Surface Text With Hidden Text Dialogue

The novel One of Ours written by Willa Cather is structured with three parts of life experience of Claude. They are respectively his study, marriage and experience in World War I. There is a subtext behind the surface text in the novel. This subtext has been deconstructing and subverting the surface text constantly. And that forms a kind of irony.In the first part of the novel, there are two kinds of character in the surface text. The first kind of people named the Children of the Sun is deadly satirized because of their crazy about collecting money, while the other kind of people named the Children of the Moon is unlimitedly prettified because of their disdain for materialism. But in the subtext, the vulgar of the Children of the Sun is diluted by their noble emotion. At the same time, the humanity weaknesses like vanity and selfish expressed on the Children of the Moon's behavior is also criticized in the subtext. So, the Children of the Moon is just another kind of the Children of the Sun.In the second part of the novel, the narration of Claude's love experience in the surface text is unfolded with the emotion development as the thread. But in the subtext, a mode of knight legend exists. And it is absolutely subverted by personalities of the hero and heroine. This ironic subversion expresses a satire on the male-dominated culture which is also an important reason for the failure of Claude's marriage. Besides, Claude's opinioned wife is satirized in the subtext, too. The implied author points out that the extreme feminism also goes against healthy family life. The ideal of gender equality will come true only when both men and women respect each other.In the third part of the novel, the surface text is filled with Claude's war-fever. The war is prettified and praised. But in the subtext, Claude's romantic outlook on war has been satirized with methods like contrast, hint, and symbolism and so on. The alienation and ruin that Claude surfers in the war shows the ridiculousness of war.One of Ours is a novel that full of modernity. It has its original opinion on society, sexual relations, and war. The subtext behind the surface text conveys an active attitude about real life of the implied author in which money is the essential condition for living a happy life. Secondly, the implied author is strongly opposed to sexual discrimination which may have two aspects. The implied author is also opposed to war which is really harmful to human spirit. It is the dialogue between the subtext and text that forms the most obviously characteristic of the novel.