Views of Strength: A Wagner Matinee

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The pioneers that traveled west from the east coast experienced so many hardships that today it has become hard to even imagine them. Willa Cather is an amazing author because through her stories readers can begin to imagine what it was truly like when pioneers had to go west and survive purely off of the labor of their own two lands. When she wrote A Wagner Matinee many Nebraskans felt that she was poorly portraying their way of life, and really what she was trying to do was highlight their strength and endurance. Today I think that her goal is successful for most readers. In this story she is using the point of view of a man who grew up in Nebraska with his aunt. His aunt is a lady that he is still in awe of because of how hard working she is. She kept everything running when he was growing up and even stayed up really late to teach him. One thing that she taught him about was music. She had been a music teacher in Boston when she met the love of her life and left music behind so she could move to Nebraska with him. In this story she is going to see her nephew and it will be the first time that she has left the farm in thirty years. This in itself would be hard because so much changes about the world in thirty years. When she gets there she is quite and doesn’t say much and doesn’t even want to leave his house but he convinces her to. They go and listen to an orchestra. She hasn’t heard so many of these songs in years and it is a beautiful thing for her. At the end she is crying because she doesn’t want to leave and go back to Nebraska. Throughout this story all her nephew does is describe the incredible strength that she has and this is why I think that Cather portrays Nebraskans so well. She is able to show how strong they hav...

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...survive daily life. Throughout the story Cather shows that Nebraskans are hard working when she describes all of the daily tasks that they have to do and the toll that they take on them. Someone can never truly understand what Nebraskans went through until they experience that kind of life for themselves. While some may have seen this description as an exaggeration I think that it helps the reader picture what they land and work did to people who lived and worked on it. The main point from Cather’s story is that in order to stay with their loved ones many people gave up a lot to go to Nebraska. When Cather shows the aunt going back to the city she shows how even when you put something out of your mind if you really love it you will not be able to go on forever without it. This is where the pioneers first get their endurance, from letting go of things that they love.

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