Examples Of Self-Sacrifice In Willa Cather's O Pioneer

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The way you look at life can take you far and manage how you look at the future, if you can make it. Does that mean doing things right such as being responsible? "Doing things right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you."(Jodi Picoult). Willa Cather author of [O Pioneer!] gives us examples of self-sacrifice with love, family and yourself. This theme is based of four fortifying characters named, Alexandra, Frank, Marie, and Emil.
Wonder what my reasoning is for having these four characters, set upon this subject self-sacrifice? The one I am going to point out now is Alexandra, only because Alexandra has to make a sacrifice between her brothers Oscar and Lou. The brothers is trying to take away of have the part of the land that Alexandra owns. You may think it not a sacrifice to mankind but if you think about she had to choose between her family and a piece a land .Oscar and Lou feels that “ Everything you’ve made has come out of the original land that us boys worked for” (125). …show more content…

This relates to Marie because of Emil they are; well was hidden lovers but Marie didn’t show she had so much love for Emil until the day he had to leave and go away. That night showed self-sacrifice because Frank knew he wasn’t good for Marie but he didn’t know Emil and Marie was in the orchard. So Frank shoot three times both died but this where self-sacrifice comes around with Marie. Emil had died on sight in the heart, Marie had a chance to be saved but instead she crawled back to Emil, Ivar comes to the conclusion that “she must have dragged herself back to Emil’s body” (201). Would you go back and just die with a person? Or would you aim to get help? Marie went back to die with her lover so she could die happy, she took it upon herself to just die when she might have had a chance of survival. That shows self-sacrifice to me and that’s why I choose Marie to represent this