One of Ours

I do like Willa Cather a lot, but I’ve had mixed responses to her lesser-known works, so to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this. I was pleasantly surprised. There is a lot going on—a coming-of-age story, family drama, bits of romance, a sustained meditation on modernity and some passing thoughts on religion. Oh yeah, and then there’s the war. There are at least a couple of common criticisms of this novel that I really disagree with. One is regarding the length of the “Nebraska” section of the novel, and another concerns the jarring break between that section and the “war” section. Honestly, I think the two authorial choices are of a piece, and I found them entirely in keeping with Cather’s general approach to storytelling. I think she wants to avoid telling one of those war stories where the young man’s entire life seems to be leading to its climactic, heroic end, and I think that’s exactly what she accomplishes. Claude’s life in Nebraska is leading just where it ended up—a man who has penned himself in, or allowed others to; one whose nature can never simply accept what is presented, but also cannot seem to break decisively with it. If he’s destined for anything, it’s to find himself trapped by the results of his own indecision. It’s certainly foreseeable that he would reach the point of wondering if it’s worth carrying on. As much as anything, it’s simply an accident of time that he is just at that moment presented with an “acceptable” way to leave it all behind, to get out and away. The first section needed its length, in order to put Claude in that place. And the transition out would necessarily have to be abrupt, in order to be at all true to life. I’ve been a bit surprised to see that people find the latter section of the book naively patriotic, as though it were celebrating Claude entering the war. Honestly, I never really felt that it fit the typical narrative—the war giving our hero some grand new purpose. Claude certainly holds it up as some kind of ideal. But Cather seems to write from an awareness of the gap between that ideal and reality. To me, the point of the war (narratively) seemed mostly to be giving Claude an escape. And to be honest, I think that’s all he needed. It isn’t the idealized “purpose” of the war that expands his life, it’s just the basic fact of traveling far from home, experiencing new ways of living and unfamiliar worldviews. I don’t think either part of the novel could stand on its own—each is most interesting in relation to the other. The book’s throughline—the most prominent and interesting theme—is the question of belonging. Claude is constantly in search of community, whether it’s in his hometown, with the Erlichs, on the ship, or with the various people he meets in France. He’s always acutely aware of human fellowship when he sees it, and cognizant of where he stands in relation to it. And I do think there are groups that might claim him—the Erlichs, his comrades in the military. But the irony of the title is that those aren’t the people who would celebrate him as “one of ours”—that would be his family & the residents of his Nebraska hometown, among whom he never really did belong.

After reading The Song of the Lark for a Lit Crit class i tried reading all the Willa Cather books i could get my hands on. Although both O Pioneers and My Antonia are more famous (and rank higher on my list of favorites) this is the title that won the Pulitzer.
Claude, a young man living in Nebraska is disillusioned by his family's deteriorating values and becomes a soldier in World War I. There are many beautiful passages in this book as Cather is a beautiful writer and it is well worth reading.