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Flashbacks
Part 2, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Alexandra and Carl:
Alexandra and Carl are foils. While Carl is highly perceptive about people and naive about the land, Alexandra is the opposite. In Part 3, Chapter 2, for instance, the narrator describes Alexandra's "blind side:"
If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have guessed what was going on in Marie’s mind, and she would have seen long before what was going on in Emil’s. But that, as Emil himself had more than once reflected, was Alexandra’s blind side, and her life had not been of the kind to sharpen her vision.
Alexandra is close with both Emil and Marie, and yet she has never realized that they have an ongoing flirtation that might turn ugly if Frank ever notices it. Alexandra is aware of Frank's jealousy because he makes it very obvious, but Emil and Marie have kept quiet about their feelings for one another. Whereas someone in tune with other humans might be able to "imagine" what is going unsaid between them, Alexandra takes people literally and at face value. This "blind spot" cannot be fully blamed for Emil, Marie, and Frank's tragic ending. Still, if Alexandra had been more astute in this area, she might have helped prevent the tragedy.
Alexandra has no such blind spot when it comes to the land. Carl has often marveled at her ability to imagine what the land has to offer. He left the Divide as a young man because he could not envision a future where it started supporting him and his family. He is amazed when he returns to find how successful Alexandra has been. When he asks her how she did it, she simply tells him that she was patient.
The novel depicts Carl's patience for Alexandra as a mirror of the patience she shows the land. Alexandra looks at the Divide with "love and yearning" for the happy relationship she imagines she might have with it one day. Carl, meanwhile, looks at Alexandra with "love and yearning." In Part 2, Chapter 5, he recalls how beautiful he always found her when they milked the cows together:
Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw her coming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that she looked as if she had walked straight out of the morning itself. Since then, when he had happened to see the sun come up in the country or on the water, he had often remembered the young Swedish girl and her milking pails.
Alexandra's brothers find her "hard," and most people do not marvel at her beauty. But even when he was away from the Divide, Carl's mind's eye has always traveled back to "the young Swedish girl and her milking pails." He spends years imagining her as a happy partner he can work alongside in the Divide. Her patience and imagination regarding the land are what lead to abundance, and his patience and imagination regarding her are what leads to their partnership at the end of the novel.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Emil and Amédée:
Emil and Amédée are foils. In Part 2, Chapter 9, Emil considers the similarities and differences in their love lives via a simile:
It seemed strange that now he should have to hide the thing that Amédée was so proud of, that the feeling which gave one of them such happiness should bring the other such despair. It was like that when Alexandra tested her seed-corn in the spring, he mused. From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why.
Emil is jealous of Amédée's ability to publicly rejoice in his marriage to Angélique. Emil feels sure that his feelings for Marie mirror Amédée's feelings for Angélique, except that his relationship with Marie brings him only despair rather than pride and happiness. Emil imagines that he and Amédée are like two grains of corn, from almost identical backgrounds, that have been planted in the same soil under the same conditions. Sometimes, despite all this sameness, one grain simply fails to thrive while the other shoots up "joyfully into the light, projecting [itself] into the future." If Amédée has shot up, Emil has "[lain] still in the earth and rotted."
Emil's simile illuminates the role luck can play in life. He and Amédée do come from similar backgrounds and have had access to similar resources throughout their lives. Still, the idea that "nobody [knows] why" Emil has had less success than Amédée seems like a refusal to accept responsibility for his own actions. On the one hand, Amédée was lucky enough to fall in love with a woman who was available to marry him. On the other hand, Emil has failed to let go of the fantasy that he will one day be able to marry Marie. Emil could choose to pursue a different woman, possibly from beyond the Divide, but instead he keeps coming back to the one who brings him "despair."
Furthermore, Emil is oversimplifying Amédée's success. Although Amédée's romantic life is happy, he nonetheless has a tragic end because of his own lot in life. Whereas Alexandra works to send Emil to college so that he can make a living away from the land, Amédée stays behind to work the land. He pours himself into this work so completely that he fails to stop to get his appendicitis treated in time. Like John Bergson, Amédée works himself to death. In fact, Emil has a greater chance than his friend to "project [himself] into the future" by pursuing his law degree, which won't be so physically taxing. But whereas the loss of Amédée ought to propel Emil away from the Divide and its harsh realities, it instead propels him toward Marie and his own tragic end. Neither of the two friends turn out to have much of a future; both of them commit too fully to the wrong things.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Alexandra and Carl:
Alexandra and Carl are foils. While Carl is highly perceptive about people and naive about the land, Alexandra is the opposite. In Part 3, Chapter 2, for instance, the narrator describes Alexandra's "blind side:"
If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have guessed what was going on in Marie’s mind, and she would have seen long before what was going on in Emil’s. But that, as Emil himself had more than once reflected, was Alexandra’s blind side, and her life had not been of the kind to sharpen her vision.
Alexandra is close with both Emil and Marie, and yet she has never realized that they have an ongoing flirtation that might turn ugly if Frank ever notices it. Alexandra is aware of Frank's jealousy because he makes it very obvious, but Emil and Marie have kept quiet about their feelings for one another. Whereas someone in tune with other humans might be able to "imagine" what is going unsaid between them, Alexandra takes people literally and at face value. This "blind spot" cannot be fully blamed for Emil, Marie, and Frank's tragic ending. Still, if Alexandra had been more astute in this area, she might have helped prevent the tragedy.
Alexandra has no such blind spot when it comes to the land. Carl has often marveled at her ability to imagine what the land has to offer. He left the Divide as a young man because he could not envision a future where it started supporting him and his family. He is amazed when he returns to find how successful Alexandra has been. When he asks her how she did it, she simply tells him that she was patient.
The novel depicts Carl's patience for Alexandra as a mirror of the patience she shows the land. Alexandra looks at the Divide with "love and yearning" for the happy relationship she imagines she might have with it one day. Carl, meanwhile, looks at Alexandra with "love and yearning." In Part 2, Chapter 5, he recalls how beautiful he always found her when they milked the cows together:
Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw her coming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that she looked as if she had walked straight out of the morning itself. Since then, when he had happened to see the sun come up in the country or on the water, he had often remembered the young Swedish girl and her milking pails.
Alexandra's brothers find her "hard," and most people do not marvel at her beauty. But even when he was away from the Divide, Carl's mind's eye has always traveled back to "the young Swedish girl and her milking pails." He spends years imagining her as a happy partner he can work alongside in the Divide. Her patience and imagination regarding the land are what lead to abundance, and his patience and imagination regarding her are what leads to their partnership at the end of the novel.
Related Themes:
