Overwhelming, untameable, vast. The land is made into a major character with itw own personality, desires, behaviors. Not just a backdrop for the story, it is an adversary to overcome. Everywhere the reader turns, the land is there, reminding both the reader and the characters that humanity does not belong in its savage wilderness. It is inescapable.

Cather;s language used to describe this country gives a sense of inhospitality and resistence to man. Hanover is "little" and "trying not to be blown away" (p.3). There is no sense of permanence. Even our time in this town is brief, emphasizing that sense of transience. After all that's necessary os said and done, Hanover vanishes behind the wagon taking the characters to their homes "as if it had never been" (p.9). Once again we are faced with the permanence and inhospitality of the "sombre wastes" of the "vast herdness" of the land (p.9).

"Dark country" seems such an appropriate description for this Nebraska wilderness (p.11). Men have attempted to overcome it for years upon years. But it still remains wild and untamed, barely touched by the work poured onto it. Roads are "faint tracks", fields "scarcely noticeable" with the work of the plow "like . . feable scratches on stone" (p.12). Even the houses blend into it, built of the very soil man wishes to conquer. "Unfriendly to man", it resists and fights this intrusion (p.13).

Some few learn to live with the land, like Ivar. He doesn't fight it or try to overcome it. Instead he nurtures it, works with it. The changes made are almost natural - Ivar's pond aids the wildlife which is sustained by the land. It fits in, fulfilling a place in the order of things. But such men are few. Most struggle to tame it and make it theirs.

For many the struggle is too much. Wildness has no desire to be tamed. It is raw, "strong . . . young . . . wild" (p.29), completely its own. Even if tamed, there's a sense that it will be its own, that man could never fully posses it. Even today it fights man's dominion. Asphalt cracks and is lifted by tree roots, walls get covered by ivy, weeds return after every removal. If man disappeared, the land could easily swallow up his accomplishments. Metal rusts, wood rots, cement breaks and erodes. Everything else would eventually be buried under the soil of time. The wild, open spaces will always intimidate man, and the land will always resist man's attempts to overcome it.


O Pioneers!
Willa Cather, 1913
Essay written January 21, 1998
grade: A