O Pioneers!, Willa Cather - Dorothy Tuck McFarland (essay date 1972)
Dorothy Tuck McFarland (essay date 1972)
SOURCE: McFarland, Dorothy Tuck. “O Pioneers! (1913).” In Willa Cather, pp. 19-28. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1972.
[In the following essay, McFarland surveys the dominant thematic concerns of Cather's novel.]
When she returned to Red Cloud from her visit to the southwest in 1912, Willa Cather found in her mind a story, which was to be called “The White Mulberry Tree,” and a poem called “Prairie Spring.” With the new story she juxtaposed another story written the winter before in Cherry Valley, “Alexandra.” This “two-part pastoral,” after considerable additions linking and clarifying the relationships of the two stories, became O Pioneers! The poem, which is in essence the poetic distillation of O Pioneers!, she placed at the beginning of the novel.
With O Pioneers! Willa Cather was “suddenly in control of inner creative forces which...
[The entire page is 2894 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
