Character Analysis: O Pioneers !

Lizbet Cantu
PO7
Cather, Willa, and Marilee Lindemann., O Pioneers! (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
1999
O Pioneers! tells the enchanting story of the Swedish, immigrant Bergson family in the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska. Although the story is told on a third point of view, the attention is clearly on Alexandra Bergson, sometimes switching the attention to other fictional characters. Alexandra is portrayed as a brave, intelligent and generous lady who not at once thinks about herself and rather depends on other people’s happiness. Throughout the short novel she does, indeed, find herself showering in wealth, but as the story draws closer to an end, her grief grows immense and endless with sparks of hope here and there. The people

The novel takes place on the great plains of the Midwestern side of the United States. The state where the novel is narrated is surrounded on the north by South Dakota, on the east by Iowa and Missouri, on the south by Kansas and Colorado, and on the west by Colorado and Wyoming. The Dissected Till Plains along with the Great Plains of Nebraska are located in the state where the story takes place. Lakes and rivers are also mentioned within the story, the Republican River, for instance is the most commonly known river around

Which all lead to the Homestead Act. Nebraska’s territory was settled under the Homestead Act of 1862. By 1884, Nebraska homesteads and farms were fighting against the emptiness of the prairies such as fictional characters of O Pioneers!, pushing settlement westward. Not only was the Nebraska territory being settled at this time, transportation was also being transformed, seeking railroads since without transportation it was merely impossible to raise commercial crops. Something else going on, which almost might seemed small, it was the rights for women. Women in Nebraska were seeking for the right to vote. Clara Bewick Colby had published the Woman Tribune Newspaper from 1883 to 1889. This newspaper provided women specifically from Nebraska more information concerning the right to vote and benefits, making women understand the equality that ought to be around that time period but which seemed obviously