Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1987
Abstract
Like the Norwegian folk hero the Ash Lad whom he was so fond of writing about, Ole Edvart Rølvaag's life and works can be seen as a search for the truth about himself and his world—both the Norwegian world whence he came and the American world to which he came. Combining realism with myth, Rølvaag explores the physical, psychological, and moral effects of Midwestern life on the immigrant pioneer as well as the rich mythic background that supports and universalizes the characters, structures, and themes of his fiction. In his analysis of the tension between Norwegian cultural traditions and the American Dream of prosperity and happiness, however, Rølvaag identifies a primary source of the individuality and alienation that are inherent in American literature. Paradoxically, his examination of the polarities of the Old World and the New, the material and the spiritual, the individual and society, identity and alienation, is also quintessentially American, for as Richard Chase has observed, “The imagination that has produced much of the best and most characteristic American fiction has been shaped by the contradictions and not by the unities and harmonies of our culture” (The American Novel 1). In Rølvaag's fiction these contradictions within his own personality and within the American character are best expressed in Per Hansa and Beret of Giants in the Earth, his masterpiece.
Recommended Citation
Moseley, Ann. Ole Edvart Rølvaag. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1987. Digital. Western Writers Series, 80.