Willa Cather: O Pioneers!

[SFG75]

This was a required reading for me in high school, but I remember next to nothing about it. Perhaps because I just listened to what the teachers and other students had to say about it and that I really didn't care for english class at the time. I bought it saturday and I'm about half way through it. There are many wonderful Cather links out there and for folks who want to read the online text version, you can do so here. One of the uncanny things is that my present employer is mentioned in the book. For those who don't know, I'm a teacher at an alternative school that is housed in a mental health treatement facility. Like many of these places, they grew out of the insane asylum system. In O Pioneers!, the boys(Oscar and Lou) press Alexandra to have Ivar commited to the asylum in Hastings. Small world indeed, even a hundred or so years later on the plains.

One of the things that I enjoy about the book is her use of language in describing the geography of the plains and description of farming in general.

There are few scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing in that counry, where the furrows of a single field often lie in a mile in length, and the brown earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls away from the shear, not even diminishing the brightness of the metal, with a soft deep sigh of happiness.

(page 50)

You also just feel the anguish of the parents, especially the mother who misses the "old country" and the father who toiled all for naught. The description of the harsh planting conditions reminds me a lot of the western part of the state, still just as unforgiving and tough for farmers to use as ever.

Any thoughts?

 

[nomadic myth]

I read it a few months ago. I seem to remember the family becoming prosperous by the end. The reward for sticking with the land I guess.

My Antonia is fresh in my mind, as I just read it. In this Cather book there is one of the Shimerda sons who is mentally challenged and has webbed fingers. They don't seem to want to put him in any sort of institution, but then again, he is not mentally ill.

Near the beginning of My Antonia there is a great section where Burden describes the plains as just land and sky, or an empty slate. The area is all potential, and nothing has been expended yet.