Willa Cather's Nature Message in The Prof's House
The major themes in Cather's The Professor's House all seem to collide in the section of the book called "Tom Outland's story." The art, religion, and nature themes are all highlighted in this section of the book. Almost from the beginning of "Tom Outland's Story" Cather sets up her conflicts. Not that she hasn't been doing this all along. The change in tone, which has moved to deliberate, almost ritualistic, has highlighted the art, religion, and nature themes from the previous section of the book, "The Family." In "The Family," Cather seems to just let her story go, that is, she seems to be writing it as it comes to her. There are definitely a few themes that she wanted to touch on and set them up, but, in general, she seems to be more concerned with just letting us know what those themes are and introducing her characters. On the other hand, Cather seems much more interested in presenting her themes, though no less interested with developing her characters in "Tom Outland's Story." In other words, Cather's agenda is much more obvious in "Tom Outland's Story" than it is in "The Family." The only theme that this doesn't apply to is the the greed/ money theme that is closer to forefront in "The
In chapter two of "Tom Outland's Story," we are assaulted again right from the get go when Cather develops further her themes in the mythic qualities of the Mesa. The Mesa, it seems, has a penchant for devouring cattle. Now, there is this quasi-mythic herd of cattle running around in the mesa. The cattle outside of the Mesa, Cather says, "get skittish" around the Mesa. The foreman, Rapp, says, "The Mesa has been populated by runaways form our herd, till now there's a fine bunch of wild cattle up there." (169) The foreman cements the larger-than-life qualities of the Mesa by not only making the Mesa, Valhalla for runaway cattle but also by making it seem like Fort Knox to get into. "The cliffs are like the base of a monument," he says, "The only way into it is through that deep canyon that opens on the water level...You can't get in by that, because the river's too deep to ford and too swift to swim. " (169) He figures that if the cattle could swim it so could a horse but he wouldn't want to try. Then the foreman says that Tom had better not try to go over there or he fire Tom. The all-important foreman also shows us what man thinks of nature when he says, "If it wasn't for that mesa, this would be the best winter range in all New Mexico." (170) You get the feeling here that if he could, Rapp would raze the mesa to the ground just so he'd have premium, no-risk, grazing ground. Rapp's attitude is at the heart of the what Cather is saying about man's relationship with nature long before it got popular to do so. Cather, Willa. The Professor's House. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1925 All of the major themes are presented in the first chapter of "Tom Outland's Story". The chapter is so full of foreshadowing and introductions it almost seems like Cather wrote this section of her book backward. How all these pointers showed up in the first chapter of this section isn't important. What is important is that they are there. The fact that they are present and the magnitude of them show the deliberate care that Cather used in this section of the book. All of these themes show up repeatedly. "Tom Outland's Story" is full of this stuff. It is hard to turn a page without reading something important for later in the book. The opening chapter of "Tom Outland's Story" is ripe with little tidbits that point to things to come. Cather set up the greed/money theme as presented above. She introduces the Blue Mesa to us, which
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Approximate Word count = 1654
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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