Chloe Webb Dr Vargas History 18 May 2024 O ‘Pioneers Analysis O Pioneers! is a love story about two couples in Hanover, Nebraska: Alexandra Bergson and Carl Linstrum, and Emil Bergson and Marie Shabata. It was set sometime between 1883 and 1890. The novel focuses on the life of Alexandra Bergson. At the beginning of the novel we learn that Alexandra, her younger brother Emil, and their neighbor Carl live in the Divide. Alexandra's father, John Bergson, died. He tells his two eldest sons, Oscar and Lou, that he is entrusting the farmland and the preservation of all his livelihood from the time he immigrated from Sweden to his daughter. It later became clear that this was undoubtedly the right decision. When drought and depression struck three …show more content…
is an American novel, written by Willa Cather and published in 1913. While it offers a good portrayal of the struggles of the pioneer life, the novel is still a work of fiction that should not be treated as a historical document. O Pioneers. offers us a depiction of different aspects of the 1880s, such as the economics, social expectations, and how the world looked at the time. First, it depicts the economics at the time and the struggles of small-scale farmers competing with larger agricultural operations. The novel explores issues such as land ownership, the impact of industrialization on rural communities, and the complexities of rural economies. For example, at the beginning of the novel everyone is selling their farms due to the drought, and Alexandra, the main protagonist of the story, decides to purchase the farms of others. She later began using modern farming tools to the disapproval of her siblings and neighbors. Second, Cather shows us a depiction of the social expectations of the time through characters like Alexandra, who takes up leadership of her family's farm despite being the only girl and not the oldest of her siblings. This results in her brothers' disapproval of her relationship with Carl, and tries telling her that the farm does not belong to her, despite the fact that it was left to her. Finally, in O Pioneers!, we receive a portrayal of the Midwest landscape and its significance to the characters. The land itself symbolizes both the promise of opportunity and the harsh realities of frontier life through descriptions of the farms, orchards, and towns. Once again, this novel is of course a work of fiction, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the 1880s. It's beneficial to supplement readings of fictional works like "O Pioneers!" with media such as diaries, letters, newspaper articles, and historical accounts from the time period. This combination can provide a more well-rounded perspective on the
The story is taking place in a prairie. The first line of pg. 47 declares that. The same page is talking about a storm might be coming. I guess, there is a ocean near the prairie. On pg. 48, I found that the prairie landscape is discomforting due to the fact that it seems alive. It also talks about the farmsteads are there to intensify the situation. That same page talking about putting fire. It is taking place during winter, and may be somewhere during December. I think, the time is during the Great Depression of 1930's. In pg. 51 we found that John's farm is under mortgage. The same page tells, He works hard too much to earn some dollars. From pg. 52, I also found, he does not appoint any helper. In pg. 52, Ann remembers about their good time as well. Now, they are not having that of a easy life. They are tired by the labour. These all quotations proves that, the setting of the story is in a hill during the great depression of 1930's.
O Pioneers!, a novel by Willa Cather is a dramatic romance. The story takes place in a Farm outside of Hanover, Nebraska. This story is set in 1997. This story is about a romance in two different relationships.
When writing William Cooper's Town, Alan Taylor connects local history with widespread political, economic, and cultural patterns in the early republic, appraises the balance of the American Revolution as demonstrated by a protrusive family's background, and merge the history of the frontier settlement with the visualizing and reconstituting of that experience in literature. Taylor achieves these goals through a vivid and dramatic coalescing of narrative and analytical history. His book will authoritatively mandate and regale readers in many ways, especially for its convincing and memorable representation of two principles subjects- William Cooper, the frontier entrepreneur and town builder, and his youngest son, the theoretical James Fenimore Cooper, who molded his own novelistic portrayal of family history through accounts such as The Pioneers (1823).
Willa Cather did a very good job by portraying the real life situations that American pioneers had to face. This novel opened the eyes of the American public to the courage these pioneers must have had to venture out on to wild and un-charted land. It also opened the heart, of the American public, to these pioneers because of the hardships and burdens these pioneers had to face. As one reads this novel, it is very easy to feel nothing but the utmost respect for these pioneers because they underwent so much turmoil, that very few others during this time, went through. These pioneers were family oriented and wanted nothing but the best possible for their families. The pioneer men back during this time were real men and the pioneer women during this time were real women.
New beginnings and new land, while made out to seem as beacons of hope and chances for prosperity, are complete opposites; new beginnings offer neither success nor happiness, but rather more failures and recurring sorrows. John Steinbeck and Jack Hodgins introduce the idea of new beginnings and settlements just as they emphasize the importance of togetherness as a community and a family in The Grapes of Wrath and Broken Ground. However, it is important to consider that these new beginnings were involuntary and rather forced due to situational circumstances. These circumstances caused drastic changes in the lives of the characters, changes that ultimately led them towards a downward spiral. In both novels, change in location helped advertise new beginnings as a chance for a new, improved lifestyle, which turned out to be a mere lie. The “promised land” was simply a hoax, which they would later realize, as it left them with nothing more than the broken pieces of their woven dreams.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
Labrie, Janet M. "The Depiction of Women's Field Work in Rural Fiction." Agricultural History 67 (Spring 1993): 119-33. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
"Chapter 2 Western Settlement and the Frontier." Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays. Ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. 3rd ed. Vol. II: Since 1865. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 37-68. Print.
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
A major drought, over-cultivation, and a country suffering from one of the greatest depressions in history are all it took to displace hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners and send them, and everything they had, out west. The Dust Bowl ruined crops all across the Great Plains region, crops that people depended on for survival. When no food could be grown and no money could be made, entire families, sometimes up to 8 people or more, packed up everything they had and began the journey to California, where it was rumored that jobs were in full supply. Without even closing the door behind them in some cases, these families left farms that had been with them for generations, only to end up in a foreign place where they were neither welcomed nor needed in great quantity. This would cause immense problems for their futures. It is these problems that author John Steinbeck spent a great deal of his time studying and documenting so that Americans could better understand the plight of these migrant farmers, otherwise known as "Okies." From touring many of these "Hoovervilles" and "Little Oklahomas" (pg. v) Steinbeck was given a firsthand look at the issues and hardships these migrant workers faced on a daily basis. With the help of Tom Collins, manager of a federal migrant labor camp, Steinbeck began a "personal and literary journey" (pg. v), revealing to the world the painful truth of these "Okies" in his book Harvest Gypsies.
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.
Willa Cather’s O Pioneers presents the land as symbolic and vital to the course of the plot. As a force of nature so powerful that it can crush the efforts of any settler in a fleeting moment. This display of supremacy presents itself in the opening lines of Cather's novel, in which she introduces the land as not only the setting but an active character within the story. When Cather’s states, “One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away,” she incarnates the spirit of the settlers within the land. As the novel progresses, the idea that one must be a force equal in strength to the land is apparent in the protagonist character of Alexandra Bergson. O Pioneers brings the works of Fredrick Jackson Turner and Solomon Butcher to life, through Alexandra and her affection for the land, Cather, gives a voice and a human persona to the expanding frontier, showcasing the lands innate ability to shape its own destiny.
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.
The western frontier is full of many experiences that changed the frontier. Each significant event has an important role on the shaping of society and way it influenced a new nation. Each author brought a new perspective and thought process to the western experience which either contradicted Turner or supported his theories. The frontier ideas that interested me include topics such as trading frontier, farming frontier, nationality and government, and the neglecting of women.
Pickle, Linda S. "Foreigh-Born Immigrants on the Great Plains Frontier in Fiction and Nonfiction." Desert, Garden, Margin, Range Literature on the American Frontier. Ed. Eric Heyne. New York, NY: Twayne, 1992. 70-89