Study Guide to Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645423836
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Guías de estudio
• Subtopic: Guías de estudio

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Ole Rolvaag's Giant in the Earth, a historical fiction novel originally published in Norwegian.

As a novel of the twentieth-century, Giants in the Earth tells the story of Norwegian pioneers. Moreover, many of the accounts throughout the book are personal encounters of Rolvaag and his wife. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Ole Rolvaag's classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains:

- Introductions to the Author and the Work

- Character Summaries

- Plot Guides

- Section and Chapter Overviews

- Test Essay and Study Q&As

The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

OLE ROLVAAG

INTRODUCTION

 

THE PERSPECTIVE

South Dakota, nicknamed the Sunshine State, is the state where Giants in the Earth takes place. Just as sunshine brings brightness, warmth and happiness, so these qualities pervade this story. Similarly, as sharper shadows come with brighter sun, deep, dark, even frightening episodes intensify this extraordinary novel. The author was born in Norway, where the winters are severe and dreary, but where in summer the sun shines at midnight. A keen awareness of contrast, light and dark, was as deep with Rolvaag as the ocean he crossed when, at the age of twenty, he came to the American prairie.

THE PRAIRIE

The story, whose subtitle is “A Saga of the Prairie,” gets its title from the book of Genesis in the Bible. Most people remember the story of Noah’s ark and some remember why Jehovah sent the flood, but few recall that a few verses before Noah’s account begins, we read: “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also, after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bear children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

When he called his pioneers “giants in the earth,” Rolvaag had the whole of this verse in mind. He writes of strong, lusty, confident, joyous men, but behind this vitality the shadow that God may strike again is ever lurking. An understanding of the meaning of the title doesn’t alter, however, the subtitle because it is the sense of the prairie, its sunshine, its windswept grass, its fertility, its rich Americanism that lingers well after the book’s last page has been turned.

Rolvaag is a down-to-earth writer. He is usually thought of as a realist, but his realism is never sordid. His writing is not self-conscious. It is exuberant. Every moment of the “now” is throbbing with the future. The story’s leading character, Per Hansa, is an enthusiast. But for all his vigor, Per Hansa is a tragic figure. Rolvaag’s realism could not have him otherwise. The transition from pioneering to Americanization was rugged physically and also psychologically.

The changes in the prairie that the pioneers bring about are strikingly depicted. Although realistic details are not omitted, Rolvaag never swamps the reader in them. His descriptive passages are never long-winded. Scenes are visualized at a glance. Whereas it is undoubtedly true that the prairie influences the settlers, it never dominates. The people, with their drives, their sense of destiny, win the contest. It is their human qualities that interest. Each character is personal. Each grows in his own way.

THE MANUSCRIPT

When Rolvaag was half way through writing Giants in the Earth and was going back to Norway to finish it, he stopped off at Chicago. The harshness of American city life bothered him. He also stopped off in Washington, D.C. He happened to arrive there on the day Woodrow Wilson died. He was shocked by the apathy of the American public. The people in the capital seemed unmoved by the passing of a great man.

Wilson was revered by the foreign-born. Up to the time of his presidency and World War I, the nationalities that were contributing to the American melting pot jealously maintained their various different characteristics and held themselves apart. It was Wilson who brought them together. His distillation gave a country to the men without countries.

Rolvaag was saddened that America was too busy to remember Wilson, too busy to remember the past. On the ship, as he traveled east, he reluctantly decided that one had to be born in Europe to have a sense of the past. At the same time, he knew that Europeans themselves were unconscious of the “Spirit of the Ages” that physically and culturally met them at the turn of nearly every street corner. It was only when Europeans crossed the Atlantic that they felt the absence of a sense of history. History localizes men in time. It gives them a sense of identity.

Rolvaag decried this lack in Americans. He didn’t want his beloved Norwegian-Americans, his own children, to forget their past. He thought that in 1924 it was important that they remember the Per Hansas who had settled the prairie. He thought they should also cherish the folkways the pioneers had brought with them. The older generation of Norwegian-Americans believed this strongly. As a member of the newer generation - he became a citizen in 1908 - Rolvaag wanted to sustain them. That is primarily why he became a professor of the Norwegian language and literature in an American university, why he made several trips back to Norway, and why he wrote Giants in the Earth.

BIOGRAPHY

Rolvaag, who was forty-seven years old when he began to write Giants in the Earth, said he had been preparing for it all his life. He was twenty when he came to this country in 1896. At that time, however, he was no raw lad. He had already served his apprenticeship as a fisherman and had been offered, if he would give up the idea of emigrating, the command of a fine brand-new ship which in a short time he would own. It would be hard to understand why he didn’t accept the proposition if one didn’t know more about his psychological makeup. In the first place, his father was not just another fisherman descended from a long line of fishermen. The ancestral home where Ole Edvart was born and whence the family took its name was the fishing camp of Rolvaag on the northeast coast. The house was like a big barn, roomy enough for its inhabitants to stretch, make, and repair the fishing nets, twist the ropes, store and prepare the food for a large family, and weave cloth - until he was fifteen, all of the author’s clothing was homemade. This same space was also the scene of much reading. His father, a voracious reader, read aloud to his children and supplemented their schooling.

The school, seven and a half miles away, was open but nine weeks a year, with terms of three weeks each. With the exception of the winter term, when the boys boarded at a nearby farm, the fifteen-mile round trip was made daily Ole started school at the age of seven. He, along with his older brother, picked up as they went quite a troop of children. There were as many as sixty-five children in the school. Religious education dominated the curriculum. Almost every day someone was flogged.

Ole wasn’t good at school. This disappointed his father because the boy was a great reader at home. It is interesting that Tennyson was an early favorite. When Ole was thirteen, his father’s older brother was appointed a permanent teacher in the area’s largest town. Ole’s father, who had considerable intellectual power of his own, was probably a little jealous of his brother’s achievement, but also disappointed that his Ole Edvart was less interested in what took place at school than in the boisterous, rollicking, fighting, sometimes romantic return trips home from school that kept him out till eight at night.

The sooner Ole was graduated, the better. Finally, at fifteen he was confirmed and became a junior member of the fishing fleet. Ole was big. He was a success in the boats. He loved the sea. He enjoyed a storm. Once, when he was alone in a boat, the sea nearly claimed him. He could hardly make it to shore. He was desperate. It took not only his full strength, but more. This over exertion caused a permanent damage to his heart - a heart that was to pain him many times before it dramatically killed him.

For six winters he followed the sea. He was proud, headstrong, and a leader among men. On shore he enjoyed himself immensely. One Christmas season he boasted of going to thirteen dances. He had a series of young loves.

Meantime he continued to read, between other works, large sections of the Bible. He wanted to read more, to travel beyond the Lofoten fishing grounds, to reach the land of Canaan. The promised land beckoned. Yet he didn’t want to leave the family he loved. He had a new sweetheart who he hoped might join it. Then came a passage ticket from his uncle in South Dakota. It seemed to him that fate intervened. It was his destiny to go. Something beyond his control drove him. He left. When he arrived at Elk Point, South Dakota, the true pioneering days were already history.

When Rolvaag arrived, he joined three single men who worked a large farm. He immediately began to earn more money than he thought possible. This was his only encouragement because the fisher boy thought farm life almost intolerable.

In a letter dated August 20, 1897, he writes: “It may be that America is a Canaan, but it will be some time before I say so. If my energy is to be drained as it has been hitherto, I won’t live long enough to say it at all. Last winter, I weighed 180 pounds. The other day I thought I would see how much I had gained on all the good food I had had. Well, the scale showed barely 140. If I continue at this rate, I won’t be a husky man when I get back home.”

His idea was to pay back his uncle for his ticket and then save for his return. He was unbearably lonely. There were even fewer books than at home. After a long period he heard about a Scandinavian newspaper, to which he soon subscribed. He began driving to a nearby town. The people were friendly. He learned a little English. He was less lonely. When his uncle left the farm to start one of his own, Ole did not go with him. Instead he decided to go to school. This he knew he never could do in Norway.

SCHOOL IN AMERICA

In 1899, with the encouragement of the local Lutheran minister, he began school at St. Augustana Academy, a preparatory boarding school. On entrance, Rolvaag was twenty-three and sported a fine, thick handlebar mustache. He worked for his room and board, but this did not make him socially unacceptable because many men, though usually younger, were doing the same. Instruction at St. Augustana was in Norwegian. (Although it has since moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, this school is still in existence.) Rolvaag surprised himself by graduating with honors. Again encouraged by the ministers, he went in 1901 to St. Olaf’s College in Northfield, Minnesota. On his arrival he had forty dollars in his pocket, which was forty dollars more than he had on the day he got off the ship from Norway.

One of his fellow students was John Berdahl, who was to become, years later, his brother-in-law. It was the Berdahl family that supplied much of the pioneer story and history of the area that Rolvaag used later in Giants in the Earth. There was a wide difference between the serious settlers of the ’70s and their fun-loving descendants in the college. Popular as he was on the campus, Rolvaag’s own serious side frequently and privately condemned the students as dull and unthinking human beings. He believed there was pioneering work to be done to save them from the evils of prosperity. In school he criticized not only the students but also their indulgent farmer parents to whom he tried to sell books during the summer vacations. The mellowness of the old Norwegian culture, he felt, was disappearing from their daily lives. It seemed that the art of living was less understood by them than by those who first arrived on the prairie and huddled with their animals in leaky sod houses.

Even in his early student days Rolvaag was disturbed by materialism. The pioneers, he was convinced, had paid a great spiritual price for their material successes. He also was beginning to realize that it was his destiny to strive for a revival of Old World culture. The pioneering spirit and “Spirit of the Ages” must survive and go hand in hand. These are two forces in life that he symbolizes in Giants in the Earth. The essence of the book is the relationship between Per Hansa, the strong, confident, physically courageous pioneer, and Beret, his refined, sensitive, and loving wife. First one is in the ascendancy, then the other. Giants in the Earth is at once a bold adventure story and a deeply moving study of personal tragedy.

LITERARY COMPETITION

Giants in the Earth was not the first pioneer story of the prairie. The turn of the century had produced many which pleased the reading public when the popularity of Civil War stories declined. Willa Cather’s My Antonia carried this kind of book to a new literary high point. It was immediately acclaimed for its superior craftsmanship in 1918. Did Rolvaag have any idea that his own pioneer story would be compared with hers? There is no evidence that he ever entertained such an idea. Rolvaag undertook his writing early in 1942 because of an event far removed from the American literary scene. The popular Norwegian novelist, Johan Bojer, announced that he intended to write a novel, in Norwegian, of course, which he intended to call The Emigrant. This story was to be written from the viewpoint of the Norwegian who stayed at home, but was nevertheless to be a rendering of the life of the settlers in America. Rolvaag, who had been preparing such a book for many years, was afraid that his book would appear too late for him to avoid an accusation of plagiarism. The knowledge that he must write his book in Norwegian compounded his fears. By this time he spoke English well, but he said Joseph Conrad (a famous English novelist whose first language was Polish) was the exception to prove the rule that man writes best in his native tongue. Bojer, who had enjoyed previous literary successes, was formidable competition. Had Rolvaag not been so convinced that he had a more gripping story to tell and that it was his destiny to write it, he would never have had the courage to begin.

Note on the Pronunciation Of Norwegian Names

O is pronounced as the u in but.
A or AA as the o in order.
OI, OJ, as the oy in coy.
EI or EJ as the a in at e.
BJ as the b in bureau.
KJ and KI as the ch in church.
SKJ, SKI, SCH as the sh in sham.
GJ, GI, HJ, LJ as the y in yes.

DETAILED SUMMARY OF GIANTS IN THE EARTH

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

BOOK I—THE LAND-TAKING—CHAPTERS 1-3

A caravan is pushing through the tall grass of an immense prairie that seems to have no end. At the head is a stocky, broad-shouldered man closely followed by a boy of nine. Behind him an ox team is slowly drawing a wagon. Trailing this is a second wagon to which a thin cow is tied.

High on the first wagon sits the mother. A pretty little girl leans asleep against her. On her other side a seven-year-old blond boy peers steadily forward. Per Hansa is moving his family from Minnesota to the Dakota Territory where he is sure to build a fine house, make a name for himself, and thereby convince his wife he was right when they first sailed from their beloved Norway. The wife’s name is Beret. The older son is Ole. The younger is Store Hans (meaning big Hans), and the little girl’s name is Anne Marie. Rosie is the cow.

The family had started in the company of others but after a breakdown of their old wagon they were alone. Because the trail had vanished during a wet, drizzly spell, they became lost. To recover the trail is a matter of life and death. The bright daylight turns to gold, to red, and then to the deeper tones of violet. “Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” Ole asks his mot...