Dissecting the Novel "O Pioneers!"
Dissecting the Novel "O Pioneers!"
After reading the novel, O Pioneers!, it was hard to judge whether it was a tragedy or a triumph. I think the answer you are looking for would be a triumph. The only way I see it as a tragedy is that Emil and Maria died. I knew, since page six of the book, that they were destined to be together. It kind of broke my heart to see later on that she had married someone else. But when her and Emil got shot, I thought it may finish as a tragedy. But overall, I would see it as a triumph in the way that the Bergson’s finally got what they wanted out of their land. It made them rich. Also, Alexandra and Carl finally married. And being that the whole novel was basically based on “the land”, they were triumphant in getting what they risked, what they longed for. In my opinion, I think the land broke the characters rather than the characters breaking the land. Of course the characters had to plant and sew the fields, but they did that every year.
It took the forever, it seemed like, for the land to break them. That’s what the Bergson’s had worked for their whole life. The land pulls the family together and makes them work hard to get what they want,...money, happiness. It makes them happy. So yes, the land does break them more than they break the land. In considering Cather’s characters, I don’t think they become fully Americanized within a generation. At the beginning of the novel, it seems like they are more in tuned with the rest of America. They are economically stable. But when Carl comes back on his first visit, Lou and Oscar scorn him about burning Wall Street. Obviously, America is building and becoming more advanced. While still in Nebraska, people are relying on their crops to get them by. They are still dwelling on their traits, beliefs, and actions that past generations had. Romantic love in this particular novel is very hard to judge whether it is necessary for human happiness. I don’t think that it was meant to be the moral of the story, or that love was the basis of this particular novel, but I do think that after reading this that it was necessary in order to be happy. Of course, in one instance,...