50 pages • 1 hour read
One Of Ours
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Symbols & Motifs
Maps
Maps are a prominent motif throughout One of Ours, an emblem of Claude’s gradually changing relationships to Nebraska and France. In the first half of the novel, Claude struggles with feelings of displacement; though he has a limited understanding of spaces beyond Nebraska, he begins to realize that he might be better off elsewhere, and France particularly beckons to him. When he is assigned to write a term paper on Joan of Arc, Claude reflects that “he had never seen a map of France, and had a very poor opinion of any place farther away than Chicago; yet he was perfectly prepared for the legend of Joan of Arc” (109).
When the Great War breaks out, Claude and his mother begin to obsessively pore over maps, locating places they read about in the news. They are particularly fixated on Paris after the Germans seize the city. This connection to France and to its precise location on a map foreshadows Claude’s future move abroad.
The symbolic significance of France becomes clearer when Claude’s wife, Enid, pursues her own move to China. Enid’s father proclaims, “A man hasn’t got much control over his own life, Claude. If it ain’t poverty or disease that torments him, it’s a name on the map” (361). With this statement, Claude resolves that he does, in fact, have control over his own life, and that he will harness control by actively pursuing the “name on the map” that has been calling to him. Thus, his decision to enlist in the army and go to France feels like a fulfillment of his destiny.
In the second half of the book, maps take on a new significance as soldiers use them to plan battle strategies. When Claude’s unit makes their way through a formerly German-occupied French village, a French family takes particular delight in giving them a German map, which they had stolen and secreted away. The most symbolically prominent moment involving maps, however, takes place during Claude’s meeting with Mlle. de Courcy. To show her where he came from, Claude draws a map of Lovely Creek with a stick in the sand. Now that he is in France, he feels a stronger connection to home. At the same time, his sense of wonder about that connection to home suggests a growing distance from his old Nebraska home and his former identity.
Transportation
Throughout One of Ours, transportation is used as a motif that parallels Claude’s personal transitions. In Book 1, Claude frequently travels back and forth from Lovely Creek to Lincoln by train, feeling divided between the two spaces yet never fully at home in either of them. In a significant moment, Cather’s narrative transitions to present tense as she describes Claude’s reflections on the train:
Claude is on his way back to Lincoln, with a fairly liberal allowance which does not contribute much to his comfort or pleasure […] He is not so much afraid of loneliness as he is of accepting cheap substitutes; of making excuses to himself for a teacher who flatters him, of waking up some morning to find himself admiring a girl merely because she is accessible. He has a dread of easy compromises, and he is terribly afraid of being fooled (60).
This moment foreshadows numerous soon-to-come developments in the book, including Claude’s marriage to Enid, a girl who is merely “accessible.” Combined with its summary-mode foreshadowing, the present tense framing of this moment generates the sensation that Claude is on the verge of something. This sense of change is further emphasized at the end of Book 1, with another scene that takes place in transit, on a sleigh ride with Bayliss, Gladys, and Enid.
The motif of transportation is reintroduced at the end of Book 2 as the newly married Claude and Enid journey to Denver by train. When Enid shuts Claude out of their train car, she foreshadows the ways in which she will shut Claude out of their marriage. Likewise, Claude’s transition from Nebraska to France marks a deeper metaphorical transition in his life. As his boat arrives on the shores of France, Claude compares the rugged shoreline to contrasting headlines he’s read of “bleeding France.” This moment suggests that Claude himself has healed from his failed relationship with Enid and is no longer “bleeding.” He feels he has arrived in his proper place.
The end of the novel comes full circle as the surviving soldiers return home from the war by ship. This moment directly echoes the Book 1 train moment, including the soldiers’ interior reflections and the transition into present tense. The present tense mirroring augments Claude’s absence from it: He is not among the soldiers in transit because he has died—the ultimate transition.
Growth and Harvest
Cather sprinkles numerous harvest symbols throughout One of Ours as physical parallels of Claude’s own personal development. In the first half of the book, Claude notably fixates on the idea of planting a gourd vine like the one the German proprietress grew at her restaurant. Gazing upon the vine, Claude begins to contemplate life overseas, signaling his own consideration of a different life in a different place. The meaning of the gourd vine symbol is confirmed shortly after when Claude converses with Ernest about the Great War, which Ernest declares “the harvest of all that has been planted” (276). Claude’s decision to enlist in the army and move to France is its own harvest, a reaping of his internal growth.
In the second half of the novel, Claude feels a deep connection to the agrarian landscape of France, noticing numerous commonalities with Nebraska’s fields. In France, plants that once seems common, such as the cottonwood tree, now seem beautiful and meaningful. Common food products grown in Nebraska also take on new meaning when Claude sees them shipped in to feed the soldiers. The Great War not only introduces Claude to new ideas and images but also allows him to harvest a sense of fulfillment from familiar ideas and images of home.
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