Nebraska by Ron Hansen
"Nebraska" by Ron Hansen is a reflective narrative that captures the essence of a small, unnamed town in Nebraska, serving as a prototype for similar rural communities. The story emphasizes the environment and the historical context of Westward settlement, focusing on the sparse population and their interactions with the landscape. The townspeople, primarily of German, Swedish, Danish, and Polish descent, are portrayed through brief mentions, highlighting the collective identity shaped by their shared experiences in this flat, expansive region. The narrative is infused with nostalgia, painting vivid seasonal images—from the hay trucks of July to the snow-covered roads of January—while also hinting at the simplicity and complexity of small-town life. The railroad serves as a vital connection to the outside world, underscoring the town's isolation yet routine existence. Hansen's approach encourages readers to explore the duality of communal identity and the subtle tensions within such tight-knit environments, ultimately leaving them to draw their own interpretations of life in this quintessential Nebraska setting.
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Nebraska by Ron Hansen
First published: 1986, as short story; 1989, as short story collection
Type of plot: Regional
Time of work: The last half of the twentieth century with flashbacks to earlier times
Locale: An unnamed small town in Nebraska
Principal Characters:
Victor Johnson , a rummagerKoch , a chiropractor who coaches the Pony League in baseball
The Story
This story does not go anywhere in any conventional sense. Rather it quite exquisitely sets a tone, delicately sketches an environment, and projects a slice of history dealing with how the West was settled and with the generalized types of people who settled it. First published in Prairie Schooner and subsequently in Harpers, "Nebraska" is a story of place. The town in which it is set remains unnamed, although at the very beginning, Ron Hansen offers a catalog of place-names—Americus, Covenant, Denmark, Grange, Hooray, Jerusalem, and Sweetwater—any of which might identify the small town in which the story is set. These towns are too small to be on any but the most specialized regional maps. Hansen creates a prototype for a typical, tiny Nebraska town.
Although he names various people in his story, the author develops none of these people as rounded characters. He mentions their names, offers a fact or two about each, then moves on. If there is any looming character in the story, it is the small town that significantly shapes the outlooks and lives of those who live in it.
The town and the area take on lives of their own. They exist as discrete entities, flat bodies spread out on a flat landscape. The only outside life pulsing through them comes from the Union Pacific trains that lumber through the town several times a day, occasionally stopping just long enough to deposit a boxcar full of supplies on a siding. The railroad tracks are the arteries of the recumbent body that is the town.
Little happens in this story or to the few people who populate it. Just as the population of the small Nebraska town is sparse, so is the population of the story. Hansen relates how some people convert their porches to sleeping quarters for boys who will soon join the navy and find themselves on ships whose populations are as great as that of the town from which they come.
Most of the pioneers who settled Nebraska are of German, Swedish, Danish, and Polish stock. They journeyed west from the east coast ports through which they entered the country, finally reaching Nebraska, where many of them settled because, exhausted and disoriented, they compromised, following the path of least resistance.
Here they built their first dwellings, sod houses—largely holes in the ground with wooden supports to hold up the blocks of sod from which the walls and roof were made. Such dwellings were buried in snow during the harsh prairie winters and emerged crumbling with the spring thaw.
"Nebraska" is largely nostalgic. It briefly sketches salient details about each season: the hay trucks spraying the gray highway with hay in July; October with its full grain silos and trees stripped of their leaves; January with heavy snow obliterating the highways and freezing the water on the Democrat so solid that people can walk clear across the river; April with snow still "pettycoating" the tree trunks.
Victor Johnson goes rummaging in an old garage, again evoking feelings of nostalgia. He finds an antiquated, windup Victrola and stacks of records from the 1920's, abandoned farm equipment, high-topped shoes, and a wooden film projector painted silver, along with big cans of old film. There are pictures, including one of a daredevil aviator who walks on the wings of biplanes.
Hansen understands the effect small-town prairie life has on those who live in such an environment. Everyone knows everyone else and, more important, knows everyone else's business. As Hansen says, everyone in the town is necessary, everyone enjoys the sort of identity of which people who live in large cities are often deprived. He does not suggest whether this is good or bad. Indeed, it is difficult to judge its goodness or badness in absolute terms. It seems—on the surface at least—wholesome, although the undercurrents that pervade such communities can be pernicious. Hansen presents bare facts and invites his readers to arrive at their own conclusions.