Willa Cather – from O Pioneers! and "A Wagner Matinée"

Willa Cather often wrote about life on the prairie, for that is where she lived while she was young (Cather). In the beginning of her career, she wrote many works that portrayed the prairies as awful (Cather). She hated her prairie life and showed that all throughout her works (Cather). Later in her life, she changed her point of view and started portraying life on the prairie as a good thing (Cather). She realized that while life was hard on the prairie, it helped one become stronger (Cather). It called to ambitious people, and those people had to be extremely creative to survive (Cather). These works were definitely Realist, because they talked about things that happened in the past that were affecting the moment that they were in. The works were bursting with emotion, which makes them nothing like the Naturalist works of the time. There was no science involved, and science was almost irrelevant to them. This work was definitely Regionalist, because it was all about life on the prairies and how things were in the West (Cather). While in the beginning Cather wrote about the bad things on the prairie and the tragedies that befell many of the pioneers that traveled west, she eventually did write about the good things on the prairie (Cather). She began promoting it as a good thing, and that is characteristic of Regionalistic works of the time (Cather). This showed society of the time, because they had mixed feelings about the prairies. They did not know what to think, and often when something is not known, people automatically chalk it up as a bad thing. Some works of the time helped this opinion to grow, even when people did not really know what they were talking about. These works do not talk of religion or of the government, for the do not have necessarily as much importance when one is out on the prairie with no other human to be seen in the surrounding areas (Cather). Cather's works both talk about nature, and about how the prairie is a bleak landscape that is one color: brown (Cather). They talk of how life on the prairie is so hard because of the droughts or overwhelming rain (Cather)). Weather on the prairies were contradictions, and no one ever knew what they should expect when they were planting and cultivating their crops. There is a little about human nature, and how it is easily broken when one lives on the prairie (Cather). When one came from privilege but fell in love with a man that lived out on the prairie, it was often easier to fall apart, because on has to do everything for oneself, instead of having help (Cather). These works talk about the American Dream of expansion and having everything that one could ever want (Cather). There was no figurative language in the works, because they were both straightforward (Cather). There was also not a Hero in either of these works, for there was really not position for a Hero to come in (Cather). Willa Cather was an influential author about the prairie, and many people listened to what she wrote in her works.

Cather, Willa. ""O Pioneers!"/ "A Wagner Matinée"" American Literature. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly A. Chin, and Jacqueline J. Royster. Columbus: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 489+. Print.