SOURCE: McFarland, Dorothy Tuck. “O Pioneers! (1913).” In Willa Cather, pp. 19-28. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1972.

In the following essay, McFarland surveys the dominant thematic concerns of Cather's novel.

When she returned to Red Cloud from her visit to the southwest in 1912, Willa Cather found in her mind a story, which was to be called “The White Mulberry Tree,” and a poem called “Prairie Spring.” With the new story she juxtaposed another story written the winter before in Cherry Valley, “Alexandra.” This “two-part pastoral,” after considerable additions linking and clarifying the relationships of the two stories, became O Pioneers! The poem, which is in essence the poetic distillation of O Pioneers!, she placed at the beginning of the novel.

With O Pioneers! Willa Cather was “suddenly in control of inner creative forces which had tended to swamp her and make her dismal so long as she could...