Sometimes a Great Notion

The Stampers’ rugged individualistic ideals clash with the logging union’s struggle against the power of an industrial company. The union that Evenwrite and Draeger work for represents the force of a collective of working-class residents of Oregon to assert and protect their rights. Their antagonist, Wakonda Pacific, is a profit-driven and selfish company, with little concern for the workers’ well-being. Wakonda Pacific has no problem going behind the union’s back to seek out the Stamper family; and the Stampers have no problem being strikebreakers, who continue supplying the company with logs. Unlike the union, which explicitly looks out for the collective, the Stampers are driven by their own independence. As the strike squeezes the town’s residents, they resentfully recall bemoan that the Stampers are “cuttin’ full time” and making money rather than living up to the words of Jesus Christ, who preached that “‘Man’s got to live, Brother,’ ‘Yes, but ‘not by bread alone’” (51).

The struggle between the collective and the individual is not limited to the union dispute. The novel explores more generally the conflict between the desire to act with free will and the necessity of living in a world with other people in aspects not directly related to the union conflict. Viv, for instance, confides to Hank that she “would like to be friends with” some of the women in town, and she wonders if “she used to have to try so hard to make friends, back home” (152). Yet at the end of the novel, she decides to embrace her loneliness as independence, leaving town.

The Stampers live by the motto “NEVER GIVE A INCH!” (35). Even so, there are times when they seem to see the validity of the collective. They are devoted to their family. When Evenwrite and Draeger try to persuade Hank to sell his logging operation to allow the union strike to be effective, their appeal about the “town of men, women, and children” going “hungry all winter to line your pocket” falls on deaf ears (410). Hank only gives in to that offer after members of Stamper family—Henry and Joe Ben—are gravely injured and killed. Yet, when Hank learns that the town has taken pity on him and has charitably bought his Thanksgiving dinner, Hank angrily rejects the collective again, breaking his agreement with the union and selling logs to Wakonda Pacific. Because Hank’s assertion of his independence is so rooted in tragedy, however, it is not celebratory. Instead, it exposes how contentious the question of collective identity versus the American values of self-reliance and individualism can be.