ONE OF OURS

One of Ours is a 1922 novel written by Willa Cather and published by Alfred A. Knopf that won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native in the first decades of the 20th century. The son of a successful farmer and an intensely pious mother, he is guaranteed a comfortable livelihood. Nevertheless, Wheeler views himself as a victim of his father's success and his own inexplicable malaise. The novel is divided into two parts: the first half in Nebraska, where Claude Wheeler struggles to find his life's purpose and is left disappointed, and the second in France during the First World War, where his pursuit of purpose is vindicated. A romantic unfulfilled by marriage and an idealist without an ideal to cling to, Wheeler fulfills his romantic idealism on the brutal battlefields of 1918 France. One of Ours is a portrait of a peculiarly American personality, a young man born after the American frontier has vanished, whose quintessentially American restlessness seeks redemption on the wartime frontier far bloodier and discovers in France a kinship with the land unknown in the New World. The novel was subject to harsh criticism Her close friend, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, saw the novel as a betrayal of the realities of war. Similarly, Ernest Hemingway took issue with her portrayal of war, writing in a 1923 letter, "Wasn't last scene wonderful? Do you know where it came from? The battle scene in Birth of a Nation. I identified episode after episode, Catherized.