One of Ours is a 1922 novel written by Willa Cather.
Claude Wheeler is a young man growing up in Nebraska in the early 1910s. Claude is aimless and discontented, frustrated with the limitations of rural life, looking for a purpose. His parents, who are perfectly content being farmers, don't understand Claude's frustrations. He gets married to childhood sweetheart Enid, but it soon becomes apparent that she doesn't understand him either, and the marriage is a failure. Finally, Claude finds something bigger than himself—on the battlefields of France.
Cather based her story in part on the life of a cousin of hers who was killed at Cantigny in 1918. A war story taking place overseas was a departure for Cather, as her previous work (like My Ántonia) was centered around her Nebraska homeland.
Tropes:
- An Arm and a Leg: Claude meets a man who lost an arm at Cantigny and also has amnesia from a nerve injury.
- Ambiguously Gay: Bobbie Jones the local soda jerk, who is described as "effeminate" and writes poetry and movie scenarios.
- Artistic License – History: Cather admits in a footnote that the outbreak of Spanish influenza is placed in the novel several months ahead of the point where the real outbreak struck.
- Big Ol' Unibrow: The scary French shopkeeper who won't sell Claude and his men cheese is described as "a fat woman, with black eyebrows that met above her nose."
- Cut Himself Shaving: Apparently Claude's brother Bayliss blamed his black eye on running into a reaper in the dark, but as Leonard gleefully relates, it was really because Leonard punched him for talking rudely about some local girls.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The main theme, as Claude doesn't know what his is, but knows it isn't living the life of a farmer.“He would spring to his feet, turn over quickly in bed, or stop short in his walk, because the old belief flashed up in him with an intense kind of hope, an intense kind of pain,—the conviction that there was something splendid about life, if he could but find it.”
- Down on the Farm: Farm life leaves Claude wanting more.
- Have a Gay Old Time:
- As was typical for literature of the era, "queer" and "gay" are used with their original meanings.
- Also contains a more surprising example, when a doctor studying a disease of the mind is called a "psychopath."
- Identity Amnesia: Claude meets a man who got shot at Cantigny and suffered nerve damage. The soldier can't remember who he is, and he can't remember the women in his life such as his mother or his fiancée, but he can remember the men in his life, such as his father.
- Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication: Alluded to by Cather when she says that women, specifically, across prairie country were looking for their maps in August 1914.
- Middle Child Syndrome: Oldest son Bayliss has his own successful business and youngest son Ralph is "docile" and stays out of trouble. Claude is restless and discontent.
- Moral Guardians: How big a prick is Bayliss? He hassles his mother over drinking coffee.
- No Guy Wants to Be Chased: A girl at college comes on a little too strong to Claude.“Their last excursion was made by moonlight, and after that evening Claude avoided Miss Millmore when he could do so without being rude. She was attractive to him no more. It was her way to subdue by clinging contact. One could scarcely call it design; it was a degree less subtle than that. She had already thus subdued a pale cousin in Atlanta, and it was on this account that she had been sent North. She had, Claude angrily admitted, no reserve,—though when one first met her she seemed to have so much. Her eager susceptibility presented not the slightest temptation to him. He was a boy with strong impulses, and he detested the idea of trifling with them.”
- "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Claude has a dream in which he's walking over to see Enid, only to realize he has no clothes on. In his dream, he leaps into the vegetable garden to hide, and then talks with Enid while trying to conceal his nudity.
- The Plague: The 1918 flu pandemic
, aka "Spanish flu" that wound up killing some 3-5% of the human race, takes a terrible toll on Claude's troopship. - Sexless Marriage: Claude is none too pleased to find out that this what his marriage to Enid is going to be. ("Everything about a man's embrace was distasteful to Enid.")
- Small Town Boredom: Claude is discontented with rural Nebraska farm life.
- A Storm Is Coming: As Claude goes to bed after he and his family talk about the war just then breaking out in Europe.“The night was sultry, with thunder clouds in the sky and an unceasing play of sheet-lightning all along the western horizon.”
- Two-Act Structure: The first part is Claude's aimless existence in Nebraska. The second part finds Claude going off to war.
- War Is Glorious: This novel received some criticism in its day and has come in for greater criticism since for its use of this trope. But the trope is in fact played straight. Claude finds nobility and a sense of purpose in the war, falling in love with France, feeling like he's finally doing something worthwhile.“When she can see nothing that has come of it all but evil, she reads Claude's letters over again and reassures herself; for him the call was clear, the cause was glorious.”
- War Is Hell: In one scene a little blonde-haired French girl has her brains splattered over the street by a German sniper. In another Claude and his buddies are bathing in a shellhole when Claude feels something poking him, and pulls out a shattered piece of helmet smeared with white goo. After rotten-smelling air starts bubbling up the gang realize that they are bathing in a hole filled with corpses.
