윌라 캐더의 『오 개척자들이여!』 : 두 여성의 삶과 미국의 꿈

Willa Cather s O Pioneers!: The Lives of Two Women and the American Dream’

The American Dream appears in various forms according to the change of the times. The immigrants who came to the New World, leaving their homeland wanted to construct ‘the second paradise’ in the New World. The material prosperity they wanted was the desire for worldly wealth and success. John Bergson, the father of Alexandra, came to the New World with his family, dreaming the American Dream , but he had made but little impression upon the wild land he had come to tame. Having death ahead, he inherits his land to Alexandra, not his sons. Alexandra does make the land her own, cultivating it with “love and yearning” rather than her father’s will to dominate. Gifted with imagination, she triumphs because she combines a mystic faith in the Divide with a pragmatic willingness to experiment with new farming techniques. Finally, she becomes one of the richest farmer on the Divide, and realizes the American Dream which her father did not fulfill. In the story of Emil’s and Marie’s passion and death, Willa Cather describes the story of adulterous or unlawful lovers whose desire cannot be contained by social structures and conventions. They fall in unlawful love and meet their death without making an effort for success. They didn t adapt themselves to the new circumstances and so they are failures of the American Dream.