O Pioneers!

Part 2 of O Pioneers! shows a peaceful picture of daily life entwined with internal conflict.

Alexandra’s pioneer perseverance has paid off. Her farmlands have grown and prospered, and the town itself has grown more modern. However, Alexandra learns that success doesn’t necessarily guarantee happiness. Alexandra is lonely, with only Marie as a true friend. She is constantly working and dealing with other people’s problems; she provides a home to Ivar, for example, and looks after Emil. The empathy Alexandra extends to others is not usually returned, however. She has built a life for other people, but she loses out on personal fulfillment outside of the success of the farm. She is considered too old to marry, and though she has always subverted gender norms, she still hasn’t earned the respect from men that she deserves for her ingenuity and work ethic. No matter how successful Alexandra is, she is still a woman in a society that regards motherhood as the ideal female role.

Other characters also experience dissatisfaction despite the success of their town. When Carl visits, he admits that he misses the cold, harsh, and unhappy town of his memories. Carl essentially lost his youth to Nebraska. The scars of growing up poor and cold have stayed with him well into adulthood. The success of the town and of his family’s old farm is a direct challenge to Carl’s experiences toiling the land without reaping the rewards. Carl must now hustle for his living; his work requires travel and freelancing—two qualities that the townspeople find suspicious. In particular, the fact that Carl has no real home makes him an oddity in a tight-knit community. For these reasons, Carl can’t feel real happiness when he sees how the town has flourished; the success of the town deepens his own sense of failure.

Emil is similarly disenchanted with the success of his family. Emil is too young to remember the hunger and struggle that characterized his family’s early experiences. Emil has only known a prosperous homestead life and has been able to prioritize education and intellectual pursuits over manual labor. Therefore, Emil cannot appreciate the miracle of the town in the ways his siblings can. Emil is eager to see the world, which means that Alexandra’s dream of giving him a life she never had has come to fruition. Still, Emil’s resentment of his hometown demonstrates that a peaceful, secure, and happy upbringing does not necessarily translate to happiness. Another conflict that informs Emil’s character development is his identity as a second-generation American. While other people in his community are first-generation immigrants very much culturally informed by their home countries, Emil is a quintessential American who puts study above manual labor and has choices regarding his future; these opportunities can be a burden as much as a privilege since they entail expectations that Emil will pioneer his own unique journey.

Central to Hanover’s ethos is the value its residents place on tight-knit community. Rural communities necessitate reliance on neighbors. Farmers work together to make the land fruitful. The failure of one farm can create a domino effect that ruins all the farms. This is what caused Alexandra’s father so much hardship; not enough homesteaders at the time were competent farmers. However, Alexandra’s success has changed the course of Hanover history; the town has grown cooperatively prosperous, but the flip side is that its residents are suspicious of difference. Despite the mingling of people from different countries, the residents’ work binds them together; they view Carl with suspicion in part because (in their eyes) his work lacks the commitment of farm life. However, outsiders are not the only ones this community judges harshly. Ivar has been a member of Hanover for decades, yet most see him as a “crazy” and dangerous man. Ivar has his own way of seeing and living in the world, and his idiosyncrasies threaten the stability of Hanover’s traditional, conformist culture. Alexandra’s attitude is a notable exception that provides contrast: She is fiercely loyal to people like Carl and Ivar because she remembers and honors their histories. Alexandra’s own difference as a woman who does man’s work likely renders her more sympathetic to outsiders. Her subversion of gender norms threatens misogynistic ideas of men as leaders and women as followers, so she knows firsthand what it is like to face the societal condemnation.

Another conflict in these chapters involves the complexity of working with family. On his deathbed, John Bergson warned his children to set aside their own egos and stay united. Now that the Bergson family enjoys security and prosperity, they are more prone to argue with one another and disagree with one another’s choices. By the end of Part 2, only Emil has explicit plans to leave, but Cather foreshadows further conflict between the two older brothers and Alexandra.

One important historical allusion in these chapters is the reference to Marie as a Bohemian. “Bohemian” in this time period often referred to people of Czech descent. The Czechs followed different customs than some other immigrant communities in Nebraska, but Marie and her family do not differ in values or work ethic. The term “Bohemian” in this novel lacks its more contemporary connotations of irreverence and artistic spirit.