O Pioneers!

This article is about the book written by Willa Cather. For 1992 movie, see O Pioneers! (film).

O! Pioneers

Author	Willa Cather
Publication date	1913

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather. It was written in part when Cather was living in Cherry Valley, New York with Isabelle McClung and was completed at the McClung's home in Pittsburgh.

Plot introduction

O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century. The main character, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farmland when her father dies, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie. The novel is also concerned with two romantic relationships - one between Alexandra and family friend Carl Linstrum, and another between Alexandra's brother Emil and the married Marie Shabata.

Plot summary

The book is divided into five parts, each of which has numerous (unnumbered) chapters.

Part I - The Wild Land

On a windy day in Hanover, Nebraska, seventeen-year-old Alexandra Bergson is visiting with her four-year-old brother Emil. Emil's little kitten has climbed a telegraph pole and is afraid to come down. Alexandra finds her neighbor and friend Carl Lindstrum, who retrieves the kitten. In the general store, Alexandra finds Emil with Marie, the same age as Emil. Marie's father has brought her from Omaha. Alexandra's father is dying, and he wishes that she run the farm after he is gone. They later visit Crazy Ivar, who advises them to keep their hogs clean. When the Linstrums are leaving, Oscar and Lou want to leave too, but neither their mother nor Alexandra will. After visiting villages downwards to see how they are getting on, she talks her brothers Oscar and Lou into mortgaging the farm to buy more land, in hopes of ending up as rich landowners.

Part II - Neighboring Fields

Sixteen years later, the farms are now prosperous. Alexandra and her brothers have divided up their inheritance, and Emil has just returned from college. The Linstrum farm has failed, and Marie, now married to one Frank Shabata, has bought it. During a Bergson family get-together, Carl Linstrum shows up, having failed in a job in Chicago. He is on his way to Alaska, but decides to stay with Alexandra for a while. There is a growing flirtatious relationship between Emil and Marie, which Carl notices. Lou and Oscar suspect that Carl wants to marry Alexandra, and are resentful that they had to work hard for their farms, but he thinks he can marry into a farm. After this, Alexandra and her brothers are no longer speaking. Then Carl, recognizing a problem, decides to leave for Alaska. At the same time, Emil announces he is leaving for a job in Mexico City. Alexandra is left alone.

Part III - Winter Memories

Alexandra spends the winter alone, except for occasional visits from Marie, whom she visits with Mrs. Lee. She also begins to have mysterious dreams.

Part IV - The White Mulberry Tree

Emil returns from Mexico City. His best friend, Amedee, is now married with a young son. At a fair at the French church, Emil and Marie kiss for the first time. They later confess their illicit love, and Emil determines to leave for law school in Michigan. Before he leaves Amedee dies from a ruptured appendix, and as a result both he and Marie realize what they value most. Before leaving he stops by Marie's farm to say one last goodbye, and they fall into a passionate embrace beneath the white Mulberry tree. They stay there for several hours, until Marie's husband, Frank, finds them, and shoots them. He goes off to Omaha. Ivar discovers Emil's abandon horse, leading him to search for the boy and discover the bodies.

Part V - Alexandra

Alexandra has gone off in a rainstorm. Ivar goes looking for her and brings her back home, where she sleeps fitfully and dreams about death. She then decides to visit Frank in Lincoln where he is incarcerated. While in town she walks by Emil's university campus, comes upon a polite young man, and feels better. The next day she talks to Frank in prison. He is bedraggled and can barely speak properly, and she promises to do what she can to see him released; she bears no ill will toward him. She then receives a telegraph from Carl, saying he is back. They decide to marry, unconcerned with her brothers' approval.

Characters in "O Pioneers!"

• Alexandra Bergson: The main character of the book. A strong-willed and intelligent woman. She was given the farm by her father John Bergson and after 16 years turned it into a very prosperous one. Alexandra isn't very adept at sensing peoples feelings or her own. It takes her a long time to realize that she loves Carl Linstrum. She also doesn't sense Emil's growing attraction toward the unhappily married Marie Shabata. She seems easy to forgive as well, as she claims to have no ill will against Frank, despite the fact he savagely murdered her brother.
• Emil Bergson: Emil the youngest child of John Bergson grows up in Alexandra's wealth to become an intelligent, handsome, and athletic person. He has the opportunity to go to college which he undertakes. But tragically he is in love with Marie Shabata who is unhappily married. He leaves for Mexico to try to escape his temptation for Marie. But after a year he returns and cannot resist. He kisses her for the first time and before leaving for law school bids a final goodbye to Marie. But Frank Shabata, Marie's husband, catches them and shoots them both in a bloody rage.
• Carl Linstrum: A former neighbor of the Bergson's. After leaving the homestead he apprentices as an engraver and lives in New York city. He becomes disillusioned with urban life and returns to see Alexandra before he wanders to Alaska.
• Marie Tovesky: A Bohemian girl who crossed paths with the Bergson's as a child and then takes up one of Alexandra's homesteads. She embodies the passion and romance of the prairie.
• Joe Tovesky, Marie's uncle.
• John Bergson, Alexandra's father. He owns 640 acres (2.6 km²) of land.
• Lou, John's son. He is seventeen years old at the outset of the novel.
• Oscar, John's son. He is nineteen years old at the outset of the novel.
• Uncle Otto, John's brother who gave in and left for Chicago where he has been working in a bakery.
• Mrs Bergson, stout and proud: she desires all the comforts of the old country and achieves it in a new and indifferent land.
• Ivar, he reads the Bible and has a mystic quality about him. He also has a great affinity to animals, especially birds.
• Signa, The youngest of Alexandra's Swedish servants.
• Barney Flinn, Alexandra's foreman.
• Mrs Hiller, a neighbour.
• Nelse Jensen, Signa's suitor, then husband.
• Annie Lee, Lou's wife's maiden name.
• Mrs Lee, Lou's mother-in-law.
• Milly, fifteen-year-old; Annie's daughter. She plays the organ and the piano.
• Stella, Annie's younger daughter.
• Frank Shabata, Marie's husband. He likes to read the Sunday newspaper about rich people's bold gestures. His character is a representation of anger and irrationality on the prairie.
• Albert Tovesky, Marie's father; an adviser in Omaha.
• Amédée Chevalier, a Frenchman, friends with Emil.
• Angélique Chevalier, Amédée's wife.
• Father Duchesne, the French priest.
• Raoul Marcel
• Moses Marcel, Raoul's father.
• Jean Bordelau
• Jan Smirka
• Mr Schwartz, the warden at the prison where Frank is being kept.

Major themes

• Pioneers in Nebraska.
• Love and marriage.
• Feminism. Alexandra, despite having made money, is dismissed by her brothers as unfit for business because she is a woman.
• Isolation

Allusions to other works

• Marie is first described as being dressed as a Kate Greenaway character would be.
• In the first chapter, the children are said to be reading Hans Christian Andersen and "the Swiss family Robinson" .
• In the fourth chapter, Alexandra is said to like to read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry.
• Many copies of the book are accompanied with the poem, "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" by Walt Whitman, which is said to be where the title comes from.

Allusions to actual history

• In the first chapter of Part II, Emil and Marie mention John Huss.
• In the second chapter of Part II, Lou mentions William Jennings Bryan.
• In the first chapter of Part II, Emil's letters are said to mention Porfirio Díaz.

[None of these are true references]

Literary significance and criticism

In a 1921 interview for Bookman, Willa Cather said, 'I decided not to 'write' at all, - simply to give myself up to the pleasure of recapturing in memory people and places I'd forgotten.'

External links

• O Pioneers! at Project Gutenberg