Giants in the Earth Analysis

Montana may claim the title of "Big Sky Country,"but not to the Hansa family. O.E. Rölvaag seems obsessed with describing the sky in this book, but it makes total sense when you realize that sky i...

O.E. Rölvaag establishes himself as the all-seeing puppet-master of this book early on, referring to his characters from a distance as "he" or "she." But Rölvaag also likes to get really cozy wit...

Rölvaag's Giants in the Earth tells an interesting story while educating us about the role that Norwegian settlers played in the settling of the American prairies. That's about as clear a case of...

Man, sometimes the world is just so beautiful you want to start bawling. Or at least that's the sense you get from O.E. Rölvaag's tone when he's describing the American prairies: Bright, clear sky...

As the book's epigraph tells us, Rölvaag borrowed the title Giants in the Earth from the Book of Genesis, which says: There were Giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the s...

There were Giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of o...

He had a heavy stocking cap pulled well down over his forehead, and large mittens on his hands; in each hand he clutched a staff… To the boys, it looked as though the man were sitting there resti...

(6) Tree LineOle Edvard Rölvaag might get a little intense with his descriptions at times, but the language in this book reads pretty easily when you compare it to other books written in the 1920s...

Norwegian immigrant Per Hansa and his family are travelling west through the United States in the late 1800s, and things ain't looking so good. They've lost the rest of their travelling party and d...

Our protagonist Per Hansa is pumped about building a new settlement in the Dakota Territory. He can't believe that there are so many miles of land for the taking… because he doesn't count the Nat...

Per Hansa, along with his family and friends, rolls into the American prairies looking to build a new settlement in the late 1800s. Everything looks pretty good at first, but then some Irish folks...

In Giants in the Earth , the character of Per Hansa shares a lot of similarities with the author, O.E. Rölvaag. For starters, both of them moved to the United States after working as fishermen bac...

Look all you want. You ain't going to find much steam in this novel. The closest you'll get is the part where Beret reminisces about getting pregnant with Per Hansa before they were married (Psst!...

Book of Genesis (Epigraph)