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Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Alexandra and Carl:
Alexandra and Carl are foils. While Carl is highly perceptive about people and naive about the land, Alexandra is the opposite. In Part 3, Chapter 2, for instance, the narrator describes Alexandra's "blind side:"
If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have guessed what was going on in Marie’s mind, and she would have seen long before what was going on in Emil’s. But that, as Emil himself had more than once reflected, was Alexandra’s blind side, and her life had not been of the kind to sharpen her vision.
Alexandra is close with both Emil and Marie, and yet she has never realized that they have an ongoing flirtation that might turn ugly if Frank ever notices it. Alexandra is aware of Frank's jealousy because he makes it very obvious, but Emil and Marie have kept quiet about their feelings for one another. Whereas someone in tune with other humans might be able to "imagine" what is going unsaid between them, Alexandra takes people literally and at face value. This "blind spot" cannot be fully blamed for Emil, Marie, and Frank's tragic ending. Still, if Alexandra had been more astute in this area, she might have helped prevent the tragedy.
Alexandra has no such blind spot when it comes to the land. Carl has often marveled at her ability to imagine what the land has to offer. He left the Divide as a young man because he could not envision a future where it started supporting him and his family. He is amazed when he returns to find how successful Alexandra has been. When he asks her how she did it, she simply tells him that she was patient.
The novel depicts Carl's patience for Alexandra as a mirror of the patience she shows the land. Alexandra looks at the Divide with "love and yearning" for the happy relationship she imagines she might have with it one day. Carl, meanwhile, looks at Alexandra with "love and yearning." In Part 2, Chapter 5, he recalls how beautiful he always found her when they milked the cows together:
Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw her coming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that she looked as if she had walked straight out of the morning itself. Since then, when he had happened to see the sun come up in the country or on the water, he had often remembered the young Swedish girl and her milking pails.
Alexandra's brothers find her "hard," and most people do not marvel at her beauty. But even when he was away from the Divide, Carl's mind's eye has always traveled back to "the young Swedish girl and her milking pails." He spends years imagining her as a happy partner he can work alongside in the Divide. Her patience and imagination regarding the land are what lead to abundance, and his patience and imagination regarding her are what leads to their partnership at the end of the novel.
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