59 pages • 1 hour read
Patrick D. SmithA Land Remembered
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Surviving Nature Versus Conquering Nature
Over the course of three generations, the MacIveys make great progress. In many ways, the family’s story is a classic example of the American dream. The first generation struggles and makes profound sacrifices in order to survive and create more opportunities for its children; the second generation builds on the success of the first; and the third arrives at a position of wealth the vast majority of people can only dream of. But with mother nature itself the chief antagonist of the MacIveys, their progress comes at a great cost to the wilderness around them.
As Tobias toils away in the scrub in the 1860s, he needn’t think twice about killing a wild boar for food or razing a small plot of natural swampland to use as a vegetable garden. For his first few years on the frontier, the environmental impact of Tobias’s attempts to merely survive is infinitesimal compared to the size and power of his natural surroundings. The mere idea of man conquering the Florida swampland is absurd to Tobias. He tells Zech, “It’s big enough for everyone. There ain’t enough cows and people in the whole world to fill it up” (88). But as Tobias progresses from merely surviving on the frontier to conducting commerce on it, he begins to wonder about the appropriateness of his actions. When surveying the carnage left behind by the mosquito plague, Tobias says, “It don’t seem to be no end to the pestilence this land can bring. Sometimes I think the Lord is warning us to go away” (172). The more the MacIveys take from the land, the worse the consequences doled out by mother nature, personified by Tobias as “the Lord.” This raises questions about the moral component of the MacIveys’ efforts to tame the wilderness for their own financial enrichment.
By the time Zech comes of age, the MacIveys have long proven they can survive nature. It is therefore incumbent on Zech’s generation to further tame nature through ever-larger cattle drives, acres upon acres of orange groves, and increasingly innovative cow-breeding practices. Zech, with his unmatched talent for rationalization, has few qualms about buying as much land as he can. In the face of super-wealthy tycoons like Hamilton Disston buying up millions of acres at a time, Zech concludes that if a true frontiersman like himself doesn’t buy up the land, some fat cat from up North will. Nevertheless, while Zech may be willing to alter the wilderness to support his livelihood, he has his limits. When visiting the budding tourist community at Palm Beach, Zech is disgusted by the extent to which the natural landscape has been defiled, telling Glenda, “Someday the damned railroads will haul folks in here thicker than deer flies, and it’ll spread elsewhere. I’m glad Pappa never saw such as this. It would ‘a killed him quicker than the malaria and the cold” (321). Later, after Glenda dies, Zech buys the untouched wilderness near the Seminole village, “wanting to leave it in its natural state and be sure that no one ever puts axes or machines to it, destroying it as the land was destroyed around Palm Beach” (359). In other words, Zech is perfectly comfortable exerting his control over nature or “taming” it, as it were, but he does so to preserve it, not to conquer it.
Compare this to Sol, whose experiences of the wilderness have already been corrupted by the fact that they only bring him grief over all his family members he lost to it. He doesn’t think twice about transforming into farmland the area Zech bought to preserve. He justifies this to Toby pragmatically, saying, “People in the new cities have to eat, and there’s beginning to be more and more of them” (370). By the time he loses Bonnie to the Okeechobee Hurricane, his attitude toward nature has turned completely antagonistic. When he dams Lake Okeechobee, it is described as “a travesty against nature that could never be reversed” (398). Finally, the fact that Sol has no children is telling. All the so-called progress he made in conquering nature and expanding the MacIvey empire leaves behind so much damage that there’s no wilderness left for potential future generations of MacIveys to enjoy, were they to exist. And while the novel makes no clear distinction between taming and conquering nature, it is clear that Sol goes too far, souring the American dream narrative of progress.
Who Owns the Land?
One of the biggest philosophical schisms between Tobias and Zech involves land ownership. Even at the age of 10, Tobias’s refusal to purchase the land surrounding the homestead mystifies Zech. In response to Zech’s concerns, Tobias says, “That’s foolish boy talk. Nobody will ever fence this land. There’s too much of it. This right here ain’t a drop in the bucket. There ain’t no man ever even seen all of it” (88).
As Zech grows older, his opinions on the matter—while still in opposition to his father’s—becomes more nuanced. He catches a glimpse of Tobias’s utopian, share-and-share-alike worldview in action at the drought pond, where he witnesses:
[…] wolves, bears a mother panther with a litter of cubs, all passing each other without comment, drinking and disappearing again into the night. There were no growls of anger, no warnings to move away, no snarling flashes of superiority—deadly natural enemies seemingly under a truce understood only by themselves, sharing equally a thing they all must have to survive (167).
But while Zech is awestruck and inspired by the display at the drought pond, he soon realizes that man is incapable of such equanimity. Upon learning of the dangers the Seminoles face from white men for the crime of merely surviving, he is disgusted by humanity’s refusal to share nature’s bounty like the beasts at the pond: “Even the animals were willing to share if it meant survival for all” (177).
As Zech matures into the patriarch and chief provider of the MacIvey family, he countermands his father’s orders never to buy land. While he is uncomfortable betraying his father’s wishes, Emma assures Zech of the rightness of his actions, saying, “[Tobias] thinks the land is a gift from the Lord for everybody’s use and it’s not right for anybody to lay claim to it. Maybe it ought to be that way, but it’s not” (219). As a man with one foot in the harmonious world of mother nature and the other in the society and laws of man, Zech knows all too well how to distinguish the way things ought to be from how they are, and nowhere is this clearer than in his attitude toward land ownership.
Later in his life, Zech’s perspective on the matter evolves once more. Rather than view land purchases as merely acts of necessity and protectionism, Zech begins to see them as acts of preservation and tribute. This becomes clear when Zech buys the land around Toby’s village both to preserve it and to honor his Seminole family and his departed wife Glenda. For Zech, the purchase of this land represents a reconciliation of his conflicted feelings over land ownership.
The Evolution of a Family Name
In A Land Remembered, the name “MacIvey” signifies so much more than merely the blood relatives and descendants of Tobias. For example, it seems a bit odd at first when Tobias, a man with virtually no vanity, insists on spending some of his precious resources on stencils that read, “MacIvey Cattle Company” (101). But Tobias’s emphasis on connecting his cattle operation to his family name becomes clearer when the reader realizes that Tobias considers every member of the MacIvey Cattle Company—including Skillit, Frog, Bonzo, and Pearlie Mae—as members of the MacIvey family, no different than Emma or Zech. This first becomes clear at the terminus of their first drive to Punta Rassa, when a cafe proprietor tries to force Skillit to eat outside. Pulling out his gun, Tobias says, “Ain’t no member of the MacIvey clan going to eat on a back porch, not here or anywhere. If one of us gets kicked out, we all go. And that’s a fact” (130). Significantly, Tobias uses the word “clan” rather than “company” or “crew” to describe Skillit, attaching equal importance to chosen families and blood families.
Later, when Skillit reveals that he wrote down “MacIvey” as his last name on a deed, the fact that Tobias considers Skillit just as much a MacIvey as himself is made even more explicit. He says, “Hell, that’s fine, Skillit! We're proud you took the name. You’re welcome to it” (263). Later, a dying Frog says to Zech:
‘I been here so long now I feel like part of the family, and I’d like the stone to say Frog MacIvey. When ole Skillit dies his is goin’ to say Skillit MacIvey, and that’s what I want too. Would it be too much of a shame to you if you did this for me?’ (354).
Not only does Zech assent to the name on the tombstone, but he insists, “You’ll rest right next to Mamma and Pappa” (354), referring to Emma and Tobias.
The importance and meaning of the MacIvey name take on a tragic dimension for Sol. By the middle of the 20th century, with none of his family, friends, or lovers left alive, Sol realizes that the MacIvey name has become little more than a corporate logo. “The name MacIvey became a phantom, not something real but meaningless letters across bank buildings, art centers and small parks” (399). And tombstones.
Cycles of Violence and Destruction on the Frontier
It’s no shock that the frontier is full of violent and destructive men, attracted by the absence of formal law enforcement. But the cycles of violence these men initiate have the effect of roping otherwise pacifist individuals into their sphere of brutality. Tobias, for instance, begins the novel with little appetite for violence against man or animal. In explaining his rationale for escaping the Civil War, the novel reads, “He did not run before because he was afraid of fighting or dying. It was not that at all. He simply could make no sense of a war pitting countrymen against each other, and he wanted no part of it if he could avoid it” (33). When Tobias and Zech encounter a flock of Carolina parakeets, Tobias describes with significant horror the practice of slaughtering the animals en masse when they gather to grieve their dead.
Yet as the range grows more crowded with violent, threatening men, Emma must repeatedly talk Tobias out of violence. When armed riders turn them away from the salt march, Emma pleads, “If somebody has to die for that grass down there, Tobias, which one of us do you say it is? Which one? Is it me, or Zech, or Skillit? Who?” (240). Violence is so prevalent on the frontier that it is easy to accept in the abstract. Only when Emma addresses the specific cost it demands does Tobias return to his pacifist roots.
Zech, on the other hand, is not so easily discouraged from violence, particularly in the service of revenge. When Glenda miscarries, Zech hangs one of the men responsible without allowing for any of debate from his fellow drovers. Though arguably more vengeful than his father, Zech is also more introspective on the matter. Camped outside Wirt McGraw’s criminal compound, Zech “wondered who these men were, where they came from, why they were here and what drove them to do what they were doing; […] Is it really worth all this, he asked himself” (338).
But despite Zech’s hope that killing McGraw will end the cycle of death, it does not; for the awkwardly healed gunshot wound Zech suffers during the raid indirectly causes his own death when it becomes trapped in his horse’s stirrup during a flood.
