SOURCE: Baker, Bruce P., II “O Pioneers! The Problem of Structure.” Great Plains Quarterly 2, no. 4 (fall 1982): 218-23.

In the following essay, Baker traces the critical reaction to the structure of Cather's O Pioneers!, finding several unifying patterns in the novel.

In her preface to the 1922 edition of Alexander's Bridge and in the 1931 essay “My First Novels: There Were Two,” Willa Cather conveyed not only her dissatisfaction with Alexander's Bridge but also her awareness that with O Pioneers! she had touched matters closer to her “deepest experience,” material that was distinctly derived from the Nebraska of her childhood.¹ She had written the book with genuine enthusiasm: “O Pioneers! interested me tremendously because it had to do with a kind of country I loved, because it was about old neighbours, once very dear, whom I had almost forgotten in the hurry and excitement of growing up and finding out what...