The Use Of Three Philosophies In O Pioneers ! By Willa Cather

All stories present three styles of writing, known as the three philosophies of life. These three philosophies consist of Naturalism, Realism, and Romanticism. Author Willa Cather displays all three of these philosophies in her story, O Pioneers!, a novel inspired by the poem Pioneers! O Pioneers!, written by Walt Whitman. While Cather uses all three philosophies to write her novel, she uses Naturalism most frequently. Although Cather incorporated Realism in her novel, she seldom used it and made it hard to catch because she used it in the most dramatic parts. For example, in the poem titled Prairie Spring, also inspired by Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Cather wrote about the rough land of the dust bowl and the things trying to live there. Cather writes “Evening and the

For instance, again, in the poem “Prairie Spring”, Cather describes the land in a profoundly Romantic way. Cather’s poem reads “The eternal, unresponsive sky. Against all this, youth, flaming like the wild roses, singing like the larks over the plowed fields, flashing like a star out of the twilight. Youth with its insupportable sweetness, its fierce necessity, its sharp desire, singing and singing, out of the lips of silence, out of the earthy dusk.” Cather also describes the land Romantically at the very end of the story when Alexandra and Carl discuss the recent events and possible future events. After a while, they go inside and Cather describes the last scene of the story quite Romantically. She says “They (Carl and Alexandra) went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them, under the evening star. Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!” As I have said, Cather used Romanticism only to describe the land and not throughout the whole