How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. (1.1.1)
How's that for an opening sentence? This immediately gives us the sense that Hanover, the town around which most of O Pioneers! takes place, is somehow at odds with its (super harsh) natural environment.
Quote #2
It was facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were to weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness. (1.1.18)
Okay, okay. We get it. Nebraska is a difficult place to live. But a passage like this one gives us some insight into the psychology of the Divide's inhabitants, in this case, Carl. In short: without a certain optimism and willingness to persevere, this country will quickly make you bitter.
Quote #3
The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings. (1.2.1)
Here, the refusal of the land to be tamed is brought into focus with the metaphor of "markings." Hard as they might try, the inhabitants of the Divide are barely able to leave any marks of human civilization. If we understand these "markings" metaphorically, as a kind of writing, then it sounds like the inhabitants are struggling and failing to write their own history.
Quote #4
John Bergson had the Old-World belief that land, in itself, is desirable. But this land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. (1.2.5)
John Bergson's "Old-World" beliefs belong to the mindset of an immigrant to the United States, who fantasizes about the endless availability of land. Well, needless to say, those fantasies don't always come true. In fact, he's started to realize that the land might just be more than he can handle.
Quote #5
But for the piece of rusty stovepipe sticking up through the sod, you could have walked over the roof of Ivar's dwelling without dreaming that you were near a human habitation. Ivar had lived for three years in the clay bank, without defiling the face of nature any more than the coyote that had lived there before him had done. (1.3.22)
Ivar's house is practically part of nature itself. Well, that's kind of how we're supposed to imagine him, as well. But—is Ivar afraid to accept being a human being?
Quote #6
Like most of their neighbors, they were meant to follow in paths already marked out for them, not to break trails in a new country. A steady job, a few holidays, nothing to think about, and they would have been very happy. It was no fault of theirs that they had been dragged into the wilderness when they were little boys. A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves. (1.4.1)
Just when you thought Lou and Oscar Bergson were the bad guys in O Pioneers!, we catch the narrator defending them. What gives? Well actually, the narrator is drawing an important distinction here, not making a defense. Apparently there's a difference between true pioneers, who have "imagination" and a special connection to the land, and those people, like Lou and Oscar, who are run-of-the-mill types.
Quote #7
For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman. (1.5.3)
When it comes to (wo)man and nature in O Pioneers!, it doesn't get much better than this passage. The Divide becomes personified here, as the great and powerful "Genius," that submits to Alexandra's "human will."
Quote #8
"We hadn't any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still." (2.4.4)
C'mon. We all know Alexandra is a pretty awesome farmer. She doesn't need to act like "the land did it." Is she just trying to be modest? Or does she actually see her will in harmony with the will of nature?
Quote #9
She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again! (3.1.42)
It often seems like nature, in O Pioneers!, acts like a metaphor for human experiences. Here, in the same way that "the secret of life" lies dormant beneath the frozen earth of winter, Marie's longing for Emil's return burns slowly in his absence.
Quote #10
The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. (4.5.5)
Ditto here. Marie contemplates the changing of the seasons and the endlessly unchanging life of nature, and imagines her own life as part of a similar set of repetitions, until her will to go on finally gives out.