Willa Cather, “The Namesake,” 1907

Depiction of American identity – is it innate, inherited, learnable, racial, genetic?

What does Lyon Hartwell learn about his “American identity”? What does the narrator learn, and what do the acolytes of Hartwell learn?

What is the significance of this group of expatriate Americans being artists – painters, sculptors – living in Paris? Discuss the creating of American texts from outside of America.

Cather describes Hartwell as being “from America,” from “all of it—from ocean to ocean” (137). How does this distinguish Hartwell from those Americans who are from a certain place? What does this say about his “nativity” – can one, in effect, become native? Is this what he does? One can have American identity and not know it – can be American and not know it – and it is just a matter of unlocking the identity, this Americanness?

Consider American identity as racial, as not inheritable or learnable. Does Michaels suggest this?

Examine the idea of discovering what it means to have a “culture.” What does this mean? What does this have to do with finding, or appropriating (from American Indians, from one’s dead uncle, from one’s artistic mentor), an identity – be it racial, national, or spiritual?

What sort of idol is Hartwell’s dead uncle to him? What kind of man – or boy – was his uncle? Was he educated? Was he hard-working? Driven? Focused? Was he “cultured”? How does Hartwell revive his uncle by immortalizing him in art? He makes his uncle an archetypal American, emblematic of American struggles, freedoms, and, effectively, beautiful youth. How does this connection with his uncle – posthumously – allow Hartwell access to the province of American identity? Once Hartwell “has” this understanding, is it portable? Permanent? What does this say about American identity and whether it is or is not “place-specific” or locatable in certain places? At times (in The Professor’s House, for example), Cather appears to suggest that one can gaina ccess to an American past by occupying certain landscapes and understandings the dynamics and peoples of those sites. But this is not how Hartwell gains and sustains and American identity – or is it?

What sort of family do Hartwell and his young protégés constitute?