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Friday, February 22, 2019

O Pioneers! By Willa Cather


When you feel like reading but your present mind is like a spinning wheel, trust Willa Cather! And so did I. O Pioneers! was my second Cather after Death Comes for the Archbishop. 'O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather's first great novel..' is printed on the back of my copy, the Vintage edition. And indeed, it was great for a first work!

O Pioneers! is the first of Great Plains trilogy, succeeded by The Song of the Lark and My Antonia. Depicting the first immigrants who settled as farmers in the Nebraska country, the story focused on the Bergsons, a Swedish-American family who owned and farmed their land. Before the father died, he trusted the land management to Alexandra, his only daughter who was much more able compared to her two brothers, Lou and Oscars, while their youngest brother Emil was still a little boy. The Linstrum's land was next to Bergson's farm, and for years Alexandra and Carl - the Linstrum boy - were friends. After two years of tereible drought and crop failure, many of their neighbors left the land to seek better opportunities in other counties, including the Linstrums. But Alexandra, despite of Lou and Oscar's objections, kept staying. Bold, strong-willed, and intelligent, she loved and trusted their farmland, and by her intuition and eagerness to learn modern techniques, she succeeded in making it prosper, while their neighbors failed.

Sixteen years later, the Bergsons were the richest landowner there. Carl Linstrum visited for the first time after he tried (and failed) to prosper in Chicago. Lou and Oscar suspected him of wanting to marry Alexandra. They trudged the idea if receiving an outsider into the farm, while it was they who had worked hard for years. Carl, who has realized after those years that he truly loved Alexandra, had no choice but left, this time to Alaska. But not before he witnessed a growing flirtatious relationship between Emil (now a handsome young man) and a married Bohemian woman, Marie Shabata, who, with his husband, has brought Linstrums' land after they left.

If you seek a slow-paced, soothing book, O Pioneers! is perfect for you. But for one tragedy near the end, this book is generally calm. It gives us chance to witness the characters dynamically developed. At the beginning, Alexandra was my favorite. But I was disappointed after she blamed Emil and Marie, while pitied Frank over the tragedy. I realized that adultery is never right, but you can't stop people of falling in love with anyone. And really, it's Frank's fault too that his wife must find another love. She fell in love head over heels with him in the first place, but he just wanted her to suffer during their marriage. Marie is flirtatious in nature, but never unfaithful. And on top of everything, murder is the ultimate crime. I can probably (though difficultly) forgive adultery, but never murder - passionately or coldly. I personally will never forgive a man who deliberately seized a gun when he was just suspicious. No, Frank has always been a murderer-to-be from the beginning. He just sought for a justification to take revenge on Marie. (-_-)

Fortunately Cather ended the story happily. At least, Carl Linstrum deserved it!

All in all, 4,5 / 5 is my final score.


8 comments:

  1. Gosh, I love Cather so much. And thank you for your wonderful thoughts about her. I've never had an experience quite like reading Cather. It's similar to how I feel when I read Woolf (well, similar but entirely different.) This is one of my favorites, along with A Lost Lady.

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    1. Quite agree, she is unique. I don't usually like monotone-slowpaced novels, but somehow Cather's writing is enchanting. It's really soothing! I don't agree about similarity with Woolf, though. I felt more troubled than soothing when reading Mrs. Dalloway. And then I gave her up.

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  2. This is my favorite Cather. Yes, slow and soothing. She could write and write about the land, and I would be content. Those character flaws are disheartening, but...that's human nature for you.

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    1. That's it! It's marvelous how she kept talking about the land, and never bored me! By the way, her love of the land quite reminded me of Zola (particularly in The Earth) though Zola is never soothing, LOL.

      Agree with the character flaws, I thought the same too. Alexandra lacks imagination, and all her life was dedicated to the land (not the humans), so her reaction is quite understandable.

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  3. Ohhh I really must read another Cather soon. I had a similar feeling to the one you described when a read My Antonia a few years back...and I love to have that again :-)

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    1. ...and I can't wait to read more Cather too! I planned to read all her works, including her short stories collection.

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  4. I recently read this book, loved it, but felt that Alexandra’s response to the murder of her beloved brother and friend was not realistic. I wish Cather had allowed us to really feel Alexandra’s grief and loss before coming to forgive Frank—I think that would have felt more real. Apart from that, I loved the book.

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    1. Cannot agree more.. but maybe Cather intended to highlight how people like Alexandra, who are too much attached to the earth, sometimes failed to conenect with human passion. Just maybe...

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