O Pioneers By Willa Cather Analysis

Willa Cather was a famous female writer in the early 1900’s. In 1913 she wrote O Pioneers! It was the first book of her Great Plains trilogy. O Pioneers! Tells the story of the Swedish Bergson family that lives in Hanover, Nebraska. Alexandra Bergson, the main character, inherits the family farmland when her father John Bergson passes away. Alexandra Bergson devotes her life to two things, making a good farmland and the success of Emil Bergson, her youngest brother. In this story Willa Cather expresses three types of literary writing movements which include naturalism, realism, and romanticism. In this essay we will be discussing how Cathers uses these literary movements in her story.
The majority of the story, O Pioneers! was written in a …show more content…
The realistic writing style represents things as they are and are considered a representation of reality. This writing style is still used quite often in literature because it simply is everyday life. Cather shows this normality of life of Frank Shabata who is jailed in contrast with the poem that reads, “all the prisoners in the prisons all the righteous and the wicked, all the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, pioneers O pioneers!” also Cather’s work tries to be as realistic and true to old life as possible. This is based mostly on Cather's descriptions of her own work. But we also pick up on this while reading O Pioneers! Think about the cold, factual manner in which the murder of Emil and Marie is described, that i would assume to be one of the better examples. This is the scene in which Emil and Marie are killed, “The gun sprang to his shoulder, he sighted mechanically and fired three times without stopping, stopped without knowing why. Either he shut his eyes or he had vertigo. He did not see anything while he was firing. He thought he heard a cry simultaneous with the second report, but he was not sure. He peered again through the hedge, at the two dark figures under the tree. They had fallen a little apart from each other, and were perfectly still—No, not quite; in a white patch of light, where the moon shone through the branches, a man's hand was plucking spasmodically at the …show more content…
The romantic writing style, common in mid to late 1800’s literature, emphasizes emotion and individualism as well as glorification of the past and nature. Willa Cather didn’t use this writing style as often as the others but all the same it was used and with great description. I believe the best scene from the book that shows romanticism comes when Alexandra finds the bodies of Emil and Marie. This scene depicts two butterflies flying above their corpses. The following two quotes will most definitely help you to visualize the romanticism of the story. In the story it says, “Once there, she seemed not to have struggled any more. She had lifted her head to her lover's breast, taken his hand in both her own, and bled quietly to death. She was lying on her right side in an easy and natural position, her cheek on Emil's shoulder. On her face there was a look of ineffable content. Her lips were parted a little; her eyes were lightly closed, as if in a day-dream or a light slumber. After she lay down there, she seemed not to have moved an eyelash. The hand she held was covered with dark stains, where she had kissed it.” Also, “But the stained, slippery grass, the darkened mulberries, told only half the story. Above Marie and Emil, two white butterflies from Frank's alfalfa-field were fluttering in and out among the interlacing shadows; diving and soaring, now close together, now far apart; and in the long grass