Vital Geography: Victor Seastrom's The Wind.
1973; Salisbury University; Volume: 1; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)Poetry Analysis and Criticism
Resumo. . . and then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said. This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath This is the truth.' - Willa Cather, in My Antonia The Nebraska prairie is more than just a backdrop for the action in many of the novels of WiIIa Cather; it participates in that action. Like man, the prairie is terrible and beautiful at the same time. In My Antonia we can't ignore the tragedy that exists or originates in the most beautiful settings and events. Antonia is beautiful and optimistic, yet she has to work like a man in the fields. Her brother goes mad; her father commits suicide: her Russian immigrant neighbors hide their past as murderers; she herself loses an illegitimate child. Antonia grows old and her beauty fades, yet the red grasslands bloom each spring, the blizzards howl in the winter, the children grow toward the sun; they go to town -and ifall iin love or remain on the prairie, dying from the elements or poverty. People and nature seem to absorb a bit of each other: The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea.1 Artists perceive in extreme natural surroundings a vital kind of geography. In Cather, it motivates, enfolds, and reflects the people. The emphasis is not on the heroism of battling the elements but the recognition and mutual participation of living with them: never is there outright despair at the primitive environment; the wildest blizzard surrounds Antonia's father's suicide and a quiet Christmas celebration alike. It is enough if man can, like Thoreau, rejoice that his hut has no yard or fence, but is part of unfenced nature itself. The application of moral laws to nature, as in Wordsworth, is only done to the extent that they are recognized in man himself. Nature is not supremely indifferent as long as man is not. We can only regard it the way G. K. Chesterton regarded truth: we never come so near to a well-rounded view of things as when we see them paradoxically. Because of space and natural environment we can recognize the importance of scene. The blasted heath in Macbeth is not merely a place where some witches happen to gather: it is their rightful habitat; it is the sort of context that produces witches; it is a symbol within the pattern of a play. Scene is not, as R. W. B. Lewis says: . . . the simple geographical location of some thing, person, or act. but rather the qualitative and qualifying context. In the hands of the expert, the scene' can thus contain the act of the character - and can be substituted for either, or become a metaphor for either.2 Before 1 928 America had produced a number of films in which nature had played a major part in motivation and identification. Griffith's use of pastoral lyricism in True-Heart Susie and Romance of Happy Valley contrasted with the cathartic use of the snow storm in Way Down East, a storm which at once reflected the turmoil between the outcast girl and the family, threw together the various divisive forces, and finally swept away the barriers between the characters. Thus, it both separated and ? united. the| protagonists, providing solid drama along the way. William K. Howard's classic White Gold had Jetta Goudal isolated on a sheep ranch, the grand drama of passion enacted upon a stark and bare stage. William Beaudine made The Canadian in 1927 (a film similar to The Wind), utilizing a hail storm as the dominant force behind and within the action. And of course there were others like Henry King's Tol'able David and Ingram's Mare Nostrum. …
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