On the Gull's Road Flashcards
by Willa Cather — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: On the Gull's Road
How does the narrator first encounter Alexandra Ebbling?
He sees her lying in a chaise longue on the deck of the steamer Germania at Genoa, apparently ill, with her sleeping daughter Carin in her arm.
What is the narrator's occupation and why is he on the ship?
He is a young American who has been working as a clerk at the American legation in Rome for two years, and he is sailing home to secure his first consular appointment.
When does Alexandra first truly open up to the narrator?
In the early evening at Naples, when the other passengers have gone to dinner and they are alone on the deserted deck, she speaks to him about watching Naples from the sea all day.
What does the narrator propose to Alexandra during the concert night?
He asks her to run away with him to one of the blue coasts they saw from Gibraltar, saying he has little money but they will manage, and that their situation is intolerable.
Why does Alexandra refuse to go with the narrator?
She gives three reasons: she feels gratitude toward Ebbling who has his own disappointments, she is too ill to begin life over, and she is too proud to offer him only the shadow of herself.
What does Alexandra do after the ship docks in New York?
Instead of staying five days in the docks as planned, she sails for Bremen on the Hobenstauffen the next morning, returning to her father in Finmark by the northern route.
How does the narrator learn of Alexandra's death?
In March, he receives a letter from her father Niels Nannestad informing him that Alexandra died on February second, in her twenty-sixth year, along with a letter she had written before her death.
What is inside the little box Alexandra gave the narrator?
A thick coil of her red-gold hair cut from where it grew thickest and brightest, along with a withered magnolia flower and two pink sea shells.
Who is Alexandra Ebbling and what is her background?
She is a twenty-five-year-old Norwegian woman from a fishing village in Finmark on the Arctic Ocean, the daughter of a widowed doctor. She married Lars Ebbling five years earlier and now lives in Genoa.
What illness does Alexandra suffer from?
She has a bad heart valve, described by the ship's doctor as a serious condition. She dies at twenty-five, less than a year after the voyage.
How is Lars Ebbling characterized in the story?
He is the ship's chief engineer, a large blond man with a long beard and a turquoise ring, described as the dandy of the boat. He is vain, flirtatious, and neglects his wife while socializing with other women.
Who is Carin and what role does she play?
Carin is Alexandra and Lars's three-year-old daughter, a chubby, red-haired girl. She adds domestic warmth to the deck scenes and highlights Alexandra's maternal tenderness despite her illness.
Who is Dame Ericson and why is she significant to Alexandra?
She is a curious old woman from Alexandra's village who had studied art in Rome. Her stories of the South and her flask of Mediterranean water kindled Alexandra's lifelong longing for the blue seas.
How does the narrator evolve over the course of the story?
He begins as an exuberant, confident twenty-five-year-old and ends as a man haunted by loss, still keeping Alexandra's mementos twenty years later, unable to tell her story to anyone.
How does the theme of impossible love operate in the story?
The love between the narrator and Alexandra is made possible only by its impossibility -- her terminal illness frees them to love without consequence, yet it also ensures they can never be together.
What does Alexandra mean when she says she never really got out of Finmark?
She means that despite physically traveling south, she remains bound by the realities of her life -- her marriage, her illness, her duty. The blue seas remain a dream she can only observe, never fully inhabit.
How does the story explore the tension between duty and desire?
Alexandra feels genuine gratitude toward her husband and refuses to abandon him despite loving the narrator, choosing obligation and pride over personal happiness.
How does memory function as a theme in the story?
The entire narrative is a twenty-year-old memory triggered by a young painter's visit. Memory both preserves and transforms the experience, keeping Alexandra alive for the narrator while emphasizing irretrievable loss.
What narrative structure does Cather use in this story?
A frame narrative: the story opens twenty years later with the narrator prompted by a young painter's visit to recall the events, then returns to the present at the end when he opens Alexandra's box.
How does Cather use the Mediterranean and Atlantic as contrasting symbols?
The warm, blue Mediterranean represents romance, beauty, and the dream of the South, while the cold Atlantic represents reality, duty, and the return to ordinary life.
What is the significance of the advancing line on the ship's chart?
It serves as a symbol of encroaching reality and the end of the lovers' time together. At first it seems like foolishness, but it gradually becomes a source of dread as it measures the distance to New York.
How does Cather use pathetic fallacy throughout the story?
The settings mirror the emotional arc: warm blue Mediterranean days accompany the blossoming love, the cold Atlantic spray signals encroaching reality, and the wet March day in New York accompanies the news of death.
What is the effect of first-person retrospective narration in this story?
It creates a dual perspective where the older narrator's melancholy colors the young man's passion, giving every joyful moment an undertone of loss and making the reader aware of the inevitable ending.
What does the word 'lugubrious' mean as used to describe the Atlantic?
It means mournful or gloomy. Cather calls the Atlantic a 'lugubrious and passionate sea,' contrasting its somber nature with the bright Mediterranean they are leaving behind.
What does 'acrimony' mean in the context of the narrator's reaction to Ebbling?
It means bitterness or sharp hostility. The narrator responds curtly when Ebbling thanks him for keeping his wife company, and his acrimony makes no impression on Ebbling's blandness.
What does 'ubiquitous' mean as applied to Lars Ebbling?
It means seeming to be everywhere at once. The narrator calls Ebbling ubiquitous because he keeps appearing in unexpected places, like the hotel in Naples where the narrator has gone ashore.
What is Alexandra expressing when she says 'It was like a baptism of fire'?
She is describing her overwhelming first experience of Naples and the South after growing up in Arctic Finmark. The phrase conveys a transformative, almost sacred experience that permanently changed her.
What does Alexandra mean by 'There is something in each of us that does not belong to the family or to society, not even to ourselves'?
She is describing an essential, untameable part of the self that can only be given through deep love. She tells the narrator that hers has flown to him, and that this gift is enough to sustain her.
What is the significance of Alexandra writing 'Vanity sometimes saves us when nothing else will, and mine saved you'?
In her final letter, she reveals that her pride in not wanting to give him a diminished version of herself -- the shadow of a dying woman -- was what kept her from ruining his life by going with him.