Summary:
The story follows the
Touhey family; the ninety-six-year-old Old Red, along with his Vietnam War
veteran son Aladdin and family in the barren bunchgrass region of north-western
Wyoming. Aladdin’s children Tyler and Shan, siblings of Ottaline, leave their
home, proving themselves to be unreliable ranch workers. In contrast, Ottaline
has little choice but to stay home and join her father as a worker on the
ranch. The story follows her loneliness on the ranch and her weight, a problem
which only accentuates her isolation. Her connection to the world outside the
ranch is limited apart from listening to conversations on a police scanner. Her
interior life diminishes to the point that she converses with a junked tractor.
The story ends with Ottaline, who is required by her father to show the cattle
to a buyer because of her father’s illness. In an ironic turn, the cattle
buyer’s son, Flyby, unexpectedly shows up in his father’s place. He recognizes
Ottaline’s knowledge of cattle, confesses his own loneliness, and decides to
marry her. Shortly thereafter, Aladdin crashes in his plane and dies. Old Red
understands then that Ottaline will take her father’s place and manage the
ranch.
Themes:
The story itself is a
mostly comic look at human madness and delusion, most evident by Ottaline
conversing with the tractor, and with hints of outlandish tragedy as Aladdin
crashes his plane fantastically.
Loneliness
–
The titular
character, Ottaline is the most evidently lonely character. On the ranch she
has no friends and is rarely allowed to leave it as it mentions “Her weight, he
said, ruined the springs on the passenger side” (p140). She is described as
having a “physique approaching the size of a hundred-gallon propane tank”
(p136) in reference to her weight, an attribute which plays a major role in her
life on the ranch and subsequently as a reason she cannot leave. Her existence
will continue to be defined within the parameters she has always known. This
loneliness is somewhat helped by her fantasy relationship with an old, broken
down tractor, which is a somewhat parodic way to exemplify the isolation she
feels. As far as revising the myths of the west, this story contradicts the
notions of the west signifying a place of freedom and prosperity. Instead of
the family being in the open wilderness feeling liberated, ironically many of
them show signs of remoteness. Be it Ottaline’s longing for love, Old Red’s age
being a factor for solitude, Wauneta’s position in the home by herself or
Tyler’s bad attitude and rebellious nature. This landscape was supposed to
represent new beginnings for settlers, which it did for Old Red of the previous
generations, however as time passes this idea becomes obsolete as the children
all seek to move to locations with lots of people and areas they aren’t trapped
by the vast acres of land, as Shan and Tyler do when they move to Las Vegas.
Ottaline even goes as far as listening to other people’s conversations on a
scanner which make her feel “sick, it made her jealous” (p146), because she’d
rather feel these emotions than none at all. Prosperity for the younger
generation isn’t in Wyoming, as it’s mentioned “Anyway, there were no jobs, she
knew that” (p140), but in the more economically advanced area where technology
prevails over agriculture. However in the end, Old Red sees Ottaline taking
over the ranch, inevitably keeping her there for the foreseeable future,
something which subverts the myth of the west. A woman running the ranch was
something relatively unheard of in the western expansion era, and represents
the modern ideologies of equality.
American Dream .vs. American Nightmare –
The idea of the
American dream is a notion that runs deep in the country, as we know, and this
story shows the two sides of it. Old Red again represents the older values. He
worked across the U.S. and kept moving west, it reads “One salty morning,
homesick for hard, dry landscape, he turned west again. He found a wife along
the way and soon enough had a few dirty kids to feed.” (p132) This is the
prototypical idea of the American dream as he eventually bought his own ranch
and bit of land. This somewhat transfers to the next generation in Aladdin, as
he lives by working hard “He went back to the spring, head down, picked up the
shovel and dug until his hands went nerveless.” (p134) However, he dies quite
brutally in the end, way before his father Old Red. This could signify a shift
in the attitudes towards the American dream as time goes by, as Aladdin dies,
so too does the American dream. This could also be interpreted as giving the
dream a sense of reality, by displaying that even if you live by these
thoughts, death is inevitably still there. This grounding realism is a constant
through the book, not only the story. The next generation perhaps doesn’t hold
these values to such a high regard, or perhaps the idea has evolved, with the
west not being the ideal place for these people anymore.
Masculinity .vs. Femininity – Classic idea of male dominance being subverted
by Ottaline’s control at the end of the story, as alluded to earlier. However,
masculinity is craved by Ottaline all throughout the story, which brings her to
the tractor with it acting for a while as this relationship to her that gives
her a “thrill”. However the power is hers as she is in control of the tractor
and its fate, moving into the role of the dominant male.
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