A Study Guide for O. E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth"
()
About this ebook
Read more from Gale
A Study Guide for S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Clavell's "Shogun" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Louis Sachar's "Holes" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A study guide for Frank Herbert's "Dune" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Shakespeare's Macbeth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Bakery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's Animal Farm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Business Plans Handbook: Furniture Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: JEAN PIAGET Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Lois Lowry's The Giver Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: ALBERT BANDURA Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Joyce's "James Joyce's Ulysses" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's The Lottery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horsemen" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Auto Detailing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for George Orwell's 1984 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to A Study Guide for O. E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth"
Related ebooks
Dark Boundary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCross Body Lead Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tenting On The Plains OR General Custer In Kansas And Texas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Awakening: original authoritative edition 1899 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rough Road to the North: A Vagabond on the Great Northern Highway Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Life and Adventures of Santa Claus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMartin Arrowsmith Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Indianapolis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bessie Coleman: Bold Pilot Who Gave Women Wings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Blood: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wagon Road North: The Saga of the Cariboo Gold Rush, Revised and Expanded Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared: A Novel by Jonas Jonasson | Conversation Starters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe River Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lay Down Your Guns: One Doctor's Battle for Hope and Healing in the Honduran Wild West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeaverland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLand of The Burnt Thigh: A Lively Story of Women Homesteaders On The South Dakota Frontier Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Harvest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYoung & Wicked: The Death of a Wayward Girl Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBinu and the Great Wall Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fox Hunt: A Refugee's Memoir of Coming to America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Warriors Don't Cry (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlum Island Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNarrow Escapes and Wilderness Adventures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Seven Wives Of Bluebeard 1920 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 Best Short Stories by Willa Cather Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiving Waters: A Journey of Faith and Discovery Connecting the Past with the Present Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTomboy Bride, 50th Anniversary Edition: One Woman's Personal Account of Life in Mining Camps of the West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Literary Criticism For You
12 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Verity: by Colleen Hoover | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Where the Crawdads Sing: by Delia Owens | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween the World and Me: by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for A Study Guide for O. E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth"
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Study Guide for O. E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth" - Gale
3
Giants in the Earth
O. E. Rölvaag
1927
Introduction
Giants in the Earth was 0. E. Rölvaag's most influential novel. It chronicles the story of a group of Norwegian pioneers who make the long trek from a fishing village in Norway through Canada to Spring Creek, in Dakota Territory. Although the westward migration means opportunity, the settlers must contend with the isolation and monotony of prairie life; primitive housing; long, frigid winters; and crop-destroying infestations in summer. These conditions are hard enough for people of robust nature, eager for a new life, but for people of delicate sensibility, like Per Hansa's wife Beret, life on the prairie becomes unbearable. Giants in the Earth deals with timeless themes of immigration, fear and loneliness, myth, and religion. The novel does not end happily but it is, nonetheless, an exuberant sprawling work that has won consistent praise for its unsparing account of the spiritual as well as the physical experience of its characters.
Author Biography
O. E. Rölvaag was bom April 2, 1876, on Dønna Island off the coast of Norway, where he lived until he was twenty. Despite an early and voracious appetite for literature, both Norwegian classics and writers such as Charles Dickens and James Fenimore Cooper, Rölvaag seemed destined to be a fisherman. A violent storm at sea in which several of his friends lost their lives was a defining experience for him. Unwilling to face the prospect of the hazards and desolation of life on the North Atlantic, Rölvaag opted instead to emigrate to America, asking his uncle in Elk Point, Minnesota, to lend him money for the passage.
His first two years in America he worked as a farmhand. But farming was scarcely more appealing to Rölvaag than fishing, and he decided to further his education. He studied first at Augustana Academy in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, then at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he graduated in 1905. At St. Olaf, Rölvaag studied the works of Norwegian novelists and discovered Norwegian folklore. The work of Henrik Ibsen was a powerful influence on him, and it was while at St. Olaf that Rölvaag recognized his desire to become a writer. After graduating, Rölvaag returned to Norway for advanced study at the University of Kristiana in Oslo. This sojourn in his own country drove home to him the importance of preserving one's cultural identity in an alien land, and in fact Rölvaag would be adamantly opposed to the idea of a melting pot his whole life.
Once back in America, Rölvaag took up a position at St. Olaf teaching Norwegian language and literature. He introduced Norwegian immigrant history as a subject at the college and helped to found several organizations for the preservation of Norwegian culture. Rölvaag's first fictional work, titled Amerika-breve (Letters from America), was published in