SOURCE: Charles, Sister Peter Damian, O.P. “Love and Death in Willa Cather's O Pioneers! CLA Journal 9, no. 9 (December 1965): 140-50.

In the following essay, Charles explores the conflict between love and death in O Pioneers!

Like any other significant novel, Willa Cather's O Pioneers! has elicited a variety of critical responses. E. K. Brown rejoices in its “happy looseness” of structure and “easy strength” of style characteristic of Willa Cather at her best.¹ David Daiches, though he finds the novel “episodic and unevenly patterned,” grants it “moments of force and beauty and a general air of power and assurance.”² To John Randall in his “search for values,” the work suggests the conclusion that “love of the land is always safe, whereas love of human beings is not.”³ An early reviewer, examining the book for The Nation, perceptively states that “the sureness of feeling and touch, the power without...