No Life Is Ordinary

It has been more than a week since I finished "My Antonia", and even longer since I finished "Giants in the Earth". So...finally, here are my reflections:

Both books incorporate the Land as a character in the story, both are pioneer stories, both take place on the Great Plains, both are the story of immigrants. The prose in both is simple, sparse, profound and beautiful. I highly recommend reading these two books back to back.

"Giants in the Earth" by O.E. Rolvaag, takes place in the 1870's in Dakota Territory (in what would later become the state of South Dakota). The immigrants are Norwegians who are determined to make a life for themselves in America. Throughout the book there is a constant tension between those who embrace the life of the pioneer, with all its hard work and incredible challenges and setbacks, and those who find the life lonely, depressing, and overwhelming. To the latter, home will always be in the old country. This conflict is played out most vividly between the two main characters, Per Hansa and his wife Beret. Throughout the book, there is this sense of foreboding, which climaxes in the ending. The Land seems headstrong, forbidding, challenging, vindictive, relentless, and only sometimes fruitful. The last chapter of the book is entitled "The Great Plain Drinks the Blood of Christian Men and is Satisfied". That says it all.

Musings from "Giants":

I loved the relationship between Per Hansa and Beret - he called her his "Beret-girl" and their love for each other was evident, but also incredibly realistic, and sometimes painful and heart-breaking. A biographer of Rolvaag says "Rolvaag had an exalted view of love, including both the physical and spiritual basis for marriage. He found that in much contemporary literature this important and beautiful aspect of human life was either taboo or presented as something unworthy and unclean. Some even exploited it speculatively in order to titillate the senses. Rolvaag felt that the great writers of the past usually had a healthier view of sex, and none more so than the Bible."

The Christian faith of the various characters is woven into their everyday lives, but for Beret it becomes an obsession. Her view of God as vindictive and Man as utterly depraved, sets into motion the events that lead to the heart-wrenching conclusion.

A discussion takes place among the various pioneer families as to what their surnames should be in the new country, because between the Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes, there are already too many Hansens, Olsens, and Johnsons. I learned that many Scandinavian immigrants took the names of the place they had come from in the old country. Hence the many American names now ending in -dahl, -gaard, -stad etc. (and including last names like Berg(h) and Woldum!) This also explains why we could have been the Olesons - because Grant Horace Woldum's father was named Ole, so had he kept to the traditions of the old country, his son would have been Grant Oleson. Also, this explains why my grandpa, Peder Berg, was called Peder Edvardson in some documents, because Edvard was his father's name, but yet he took the last name of "Berg" when he came to America, probably because it had something to do with the place in Norway where he was from.

"My Antonia" by Willa Cather, takes place on the plains of Nebraska, and although the book never gives the time period, it feels somewhat later than that of "Giants", perhaps the very late 1800's to early 1900's. The introduction to the book is written in the first person, by a friend of the narrator of the rest of the book, Jim Burden. Jim Burden's story begins when he is ten years old, travelling from Virginia after the death of his parents, to live with his grandparents on their farm in Nebraska. On the train across the Great Plains, Jim gets his first glimpse of Antonia, a Bohemian girl a few years older than himself, travelling with her family to the same small town of Black Hawk. The rest of the book is the story of the people of the farms, and later those of the townspeople. But most of all, it is the story of Antonia and Jim, and the different paths that their lives take, and the ways those paths cross over more than twenty years. The story is simple and lovely and filled with a sort of longing for what once was or could have been.

Some quotes from the book that I loved:

"In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones." - Jim Burden

"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again." - Jim Burden

"The trouble with me was, Jim, I never could believe harm of anybody I loved." - Antonia

"I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow had faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life." - Jim Burden

"Do you know, Antonia, since I've been away, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister - anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me." - Jim Burden

"Optima dies...prima fugit." - Virgil Translation: "The best days are the first to flee." - from the title page

So... in conclusion, these two books have given me a picture of the life of the pioneer (a life I don't think I could survive for even a day!), the land that was both fruitful and destructive, the passionate love of that land, the beauty of each human story. There is no such thing as an ordinary life.