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I reread this while I was under 9 feet of snow, on the theory that it would make me more appreciative of the fact that I was not literally starving and I had plenty of food more varied than brown bread, and also quite a lot of books.
It was indeed very inspiring that way. I hadn't reread it in a while, as it isn't one of my favorites of the Little House books. Other than Almanzo and Cap Garland's daring ride to fetch the seed wheat, I always found it a bit monotonous. But of course, that is exactly the point. It's death by monotony.
Laura does an amazing job of evoking exactly how dreary and unchanging the experience is – like depression made into an environment. There's no variety in food. There's no variety in what you see. There's no variety in work. There's no variety in the people you interact with. Most horrific of all, there's no variety in sound. All you can hear is the incessant howling of the blizzard. Pa's fingers are so swollen from twisting hay into sticks in the cold that he can't even play his fiddle.
Laura describes this incredibly vividly, including her own state of mind-numbed depression. She literally can't think of anything but the sound of the wind. They get so bored of eating brown wheat bread and nothing but brown wheat bread, that all but Pa lose their appetites for it, even though they're on the verge of starvation. That did make me grateful for the variety of my own trapped in snow state. At least the work I had to do was shoveling snow from what felt like far too many locations, but that's a lot better than doing the same work over and over and over again. The fear of the adults is starvation, but what's most vivid to Laura is the sameness. It's almost a horror story.
Almanzo and Cap obtain the seed wheat from a settler who initially refuses to sell it to them, even when they explained that their entire town is starving. They have to talk him into it, even after raising the price far above the going rate. It never occurred to me before, but I wonder now what Almanzo would have done if the settlor had both refused to sell and if Almanzo didn't have his own seed wheat. I assume he would have dropped the money on the table and simply taken the wheat. But it's a situation that could have gotten very, very ugly.
There's a few non-blizzard bits that are lovely, most notably when they find a lost bird, nurse it back to health, and release it without ever finding out what it was or where it came from. But of course what the book is remembered for is the blizzard that seems to go on and on forever, and the triumphant moment when it ends, and the trains arrive, and they get to have appetizing food and hope and happiness again.
It was indeed very inspiring that way. I hadn't reread it in a while, as it isn't one of my favorites of the Little House books. Other than Almanzo and Cap Garland's daring ride to fetch the seed wheat, I always found it a bit monotonous. But of course, that is exactly the point. It's death by monotony.
Laura does an amazing job of evoking exactly how dreary and unchanging the experience is – like depression made into an environment. There's no variety in food. There's no variety in what you see. There's no variety in work. There's no variety in the people you interact with. Most horrific of all, there's no variety in sound. All you can hear is the incessant howling of the blizzard. Pa's fingers are so swollen from twisting hay into sticks in the cold that he can't even play his fiddle.
Laura describes this incredibly vividly, including her own state of mind-numbed depression. She literally can't think of anything but the sound of the wind. They get so bored of eating brown wheat bread and nothing but brown wheat bread, that all but Pa lose their appetites for it, even though they're on the verge of starvation. That did make me grateful for the variety of my own trapped in snow state. At least the work I had to do was shoveling snow from what felt like far too many locations, but that's a lot better than doing the same work over and over and over again. The fear of the adults is starvation, but what's most vivid to Laura is the sameness. It's almost a horror story.
Almanzo and Cap obtain the seed wheat from a settler who initially refuses to sell it to them, even when they explained that their entire town is starving. They have to talk him into it, even after raising the price far above the going rate. It never occurred to me before, but I wonder now what Almanzo would have done if the settlor had both refused to sell and if Almanzo didn't have his own seed wheat. I assume he would have dropped the money on the table and simply taken the wheat. But it's a situation that could have gotten very, very ugly.
There's a few non-blizzard bits that are lovely, most notably when they find a lost bird, nurse it back to health, and release it without ever finding out what it was or where it came from. But of course what the book is remembered for is the blizzard that seems to go on and on forever, and the triumphant moment when it ends, and the trains arrive, and they get to have appetizing food and hope and happiness again.
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And, they were obnoxious. Complained constantly. None of the Stoic Pioneer Spirit that Laura wanted to write about, so she just wrote about the (very real) long winter as if these people weren't there.
The winter, incidentally, was genuinely horrific; De Smet was one of a handful of towns in the Dakotas where no one died. LOTS of people starved to death; LOTS of people got lost in blizzards and died. It was every bit as bad as she described.
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