Independent People
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Author | Halldór Laxness |
|---|---|
| Original title | Sjálfstætt fólk |
| Translator | J. A. Thompson |
| Country | Iceland |
| Language | Icelandic |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Vintage Books |
| Released | 1934 (Part I), 1935 (Part II) |
| Released in English | 1946 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 512 (first vintage international edition) |
| ISBN | 0-679-76792-4 |
Independent People (Icelandic: Sjálfstætt fólk) is an epic novel by Halldór Laxness, published 1934-35. Its subject is the struggle of poor Icelandic farmers in late 1800s/early 1900s, only freed from debt bondage in the last generation, and surviving on an isolated croft in inhospitable countryside.
Laxness was considered the main proponents of Social Realism in Icelandic fiction in the 1930s.[1]
The novel is an indictment of materialism, the human relationship costs of the 'independent spirit', and perhaps capitalism itself. It helped propel Laxness to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1955.
[edit] Plot summary
It is the story of a man's life from just after he escapes his virtual enslavement to a local rural family on a remote end of Iceland, up through his attempts to build a family, a home, and a future for himself. However, from reading it, it is never explicitly stated that the setting is a remote part of Iceland. The reader only knows what the character thinks about it; and as far as he is concerned, it is a good plot of land. It is all he's ever known, he hasn't wandered in his mind to France or Germany or America. So as far as the reader knows, the land is just his Land.
It reveals some of Laxness's anti-war leanings in a chapter that consists of Icelandic farmers sitting around talking about how the livestock sales sure have gone up since the Europeans started murdering each other for no good reason. Also displayed is hatred of politicians, as he depicts them as all bosom buddies, part of some exclusive mindset that renders them too busy hobnobbing with each other and fulfilling grand ideals for them to actually care about what the poor people are going through.
Readers may also interpret it as an indictment of the idea of independence — not the good kind of independence, but independence taken to such an extreme that it becomes willful ignorance, and a sort of slavery of family members to the patriarch's ideas. To him his ideas are unquestionable, and inherently linked to his 'freedom'. This ends with alienating his family, in tragedy, in every minuscule and minute detail that Laxness paints with. Then he pulls back, and the reader realizes that just about every person out there on this part of the Icelandic ground was going through similar experiences. Poor health, near starvation, exploitative merchants, ignorance, hatred, etc. People will probably notice that Laxness, although he shows clearly that the main character destroyed the lives of some members of his family, the author seems to have a deep understanding of how that character came to exist, of why he exists, of why everything happens. Laxness still manages to dig out some shred of hope and love from the abysmal rural disenfranchised powerless poverty depicted in the book, and to find some human tenderness inside the burly troll monster of the main character.
