One Of Ours

“Almost without realizing what he was doing, he tried to think things out and to justify his opinions to himself, so that he would have something to say when the Erlich boys questioned him. He had grown up with the conviction that it was beneath his dignity to explain himself, just as it was to dress carefully, or to be caught taking pains about anything. Ernest was the only person he knew who tried to state clearly just why he believed this or that; and people at home thought him very conceited and foreign. It wasn’t American to explain yourself; you didn’t have to! On the farm you said you would or you wouldn’t; that Roosevelt was all right, or that he was crazy. You weren’t supposed to say more unless you were a stump speaker—if you tried to say more, it was because you liked to hear yourself talk. Since you never said anything, you didn’t form the habit of thinking. If you got too much bored, you went to town and bought something new.”

When Claude begins attending courses at the State University, his friend Julius Erlich invites him to intellectual discussions and creative gatherings at his family’s home. Because the Erlich family is German and embodies distinctly European values, Claude begins to contrast their ways of thinking with his own family’s American modes of living. Admiring the eloquence of his German friends, Claude interrogates certain assumptions about American communication and masculinity (that real American men don’t need to explain themselves, that articulate, well-developed explanations are not just unnecessary, but unmanly). Claude also exposes the way American capitalism is used a substitute for meaning-making. 

“He never came back without emotion—try as he would to pass lightly over these departures and returns which were all in the day’s work. When he came up the hill like this, toward the tall house with its lighted windows, something always clutched at his heart. He both loved and hated to come home. He was always disappointed, and yet he always felt the rightness of returning to his own place. Even when it broke his spirit and humbled his pride, he felt it was right that he should be thus humbled. He didn’t question that the lowest state of mind was the truest, and that the less a man thought of himself, the more likely he was to be correct in his estimate.”

Claude contemplates his conflicted feelings about his family, his identity, and where he belongs. Throughout much of Book 1, Claude travels back and forth between Lovely Creek and Lincoln, feeling a different sense of belonging and a different sense of alienation in both places. In Lincoln, Claude revels in the intellectually stimulating company of the Erlichs but feels like an outsider in his unstylish clothing, his ingrained habits of masculine “American” restraint, and the sensation that he doesn’t know what to say. At his family farm on Lovely Creek, Claude feels disappointed in his surroundings, but nevertheless believes this homestead is his own place.

“‘Faith,’ as he saw it exemplified in the faculty of the Temple school, was a substitute for most of the manly qualities he admired. Young men went into the ministry because they were timid or lazy and wanted society to take care of them; because they wanted to be pampered by kind, trusting women like his mother.” 

Claude has come to believe that the meaning American midwesterners seek in religion is “unmanly” because he associates religion with the trusting subservience of “women like his mother.” He attempts to reconcile his quest for learning and his search for higher meaning with his distrust for the sources providing his education. This passage also suggests Claude’s increasing emotional distance from “women like his mother.” Though Claude loves his mother, he also resents her as the embodiment of meekness and passivity. He wishes to make his own way in the world and open his mind to new ideas, even if those ideas are uncomfortable.

“Ernest was sympathetic now. He drew nearer to Claude as they walked along and looked at him sidewise with concern. ‘You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up, and it is no way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that—and we learn to make the most of little things.’”

This conversation examines the differences between American and European cultural attitudes through Claude’s friend Ernest, a farmer whose family immigrated to Lovely Creek from Bohemia. Herein, Ernest suggests that Claude spends too much time seeking meaning outside himself and thus takes day-to-day experiences and pleasures for granted. Ernest implies that this is a distinctly American way of approaching life, suggesting that American capitalism—the constant yearning for more land, more, money, and more knowledge—prevents American from experiencing satisfaction. By constantly searching for more, Americans feel they have less. 

“It had always been so. And now, as she grew older, and her flesh had almost ceased to be concerned with pain or pleasure, like the wasted wax images in old churches, it still vibrated with his feelings and became quick again for him. His chagrins shriveled her. When he was hurt and suffered silently, something ached in her. On the other hand, when he was happy, a wave of physical contentment went through her. If she wakened in the night and happened to think that he had been happy lately, she would lie softly and gratefully in her warm place.”

“It had always been so. And now, as she grew older, and her flesh had almost ceased to be concerned with pain or pleasure, like the wasted wax images in old churches, it still vibrated with his feelings and became quick again for him. His chagrins shriveled her. When he was hurt and suffered silently, something ached in her. On the other hand, when he was happy, a wave of physical contentment went through her. If she wakened in the night and happened to think that he had been happy lately, she would lie softly and gratefully in her warm place.”

“The thing that hurt was the feeling of being out of it, of being lost in another kind of life in which ideas played but little part. He was a stranger who walked in and sat down here; but he belonged out in the big, lonely country, where people worked hard with their backs and got tired like the horses, and were too sleepy at night to think of anything to say.”

In this scene, Claude returns to the Erlichs’ home for an intellectual gathering several months after withdrawing from school. Claude finds that the labor of caring for the family farm has changed him against his own will, that he now feels “lost in another kind of life in which ideas played but little part.” Herein, the novel once again gestures to its title, suggesting that Claude is “one of ours”—that he is part of an all-American, hardworking capitalist family and thus “belong[s] out in the big, lonely country.” Ironically, that this sense of belonging makes Claude feel lonely. Cather implies that there is something inherently American about the combined sense of belonging and loneliness, as Americans will never truly be satisfied where they are or what they have.

“No, it’s not that. It’s having so much time to think that makes me blue. You see, Enid, I’ve never yet done anything that gave me any satisfaction. I must be good for something. When I lie still and think, I wonder whether my life has been happening to me or to somebody else. It doesn’t seem to have much connection with me. I haven’t made much of a start.”

Claude lies bedbound, having been badly injured in an accident while plowing the fields. Unable to distract himself with work, Claude finds himself preoccupied with his thoughts, plagued by his former sense that his life has no meaning. When a local woman named Enid regularly comes to visit Claude and converse with him, he immediately latches on to her, believing that perhaps she can give him the start in life he’s looking for.

If Claude hadn’t been working too hard, he wouldn’t have been injured. If Claude hadn’t been injured, he wouldn’t have been confined to bed and thus plagued by his own thoughts. If Claude hadn’t been confined to bed, questioning his life, he wouldn’t have sought meaning by pursuing an ill-fated romance with Enid. Thus, Cather comments on the ways Americans use their capitalistic work habits to avoid thinking and meaning-making.

“Was there nothing in the world outside to answer to his own feelings, and was every turn to be fresh disappointment? Why was life so mysteriously hard? This country itself was sad, he thought, looking about him, and you could no more change that than you could change the story in an unhappy human face.”

“Was there nothing in the world outside to answer to his own feelings, and was every turn to be fresh disappointment? Why was life so mysteriously hard? This country itself was sad, he thought, looking about him, and you could no more change that than you could change the story in an unhappy human face.”

“You Americans brag like little boys; you would and you wouldn’t! I tell you, nobody’s will has anything to do with this. It is the harvest of all that has been planted. I never thought it would come in my lifetime, but I knew it would come.”

Through this conversation with Ernest, Claude begins to contemplate the Great War as a development that includes Americans in Nebraska just as much as it includes the “old country” of Bohemia. As Claude and Ernest harvest their fields, Claude understands the more figurative harvest Ernest speaks of, marking a turning point in Claude’s understanding of the war. He begins to follow events with personal interest and a sense of future possibility. 

“Claude used to lie there and watch the clouds, saying to himself, ‘It’s the end of everything for me.’ Other men than he must have been disappointed, and he wondered how they bore it through a lifetime. Claude had been a well-behaved boy because he was an idealist; he had looked forward to being wonderfully happy in love, and to deserving his happiness. He had never dreamed that it might be otherwise.”

After months of marriage to Enid, Claude realizes that she does not care for him as he hoped she would. He reflects that he naively and idealistically entered into marriage because “he had never dreamed that it might be otherwise.” As Claude works the fields, he contemplates the earlier days when he used to think, “it’s the end of everything for me.” He reflects that even in the life transition he made by marrying Enid, very little has changed for him, and he continues to feel, “it’s the end of everything for me.” Thus, he comes to understand what Ernest meant when he warned Claude about searching for meaning outside himself. 

“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.”

When Enid decides to move to China and care for her missionary sister, Carrie, Enid’s father expresses his sympathies to Claude. In this moment, he suggests that China is the “name on the map” tormenting Claude, a symbol of his separation from Enid. Rather than feel tormented, Claude gains a sense of clarity from this separation. Acknowledging his already present feelings of separation—from Enid, from his family, and from his hometown—Claude decides to enlist in the army and fight in the Great War. So doing, he fixates on another “name on the map”: Paris.

“How inherently mournful and ugly such objects were, when the feeling that had made them precious no longer existed! The debris of human life was more worthless and ugly than the dead and decaying things in nature. Rubbish…junk…his mind could not picture anything that so exposed and condemned all the dreary, weary, ever-repeated actions by which life is continued from day to day. Actions without meaning…As he looked out and saw the gray landscape through the gently falling snow, he could not help thinking how much better it would be if people could go to sleep like the fields; could be blanketed down under the snow, to wake with their hurts healed and their defeats forgotten.”

As Claude processes Enid’s move to China, he mournfully contemplates the house he built for the two of them, and the objects therein. Surrendering himself to the end of his marriage, he finds his possessions “more worthless and ugly than the dead and decaying things in nature.” The end of Claude’s marriage coincides with the end of his capitalistic attachment to objects and the end of his false American dream of having a wife, and owning a plot of land and a house. With these reflections, he begins to free himself from the emotional ties that bind him to Lovely Creek, and he considers moving abroad and fighting with the army. 

“What were they, and what was he, doing here on the Atlantic? Two years ago he had seemed a fellow for whom life was over; driven into the ground like a post, or like those Chinese criminals who are planted upright in the earth, with only their heads left out for birds to peck at and insects to sting. All his comrades had been tucked away in prairie towns, with their little jobs and their little plans. Yet here they were, attended by unknown ships called in from the four quarters of the earth. How had they come to be worth the watchfulness and devotion of so many men and machines, this extravagant consumption of fuel and energy? Taken one by one, they were ordinary fellows like himself. Yet here they were. And in this massing and movement of men there was nothing mean or common; he was sure of that.”

Onboard the Anchises, a military ship bound for France, Claude contemplates the all-encompassing historic moment in which he and his compatriots are now enveloped. Though they were all “ordinary fellows” in their hometowns, the war has transformed them into a heroic “mass.” Cather suggests that the war provides these men with a sense of meaning by removing them from their unremarkable lives back home and making them part of a struggle much bigger than themselves. When One of Ours was released in 1922, critics objected to passages like this as overly simplistic propaganda, claiming that Cather was romanticizing war. 

“It was quite true, he realized; the doctor had caught him. He was enjoying himself all the while and didn’t want to be safe anywhere […] He awoke every morning with that sense of freedom and going forward, as if the world were growing bigger each day and he were growing with it. Other fellows were sick and dying, and that was terrible—but he and the boat went on, and always on.”

When an influenza epidemic breaks out onboard the Anchises, Claude serves an important role as the ship doctor’s assistant. The doctor observes that Claude seems to thrive in this role because in spite of the grim atmosphere, he is enjoying himself. The life or death struggle Claude faces every day gives him a sense of meaning and purpose he never felt working the fields in Nebraska. Claude no longer pauses to contemplate his duties or search for meaning “outside” himself, knowing that “he and the boat [will go] on, and always on.” 

“Take it from me, there are thousands who will never go back! I’m not speaking of the casualties. Some of you Americans are likely to discover the world this trip…and it’ll make the hell of a lot of difference! You boys never had a fair chance. There’s a conspiracy of Church and State to keep you down.”

Onboard the Anchises, Claude finds he’s not the only soldier who far prefers the war to life back home. He meets a flamboyant, thrill-seeking young pilot named Victor Morse who has a British accent despite being from Iowa. The well-traveled and worldly Victor cheerfully pronounces that many men, like himself and Claude, will “never go back” to where they came from after the end of the war. Victor suggests that for many American men, the war is an opportunity to broaden their cultural horizons and experience life outside themselves. This statement later resonates with complicated irony after Claude learns Victor was shot down and killed, though Victor dies a far more exciting and heroic death he would’ve back in Iowa. 

“The muscular strain of mimic trench operations was more of a tax on him than on any of the other officers. He was as tall as Claude, but he weighed only 146 pounds, and he had not been roughly bred like most of the others. When his fellow officers learned that he was a violinist by profession, that he could have had a soft job as interpreter or as an organizer of camp entertainments, they no longer resented his reserve or his occasional superciliousness. They respected a man who could have wriggled out and didn’t.”

In France, Claude meets David Gerhardt, a talented violinist. At first, Claude feels jealous of David’s special skill, but he comes to respect David as a man who forsook his talents to serve for a larger cause in the war. Despite David’s physical slightness and weakness, Claude’s fellow officers seem to agree that David’s noble attempts to be one of them—when “he could have had a soft job as interpreter or as an organizer of camp entertainments”—make him a real man. This sense of community solidarity in the army again speaks to the novel’s title.

“‘They must love their country so much, don’t you think, when they endure such poverty to come back to it?’ she said. ‘Even the old ones do not often complain about their dear things—their linen, and their china, and their beds. If they have the ground, and hope, all that they can make again. This war has taught us all how little the made things matter. Only the feeling matters.’” 

Upon the recommendation of his fellow soldiers, Claude goes to visit a young woman named Mlle. de Courcy. Mlle. de Courcy explains that she moved back to her French village a year ago after the Americans helped liberate it from German rule. Claude is charmed by Mlle. de Courcy’s gratitude toward the American soldiers, and he admires her calm acceptance of wartime sacrifice. He agrees with her sentiment that “war has taught us all how little the made things matter. Only the feeling matters.” This sentiment directly contrasts Claude’s capitalistic American anguish at the end of his marriage, wherein he mourned the lost meaning of objects in the house he built for Enid. In this moment, Cather reveals how much Claude’s attitudes have evolved now that he is serving in the war and has found a sense of deeper meaning. 

“Claude took a stick and drew a square in the sand: there, to begin with, was the house and farmyard; there was the big pasture, with Lovely Creek flowing through it; there were the wheatfields and cornfields, the timber claim; more wheat and corn, more pastures. There it all was, diagrammed on the yellow sand, with shadows gliding over it from the half-charred locust trees. He would not have believed that he could tell a stranger about it in such detail.”

During his visit with Mlle. de Courcy, Claude draws a map of Lovely Creek in the sand to show her where he came from. France is no longer the distant “name on the map” in Claude’s imagination. Now that he is serving as a soldier on French soil, Lovely Creek is now the strange, foreign land. Claude feels surprised “that he could tell a stranger about it in such detail,” suggesting that he feels detached from Nebraska. At the same time, he seems to take pride in elements of home now that they serve a new purpose in the Great War.

“As for him, perhaps he would never go home at all. Perhaps, when this great affair was over, he would buy a little farm and stay here for the rest of his life. That was a project he liked to play with. There was no chance for the kind of life he wanted at home, where people were always buying and selling, building and pulling down. He had begun to believe that the Americans were a people of shallow emotions. That was the way Gerhardt had put it once; and if it was true, there was no cure for it. Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.”

Feeling very much at home with his French host family, the Jouberts, Claude contemplates remaining in the community. The simple life Claude leads in France exposes the materialism of Americans, of men like his father who are always “buying and selling, building and pulling down.” This passage exposes how much Claude’s perspective has changed after discovering a sense of meaning in his wartime role.

“I didn’t feel I was a good enough violinist to admit that I wasn’t a man.” 

This moment, when Claude asks David why he gave up his career to join the army, continues the novel’s examination of masculinity and Cather’s alignment of manhood with fighting for a larger purpose outside yourself. David also significantly explains that he can never go back to playing the violin after the war is over. This definitive proclamation foreshadows the future for both David and Claude: There is no “going back” because they will both die in battle. 

“Because in 1917 I was 24 years old, and able to bear arms. The war was put up to our generation. I don’t know what for; the sins of our fathers, probably. Certainly not to make the world safe for Democracy, or any rhetoric of that sort. When I was doing stretcher work, I had to tell myself over and over that nothing would come of it, but that it had to be. Sometimes, though, I think something must […] Nothing we expect, but something unforeseen.”

David continues to explain to Claude that he will never go back to his former home and that he does not want to go back. Even though he does not believe in the nobility of the men who are leading him or the causes he’s supposedly fighting for, David believes the Great War is a kind of destiny for all the young men of his generation.

Passages such as this suggest a layer of complexity and loss to Cather’s romanticization of war. Though David and Claude find a sense of purpose in their roles as soldiers, they admit that the war itself has no meaning. This admission also further complicates Ernest’s earlier idea of American values—of men finding purpose outside themselves. 

“When the survivors of Company B are old men, and are telling over their good days, they will say to each other, ‘Oh, that week we spent at Beaufort!’ They will close their eyes and see a little village on a low ridge, lost in the forest, overgrown with oak and chestnut and black walnut…buried in autumn color, the streets drifted deep in autumn leaves, great branches interlacing over the roofs of the houses, wells of cool water that tastes of moss and tree roots. Up and down those streets they will see figures passing; themselves, young and brown and clean-limbed; and comrades, long dead, but still alive in that faraway village. How they will wish they could tramp again, nights on days in the mud and rain, to drag sore feet into their old billets at Beaufort! To sink into those wide feather beds and sleep the round of the clock while the old women washed and dried their clothes for them; to eat rabbit stew and pommes frites in the garden—rabbit stew made with red wine and chestnuts. Oh, the days that are no more!”

This passage combines future and past tense to blur the reader’s sense of time, communicating the soldiers’ own sensation of the remembered past blending into their lives upon their return. Cather’s details lend these imagined reflections an elegiac tone, suggesting that many of Claude’s fellow soldiers will miss their time serving and look back on it fondly in spite of their comrades’ deaths. Cather’s reference to the soldiers as a nameless group, specifically excluding Claude and David, also ominously foreshadows both deaths. 

“The sun is sinking low, a transport is steaming slowly up the narrows with the tide. The decks are covered with brown men. They cluster over the superstructure like bees in swarming time. Their attitudes are relaxed and lounging. Some look thoughtful, some well contented, some are melancholy, and many are indifferent, as they watch the shore approaching. They are not the same men who went away.”

“The sun is sinking low, a transport is steaming slowly up the narrows with the tide. The decks are covered with brown men. They cluster over the superstructure like bees in swarming time. Their attitudes are relaxed and lounging. Some look thoughtful, some well contented, some are melancholy, and many are indifferent, as they watch the shore approaching. They are not the same men who went away.”