What’s Up With the Title?

Giants in the Earth

As the book's epigraph tells us, Rölvaag borrowed the title Giants in the Earth from the Book of Genesis, which says:

There were Giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

At first glance, the passage seems to be Rölvaag's way of admiring all the great "giants" of the past who settled the American prairies. But the image of the "giant" always appears in the story in a negative way. 

The image of the giant only appears in two major scenes in Giants in the Earth . On both occasions, Beret appears to hallucinate and sees giants in the world around her. When she looks at a wooden pole in her new settlement, she thinks,

[The centre pole] looked like the giants she had read about as a child; for a long while she was unable to banish the picture from her mind. (1.2.2.13)

At a later point, Beret looks up at the clouds above her home and thinks she sees a giant's threatening face in them. Ugh. We'd rather see a turtle or a baby.

Giants in the Earth might sound like a glorious title, in the same way that settling the American prairies might sound like a glorious life for Per Hansa. But for Beret, the figure of the giant is always something horribly huge and violent, just like the American prairies.

So in other words, the title Giants in the Earth covers both of the major perspectives we get in this book. There's the perspective of Per Hansa, which sees the hugeness of the American prairies as a challenge that he must overcome with his strength and determination. But for Beret, the "Giants in the Earth" refers to the gigantic and uncontrollable horror of the prairies, which will ultimately take her husband's life.