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    O Pioneers
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    O Pioneers
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    O Pioneers
    Ebook211 pages15 hours

    O Pioneers

    By Willa Cather

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A classic frontier novel from Pulitzer prize-winning author Willa Cather, O Pioneers is a magnificent celebration of life and the noble pioneer spirit. It celebrates a 100th anniversary in 2013. It is a tale of murder, love and money, as people struggle to carve out a life in the wilderness during the turn of the twentieth century, while battling ever-duplicitous human nature. Alexandra Bergson's father, John, is dying. He entrusts his farmstead on a desolate stretch of plain to her rather than to her brothers. Faced with the rigours of frontier living, droughts and penury, Alexandra only becomes more determined to carry on her father's legacy and battles through remortgaging the farm and adopting new techniques. Fast forward sixteen years, her hard work has paid off, her brothers Lou and Oscar have both created prosperous farms and under Alexandra's management the original farm has thrived. When childhood friend Carl Linstrum returns from travelling though it appears that romance is on the cards and Lou and Oscar drive him out of town, fearing that their sister's marriage would disinherit their own children. The community begins to unravel as jealousy spills out into murder. Willa Cather's writing reflects her upbringing in prairie lands steeped in history. Prairie living, and its accompanying literature, represents a quintessential American experience. The power of the land itself, the resilience of its inhabitants and the flow of history over the land all come together to create a potent and moving novel.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHesperus Press Ltd.
    Release dateJul 26, 2013
    ISBN9781780941943
    Author

    Willa Cather

    WILLA CATHER (1873–1947), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than fifteen books, was one of the most distinguished American writers of the early twentieth century.

    Read more from Willa Cather

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    Reviews for O Pioneers

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      The story of French/Bohemian immigrants to the American West in the late 19th century. I have read much about western settlement and this book did not live up to it's hype. This was mostly a book about interpersonal relationships and not about actual settlement. By this time they had mechanized farming (except tractors) and telephones; not really pioneers, in my mind. This certainly was not on the level of The Little House Books or Sara Donati books. This was my 2nd (and last) Cather book I've read that really wasn't interesting. 198 pages
    • 4/5
      Worth a trip to Nebraska.
    • 4/5
      An engrossing story to lose yourself in, well read.
    • 4/5
      This book was a pleasant surprise -- I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Written 100 years ago, its observations of human foibles are still apt.
    • 4/5
      A character piece. What happens in this book isn't particularly interesting, but the people it centers around is. There isn't anything particularly mesmerizing about any of the characters - they're just so real and wholesome and pleasant that I'd like being friends with them, but they have conflict just enough that they're intriguing to watch from afar as well. I love Alexandra most, of course. A feminist icon.
    • 4/5
      Meh, Cather. I read My Antonia sometime in my teens and didn't care for it. Read O! Pioneers in masters degree school and didn't care for it. And I still don't care for it. The descriptions of the land are pretty amazing, and I like some of the characters okay, but for the most part I'm just not gripped or intrigued or fascinated or angered or annoyed or anything really until the end, when Frank shoots his wife, Marie, and Emil and Alexandra is all "well, you know, it's more their fault than yours, Frank, because, you know, carrying on and doing the what-not." Aside from my general "sorry, can't" re: "it's okay to murder your wife and her lover because adultery," Alexandra's reaction to it given her otherwise quite (proto-) feminist attitudes about everything else make me all verhoodled in my brainmeats. This is one of those books I feel is far more important to literature than it ever will be entertaining, enlightening, or appealing to me.
    • 5/5
      This book was written in 1913, but it is set in 19th century Nebraska. At that time, a large number of immigrants had made their way to the United States and they came because they knew that land was being offered for free to settlers. This particular settlement is Hanover, Nebraska, and the book is about the Bergstrom family who were immigrants from Sweden. Hard work is definitely not foreign to these people and Alexandra and her family (mother, father, three brothers, and Alexandra herself), Alexandra's father is taken from the family at a fairly young age, but he leaves a sizeable homestead and a house for his family, and he entrusts his daughter to look after it all. He recognizes that she is the most capable of the lot. Alexandra faces this challenge head-on, and she increases her landholdings, and ensures that her family are much better off than when she began. She does this at great sacrifice to her own personal life. This is a story about the strength of the human race; about love and loss; and about great tragedy. It's a wonderful and realistic portrayal of colonial life in the untamed American prairie. I highly recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      Alexandra is incredible. She was strong, and suffered at the hands of all of her brothers. The story was beautiful, even in it's sadness. The writing was poetic and kept me reading.I loved the ending. The scene where Alexandra realizes it was Jesus who she had been dreaming about for much of her life. I loved it. I was still happy when Carl came back and they agreed to get married, but I also liked the idea of Alexandra becoming a nun (it was implied that was what she was considering this.)The one thing that I didn't like was the victim blaming. Frank Shabata hurt his wife, not physically, but emotionally, for years and years. It was wrong of her and Emil to commit adultry, but two wrongs make more wrong, and I didn't like that first Frank, and then Alexandra essentially blamed Emil and Marie for Frank's murdering them. Besides the fact that this action was a mortal sin for Frank, it also prevented the two of them from repenting their own. Whether he had a temper or not, Frank should not have kept saying that it was her fault for letting him catch them. It was his fault for letting himself become bitter and suspicious. It was his fault for trying to make Marie as bitter as he. It was his fault for taking the gun with him to the orchard when he did not truly think that there were any intruders. And it was his fault for raising the gun to his shoulder and firing. The murder may not have been premeditated, but it was murder none the less. Ivar believes that the Emil and Marie are in Hell for their actions. I don't know whether they are (or whether non-fictional people in their place would be,) but they didn't deserve to die so quickly and without the chance to ask for God's forgiveness.So, basically I really enjoyed the book, but I didn't like the fact that Marie and Emil were blamed for their own murders. They were to blame for the sins they committed, yes, but not for the sins Frank committed. I do think I will be reading more Willa Cather in the future.
    • 2/5
      I feel obligated to say that it wasn't by any means due to the writing, references, or classic applicability of this book that it got a two star rating (I'm calling it a 2.5). It is simply because, although interesting, it was hard pressed to keep my attention for long periods of time. I would still recommend it if you are interested in early colonial mid-west historical fiction!
    • 5/5
      The story of a strong female pioneer. It must have really hurt to have her brothers dismiss her contribution because she was a women.
    • 4/5
      Somehow, I managed to make it through 64 years of life and an MA in American Literature without ever having read any of Willa Cather's novels. So I picked up O PIONEERS and found it to be very good. Cather shows the same passion for the American landscape that John Steinbeck does, but in a less flowery manner.
    • 4/5
      This is a great little novel about the plight of the immigrant farmers in Nebraska toward the end of the 19th century. I liked that the main protagonist was a woman, and a strong woman of course, who was given responsibility of managing the homestead by her dying father and used this advantage to realize her vision. It's very placid going for the first half and very pleasant as such, but the dramatic elements come in during the second half and move the story along in ways one would not at all have expected from what came before. Very well done. Makes me want to read more work by Willa Cather, and while I liked this novel very much, in the end I can't say it really moved me. Perhaps this has something to do with the ending and the moralistic attitude taken by the characters of the after a tragic outcome, which I hope was not the stance taken by the author as well.
    • 4/5
      It was from 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 wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.The prairie is almost its own character in Cather's novels. This story follows the swedish Bergson family. The main character, the girl Alexandra, is the only one who really understands the potential of the prairie to make a living. She studies and learn from the few wise people around her and her industriousness pays off. Another beautiful prairie-story from Cather. There’s such and aching and longing for love and belonging in Alexandra as she grows up and becomes an independent land owner. You just want her to find happiness and love. You have to wait quite a bit, but it’s all worth it. Her personal life, her own realization of herself, was almost a subconscious existence; like an underground river that came to the surface only here and there, at intervals months apart, and then sank again to flow on under her own fields.
    • 1/5
      Had to read it for an American Lit class in college. So boring.
    • 4/5
      Sally Apollon Review 5/30/12 ofO Pioneers! By Willa Catha7 out of 10Setting: I very much enjoyed the descriptions of the time & place of the Pioneers in this book. It is a period I know little of and I do take great interest in the ground-breaking time, both literally and figuratively speaking. These people had to learn to get along in a strange environment with a different climate, resources and surprisingly multicultural neighbors; I have a huge amount of respect for the settlers of this time and the struggles they faced.Language: This was very descriptive and evocative, sympathetic to the land and the animals & birds. I found it to be breathtaking on occasion and really the greatest strength of the book. The story was well-wrought, by turns triumphant and tragic, reflecting the harshness and renewal of nature.Characterization: Alexandra is a tour de force; her character provides constancy and stability for all the other characters. She is sensitive, yet has more strength than any of the others. It is as if she is in harmony with the land and draws her strength from it.The distinction between her two older brothers & Emil is sharp and their lack of relationship is a product of their differences. Emil: educated, dapper, articulate, well-travelled & intelligent—he is the Brave New World, compared to his brothers who are ignorant, uneducated and bigoted, even though they work like carthorses. They are the Protestant Work Ethic and a relic of the Old World, at once, come to life. Marie—since her first appearance as a child did not quite appear to fit in this world. She transitions from a precocious child to sensual woman with a passionate disposition, ready to enfold anyone she encounters in her aura. She and Emil do seem to belong together, there is evidently a magnetism that pulls them closer—meanwhile her surly husband, Frank pushes her away. I did find the description of the gradual breakdown of their marriage to be very poignant and realistic. So sad to see love grow cold and turn to resentment and even worse. Ammadee, Emil’s French childhood friend was such a delight; I barely saw that coming—when the tragedy occurred, (appendicitis! How utterly preventable, in this day and age!) it seemed all the more apt that he was this “Golden Boy” who had a beautiful life. Ironically, his prank in the church to kill the lights brought Emil and Marie together and his death drove them closer still.Frank—why was he so utterly tragic, so completely pathetic and how could Alexandra have such pity on him to go visit him at the end? I was not sympathetic to him up to a point—his own morose nature helped to bring the adulterous situation about and he had a choice about the way he behaved and treated his wife. Having said that, I do think he sincerely lost his mind when he saw them and hardly knew what he was doing, jail was really too good for him, he will be trapped in his own mind for the rest of his life. Regardless, I don’t think Alexandra helped him, or herself by visiting—even if it does speak volumes about her character that she would do so. I suppose she just had to do that to let him know that SHE didn’t blame him.Carl Lindstrom: it was interesting to me that he didn’t return for Alexandra sooner or try harder to make her his own—but then we wouldn’t have had a story. These days, the grand old age of forty seems so young, but at that time to consider marriage then was considered by most to make oneself “ridiculous”. He also had the drive to “make something of himself” before truly offering himself to a woman such as Alexandra. I was happy when they were finally together.One thing I found interesting was that the relationships were very succinctly described; the conversations few, the pivotal moments well circumscribed. It was a short but very neat and tidy novel, well-styled and with an acute sense of realism, right down to the quick & drawn out deaths of Emil and Marie, respectively—perfectly, compellingly descriptive.As an overall sense, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and even more on retrospect, probably would even consider reading another by this author, but not in too much of a hurry.Finally, as a footnote, I had to go & look up Bohemia to see exactly what it referred to, as I had only previously encountered it’s usage as a word to describe a “free-spirited or artistic” character and in this book it evidently refers to a race—even a country of origin. It does, indeed, it refers to the area that roughly corresponds to the Czech Republic today. I did find it interesting that in this novel we encounter Swedish, Norwegian, Germans, French and of course the Czech; but I don’t recall any English—maybe that’s because they went North to New England..?
    • 2/5
      Best summed up by the word "Eh." This books starts flat and ends flat, with nothing special happening in between. I'm shocked that so many people gave this high ratings. Personally, I think this one should be avoided. Nothing was gained from reading it.
    • 3/5
      *This review includes plot spoilers.*I was reluctant to read Cather because her works seemed regional and dated, but after reading "O Pioneers!" I concur with other reviewers that the regionalism is actually its best feature. The prairie becomes a major character, probably even the book's most nuanced one. Cather skilfully establishes the prairie frontier's power from the opening sentence. ("One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska plain, was trying not to be blown away.") In light of its regional flavor, I enjoyed the book more than I'd expected.However, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading a children's novel, partly because of the plucky, precociously wise protagonist whose every decision turns out to be the right one despite the naysaying of her older brothers, and partly because it begins with young Alexandra trying to get young Emil's kitten down from a telephone pole. I cringed when the book's first line of dialogue was "My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her will fweeze!" (No typos, folks: that's "fweeze" with a W.) Real protagonists, like real people, have flaws and experience setbacks; Alexandra Bergson doesn't, with the exception of her brother's death, and even then she carries on after reaching the peculiar conclusion that she and Emil are both more to blame for Emil's death than the guy who shot him, a stance that seems incredible and nonhuman for the sister of a murder victim, regardless of the circumstances.Moreover, the descriptions of courtship, family life, and unrequited love are so innocent that, by today's standards, they seem bowdlerized for children. Of course, Cather can't be retroactively faulted for changing mores and modern-day literary bluntness, but questions of fault aside, it does diminish the book's appeal to this modern reader.I was preparing to give Cather tremendous credit for avoiding the easy, obvious ending of having Alexandra wind up with Carl, an ending that seemed to have been subverted until Carl's return from Alaska a mere five pages from the end. It also seemed unintentionally funny when, on the final page, Alexandra casually told Carl, "I will tell you about that afterward, after we are married." What?! He's been back in Nebraska for less than a day after a long absence, and they'd never discussed marriage before or even really been a romantic couple, yet suddenly marriage is presumed, as a tidy way to end the story; I laughed out loud because of its abruptness and, admittedly, imagining Carl's face amid the echoes of a thousand sitcom plots about men's fear of commitment.The prose is straightforward and spare, which would typically be yet another indicator of a children's book, but to me this seemed appropriate given the harshness of pioneer life and the utilitarian matter-of-factness of the pioneer characters. The stylistic element I found jarring, and a bit patronizing given its restriction to particular nationalities, was her heavy-handed representation of dialect for some characters, while the majority of characters speak fluent, standard English--all the more remarkably given that nearly all the characters, with the exception of Emil, are uneducated.Despite the above criticism, I mostly enjoyed it and am glad I read it, given its insight into pioneer life and Cather's prominence in early 20th-century American literature. I'd strongly recommend it for children, who prefer simple characters and unflawed protagonists, and for whom predictable happy endings are reassuring rather than trite. It would be hit-or-miss to recommend this book for adults.
    • 4/5
      I loved Alexandra and the way she could see the true beauty of the land even as she struggled to harness it. Sad, beautiful, luminous.
    • 5/5
      This book has two of my favorite things - beautiful writing and a strong female protagonist. Alexandra Bergson is put in charge of her family's farm after her father dies, despite the fact that she has two older brothers. She has a head for business, and she loves the land. Life is not always easy for Alexandra. She focuses on her farm and has few close friends. When describing her memory of a duck on a pond, Cather notes, "Most of Alexandra's happy memories were as impersonal as this one; yet to her they were very personal. Her mind was a white book, with clear writing about weather and beasts and growing things." In telling Alexandra's story, Cather is able to let her love for Nebraska shine through as well. Her descriptions of the land and the seasons are vivid. I captured several of these, but perhaps because I'm reading this in the midst of a cold snap, this one stood out:"Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. . . One could easily believe that in the dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever."
    • 4/5
      Uncharacteristically, I managed to read more than half of this novel without reading the back of book blurb. When I did and saw the word "murder" I laughed. How could such a quiet, deliberate book lead to such a harsh, unforgiving word? Masterfully, it turns out.

      Cather's strength is description. Her descriptions of nature are especially detailed and evocative. But, she's at her best when she is underplaying events, using a few well chosen words to pinpoint emotions. Beautiful and surprising, O Pioneers! will stay with me for a while.
    • 3/5
      I always had in the back of mind while I was reading this book that it had been written in a much more conservative time. I suspect that it pushed the limits more back then than it feels to be doing now, especially in regard to women's rights. I was struck by how undated the writing was, not stiff in any way, but not exactly free-spirited either. At times, the narrative is quite eloquent, but it had too many wordy, bland passages for me to forgive its variable quality. For the most part, I chock that up to this being an early work for a gifted writer. I expect to enjoy My Antonia even more.
    • 4/5
      When her father dies, Alexandra takes over the running of the farm in Nebraska. Over the years and told in a series of vignettes, we get to see Alexandra's successes and challenges, and get to know the community of pioneer and immigrant folk who work hard and love the land.My first impression of the book was that the land itself was the most interesting character, and that feeling never quite abandoned me though I was impressed with how much Cather was able to convey about the community in a series of short vignettes that cover a few decades. Did I enjoy the book? It's hard to say. I admired Cather's writing to some extent. I liked some characters and the fact that it was about a woman running a farm. I was disappointed by the side story of Marie and Alexandra's brother Emil. They love each other but of course their love is ill-fated and Marie's jealous husband, Frank, kills them in a fit of passion. It was presented as almost inevitable but it made me mad. The descriptions were sometimes quite lovely. Yet it didn't completely grip me, and I most likely would not read it again.
    • 4/5
      classic Cather--probably a good one to start out with--not sure if it's my favorite one but still it is very good
    • 4/5
      I’ve wanted to read one of Cather’s books for a long time. I grew up on a farm in the plains of Colorado and I readily looked forward to her description of the plains and farm life in Nebraska. I was excited I could use this as an “O” title and a 1910’s title as well.I was a little disappointed in the book, though. It started off very slowly for me, but by the second chapter I was enjoying it. It is the story of the Bergson family and their struggles to make their farm successful. Alexandra Bergson (the oldest daughter) does a very good job managing the farm and they succeed when other people are selling the land. She and her brothers have different ideas about the farm, though, and split the land equally thereafter. When Alexandra’s land flourishes, her brothers still think they have a say in it and in her personal life. Thankfully, she is a strong woman and stands up to them.I really enjoyed the basic story and the description of the Nebraska plains. I just felt, though, that the story was a bit incomplete. In the middle of the book it skips over several years and I would have liked to have read about them. In addition, I thought the ending was a little weak. Not in what happens, but in the writing of the ending. It just left me a little unsatisfied. I guess I wanted the story to continue. Still, it deserves its classic status, and I look forward to reading more of Cather’s work.
    • 4/5
      The book starts out VERY slowly -- as in, the first half of it is not particularly engrossing reading. After those first two sections, I put it down thinking that it was just a bunch of sketches of vaguely connected scenes, with no overarching plot, and that Cather gave us no reason to care about the overly-stereotypical characters at all. But the novel really picks up in the second half. I can't quite put my finger on what changes, beyond the introduction of more lasting conflict and of something more approaching an actual story. I'm not sure that that's all that is different. Whatever it is, though, most of the end of the book is quite affecting. I do have quibbles with the book: the first half could be condensed so that the reader doesn't have to slog through so many apparently-random, somewhat dull scenes; the gist of many of the characters' longer speeches that show their interior thoughts could be gotten across to us in their actions rather than making us read stilted, artificial dialogue; and I am frankly disgusted by the judgments that Alexandra and the novel make regarding Emil's and Maria's fates. Nevertheless, this isn't a bad read. It's worth picking up for Cather's beautiful prose and for the story of the book's second half. I give it 3 1/2 stars overall, though if the first half of the book had been handled better this easily would've been at least a 4.
    • 4/5
      This is probably the fourth or fifth Cather novel I have read. I cannot say it is my favorite, probably because the plot was not nearly as engaging as it was in her later works. However, I don't think anyone captures the essence of the American plains like Cather can. Her protagonist in this book is basically an incarnation of mother earth herself. At one point, Alexandra recounts the history of the farm and says the wheat only flourished when the land was ready. For Alexandra, life is much the same. She was not ready for love until she had fully matured. There were several characters who were quite engaging; Alexandra's brother, Emil and Ivar, the man of nature, along with Marie the beautiful butterfly of a woman comprise a very interesting cast of characters. It was a really good read, but just not as marvelous as Cather's future works.
    • 5/5
      Having tried and failed to read My Antonia a couple of times, I didn't expect to like this book a lot. So I was shocked when I started to love it. Cather's prose is tight, and her characters are gracefully drawn. Even an eccentric like Ivar doesn't get the Faulkner treatment; these people appear in strokes, gradually, and they are all the more real for it. I was enraptured by this book, almost all the way to the end. [It does really start to unravel in the final exchange between Alexandra and Carl--I don't know what that was in the service of, exactly.]
    • 5/5
      Life on the divide is tough. We know this as it is written, " The records of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches of time left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings.John Bergson is dying and he tells his daughter Alexandra he wants her to run the farm when he is gone. She has 3 brothers Emil, Lou and Oscar but everyone knows that it is Alexandra who expresses herself best in soil. John passes on and the family farm prospers for three years after his death but then hard times come. Families around them are selling out and leaving the divide but Alexandra goes down south to look at land and she comes back and talks her brothers into mortgaging the farm so they can buy up more land. Sixteen years after Johns death his wife dies. The farms are now prosperous so the inheritance is divided among the 4 children. Sadly, the coveting expressed in childhood extends into adulthood and ends in tragedy. And, the story comes full circle as Carl is there at the end to help Alexandra, just as he was in the beginning.
    • 5/5
      O Pioneers is the story of Alexandra Bergsons, the daughter of Swedish immigrants who settle in Nebraska at the turn of the century. Farming life is hard work and when Alexandra’s father passes away, she is left in charge of the household and the land. Alexandra works hard to turn the farm into a successful business and put Emil, her youngest brother through college. As a result, Alexandra sacrifices her social life and finds herself alone. Many years later, Alexandra is reunited with Carl, a childhood friend who comes back to Nebraska from the big city to visit. Having achieved success, Alexandra finds that she yearns to share her life with Carl. Carl has always been in love with Alaexandra but feels he must go to Alaska to seek his fortune before asking for Alexandra’s hand. Alexandra waits patiently for his return. In the meantime, Emil has returned from a year in Mexico and finds himself still hopelessly in love with Marie, a childhood friend who is now married. News of a tragic event cause Carl to return to Nebraska where he is reunited with Alexandra, this time for good.
    • 4/5
      At the turn of the last century, Alexandra, a first generation Swedish immigrant, shoulders the responsibility of managing a farm in the vast erasure of flat land and endless sky that is Nebraska and raising her three brothers after the untimely death of their parents. She sees and capitalizes upon the potential of the land where others find despair. Frontierswomen are my favorite."Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before."