Willa Cather – O Pioneers! and A Wagner Matinée

I personally enjoyed reading the excerpt from O Pioneers! While reading the short little part, I was struck at how similar The Grapes of Wrath was to O Pioneers. The author talked of the hardships and what exactly the pioneers went through during that time. I got to thinking about how history just tends to repeat itself over and over again. The conditions upon which those pioneers lived under had not changed, even after several years of learning to adapt. The pioneers were still just getting by.

Realism was, of course, displayed in this excerpt, as well as regionalism. This excerpt takes the reader away from the comfort of their home and puts them instead into a situation that they would have most likely not have ever experienced through the course of their normal, everyday life. The reader is taken to a place where men and women are just barely getting by, the food supply is scarce, and the conditions upon which they live under are gross and dirty. One point I found interesting as well as kind of sad is when Cather says, "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 place that had been proved habitable (Cather 489). That sentence right there shows the disparity with the men, and how they are truly feeling, providing the sense of realism, as well as regionalism.

A Wagner Matinée was another interesting story to read. It took me a while to read it, but I actually enjoyed this one as well. I especially like how Cather used the music references to tell of what music's effect had on each person, because that is almost exactly what I do. When I listen to music, usually from movies or classical, I tend to listen for the story that goes along with the music, which is what Aunt Georgiana seemed to be doing, which I thought was neat, as well as a good insight to what Aunt Georgiana was going through. She had not listened to music in quite some time, and yet she goes and listens to this orchestra, and seems to be left speechless. I personally thought that Cather did a good job with conveying the emotions and Aunt Georgiana's story through music and words.

Overall, both stories conveyed realism and regionalism, because the reader was taken away from the comfort of their own imagination and taken to a place far different than what they are used to. In the excerpt from O Pioneers, we were told about the different experiences that occur for actual pioneers, and how they try to survive. Then, in A Wagner Matinée, music was what took the reader away and got them to start thinking outside the box, as cliched as that statement may be. Both of the stories were interesting and definitely made the reader think afterwards.

Works Cited:

Cather, Willa. "from O Pioneers!" American Literature Textbook. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 489. Print.

Cather, Willa. "A Wagner Matinée." American Literature Textbook. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 521-526. Print.