Of all the family members, the description of Olaf perhaps resounds most strongly as a pure, unchanging product of his environment. Ericson, little Eric and Olaf behave in harmony according to the Western environment and provide resistance to the characters of Nils and Clara whose high-spirited individuality operates in contrast to the setting. Cather uses the sensory effects of Nils’ surroundings to obtain his inner emotional and psychological underpinnings, a tactic she continues to use throughout the entire story. The mention of a name or two, perhaps the rattle of a wagon along a dusty road the rank, resinous smell of sunflowers and ironweed, which the night damp brought up from the draws and low places perhaps, more than all, the dancing lights of the motor that had plunged by.” The first sentence describes an emotional state, and that which follows uses hard physical detail to invoke that state. Yet even Nils who had fully cast off his ties to this place years before feels the tug of the surroundings right away, foreshadowing the inherent conflicts he will encounter with the inhabitants of this country: “Just now he was experiencing something very much like homesickness, and he was wondering what had brought it about.
This is even noted by the station agent in a remark about the luggage, “Depends on whether you like the country, I suppose” indicating the importance of this place for all who encounter it-those at odds with it usually leave. Through her descriptive details of his character, she places the foreign-attired Nils immediately at odds at the story’s narrative moment-the plains are tied to his past and all he’s left behind for a better, more exciting life. In “The Bohemian Girl”, setting functions almost as a separate character of its own, and the active interplay between Nils, Clara, Eric and Olaf with the setting thrusts the story forward seemingly inevitably.Ĭather clearly defines Nils’ relationship to his surroundings at the story’s immediate onset.
At various points in her fiction the setting entraps, threatens to entrap, frees or nourishes the lives of the characters, both as individuals and in their relationships to one another. Cather utilizes the settings and atmosphere of her fictive narrative moments to show the collective historical background of families, townsfolk, and neighbors, their ties and rivalries, as well as their interactive relationships with setting to project to their futures. The customs, motivations and actions of the characters throughout Willa Cather’s fiction grow almost entirely out of her various depictions of the American West.
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