Wayfaring Tramps of the Great Prairie and New York: Portraying Surplus Wage Laborers in My Ántonia and Manhattan Transfer

Abstract

This essay explores how My Ántonia and Manhattan Transfer portray the rise of tramping surplus wage laborers on the horizon of American society at the turn of the twentieth century, aiming to reveal the literary and social implications woven into their literary portrayals of the wayfaring laborers. After the long depression of 1873, the first major economic turmoil of American history, wayfaring surplus wage laborers, known as tramps, appeared on the American landscapes from the Great Prairie to the bustling streets of Manhattan. It is therefore not surprising that both Willa Cather and John Dos Passos, as representative American writers, directly or indirectly engaged with these displaced tramping figures in their novels. The wayfaring surplus laborers in both novels prove that the country and the city are interdependent spheres within the economic and historical movements of modern capitalism. For many of these tramping surplus wage laborers, the search for “the center of things” symbolizes their yearning for employment, stability, and even self-affirming social identity. In Manhattan Transfer, most surplus wage laborers fail to reach this center of things. By contrast, it is Ántonia Shimerda who discovers a true center of things within her homestead, where humans and nature coexist productively through her intrinsic and reciprocal labor, ensuring the fulfilling meaning of life in contrast to the emptiness of perpetual tramping. In short, whereas Manhattan Transfer portrays an elusive, alienating center of things operated by the capitalist circulation of commodities, My Ántonia envisions the recovery of that center of things in ecological harmony by means of her intrinsic labor, not surplus labor.