“All the pulses of the world, Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat, Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O Pioneers!” Willa Cather’s depictions of frontier life exist as both realistic and specific. Cather grew up on the Nebraskan Great Plains, in surroundings that inspired the setting of “O Pioneers!” This story discusses the story of the Bergson family, who owns a farm on the highland prairies of Nebraska, otherwise knows as, "the Divide." This story has a tragedy and a romance background to it. John Bergson leaves his land to his children when he dies. After John Bergson’s death, his children learn to make decisions on their own, and the land they own shapes each of them into their own person. “O Pioneers!,” displays several forms of philosophical literature, including naturalism, realism, and romanticism. Naturalism has a style and theory of representation based on the accurate depiction of detail. “O Pioneers!” shows many forms of naturalism. “It was facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wants left alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.” This quote displays the brutalness of Nebraska; this state will quickly …show more content…
This story also includes naturalism and romanticism, although realism is the theme that comes across most throughout the story. They use the compelling and realistic details to make the story pragmatic. “When Frank Shabata got home that night, he found Emil's mare in his stable. Such an impertinence amazed him.” In the story Emil puts his horse into Frank’s barn. Even in today’s society people do not park their car in someone else’s garage. People know of this unspoken rule. Therefore, when Frank got mad about Emil putting his horse in his barn, it made it