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Brief Summary Of O Pioneers ! By Willa Cather

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O Pioneers!
By Willa Cather

Aashka Jhaveri
7B
January 23, 2017 O Pioneers!, written by Willa Cather, was her first book, which was about a prairie lifestyle. When she was in college, Willa Cather first had an interest in studying medicine, but after one of her stories she wrote in writing class got published, she found an interest in writing. After graduating college, she got a job as a high school English teacher and wrote short stories during that time. The short stories she wrote were noticed by the owner of McClure’s Magazine, S. S. McClure, who hired her. After five years she started writing her own books, and the first few, such as O Pioneers were about the destruction of pioneering tradition. Alexandra Bergson, one of the main characters in O Pioneers!, portrays an American pioneer who stays strong mentally and does not give up. An argument to go against the thesis would be that Alexandra is a woman who does not stay strong mentally because after Emil died, she did not want to do anything. She felt almost depressed that her hard work, which was so Emil could go to college and become a businessperson, had all crumbled because Emil died. Once both Emil and Marie were gone, Alexandra could only talk to Ivar and Signa, so she started feeling lonely and was longing for Carl to …show more content…

She always believed that she could farm on the land no matter what others said; she did not even listen to two of her brothers, Lou and Oscar. In doing this, she eventually makes the farm profitable after inheriting the farm from her father, John Bergson. Lou and Oscar were like their neighbors; they stuck to tradition and objected Alexandra’s ideas that were different. Alexandra, ready to try new methods of farming, was open-minded, yet her brothers were close-minded, not wanting to anything but tradition. Alexandra knew that sometimes traditions

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“A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves” (Cather 38). This quote from the book, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather it’s basically saying that a pioneer isn’t supposed to need a perfect world because they should be able to imagine one even in the harshest times and conditions. Their work and imagination should be what creates a better world for themselves. Alexandra Bergson’s family immigrated to the United States and settled in Omaha, Nebraska they were pioneers.

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In O Pioneers there were three important relationships to the progression of the story, those are the relationships between Alexandra and Carl, and Marie with both Frank and Emil. There were many different things which held each relationship back and not one of them was completely smooth sailing. The relationship between Frank and Marie failed due to Frank’s lack of love for Marie and his melancholy behavior, that paired with Marie’s infidelity crashed their relationship straight into the ground. Marie felt farther away from Frank and her love for Emil just kept growing, this brought their relationship right to its end in which both Emil and Marie were killed by Frank.

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