Willa Cather’s 1913 novel “O Pioneers!” blows through you like the rippling winds of the Nebraska prairie itself—sharp, sweet, sad, and filled with the taste of the wilderness. That wilderness includes both the literal landscape of the prairie where the novel takes place and the interior landscape of the human spirit, filled with so much mystery, yet vividly evoked by Cather’s masterful writing.
The novel is about the longing, loneliness, and restlessness present in the human soul, the ways that longing manifests (sometimes destructively), and how we attempt to anchor ourselves to something as immovable as the land itself.
The novel is short—my copy clocks in at only 120 pages—yet its pages contain a vast expanse of both time and space. Cather crafted an atmospheric work that seems to extend beyond its brief time it takes to read it, somehow capturing the sweep of the prairie and the struggles of the pioneers. In the land, the pioneers find both an inhospitable enemy and a consoling friend to soothe their passions, losses, and longings. So powerful is the land that it practically becomes another character in the book.
More Than a Plain Story
The novel covers most of the life story of Alexandra Bergson, a Swedish girl who immigrates to the Nebraska plains along with her parents and three brothers. Loss marks Alexandra’s story from the beginning: Her father is on his deathbed at the novel’s opening. Her mother also passes away early on in the book. They leave Alexandra, probably in her early 20s, with the daunting task of preserving the homestead he accumulated at great cost to scrape a living from its stubborn fields.Alexandra commits herself to the task with all the strength of her passionate, independent, and creative temperament. She not only preserves the homestead, but expands it through sound investments and patience. With an understanding of agriculture and the land itself that most of the pioneers lack, Alexandra knows that their property will greatly increase in value if handled correctly. She loves the land and believes in its ability to bear fruit in time. And so it does. Through her perseverance and daring investments, she creates great wealth for herself and her brothers, and as the years pass, the wilderness transforms from sterility to abundance, harshness to hospitality.
But Alexandra labors at her thankless work mostly alone. Her closest childhood friend, Carl Linstrum, moves away to seek his fortune, and two of her brothers are so unlike her in temperament that they share no real bond. Only her youngest brother, Emil, really understands what lies behind Alexandra’s quiet determination. One of the things she carries on her heart is the hope of making a future for Emil that is far brighter than her own.
Virtually all the characters in the novel are lonely, and their figures look small against the immense plains of human life and the powerful forces that shape it. Alexandra takes in an old misfit named Ivar, whom no one cares about nor understands except her. Alexandra’s neighbor—a charming, young, spirited woman named Marie—finds herself in an unhappy marriage where she and her discontented, restless husband live increasingly separate, lonely lives. As Emil becomes a young man, he falls hopelessly in love with the inaccessible Marie, pining after her in solitary, hidden pain, unnoticed even by Alexandra.
The characters’ loneliness stirs restlessness that they struggle to control. In turns, they’re repelled by and attracted to each other. It’s an ebb and flow similar to the effect of the prairie, which simultaneously repels and attracts.
But Alexandra’s restlessness and loneliness isn’t quite like everyone else’s. She maintains a kind of calm in spite of it, a kind of resignation, and, perhaps most importantly, charity toward others. Despite her faults, mistakes, and blind spots, she keeps that love always burning. Her internal trials don’t make her neglect others’ needs, nor become self-centered.
At the most pivotal moment, regardless of (or perhaps because of) her self-assurance and strength of will, she has only forgiveness in her heart, even for the person she has the most reason not to forgive. One source of her internal strength might be her dream. She dreams a strange dream of powerful arms that carry her gently over the rolling prairie. Perhaps it’s an image of heavenly protection that guides her among the hills and valleys of life.
Alexandra’s story is, in many ways, a sad one. But it’s not without hope. It’s not without some reward for her virtue. A measure of happiness is barely snatched from the cruel winds of the world and held close to the heart like a fragile bird.
“O Pioneers!” is a brief, delicate, heart-wrenching masterpiece. Cather recreates life on the frontier, bringing it alive with just the right details and collection of distinctive, utterly believable characters and settings. When you read the book, you feel that you’ve understood the American frontier, the immigrants who settled it, and their long-gone age in a profound way. It’s almost as if you were there yourself. You touch the ghost of their memory and a lost world. This is one of the great joys of the book. But the greatest joy is to see a strong pilgrim soul making her way steadily through a tragic world with love in her heart, even when love seems impossible.
This isn’t a light read. But for those prepared for weightier themes, it can be a deeply rewarding one.
