Alexandra Bergson acts more of a biographical character than everyone gives her credit for. Cather saw herself as a strong, intelligent, young women trying to carve a path through the world that did not seem to appreciate her. Cather had three different philosophies in the book and they are Naturalistic, Realism, and Romanticism.
Realism appears to be the way of life. Realism deals with the social problems of real people in real places and in the present. She used it in the story by using the characters as a point or having real life events that could happen in the real world happen to them. During the book, Frank always got so drunk and then he couldn’t control his anger issues. But marie didn't help any by always wanting to hang around with
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The naturalistic view of the book seems to show that John Bergson wanted Alexandra to have the land after he passes because she has more sense than her brother. The naturalistic point of view is used very carefully or shown carefully in this novel. Alexandra seems very wise when it came to who she wanted to help her with the land because it meant so much to them. The Naturalistic point in this novel seems naturalistic because the fact that Alexandra did indeed deserve the land and would take better care of it herself. She does a good job on keeping up with the land because her brothers Lou and Oscar would help her with it but eventually it got too much for them and they ended up leaving and got married.”There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back. Like the plains of Lombardy, it seems to rise a little to meet the sun. The air and the earth are curiously mated and intermingled, as if the one where the breath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissant quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness”.John Bergson wanted Alexandra to keep the land as long as she could and she has done that for 16 plus years.”The rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing climate and the smoothness of the land make labor easy for men and beasts. There are few scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing in that country, where the furrows of a single field often lie a mile in length, and the brown earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls away from the shear, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, with a soft, deep sigh of happiness. The wheat-cutting sometimes goes on
Alexandra Bergson is a hard working women. She struggles at first but does not give up. Alexandra’s hard work finally pays off. She is really successful and really wealthy. She is a mentor to her under brother. She does not want him to be like her. She motivates and pushes him to become someone better than her. Alexandra was always kind and caring to all the people around her. She would try her best to be friendly and helpful with everyone. She was forgiving to people even if they did or said something to her. Alexandra was also a lonely single lady. She spent most of her time staying on top of her farm and younger brother. She was loving
Alexandra is a hard working young lady and will do anything to make her father proud. When the drought and depression struck three years later, Alexandra's determination to keep the farm allows her to persevere. Many families, including Carl Linstrum's, sell their farms and move away. However, Alexandra believes in the promise of the country and staying true to her father's word. She convinces her brothers to re-mortgage their farm and buy more land. She also convinces them to look for more innovative farming techniques.
Although Alexandra begins working the land to fulfill her father’s dying wish, no one in her early life ever realizes that perhaps she had other dreams and other wishes. “You feel that, properly, Alexandra’s house is the big out-of-doors, and that it is in the soil that she expresses herself best,” an...
“Long days. Open country with ash blowing over the road. The boy sat by the fire at night with the pieces of the map across his knees. He had the names of towns and rivers by heart and he measured their progress daily”
This is Cather’s idea of what John Bergson had to fight against. It’s clear, that the whole family felt discouraged and helpless when there was no success coming. They saw many people around them selling their land and giving the farming up. They were going to find their fortune somewhere else. After John Bergson died, his sons also wanted to give up and change the hard work on the infertile land for some job in a town.
The increase in immigrants into America was one of the reasons. Realists endeavored to give a comprehensive picture of modern life by presenting the entire picture. The true definition of literary realism as defined by Encyclopedia Britannica is an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to any one-century or group of writers, it is most often associated with the literary movement in 19th-century France, specifically with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. George Eliot introduced realism into England, and William Dean Howells introduced it into the United States.
In the novel O Pioneers!, Alexandra Bergson is the novel's central protagonist. Alexandra?s character is a model of emotional strength, courage, and tenacity. As the eldest child of the Swedish immigrant John Bergson, she inherits his farm and makes it profitable. Because Alexandra is best suited to perform the labor of prairie life (mentally and physically), she is a prototype of the strong American pioneer and an embodiment of the untamed American West.
Realism, in philosophical terms, refers to the concept that there is a reality beyond our perception. This means that how we see things and what we believe about them has no impact on the nature of said things. For example an individual may see an object as blue and another see the same object to be red, this is merely a disagreement between both parties about how they should label the colour. This wouldn’t mean that both parties are discussing different objects, this shows that no matter what individual’s beliefs or thoughts on the real world are only ever approximations and do not accurately capture reality. (O’Brien, M and Yar, M, 2008)
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.
Realism claims that what we can review about our surrounding is established in the fact that they absolutely exist. What we believe about gathered information is what we think about the actual world. It states that there is an actual world that assimilates directly with what we think about it.
Realism started in France in the 1830s. It was very popular there for a long time. A man named Friedrich Schiller came up with the word “realism.” Realism is based on contemporary life. There is a very accurate and honest representation of characters in this style of art. Realism tries to combine romanticism and the enlightenment. Life isn’t just about mind and not just about feelings either, it’s about both feelings and reason together. As said in the na...
Realism occurs everyday, one may not know but its the reason why know not everyone gets to live their lives to a happy ending, its the reason why sometimes you can't get everything you want in your life. Realism is the attitude or practice of accepting a situation as it is and being prepared to deal with it accordingly. Realism is a trend which takes place in the nineteenth century during which literature depicted life "as is," and focuses on real life. This literary movement frequently depicted everyday life; it follows the rule of a phenomenal world and that nothing is added to your life. It is the reverse job of what a filter would do to all the troubles that one may encounter later in life. Realism is represented in Kate Chopin's short stories The Story of an Hour and A Pair of Silk Stockings. In both the short stories, the main characters get to face a dream/fantasy that they’ve always wanted to encounter; something rare that lasted only for a short amount of time. The freedom that each character got was some sort of new freedom that they never experienced before. For example in The Story of an Hour, the main character Louise Mallards is feels oppressed because she can't live for herself. She realizes at the end that her husband was alive the whole time and that her short fantasy came to an end. She thought that it would last forever until the death of her but she was wrong. Another example of realism is A Pair of Silk Stockings, the main character of this story was Little Mrs Sommers. She finds fifteen dollars on the floor and this feeling of having this much money eventually controls her until its all gone. Her lack of being able to control herself and curiosity controls her and the money. W...
Realism is a style of writing which shows how things are in life. It showed how mostly every person thought life was just perfect. They were not seeing the
When the newlyweds move in they are wary of their new landscape, the unfamiliar surroundings, cultural barriers and difference to their old landscape along with the people in the landscape cause them to be unreceptive to the landscape. The changing relationship between the people is demonstrated through the comparative description of the couple in their old and new neighbourhoods. Their prior residence was “in the expansive outer suburbs where good neighbours were seldom seen and never heard”. This is juxtaposed against the noisy Macedonian family that “shouted, ranted and screamed”. The accumulation implies the severity of the noise and juxtaposed against the silence of their old neighbours, Winton demonstrates his purpose that the landscape shapes us and irrational emotions of fear and worry interfere with our receptivity to the landscape. The negative connotations of “uncomfortable”, “nervous”, “disapproval”, “resented” and “disgust” used to describe their neighbours highlights their lack of receptivity to their new landscape. The strained relationships with the neighbours continued into autumn and although displeased, the couple “took careful note of what was said”. The gradual acceptance emphasises the time required to fully accept the new people and their landscape as well as the shift in perspective that is only possible with time. The lack of receptivity to the landscape impacts the couple’s relationship with the neighbours and hence this shows the complexity of human behaviour because it is based on emotions which are impacted by the receptivity to the
Realism is a literary style in which the author describes people, their actions, their emotions and surroundings as close to the reality as possible. The characters are not perfectly good or completely evil; they exhibit strengths and weaknesses, just as real people. The characters often commit crimes or do immoral things, and are not always just good or just evil. In a realistic novel, aspects of the time period or location are also taken into consideration. Characters dress in clothes that befit them, and speak with local dialects. Most importantly, characters are not sugar coated or exaggerated. The characters do things as they would normally do them, and are not worse or better then their real life counterparts.