# The Plains of Nebraska explained — Travel Essays

> Chapter companion for Travel Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson.

## What happens

The narrator describes the vast, featureless plains of Nebraska, comparing the landscape to a billiard-board and reflecting on the monotony and isolation experienced by settlers. He observes a contented milk-selling woman at a way station and recounts a rude encounter at North Platte, highlighting the incomplete civilization of the region.

## Themes in this chapter

### Nature and the Sublime

The vast, empty plains evoke a sense of the sublime, with the horizon and sky dominating the landscape, both exhilarating and oppressive.

### Freedom vs. Confinement

The open plains offer a sense of freedom but also confinement through monotony and isolation, as the settler is trapped in a 'huge sameness.'

## Character check-ins

### The Americans

The narrator observes a well-dressed man who rudely refuses to pass the milk-jug, exemplifying incomplete civilization.

## Key lines

> It was a world almost without a feature; an empty sky, an empty earth; front and back, the line of railway stretched from horizon to horizon, like a cue across a billiard-board.

The landscape was featureless, with the railway line extending straight across the flat plain like a cue on a billiard table.

_The narrator emphasizes the stark emptiness and artificiality of the plains._

> She sold milk with patriarchal grace. There was not a line in her countenance, not a note in her soft and sleepy voice, but spoke of an entire contentment with her life.

She sold milk with a dignified, almost maternal ease, and her face and voice expressed complete satisfaction with her life.

_The narrator admires the milk-seller's contentment despite her bleak surroundings._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se/chapters/the-plains-of-nebraska
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se/chapters