A review of willa cathers short tale o pioneers
Ivar unslung a hammock from a hook on the wall; in it was rolled a buffalo robe. Alexandra turned away decidedly.
O pioneers band
They came in and stood at the foot of the bed. For weeks, John Bergson had been thinking about these things. Many of them had never worked on a farm until they took up their homesteads. I'm afraid they are beginning to feel hard toward me because I won't listen to any talk about going. Often he did not see anybody from one week's end to another. Is that why so many come? He always felt shy and awkward here, and wanted to hide behind things for fear some one might laugh at him. Alexandra did not propose any reforms in the care of the pigs, and they hoped she had forgotten Ivar's talk. But these wild things are God's birds. She had never quite forgiven John Bergson for bringing her to the end of the earth; but, now that she was there, she wanted to be let alone to reconstruct her old life in so far as that was possible. The square head and heavy shoulders belonged to Oscar, the elder.She was going over to the other ocean, maybe, and did not know how far it was. Oscar and Lou, on the front seat, wore their cloth hats and coats, never worn except on Sundays, and Emil, on the second seat with Alexandra, sat proudly in his new trousers, made from a pair of his father's, and a pink-striped shirt, with a wide ruffled collar.
Perhaps that was why she bethought herself of Emil. Have you got it? Cather was fundamentally a Platonist; she believed that vision was more real than reality.
And that was all you saw.
It was a still, deep-breathing summer night, full of the smell of the hay fields. The little town behind them had vanished as if it had never been, had fallen behind the swell of the prairie, and the stern frozen country received them into its bosom.
It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. The women were checking over their groceries and pinning their big red shawls about their heads.