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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
I first read excerpts from Cather's O Pioneers in high school and have always loved her clear and sparse descriptive writing style and the depth of her characters. No one in her stories is one-dimensional, everyone is.complex with different strengths and frailties, that she seems to understand.
The main fault I find with many works of modern fiction are protagonists that I just don't like. In Cather's stories, you end up somehow sympathizing even with the bad guys on some level. Everyone is very human. And though her works are set in the late 19th or early 20th century, you feel like these people are like the people you know every day. They exist everywhere.
The "pioneers" in this story include the wealthy, boastful, but painfully insecure older brother, the stalwart oldest sister who holds everyone together, but has trouble relating to people as one-on-one, the impulsive, openhearted hero, who makes one tragic decision, and an equally open-hearted unhappy wife who pays dearly for the community's deeply ingrained social restrictions and biases.
I liked that in the end, the main character still really misconstrues what happened and why, but carries on anyway. Just like the rest of us.
The main fault I find with many works of modern fiction are protagonists that I just don't like. In Cather's stories, you end up somehow sympathizing even with the bad guys on some level. Everyone is very human. And though her works are set in the late 19th or early 20th century, you feel like these people are like the people you know every day. They exist everywhere.
The "pioneers" in this story include the wealthy, boastful, but painfully insecure older brother, the stalwart oldest sister who holds everyone together, but has trouble relating to people as one-on-one, the impulsive, openhearted hero, who makes one tragic decision, and an equally open-hearted unhappy wife who pays dearly for the community's deeply ingrained social restrictions and biases.
I liked that in the end, the main character still really misconstrues what happened and why, but carries on anyway. Just like the rest of us.
Cather has a unique vision. The focus on nature and the land is meditative and thought-provoking. She sees human life in the broadest way, taking you from childhood to middle age, and also placing the individual in relation to preceding, and even future, generations as well as the community and family she lives in. She is not difficult reading but I can see why Cather is not "popular." She does not plot with melodrama or follow the usual paths of comedy or tragedy. In this novel a pivotal life experience is watching a lone duck in a pond. This is not my favorite Cather novel; that would probably be The Professor's House but this was a pleasure to read. I plan to read all of her novels.
I love the descriptions of the land. And the story, too . . . .
I had forgotten how much I like Willa Cather -her strong female protagonist and her beautiful prose which imparts a palpable love of the prairie.
Cather's characters lives are so real, so mundane and memorable.
Wonderful feminist story. The ending was shocking.
I always find it hard to review three-star novels, because there's nothing fundamentally wrong with them - they just didn't affect me enough to warrant four or (rarely) five stars. That holds true for this book as well: I really enjoyed it, but it didn't blow me away.
O Pioneers! published in 1913, is a window into early Nebraskan pioneer life. I don't think I've ever read a novel set in Nebraska, and only a few related to pioneer life (only Butcher's Crossing and The Big Rock-Candy Mountain come to mind, though there must be more) so that was exciting. O Pioneers! chronicles the life of Alexandra Bergson, a young Swedish woman who emigrated to the U.S. when she was a child. When she is a teenager, her father passes away (this happens at the beginning of the novel, so it's not really a spoiler) and she has to take over the running of the farm - a fledgling enterprise. As you can imagine, this is quite unusual for a woman in the late 19th century, but as it is her father's dying wish, she puts her mind to it. Along the way, we get to know Alexandra's younger brother Emil, her older (senseless) brothers Lou and Oscar, and her friends Carl and Marie, as well as an eccentric Norwegian man called Ivar
(more on him in a second).
The book is filled with descriptions of the prairie and the farm: beehives in the orchard, walnut trees, a pond with wild ducks, long stretches of wheat field and pastures where horses roam freely. It's an idyllic, bucolic environment...until it's not. There's a bit of a twist at the end, but I felt myself strangely unaffected by it. I think it's because you don't learn that much about each character's feelings beyond what is described in a few words, so the twist is surprising, but not particularly painful (in my case).
I did appreciate the allusion to a Greek myth....
Another thing that fascinated me was the way in which Cather seems to walk a line between her own beliefs and her desire for publication. There are such wildly conflicting notions of womanhood and femininity in this novel, that I'm inclined to think Alexandra's infuriating notions regarding Marie (near the end) are only there for the sake of publication. I mean, Alexandra is so independent, so prudent, so business-savvy and strong, that her comments and feelings near the end of the book come as a surprise. It's almost as if her publisher asked her to put them in, to balance out Alexandra's independence. (Then again...it is 1913. There are some other moments in this book that are highly uncomfortable when you read them in 2020: grown men jokingly asking a little girl to choose them as her lover (?!) and a young man kissing his best friend's bride on the mouth and then carrying her away as a joke...what? So, who knows why Alexandra says what she does.)
Still, there are other things that make me wonder if Cather had stronger opinions and ideas than she was able to foreground in this novel alone. For example, the portrait of Ivar is fascinating. He's an eccentric man, who initially lives by himself, far out of town. He is somewhat of a recluse and always goes barefoot. He only speaks Norwegian, despite having lived in the U.S. for sometime, and he is very connected to nature. He refuses to eat meat, and cares deeply for his environment. He especially has a way with horses, and others seek him out for that reason. Aside from that, though, he is mostly left alone, and most pioneers are prejudiced against him because he is "peculiar." Alexandra is one of the only people who treats him like an equal, and even goes to him for advice.
It's fascinating to me that Cather would include such a character. Did she meet someone like that? If not, were these her own ideas? Characters like Ivar, and Alexandra herself, make me think that Cather was much more progressive and open-minded than Alexandra's comments near the end of the novel suggest. Very interesting indeed. I guess I have to read some of her other works now to see if that impression holds up!
O Pioneers! published in 1913, is a window into early Nebraskan pioneer life. I don't think I've ever read a novel set in Nebraska, and only a few related to pioneer life (only Butcher's Crossing and The Big Rock-Candy Mountain come to mind, though there must be more) so that was exciting. O Pioneers! chronicles the life of Alexandra Bergson, a young Swedish woman who emigrated to the U.S. when she was a child. When she is a teenager, her father passes away (this happens at the beginning of the novel, so it's not really a spoiler) and she has to take over the running of the farm - a fledgling enterprise. As you can imagine, this is quite unusual for a woman in the late 19th century, but as it is her father's dying wish, she puts her mind to it. Along the way, we get to know Alexandra's younger brother Emil, her older (senseless) brothers Lou and Oscar, and her friends Carl and Marie, as well as an eccentric Norwegian man called Ivar
(more on him in a second).
The book is filled with descriptions of the prairie and the farm: beehives in the orchard, walnut trees, a pond with wild ducks, long stretches of wheat field and pastures where horses roam freely. It's an idyllic, bucolic environment...until it's not. There's a bit of a twist at the end, but I felt myself strangely unaffected by it. I think it's because you don't learn that much about each character's feelings beyond what is described in a few words, so the twist is surprising, but not particularly painful (in my case).
I did appreciate the allusion to a Greek myth...
Spoiler
Pyramus and Thisbe, by Ovid. I did not see the resemblance until their death - when Emil and Marie are found underneath the mulberry tree, and the white berries are stained red. Re-reading the beginning of the tale, it's clear that Cather was inspired by it. The very first sentence even reads: "Pyramus and Thisbe...lived in neighboring houses." I mean, come on! Interesting touch, CatherAnother thing that fascinated me was the way in which Cather seems to walk a line between her own beliefs and her desire for publication. There are such wildly conflicting notions of womanhood and femininity in this novel, that I'm inclined to think Alexandra's infuriating notions regarding Marie (near the end) are only there for the sake of publication. I mean, Alexandra is so independent, so prudent, so business-savvy and strong, that her comments and feelings near the end of the book come as a surprise. It's almost as if her publisher asked her to put them in, to balance out Alexandra's independence. (Then again...it is 1913. There are some other moments in this book that are highly uncomfortable when you read them in 2020: grown men jokingly asking a little girl to choose them as her lover (?!) and a young man kissing his best friend's bride on the mouth and then carrying her away as a joke...what? So, who knows why Alexandra says what she does.)
Still, there are other things that make me wonder if Cather had stronger opinions and ideas than she was able to foreground in this novel alone. For example, the portrait of Ivar is fascinating. He's an eccentric man, who initially lives by himself, far out of town. He is somewhat of a recluse and always goes barefoot. He only speaks Norwegian, despite having lived in the U.S. for sometime, and he is very connected to nature. He refuses to eat meat, and cares deeply for his environment. He especially has a way with horses, and others seek him out for that reason. Aside from that, though, he is mostly left alone, and most pioneers are prejudiced against him because he is "peculiar." Alexandra is one of the only people who treats him like an equal, and even goes to him for advice.
It's fascinating to me that Cather would include such a character. Did she meet someone like that? If not, were these her own ideas? Characters like Ivar, and Alexandra herself, make me think that Cather was much more progressive and open-minded than Alexandra's comments near the end of the novel suggest. Very interesting indeed. I guess I have to read some of her other works now to see if that impression holds up!
I loved this book, fantastic story with a wonderful main character. The setting is vivid and real. Just a wonderful look at agricultural, American, immigrant, farming life in the late 1800s!
Willa Cather's prose is beautifuly to read. I thoroughly enjoyed her portrayal of life in Nebraska and the difficulties faced as the farmers tried to break the land. She did a marvelous job of painting word pictures of both the land and the people, without getting over-wordy. She let the reader fill in a lot of the blanks about the characters and didn't rely on stock-types.