Summary

Willa Cather’s One of Ours employs a third-person omniscient narrator who speaks in the past tense. Set just before World War One in Frankfort, Nebraska, the novel begins with Claude Wheeler waking up on the morning of the circus. Claude asks his father if he can drive the car into town from their farm, but Nat Wheeler says he can take the mules instead. This upsets Claude, for his father knows driving the mules is embarrassing, but Claude accepts his father’s will without question.

Once in town, Claude meets his brother, Bayliss, who he notices has a black eye. Claude then joins with his German friend Ernest Havel, and the narrator reports that Claude felt a “mental liberty” Ernest he did not achieve elsewhere (8). Ernest and Claude meet Leonard Dawson, who says he gave Bayliss a black eye because...