Willa Cather

Willa Cather, in her story, “O Pioneers”, utilizes several different philosophies of life to tell a realistic story about immigrant life and struggles on the plains of late 1800’s Nebraska. The story is centered on the character of Alexandra Bergson, her family, friends and neighbors and her struggle to raise her three brothers on the family farm during harsh times. Cather’s use of romanticism, realism and naturalism helps to tell the story from the eyes of the characters and shows clearly her philosophy of life. It has been stated that the character of Alexandra was based upon Cather’s view of herself and her own beliefs. The land and its effect on the characters living on the plains is a central theme in the telling of the story. In the opening of the story, the little town of Hanover is described as “trying not to be blown away” during one season of drought and windy weather. This use of symbolism was what Cather used to tell how the conditions and the many natural forces had an effect on the town people. It represented how the characters resisted against nature to produce crops and a living on the plains. Several…

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…

Cather herself had spent some time in Washington, D.C. while working for the Nebraska State Journal and the Index of Pittsburgh Life writing criticism and interviews with comments on the Washington cultural and social scenes (Willa 102). In an effort to supplement her income while there, Cather took a job as a translator in a government office identifying the slaving clerks her fictional Tom later encounters (Willa 102). In the novel, discouraged by Tom’s inability to obtain governmental…

The story “O! Pioneers” written by Willa Cather uses three types of writing views. She uses the Romantic, Realistic, and Naturalistic views to write the story. The story is about a girl named Alexandra and how she deals with loss, failure, and loneliness. Cather mostly uses the naturalistic view to explain the struggles that Alexandra goes through, but she also uses the romantic and realistic views to explain it. Cather uses the Realistic view to show us Alexandra realization of what happened.…

In My Antonia, Cather uses symbols from nature to express the essential aspects of the lives of the characters. Some symbols are of the land: the prairie, the grass, winter, etc. Other symbols are animals: badgers, wolves, rattlesnakes, larks, etc. Choose three symbols and discuss how they convey information about the daily lives of the characters, how the characters relate to each other and/or how Cather views life. In My Antonia, by Willa Cather, there are multiple examples of symbolism. Mr.…

gurantee wealth and the status that comes along with it. In the process, they devalue any norms, values, or morals they were taught as an child. For example, in“ Paul’s Case,“ written by Willa Cather, Paul will do anything to live like a rich man. Never thinking about the damage he has caused to others along the way along the way.Through out the story Cather clearly shows how portraying someone you are not, can…

In Willa Cather’s novel entitled My Antonia, she writes about several female characters that, in essence, challenge the stereotypical women’s role in a male-dominated society during the early 1900s. In Trifles, a play written by Susan Glaspell, she depicts her female characters as crafty and bright and not simply inferior intellectually to their male counterparts. Upon closer examination of these two pieces of work, Cather and Glaspell demonstrate that these female characters defy the existing…

Willa Cather was one of the most prominent American writers of the early 20th century. Writing novels, essays, and short stories, Cather relied on her youth in Nebraska for inspiration. Though, Nebraska lacked many of Cather’s longings like the arts. By moving to Pittsburgh and New York after college, Cather would find the indulgences she desired. In two of Willa Cather’s short stories, “Paul’s Case” and “A Wagner Matinee,” Cather demonstrates how the arts allow people to temporarily escape…

age story told from the eyes of Jim Burden. Jim reflects back on his childhood and remembers his dear friend Antonia. Willa Cather uses Jim as the narrative so he can relate the themes such female inequality, the immigrant experiences, and agriculture and farming. Female inequality was not something that Willa Cather had, but she added it in this novel to where women were actually seen as the strongest and the mean were the weakest. Willa Cather switched the roles and allowed the women to be…

The wind brushed foreign settlers onto the untamed prairie lands of Hanover, Nebraska, where they would learn to live from the soil of the land. In the beginning of the novel, Willa Cather sets a dreary, cold, dark, stormy tone of the divide near Norway Creek, frontier similar to the unsure and suffering of the Bergson’s family. The land is the livelihood of the Bergson family, even after the father passes. Other prospectors might say, “one of the richest houses on the divide and that farmer was…