O Pioneers! Tone

Pastoral

A great way to get what we mean by pastoral is to read the poetic epigraph to O Pioneers!, "Prairie Spring," which Cather wrote herself. We spend a while talking about this in our section on the "Epigraph," so you might want to check it out. Basically, we use pastoral as an adjective to define anything that depicts a lot of nature. (For uses of pastoral as a noun, check out "Writing Style.") And let's face it: O Pioneers! is pretty into nature.

So, what do all those descriptions of the prairie have to do with the novel's tone? Well, here, the trick is to think about how these descriptions alter the attitude the novel takes toward its characters. One thing occurs to us right off the bat: by placing all that focus on nature, O Pioneers! seems to have a somewhat disinterested attitude toward the lives of its human characters. The joys and tragedies these people experience in their lifetimes are just one part of a much larger, more dramatic and powerful story: that of the land itself.

O Pioneers! is as much a story about Alexandra, Carl, Emil, Marie and all the others, as it is one about the Divide—its transformation from barren wasteland to Alexandra's lush fields of grain. This suggests that the land is not simply a background to the human stories, but is a key influence on these characters' fates. As a result, O Pioneers! doesn't seem like a tragedy, even when bad things are happening to people. Ultimately, the land is the novel's implicit hero.

Exultant

We often find the narrator pulling back from the scene of human thoughts, feelings and actions, in order to take in a wider view of the natural world. But don't the wrong idea—the narrator hasn't just gotten bored. Instead, we get the sense that the pull of nature is so strong, the narrator can't resist exulting in its beauty and power. That's what we mean when we talk about an exultant tone: the novel frequently gets swept up in its own subject matter.

There's a lot of textual evidence to choose from, here. We'll focus on two important passages. The first comes from the middle of the novel, during the winter. Marie is growing increasingly depressed about her failed marriage, all while falling more and more in love with Emil. Check out the way the narrator moves from describing Marie's inner world to depicting the natural world, and from there, lifts off into a joyous exultation that intertwines the two:

[Marie] tried to be patient with her husband. He and his hired man usually played California Jack in the evening. Marie sat sewing or crocheting and tried to take a friendly interest in the game, but she was always thinking about the wide fields outside, where the snow was drifting over the fences; and about the orchard, where the snow was falling and packing, crust over crust. […] She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again! (3.1.42)

In a few lines, the narrator zooms out from Marie, takes in the wintery landscape and then plunges into the depths of the earth, finding the dormant "secret of life." Yet, the narrator manages to do this all while still describing Marie's emotional state; like the land, Marie too has grown cold and weary, while deep down, there is still a fire burning for Emil. Marie is incorporated into an exultant, pastoral description in a way that makes the land a metaphor for her emotional state, and vice versa.

We find something similar at the very end of the novel. Here, Alexandra has decided to accompany Carl to Alaska, while planning to return to Nebraska after the season is over. Check out how the narrator wraps things up:

They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them, under the evening star. Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth! (5.3.31)

Again, we find the narrator pulling pack from the inner world of the human characters and expanding out to view the natural world. And, as in the other passage, the narrator gets pretty darn excited about this. The final exclamation point echoes the one in the title: O Pioneers! Except here, rather than hailing those who went west, the exclamation celebrates the "fortunate country" to which Alexandra belongs.

The point? Alexandra doesn't get all the glory for being the hero. The last sentence looks forward to a time when Alexandra will be "received" by the land, i.e. when she dies and is buried in the ground. Then, her fine qualities will be reproduced in nature: "in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!"

This passage sets the tone for a novel in which the boundary between human characters and their natural environment is often fluid, and in which the union of nature and human appears even more desirable than those temporary unions made between humans. (Check out Alexandra's "Character Analysis" for more.)

Nostalgic

When we say a novel is "nostalgic," that means it gives us the sense that things used to be better in the old days. Often, nostalgia also expresses distaste for the present. We'll have some more to say about that when we talk about the novel's anti-political tone below. But for now, let's focus on the way O Pioneers! valorizes the early settlers of the Divide and is occasionally critical of their descendants.

Take John Bergson, the father figure who shows up throughout the novel. Even after his death in Part 1, old man Bergson remains ever-present in the portrait that hangs in Alexandra's house. (For more on that, check out "Symbols: The Portrait of John Bergson.") The ghostly way he watches over the events that follow his death give us the sense that his generation, the first immigrants to the Divide, have unfinished business.

So what might that unfinished business be? Well, for one, it could be the fear that his descendants won't live up to his legacy. Looking closely at some of the things we find elsewhere in the novel, this doesn't seem so off target.

For one, take the title: O Pioneers! As we mention in our section on the title, this novel isn't even about pioneers, but about their descendants. The title itself is a quote from a poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865, when the westward-bound were still making their treks. When the novel is published in 1913, the title, at least, seems to be celebrating a time long past.

Compare that to what the narrator has to say about Lou and Oscar towards the beginning of the novel.

Like most of their neighbors, they were meant to follow in paths already marked out for them, not to break trails in a new country. A steady job, a few holidays, nothing to think about, and they would have been very happy. It was no fault of theirs that they had been dragged into the wilderness when they were little boys. A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves. (1.4.1)

Here, Bergson's sons are hardly portrayed as intrepid settlers. In fact, we're led to believe that they resent their station in life. The problem is, in short, that people like Lou and Oscar just aren't true pioneers. Those times are over. Their generation lacks the "imagination," the vision and willingness to take a risk on a new country, which characterized their forbears.

But their generation doesn't include Alexandra, right? Well, it's complicated. When it comes to the dilution of the pioneer spirit, even Alexandra is no exception. She might be independent and strong-willed, but her vision doesn't extend beyond the Divide. She too lacks the pioneer imagination—the power of self-realization. Take a look:

[Alexandra's] training had all been toward the end of making her proficient in what she had undertaken to do. Her personal life, her own realization of herself, was almost a subconscious existence […] (3.2.1)

Alexandra's frontier upbringing has, in some sense, stunted her personal development. And she's not alone; in general, O Pioneers! portrays the second generation of immigrants as diminished versions of their pioneering parents. Is it surprising, then, that the novel glorifies the natural environment? O Pioneers! sometimes seems to be written with a longing for the good ol' days, when the frontier was still open, and when the prairieland was still the stuff of pioneer dreams.

Anti-Political

It might not seem obvious at first glance, but O Pioneers! has an axe to grind with politics and politicians. Consider two of the main antagonists in the novel: Lou Bergson and Frank Shabata. Among their other character flaws, they are both described as "political agitators" (2.8.3). Now, being politically engaged doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. So what gives?

If we look closely, we realize that O Pioneers! tends to see politics as an expression for greed and resentment. When Carl first returns from the city in Part 2, Lou tries to talk politics with him and is parodied as a rabble-rouser. Check out Carl's response and the narrator's commentary in this passage:

Lou began to bluster, as he always did when he talked politics. "We gave Wall Street a scare in ninety-six, all right, and we're fixing another to hand them. Silver wasn't the only issue," he nodded mysteriously. "There's a good many things got to be changed. The West is going to make itself heard."

Carl laughed. "But, surely, it did do that, if nothing else."

When the narrator notes that Lou nods "mysteriously," the implication is that he's just being pretentious, and doesn't really know what he's talking about. This view is voiced by Carl's response, which makes fun of Lou's attempt to sound serious and threatening. Carl clearly thinks that all this politics business is nothing but a lot of noise.

The narrator also groups Frank Shabata together with Lou. Frank is consistently portrayed as resentful of his lot in life, having gone from a well-dressed urbanite to a plain old farmer. His resentment takes on a political tone, or so the narrator implies. Take a look:

[Marie] hated to see the Sunday newspapers come into the house. Frank was always reading about the doings of rich people and feeling outraged. He had an inexhaustible stock of stories about their crimes and follies, how they bribed the courts and shot down their butlers with impunity whenever they chose. Frank and Lou Bergson had very similar ideas, and they were two of the political agitators of the county. (2.8.3)

Here, it's clear that "political agitator" is being used as a bad word to describe both Lou and Frank. The narrator doesn't take their politics seriously, but instead sees it as an extension of their resentful feelings toward more financially successful folks. Oh yeah, and these guys aren't exactly the most likeable characters in the novel. All of this combines to create a pretty negative attitude toward politics on the Divide.