Transfusion Plot: Reading the American Novel

Abstract

This thesis proposes a new critical framework for reading American literature: the Transfusion Plot, a structural and symbolic model through which narrative progression depends on reciprocal exchanges among body, land, and memory. Drawing on metaphor and materiality, the Transfusion Plot suggests that stories in the American novel emerge—successfully or not—through acts of offering: labor, lineage, emotion, and sacrifice given to soil or withheld from it. The dual meaning of “plot” as both narrative arc and physical land is central to this reading, allowing for deeper insight into how novels negotiate rootedness, inheritance, and rupture. The project centers on a close reading of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, where the success or failure of plot depends on the characters’ ability to labor meaningfully on and with the land. The Shimerdas arrive without preparation or offering, and the prairie remains closed to them. In contrast, Ántonia’s physical labor becomes the novel’s central transfusion—her bodily commitment to soil generates memory, family, and narrative continuity. Her sweat, persistence, and eventual rootedness form a living arc in which plot, in both senses, is allowed to grow. Ultimately, the Transfusion Plot offers a vocabulary for reading the American novel through its circulatory systems—where blood, sweat, soil, and story intersect. It repositions land not as backdrop but as participant in the plot’s formation and resolution, inviting new readings of literary inheritance and identity