The difficult relationship between the individual and society is
one of the most enduring themes of American culture, and, as
such, figures prominently in American literature. America's
first Puritan forebears were dissenters, forced to reconcile
their impulse toward revolution against the society that
confined them with their faith in the sanctity of the idea of
community. Since then, America has been marked by the uneasy
balance between the forces of the personal and the public,
between those of individual dreams and the great American Dream.
Willa Cather's first great novel, O Pioneers!, addresses itself
in large part to that uneasy balance. In the story of Alexandra
Bergson, the novel measures the potency of the remarkable
individual against universal human desires and the forces of
national history. The uneasiness that marks the characters'
relationship with society and history in O Pioneers! is also
present in their relationship with the land. The land is their
home and their livelihood, and it constitu