Throughout the first fifty pages of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! the notion of land itself carries a sacred or divine importance. The implied author recounts that John Bergson possessed the “Old-World belief that land, in itself, was desirable” (8). John Bergson’s belief implies that it is not the crops nor the fertility that is valuable, but rather it is the mere ownership of the space. Of course the hope is that the land will help the settlers acquire sufficient income, but it also holds a greater significance.  In part two, Alexandra personifies the land while she discusses its transformation: “We hadn’t any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself” (45). In her explanation, Alexandra gives the land and not her family all the credit for its blossoming. Further, she attributes its infertility and unruliness to its sense of humor and to its slumber as if it were a mischievous human. Her words suggest that she does indeed view the land as a divine power.

It will be interesting to see how the text will continue to unveil the divinity of the land in the rest of the novel.

The first fifty pages of the novel are set, most prominently, in two starkly different landscapes. In the beginning of the novel, the Bergson family is portrayed as one that is forced to endure tremendous hardship. For example, “One winter [Bergson’s] cattle had perished in a blizzard. The next summer one of his plow horses broke its leg in a prairie-dog hole and had to be shot”(Cather, 8). Despite the initially barren agricultural seasons, the farm did cultivate a strong, wise, independent woman. After demonstrating John Bergson’s trust in his daughter, Cather tells, “Before Alexandra was twelve years old she had begun to be a help to him, and as she grew older he had become to depend more and more on her resourcefulness and good judgment”(9). Both Alexandra’s strong will and independence, along with her father’s trust in her, echoes Adams’ claim that, “The old life was lonely and hard, but it bred strong individualism”(Adams, 409).

Later, the novel jumps 16 years in advance, and both the farm’s physical and cultural landscapes have changed. Where the land was once crude and lifeless, now “The rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry smoothness of the land make labor easy for men and beasts”(Cather, 29). Further, Alexandra, with her newly acquired wealth, has also changed the layout of her house, “The table was set for company in the dining-room , where highly varnished wood and colored glass and useless pieces of china were conspicuous enough to satisfy standards of the new prosperity”(Cather, 37). Although Alexandra’s character has not completely shifted along with her newly acquired wealth, as can be exhibited in her protection of Ivar, it is hard to tell if the same can be said for Emil. In the coming readings, we shall see if Adams’s prediction that, “[The consumer], like the rest of us, thus appears to be getting into a treadmill in which he earns, not what he may enjoy, but what he may spend…”(Adams, 408) comes into fruition.

Ultimately, if Cather is trying to critique the American Dream by showing the Bergson family’s demise at the hand of their newly acquired wealth, then why is the reader not shown the 16 year interim? Although the abrupt nature of the change does call the reader to focus on the family’s emotional change, could the transition period not too have provided ripe ground for criticism?

In the first two pages of her 1913 novel O Pioneers!, Willa Cather utilizes a compositional risk that parallels her own style, an initial and deliberate loss of readership, with the antithetical nature of main characters Emil and heroine Alexandra Bergson. To begin, Cather introduces the small Nebraskan town of Hanover with “haphazard” descriptions and negative superlatives, suggesting an unsystematic setting, and imposing an immediate loss of readership (Cather 1). A statement that “none of the dwelling-houses had any appearance of permanence” features both a negative and passive introductory clause and the awkward phrase of “dwelling-houses,” which both purposefully and riskily establish the “two uneven rows” of Hanover, Nebraska, as a shabby scene worth un-reading (1). This description, however awkward and cringe-worthy it may seem, appropriately premises the dreary description of the town, and continues during the introduction of Emil Bergson: the “clumsy, crying Swede boy” (1). Visual imagery complements a tattered image of the Bergson brother with details about his “cap pulled over his ears; his nose and his chubby cheeks chapped with cold” (1). This segue to Emil is quick and clean, and thus Cather’s initial loss of readership is not crude and embarrassing, but rather strategic in its parallel to its character introduction.

Out of nowhere, and perhaps even more strategically, Cather invokes another character: Emil’s sister Alexandra Bergson, and with the aptness of this unexpected introduction, Cather regains her readership. Resolute diction begins to introduce Alexandra as a “tall, strong girl;” all while structurally, Cather’s sentences become more active with verbs that “walk intently” across the page (2). In an interactive scene in which Alexandra “stop[s] short” and “stoop[s] down” to “wipe” her brother’s “wet face,” Cather amalgamates these two images—one haphazard and unkempt and one strong and resolute—in order to ferment an antithetical brother-sister relationship. In a novel that traces the dual nature of familial relationships of Swedish-American immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, perhaps it is this inverted and parallel designation to a relationship that foreshadows the family’s strife with death, inheritance, and social norms. Only time will tell. As for now, it is safe to say that Cather’s forthright invocation of Emil, Alexandra, and what seems to be a deliberate loss of author-credibility, proves to strategically and more meaningfully distinguish her setting and characters.

The first 50 pages of the novel introduces the reader to the Swedish Bergson family as well as characters of the Divide, a region of the frontier.

Upon their father’s death, the Bergson siblings are faced with the decision to remain on the frontier tying their fate to the success of the land or to retreat to the city  where work is sure to be found. Alexandra, the protagonist of the story, was left as head-of-house following her father’s death and decides to remain. Sixteen years later, we find that she had made the eventually fruitful decision as the value of the land rose, making the family rich.

The conflict between individual security versus greater purpose is evident. For example, we are introduced to the Divide as many families are quitting the pursuit of making it on the frontier to return to the city. While Alexandra could have decided to return to the city which would have resulted in a considerably easier life for herself, she picks the harder choice of working the land. We see the difficulty in finding purpose on the frontier on page 49 with Carrie Jensen, who had attempted suicide multiple times because she failed to see beyond the monotonous fields. Alexandra attributes her purpose to her brother, Emil: “he is going to have a chance, a whole chance; that is what I’ve worked for.”

It will be intriguing to see the development of familial relationships within the Bergson family in the rest of the novel, as the characters grow more independent.

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Enjoy!