{"id":165,"date":"2017-02-09T00:47:57","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T05:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/?p=165"},"modified":"2017-02-09T00:47:57","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T05:47:57","slug":"ownership-and-dignity-of-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/willa-cather-novel\/ownership-and-dignity-of-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Ownership and Dignity of Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the themes that resurfaces often in <em>O Pioneers!<\/em>, I think, is the theme of ownership and dignity of work. The novel suggests that being devoted to one\u2019s work and loving the work for its own merit provides a kind of dignity, a feeling of rough individuality, and a sense of purpose that one cannot really attain by other means. It is the same with the land; to Alexandra, \u201cthe people who love [the land] and understand it are the people who own it\u201d (122). In dignified work, there is a level of mutuality and of coexistence between the land and the person toiling upon it. We begin to see a fundamental difference between struggling <em>with<\/em> the land \u2013\u2013 a formidable, unforgiving force of nature \u2013\u2013 and struggling <em>against<\/em> it.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the novel, though, we see other characters in Alexandra\u2019s life who fall short of Alexandra\u2019s simple self-determination; they fail to appreciate their work as an opportunity to make something of themselves aside from material gain, and instead turn to other satisfactory egresses, like alcohol, restless travel, or illicit love \u2013\u2013 often meeting undignified and tragic ends. Emil\u00a0and\u00a0Marie, hopelessly in love,\u00a0are killed by\u00a0Frank who is sentenced with 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, Lou and Oscar, who are distracted by their jealousy and resentment towards Alexandra\u2019s success and her relationship with Carl, struggle to subdue the land, and never achieve the noble stature or success of their older sister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the themes that resurfaces often in O Pioneers!, I think, is the theme of ownership and dignity of work. The novel suggests that being devoted to one\u2019s work and loving the work for its own merit provides a kind of dignity, a feeling of rough individuality, and a sense of purpose that one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":394,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-willa-cather-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}