Mrs. Whiting does have a more emotional side, it has been “beaten into perfect submission,” much like Honus Whiting. The result of her repression is an inability to feel any emotion at all.

Ultimately, Russo illustrates that successful repression is a myth; suppressed emotions will either erupt violently or slowly consume a person from within.

Russo uses Miles Roby as a character to illustrate the debilitating impact of overwhelming guilt. Miles's life is largely motivated by a blend of love, guilt, and fear. His deep affection for his mother makes him feel guilty for not visiting her during his college years, even though she actually wants him to remain distant from Francine Whiting. Mrs. Whiting takes advantage of this guilt to lure Miles back home, fully aware that it would upset his mother. As a result, Miles is left feeling guilty for letting his mother down, for not finishing his education, and for contributing to her suffering as her cancer worsens.

In almost every circumstance, Miles is quick to blame himself. Much of this guilt stems from his Catholic upbringing. One cannot help but feel for young Miles, at just nine years old, preparing for confession after a pivotal vacation on Martha’s Vineyard:

Since returning from Martha’s Vineyard, he had become convinced that he, not just his mother, had somehow sinned there, though he was unsure of the nature of the sin or how to confess it to the man behind the lattice. He knew he had betrayed his father by promising to keep his mother’s secret, yet he felt certain that breaking that promise would mean betraying her. . . . He came to confession armed with a list of sins he hadn’t committed, hoping they matched the gravity of whatever he was hiding.

Miles is ensnared by guilt: regardless of his choice, he ends up betraying someone. Grace, driven by her own guilt, follows Father Tom’s guidance to humble herself by seeking forgiveness from Francine Whiting.

In contrast, Max Roby and Mrs. Whiting experience little to no guilt regarding their actions. Mrs. Whiting is portrayed as cold and unfeeling, while Max is repeatedly compared to an ape. The takeaway here is that while some level of guilt is essential and can have a humanizing effect, too much of it is crippling, leaving a person unable to take action.

In the first chapter of Empire Falls, Miles observes that when patrons look out from the Empire Grill, their eyes are drawn to the abandoned textile mill and shirt factory, instead of the view in the opposite direction. He muses, “If the past were razed, the slate wiped clean, maybe fewer people would confuse it with the future.” The residents of Empire Falls still cling to the hope that the mill and factory will be purchased and revitalized, bringing back the town's former prosperity.

This confusion is further emphasized by the scale model of Empire Falls displayed at the Planning and Development Commission office. While one might expect the Commission to be focused on future development, the model depicts Empire Falls as it appeared in 1959. As Mrs. Whiting remarks, “Most Americans want it to be 1959, with the addition of cappuccino and cable TV.” The only structure in the model that accurately reflects its real-world counterpart is the Whiting mansion, possibly indicating that Empire Falls' past, present, and future are all intertwined with the Whitings.

Russo frequently likens sexual desire to an ailment or fever. For instance, Father Mark, a young priest at St. Catherine’s, struggles with his homosexuality while trying to maintain celibacy. He meets a young gay artist at a protest, who invites him to his studio for spiritual guidance. When Father Mark resists the temptation, Russo notes, “Father Mark’s own crisis had passed, leaving him weak and relieved, as if a fever had broken.”

In another example, Miles’s mother-in-law, Bea, muses that “Saying good-bye to sex was like waking up from a delirium, a tropical fever, into a world of cool, Canadian breezes.” Likewise, Mrs. Walsh, the housekeeper at St. Cat’s, has lost interest in sex and views her past fascination with it as “a kind of temporary lunacy,” which, thankfully, “had been short-lived, not terribly virulent, and ultimately cured by marriage, as God intended.”

In contrast, the younger Janine Roby disagrees with Bea and Mrs. Walsh. After enduring twenty years of a passionless marriage to Miles, Janine has recently discovered the joys of sex. She attributes her sexual awakening and first orgasm to Walt. Her aim in marrying Walt is to “make up for all the sex she’d been cheated out of.” This explains her shock when she learns that Walt is sixty, not fifty, as he had claimed. “What if in a few short years all her well-hung man did was hang?” By the novel’s conclusion, Janine’s enthusiasm for Walt has notably diminished. If marrying Walt could be considered irrational—something Bea would certainly say—then Janine might also be seen as experiencing a temporary insanity.

The sole character who appears to genuinely enjoy their sexuality is Grace Roby. During her brief affair with C. B. Whiting on Martha’s Vineyard, Grace is more joyful and vibrant than Miles has ever seen her. Perhaps this is because Grace and C. B. Whiting are truly in love, unlike most of the other couples in the story, who are mismatched and unhappy. Ironically, during her island affair, Grace also suffers from severe morning sickness, a result of her sexual relationship with Max Roby.

Overall, Russo's novel suggests that sexual desire within an inappropriate relationship, such as between Max and Grace, or when experienced by a self-absorbed person who lacks the maturity for true love, like Janine, is merely a physical condition or hormonal imbalance.