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

Willa Cather moved with her family at a young age to Nebraska. They lived on the open prairie. This move was a huge impact on Cather's life. A lot of her stories come from life on the prairie like "O Pioneers" and "My Antonia". Cather's works demonstrate Regionalism which is a subset of Realism because her stories focus on one family in a specific region of the United States, which is usually on the prairie (Wilhelm).

Willa Cather's "O Pioneers!" portrays Realism very well. Realism is like saying something for what it really is. It is like saying what really happened and what is real in life. "O Pioneers!" describes part of the life and hardships of people living on the prairie. "...three years of drought and failure, the last struggle of a wild soil against the encroaching plowshare. The first of these fruitless summers the Bergson boys bore courageously. The failure of the corn crop made labor cheap. Lou and Oscar hired two men and put in bigger crops than ever before. They lost everything they spend. The whole country was discouraged. Farmers who were already in debt had to give up their land. A few foreclosures demoralized the country. The settlers sat about on the wooden sidewalks in the little town and told each other that the country was never meant for men to live in; the thing to do was to get back to Iowa, to Illinois, to any pace that had been proved habitable...A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves" (Cather, "O"). This quote portrays Realism because it tells of the hardships and things the pioneers, specifically two pioneer boys, had to deal with. They went through droughts, failure in growing crops, foreclosures, and many other things. All of these things are very real which is why this exert is described as Realism.

Cather's "A Wagner Matinee" is about a boy whose aunt comes to his town (Cather, "A Wagner"). The boy remembers many things from his childhood about his aunt. He remembers all the great things she taught him, and in appreciation to those wonderful things he was taught, he takes his aunt to see an Orchestra play (Cather, "A Wagner"). This short story portrays Realism because it talks about how the boy remembers his aunt, and it all seems very real. The boy remembers how his aunt taught him Latin, gave him many books to read including Shakespeare, and taught him how to play the organ.

Both of these short stories depict Regionalism because they both take place in a small town and with a few people. "O Pioneers!" takes place on the prairie, a small region of the United States, and it reflects the hardships that the pioneers had during their lifetime (Cather, "O"). "A Wagner Matinee" takes place in a small city or town and depicts an afternoon that a young man has with his aunt whom he has many found memories of (Cather, "A Wagner").

Neither of these stories have a lot to do with religion or nature. They do not really talk about the American Hero or government either. "O Pioneers!" can be said to show a little bit of the American Dream because part of the American Dream was to move out west and make a living for oneself which is exactly what the pioneers are trying to do. These stories both reflect their time period because they take place when America is really trying to expand itself. The pioneers are a great example of people expanding, and the aunt in "A Wagner Matinee" comes back to her hometown after moving out west to the country (Cather, "A Wagner").



Works Cited:

Cather, Willa. "from O Pioneers!" Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Colombus: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 489. Print.

Cather, Willa. "from 'A Wagner Matinée." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Colombus: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 521-526. Print.

Wilhelm, Jeffrey. "Willa Cather's Great Plains." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Colombus: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 488. Print.