The Relationship between the People and the Land in Willa Cather's O Pioneers
'For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of the geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning'
This quotation cuts straight to the heart of Willa Cather's whole argument throughout O Pioneers!, which is that it is Alexandra Bergson's will to survive and continually adapt which makes her successful -the facts that her neighbours are unwilling to take up new ideas and technologies, they are unwilling to gamble, and, worse, unwilling to listen to those whose relationship with the landscape is harmonious and respectful (such as that of Ivar), mark them down as part of the legacy of ignorant, unadventurous past. Alexandra is not content with a position such as Ivar's, though; she does not seek to subsume herself into nature, but to respectfully co-exist with it until she can in a greater development tame it. Whereas Ivar merely wishes to leave no mark, she has more controversial ideas. It is this which marks her out as something special; she was born with the fiery imagination of the true pioneer, born to prosper in "the struggle in which [she] was destined to succeed while so many men broke their hearts and died" (page 46). If she is so destined to succeed, she must similary be destined to make her mark on society of the time, on its established traditions, and sweep them aside in order for a brighter world vision to take their place.
There is overwhelming evidence presented by Cather for the inability of American society to coexist harmoniously with the individualist immigrant; they can accept only those who are willing to subscribe to the conformist doctrine ...
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...ndra's face "there was that exalted serenity that sometimes came to her at moments of deep feeling." (page 170) She has 'clear eyes' (same page), with the inference being that she sees clearly now above all other times of realisation. It follows from her life and story that the land is a metaphor for nature, which is intrinsically bound up in the experience of human life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
O Pioneers, Willa Cather, Oxford University Press, 1999.
The Landscape and the Looking Glass: Willa Cather's Search for Value, John H. Randall III, Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1960.
FOOTNOTES:
All quotes taken from the set text unless otherwise noted.
1. Back cover copy of O Pioneers!
2. Randall, page 68
3. Randall, page 291
4. Randall, page 20
5. Randall, page 72
6. Randall, page 67
Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski with Kari Ronning, Charles W. Mignon and Frederick M. Link. The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997.
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Cather portrays the tension between Alexandra and the community in the first four chapters of the section, entitled "Neighboring Fields." Alexandra, an iconoclast, who challenges the close-minded and petty world of small-town America, in which Lou and Oscar, her older brothers, are in one accord with. To an extent, Alexandra's brothers are bound to tradition, obsessed with popular opinion, and frightened by unconventional thought. Just as Lou and Oscar initially resist Alexandra's vision of the land's future and later her innovative farming techniques, they also ridicule her impulse to treat Crazy Ivar with k...
Rielly, Edward J. “Out of the Landscape of His Past.” Journal of American Cultuer 16.3 (1993): 47.
A very profound statement in the document was when he stated, “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem”,
Walker, Alice. (1974). “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” Ways of Reading. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, pp. 694-701.
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