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Title: O Pioneers! (Vintage Classics) by Willa Cather ISBN: 0-679-74362-6 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 December, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.06 (62 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Price of Keeping the Land
Comment: This early Cather novel introduces readers to the majesty and the fury of the untamed prairie, when the mid west was yet Americca's frontier. It obliquely asks the question: How did the Land shape its people--mainly immigrants from Scandinavia, Bohemia and France--and how did the hopeful settlers, true Pioneers, shape and share the land? Who ultimately can ever own the prairie; can mere mortals seriously hold the undulating waves of grain in trust for future generations?
Spanning some 17 years this gripping novel depicts the struggle to tame the midwest by a Swedish family, whose lives intertwine with those of their neighbors. Against hostile and unforgiving nature
the simple tale is spun out: a wise teenage girl inherits control of the family farm from her dying fathr, since she alone of his offspring understands the importance of retaining the land at all costs. Despite interferance by her resentful, short-sighted brothers, Alexandra does just that, revealing vison and
determination beyond her years. For it is thus that she honors the memory of their father, keeping his faith in the ultimate
productivity o the savage land, when many neighbors sell out.
Creating strong female characters--of which the land itself or Mother Nature may be considered a shadowy one--Cather glowingly describes the rugged beauty of the mid west: rolling grasses,
powerful sunsets, intoxicating spring blossoms, with fluctuating, unpredictable weather. A farmer's life is an annual gamble, but then so is any pilgrimmage of the heart. Totally absorbed in running her successful farm, Alexandra does not look beneath the surface; she does not Notice things. Like the illicit love which blooms unbidden between her young brother, Emil, and Marie, the restless married woman next door. Add a wild, jealous husband into the equation and a volatile situation is inevitable.
Cather's style draws the reader directly into the mindset of her main characters. Recognizing the danger signs before Alexandra does, we tremble with the realization of future emotional turbulence.
The author' use of color to help us visualize her beloved landscape is remarkable, but most of all we marvel that she depicts the countryside itself as a non-verbal player in the repetitive tale of human stories. In the end readers must decide for themselves who is most to blame for the tragedy--if guilt must be parceled out. Her grim theme, that Happiness is easier to lose than to find, taints the backdrop of timid hope. The furrows of her novel are plowed and scored with attempts of her characters to "possess a personality apart from the soil. " This seemingly agrarian novel is less about the effect so grains of seed in the ground, than about the grains of love sown in a desperate search for joy in the hearts of the pioneers. How can Love survive in a barren wilderness? A true classic of human striving and passion.
Rating: 3
Summary: When men were men and women were more so.
Comment: The first half of this novel is curiously disjointed. Months, sometimes years elapse between each chapter, making it rather like reading fragments of a long family saga. The effect is to distance the reader from the characters. The second half is a more continuous and involving narrative, developing into a conventional social drama with a surprisingly melodramatic climax.
The writing is fine, with an especially strong visual sense, sometimes reading almost like a treatment for a screenplay. The author manages a simple and elegant style that suits her theme perfectly.
Cather's sympathies are firmly with the strong central female character Alexandra. The male characters are mostly insipid and unstable, and an affection, tinged with contempt, is shown toward the more submissive female characters. Apart from Alexandra, the author's deepest affection is reserved for the country itself. Cather writes of the Nebraska that she knew in her youth and of the immigrant men and women who tamed a hostile landscape.
The title is taken from a very poor and overblown poem by Walt Whitman, appropriate only in that the poem is as hard going for the reader as the land was for the pioneer. But, title apart, the novel remains a solid rendition of Western pioneer life, a vital strand of American cultural history.
Rating: 3
Summary: Beautiful story, but little else
Comment: Besides being the novel that allowed Willa Cather to become an established American writer, O Pioneers! was also very dear to her heart. In the novel, Cather addresses the subject matter with which she was most familiar: immigrant pioneers farming on the Nebraska Divide.
The plot of O Pioneers! concerns the Bergsons, a Scandinavian family who maintains their livelihood by farming in the small Nebraska town of Hanover. The death of the family patriarch, John Bergson, leaves the oldest child, Alexandra, to manage the vast farming lands. Soon after, pressure mounts on Alexandra to sell the farm and return to urban life. She makes the decision, however, to "hold on harder than ever." O Pioneers! is not only the story of "the old wild country, the struggle in which [she] was destined to succeed while so many men broke their hearts and died," it is also the exploration of human emotion as a result of that toil.
Cather's descriptive language lends itself to a lyrical, pastoral beauty. But maybe because I live in a world apart from Alexandra, I thought that the novel lacked genuineness. Since we've heard this story so many times in other settings, the novel has a fairytale-ish quality and an oversimplicity that didn't really allow me to connect with any of the characters. Therefore, I hesitate to heartily recommend it. Still, O Pioneers! is a valiant first effort from Willa Cather. Bonus points, too, for the strong female character Alexandra.
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Title: My Antonia by Willa Cather ISBN: 039575514X Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 21 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Death Comes for the Archbishop (Vintage Classics) by Willa Cather ISBN: 0679728899 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 16 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather, Doris Grumbach ISBN: 0395345308 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 10 May, 1983 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title:O Pioneers! ASIN: B00000G082 Publisher: Hallmark Home Entertainment Pub. Date: 18 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $9.98 |
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Title: The Professor's House (Vintage Classic) by Willa Cather ISBN: 0679731806 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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