Willa Cather's O Pioneers! provides a unique outlook on western prairie life in America during the late nineteenth century, as the story is told from the perspective of a successful women. While the main character, Alexandra Bergson, gains success from her land, she also faces many personal struggles within a society for which her individual prosperity is not the norm. In this paper, I will discuss the conflict between Alexandra and her brothers, the nature of women and their roles on the prairie, and Alexandra's relationship with men outside the family; namely, Carl Linstrom. Alexandra is the eldest of four children, and the daughter of a Swedish immigrant who perhaps held unrealistic notions of his ability to tame American land. After his passing, he leaves Alexandra the responsibility of caring for her three younger brothers, Lou, Oscar, and Emil. While she holds a close relationship with Emil, the bond between Oscar and Lou is lacking. .
The siblings have vastly different ideas about obtaining "The American dream". The boys would have been happy moving to "the baking shop in Chicago (pg. 88)" where there uncle works. This becomes clear after the siblings endure a three year drought and no success on the prairie. They express their intentions of selling the land and buying a one-way ticket out, but Alexandra resists. Her intense pioneer spirit and loyalty to her father is unwavering. She believes the land is not the problem; rather, the people are. Her decisions to not only keep the land, but to borrow money in order to buy even more land, ends up being a prosperous one. However, this squabble is the beginning of a long history of misunderstanding and disagreement between the siblings. .
An argument later in the novel offers a glimpse into the role of women on the prairie. Despite Alexandra's tremendous efforts and ultimate success over the land, her work is trivialized by the men in her life, who even go as far as to say "The property of a family belongs to the men () because they do the work (pg.
The novel, O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather, conveys several ideologies about American society from the time frame it was written. ... Cather also demonstrates the uncertainty settlers experience in the plains. ... All in all, Cather demonstrates some relative issues plaguing American society during the 1900s. ... Cather ultimately wrote O Pioneers!...
All of these hardships, as well as others, were portrayed in Willa Cather's "O" Pioneers". ... Cather stated in Chapter two that John Bergson "spent his first five years on the Divide getting into debt, and the last six getting out." ... Willa Cather did a very good job by portraying the real life situations that American pioneers had to face. ... It also opened the heart, of the American public, to these pioneers because of the hardships and burdens these pioneers had to face. ... The pioneer men back during this time were real men and the pioneer women during this time were real women....
O Pioneers! By: Willa Cather O Pioneer!, is a story about a strong woman's life out on the land in early America. The book takes you through all the many hardships and wonders of her life. The book helps you to see the adversity of being a strong woman of that time. The book sta...
-Immigrants, Pioneers, Europe - Religion spirituality-throughout her life and especially after 1922, Cather was concerned with the decline of spirituality in an increasingly materialistic American society - Nature, Catholicism/Protestantism, Modernism -Missions and Native Americans Death comes for the Archbishop: symbolism and imagery In Death Comes for The Archbishop, Willa Cather demonstrates her unique ability to illustrate exceedingly intricate landscapes with delightfully eloquent prose. ... Willa Cather superbly incorporates both imagery and symbolism to convey these and other significan...
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."1 Therefore, it makes sense that if mortals cannot bear the darkness, they [should not] not go there. If man dislikes "black night and yawning chasms,"2 then should he not even consider them? Shouldn't man seek out the sunshine, instead? The remedy is very simple: Avoid the darkness and seek the light. But, no. ...
