As Willa Cather wrote “O Pioneers!” she drew from 3 main philosophies of life, Realism, Romanticism, and Naturalism. While one book or story may adhere to just one of these philosophies, Cather was able to masterfully combine all of them.
For starters, realism gets best described as “A faithful representation of reality”. One example of this in O Pioneers! Would come in chapter 1 of part 1 when Alexandra says "Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But he says father can 't get better; can 't get well.". This is an example of realism in that she is just saying it how it is instead of trying to sugar coat it. Another example would show up in chapter 12 of part 4 Alexandra says "And now you are going away. I thought so.". This is realism in that she sees his tendencies in how he leaves. Those are just some of the many examples of Cather using realism in O Pioneers!.
…show more content…
One example of this in O Pioneers! would come in chapter 3 of part 1 when Alexandra says "Yes, yes, Carl, I know. You are wasting your life here. You are able, to do much better things. “. This was her over glorifying the fact that Carl is leaving to learn something as useless as Engraving thinking it will improve his situation in life.Another example of romanticism would show up in chapter 7 of part 4 when Emil says "don 't take my dream away!" showing that the characters have dreams and aspirations to become bigger than themselves at that point in