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

surrounding her show both innocence and fondness with beautiful heartbreaking stories of their own, but not one person in the town can prove to be as strong as Alexandra.
The geographic setting of the novel is located on the Nebraska frontier, in a fictional town named Hanover, which could be better characterized as a small, real town named Red Cloud on Nebraska today.

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

Nebraska.
O Pioneers! is told from a perspective of the times around 1883 all the way until 1890. During this time period there were large numbers of immigrants coming to the United States. The largest number of immigrants came from Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Sweden and Norway. 61.1 percent of immigrants were males, 38.9 percent females and 21.4 percent were under the age of fifteen. Sweden immigrants (such as the Bergson family) were the fourth highest number of immigrants coming to the United States at this time, which was around 568, 362 immigrants.
Around this time frame, there were eighteen different treaties created where Native Americans “gave up” their land in Nebraska to the United States’ government.

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

impossible.
A myriad of issues happened throughout the short novel, but only a couple managed to stand out. Alexandra was managing the farms and business her father had left her, her older brothers thought it was a mistake allowing a woman do such thing. This showed a major issue with the equality of women in both the book and what actually happened in the past (and still continues today, but not as bad as this time). Alexandra was perhaps the only feminist in the entire fictional town of Hanover. No one believed in women being as equal as men were.
Immigration was another great problem, although it also links to the women’s equality of men. The large numbers of immigrants coming to the United States was immense, with the highest percentage being males. Obviously males being “fit” to own land which women could not be “fit” to do (which Alexandra, in the novel, proved wrong). This not only reflects on the lack of belief on women, but it also shows how many immigrants were willing to do anything and give perhaps everything, just for a better life from the one they had left behind in their home country, here in the United States of America.