One of Ours by Willa Cather - 785 Words

Margaret Elliot is â€Å"beautiful, talented, critical, unsatisfied, tired of the world at twenty-four† (Great Short Works, 8). Engaged to a man she has no feelings for, life feels bleak and without purpose. She feels true love once with Eric, but just for a moment. For her whole life, Margaret â€Å"had searched the faces of men for the look that lay in his eyes. She knew that look had never shone before, would never shine for her on earth again, that such love comes to one only in dreams or in impossible places like this, unattainable always. This was Love’s self, and in a moment it would die† (Great Short Works, 29). For Willa Cather this is how love exists. Happy relationships are plentiful, but the enchanted, all encapsulating love of dreams only exists in glances. For Eric this glance is enough. He does not regret his decision or the damnation he is sure it will cause. For him â€Å"a day shall be as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day† as his love lives on. In most cases, however love is not enough. Both Margaret and Claude, the protagonist of Cather’s novel One of Ours feel this shimmer of love, but in the end must search for meaning elsewhere. Set in a small Nebraska farm town, One of Ours opens several years before the start of the First World War. Claude is unsatisfied with his simple life in the fields, and possesses an idealistic, romantic outlook that propels him to search for meaning on a much different field in Europe. For Claude, who wants nothing more thanShow MoreRelatedWilla Cather s O Pioneers ! 1152 Words   |  5 PagesCather portraying herself in the characters and the flipped gender roles Considering I am one of the only two males in the Intro to Women’s Literature class, I felt moved to touch on Willa Cather’s flipping of the gender roles in the book O Pioneers! I will be using my own opinion in this essay, along with textual evidence to back up my claims. I will also be establishing connections between Cather’s portrayals of herself within the themes and characters in the book. As we know, Willa Cather wasRead MoreAnalysis Of O Pioneers By Willa Cather1038 Words   |  5 Pages O Pioneers by Willa Cather sets itself apart from other novels of its time because of what its stands for, feminism. It exemplifies women’s equality, represented by the main character, Alexandra, by showing her survival in a male dominated society. She succeeded in building her female identity and achieved a sense of female attainment by revolutionizing the wild land and struggling for her equal rights with all that surrounded her. This paper focuses on the feminist thoughts and the positive attitudeRead MoreBiography of Willa Sibert Cather1473 Words   |  6 PagesWILLA SIBERT CATHER BIOGRAPHY Willa Sibert Cather was born in Winchester, Virginia on December 7, 1873 to Charles and Mary Cather. Willa’s father was a deputy sheriff and farmer, and her mother was a school teacher. When Willa was nine, in 1883, her family moved to the Nebraska prairie to follow her grandparents, William and Caroline in Webster County. The prairie life was an unfamiliar landscape, which was crucial in Cather’s life. In 1888, Cather decided that she wanted to become a surgeonRead More Importance of the Past in Willa Cathers My Antonia Essay685 Words   |  3 PagesThe Importance of the Past in Willa Cathers My Antonia    In My Antonia, Willa Cather emphasizes the importance of the past through Jum Burdens narration. Jim Burden realizes at the conclusion of the novel how much he enjoyed his childhood days and how much his memories mean to him. There are three events that Cather included in the novel which contribute greatly to the overall theme, concerning the importance of the past. One event is in Chapter II of Book III. Jim decides to writeRead More Willa Cathers Death Comes for the Archbishop: A Narrative Essay756 Words   |  4 PagesWilla Cathers Death Comes for the Archbishop: A Narrative When one thinks of a novel, a word that usually will come to mind is fiction. In fact, other meanings for the word novel are new and unique. Although an author may use real places, real time, or base their story on real events in part, their outcome is essentially a creation. We, as readers, are in a sense captive to the writers imagination and must conform to the rules of the worlds they create. If we accept this, then Willa CathersRead More An Immense Career Essay example2113 Words   |  9 PagesAn Immense Career Career Willa Cather, American novelist and short-story writer, was born Willela Sibert Cather on 7 December 1873, in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, near Winchester. At nine years of age, in 1883, her family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska. Many of her novels were set in Red Cloud. She attended the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and graduated in 1895. She spent a few years after college working on a newspaper, and then worked an editorial job at the magazine Home Monthly in Read More Self-imposed Estrangement in Pauls Case Essay1314 Words   |  6 PagesSelf-imposed Estrangement in Pauls Case, by Willa Cather Many times, we try to separate ourselves from the world around us; we distance ourselves from society that gives us life. What is worse, we are voluntarily subjected to the lonesomeness which precedes wallowing in our own self pity. Pauls Case, in which the theme of the fatal progression of deliberate seclusion presents the major conflict, centers around a young man, in his alienation, suppressing his need for attention and satisfyingRead MorePauls Case by Willa Cather Essay622 Words   |  3 PagesPauls Case by Willa Cather Willa Cather was born near Winchester, Virginia in 1873. At age ten, she moved with her family to Nebraska where most of her stories were set. In 1913, she began an extensive writing career which included many short stories and several novels. In her stories, she depicted the lives of prairie farmers on the great plains. She glorified them over the city dwellers. In 1922, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel One of Ours. She left behind a heritage forRead MoreInfluenced by Land and Man: Willa Cather and Catherine Porter, Writers of the Southwest1316 Words   |  6 Pagesscene of a saloon shootout and John Wayne materialize. Southwestern literature is more than the O.K. Corral. Writers such as Willa Cather and Catherine Porter do not have the prototypical storyline stated above, but they are writers of Southwestern literature. In order to understand why Willa Cather and Catherine Porter should be considered a part of Southwestern literature, one must consider the difference between the American West and Southwest and understand that their writing is deeply influencedRead MoreEssay about The Beauty of the Lack of Structure in My Antonia1587 Words   |  7 PagesJr.s, My Antonia; A Frontier Drama of Time, Willa Cathers novel, one of her most important and perhaps most popular works, is defective in structure (Bloom, 21).   He quotes E. K. Brown, who defends that: Everything in the book is there to convey a feeling, not to tell a story, not to establish a social philosophy, not even to animate a group of characters (21).   The reader undoubtedly feels the impact of the story of Antonia and Jim as Cather intended, but critics blind themselves to the