Character Analysis
One thing seems true about "Crazy Ivar:" he's not really all that crazy.
Is he a loner? Yes. Is he eccentric, with some wacky ideas about nature and religion and feet? Definitely. But hey, guess what? Alexandra is an eccentric loner, too, and she's the heroine of the novel.
Living Off the Grid, And Then Some
In fact, it might seem like we're supposed to see Ivar as Alexandra's shadow. He has, like Alexandra, lived a life of dedication to the land, loving it and understanding as she does. It's just that he takes it all to an extreme.
The Divide is already a pretty isolated place, but Ivar seeks out even more isolation, settling in "the rough country" and rarely leaving his homestead (1.3.16). Claiming he dislikes the "litter of human dwellings," he makes his home in a sod house that's barely visible beneath the grassy plain (1.3.24). He literally lives in the land.
And when Alexandra decides to take him in, when he faces financial ruin, he decides he's more at home in her barn. Alexandra, on the other hand, at least makes a superficial attempt to keep up appearances, obeying the laws of social grace even when she doesn't really believe in them (see Part 2, Chapter 3). But in her heart of hearts, she's still a non-conformist, like Ivar.
We're Crazy for Caveats
Okay, Ivar might be a little crazy. But there are caveats. When everyone is talking about sending Ivar to an insane asylum, for instance, he sounds pretty lucid about his own situation. Take a look:
"You know […] that I would not harm any living creature. You believe that every one should worship God in the way revealed to him. But that is not the way of this country. The way here is for all to do alike. I am despised because I do not wear shoes, because I do not cut my hair, and because I have visions. At home, in the old country, there were many like me, who had been touched by God, or who had seen things in the graveyard at night and were different afterward." (2.2.21)
Ivar makes a valid point. Back in the Old Country, maybe it wasn't so uncommon for people to practice religion in, let's say, idiosyncratic ways. But here on the Divide, Ivar is stuck in the crossfire of conformist tendencies.
It's not that people fear he will harm them; it's that they are fearful anytime someone does something not according to their notions of normal. (Check out what we have to say about Alexandra's feud with Lou and Oscar, for instance, in her "Character Analysis.")
But if anything does set Ivar apart from Alexandra, it's his religious beliefs. At the outset of the novel, Ivar seems more like a nature-worshipper than a Christian, in the strict sense of the word. He claims to enjoy living out in the wilderness because "his Bible seemed truer to him there" (1.3.24). But here, the narrator doesn't discount what Ivar is saying. Check it out:
If one stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, one understood what Ivar meant. (1.3.24)
As the story progresses, though, we realize just how obsessed Ivar is with the darker things, like sin and "temptation." This colors his off-beat religious views, and reveals something a little, well troubling. Here, we might consider letting go of those quotation marks on "crazy," and give full credence to Ivar's wackiness. Consider what he tells one of Alexandra's servant girls about going barefoot:
"From my youth up I have had a strong, rebellious body, and have been subject to every kind of temptation. Even in age my temptations are prolonged. It was necessary to make some allowances; and the feet, as I understand it, are free members. There is no divine prohibition for them in the Ten Commandments. The hands, the tongue, the eyes, the heart, all the bodily desires we are commanded to subdue; but the feet are free members. I indulge them without harm to any one, even to trampling in filth when my desires are low. They are quickly cleaned again." (5.1.13)
Okay, apparently he has a lot to say about feet.
But the take-home point is clear: Ivar was once a youth who struggled with many "temptations," but has since devoted his life to avoiding their indulgence—except when it comes to his feet, that is. The real poignancy of this passage has to do with witnessing Ivar's denial of his body and his physical desires.
It's enough to make anyone seem a little, well, off.
No Shoes, No Service
This is where Ivar seems to part from Alexandra's shadow. While Alexandra spends most of her life feeling detached from her personal desires, she ultimately finds a great feeling of freedom in going after what she wants: Carl, and a life spent on the Divide. Ivar, on the other hand, seems to have cut his own life short, numbing his human feelings through constant self-denial.
Their divergence comes across loud and clear in this passage, when Ivar and a servant girl find their mistress out wandering in the graveyard shortly after Emil's murder. Alexandra speaks:
"Maybe it's like that with the dead. If they feel anything at all, it's the old things, before they were born, that comfort people like the feeling of their own bed does when they are little."
"Mistress," said Ivar reproachfully, "those are bad thoughts. The dead are in Paradise."
Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Emil was in paradise. (5.1.24-26)
Though Ivar, like Alexandra, is most at home amidst the natural splendor of the Divide, his universe is a dark one, filled with sin and temptation. In O Pioneers!, Alexandra seems to represent a path towards personal freedom, rather than self-denial, that is still in harmony with nature. Ivar? Not so much.