One Of Ours Cather Character Analysis

In the novel One of Ours Cather illustrates World War 1 different then most. From the somewhat graphic descriptions of injuries and death to the calm village scenes to meditations on what it must have meant for so many young men to finally find meaning in their lives just when they were most at risk of losing everything. She often romanticized the war but at the same time she made it well balanced. She showed the war as a monstrous thing that was fought by decent-hearted people in defense of their fellow human beings.
She starts with Claude the son of a successful farmer. He is guaranteed to live a comfortable life. Nevertheless, Wheeler views himself as a victim of his father's success. Just as Claude is doing well at the university his happiness comes to an end. His studies are cut short when his father, Nat, announces that he has bought a farm in Colorado. Nat tells Claude that he will begin living most of the time on the ranch and will take Claude’s youngest brother, Ralph, with him. Claude is told to drop out of college, manage the Nebraska farm, and care for his mother.
Claude obeys with his father’s commands, and he does a good job running the farm, introducing many new modern methods. One day, he is severely injured while driving the mule team due to the mules that had been frightened by a
Reading Cather's novel requires a deeper understanding of how close the war seemed to Americans. Cather refers specifically to a range of visual references, particularly recruiting posters, which brought the war home to Americans. As women began to work near the front, this visual flirtation with the possibility of women taking traditionally male roles in the war effort became an increasingly dominant motif. Playful and eroticized cross-dressing gives way to a more serious depiction of women laboring in unfeminine