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

Both of Cather's works in mention involve both Realism and Regionalism. This is due to the fact that Cather is very keen on allowing the reader to know the hardships of the common man, yet, she also describes, and is true to, the region in which the works take place. The West is also mentioned in Cather's two works. "O Pioneers!" and "A Wagner Matinee" were both written by Willa Cather, and both also posses qualities of Regionalism, Naturalism, and Realism. In "O Pioneers!” the life of the Bergson brothers is depicted like it is some kind of biography. In plain and simplistic writing, the lives of two people are depicted in detail, giving information about things that are unimportant but still relate to the story as a whole. These insignificant and most likely unimportant details are common coming from authors of Realism, and Cather is certainly no exception to this. Also, the events that are depicted in "O Pioneers!" are interesting but could also happen in real life, especially in the past. These events are not really heard of now because our country has already reached the Western boarders, but events like these are still talked about by many people. But in the time period, the events were pretty common because Westward expansion really was a way of American life at the time due to manifest destiny and the quest for more land and influence. Her characters live their lives much the same as any pioneer of the time, living in the wild country of Nebraska, dealing with the very real hardships like drought, windstorms, thunderstorms, hail, buffalo stampedes, all things that ruin crops and various other trials such as coyotes picking off calves and foals, sometimes pigs. It was a very rough life, but some people are just made to be as stubborn and as determined to make it, like all of Willa Cather's characters. These stories are not so much part of the subset called Naturalism because they had nothing to do with nature's beings or how they interacted. So, Regionalism is still the best description to give to Willa Cather's works here. The section from "O Pioneers!" is focused on these Bergson boys and the harsh and unfair ways they had to live. These boys were farmers on new, prospective land out of the city, but the harvest had not been good, causing many of their fellow, neighboring farmers to declare bankruptcy and foreclose their land. The character of the narrator is very important to the story; it is written in first person and provides the window for which the reader can observe both the characteristics of the surrounding culture in Boston and Nebraska, and the attitude and feelings for which the narrator's aunt exhibits. Because of the way that Cather writes the narrator's observations, there are some that seem to be written by a distanced observer, and many that seem to be written by the actual character who is involved in the ongoing plot. "The overture closed, my aunt released my coat sleeve, but she said nothing... What, I wondered, did she get from it?" is a line that creates curiosity and shows that the narrator is limited to what he can observe, and can merely make speculations at a distance. However, the line "I understood. For her, just outside the concert hall laid the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs..." successfully explains what his aunt is truly feeling and why, making the narrator seems like a closely involved character.

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