How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Prairie Spring
Evening and the flat land,
Rich and somber and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk. (Epigraph)
This epigraph makes the focus on youth in O Pioneers! pretty darn clear. Check out our comments on this poem in the "Epigraph" section.
Quote #2
After supper Lou put on a necktie and went across the fields to court Annie Lee, and Carl and Oscar sat down to a game of checkers, while Alexandra read "The Swiss Family Robinson" aloud to her mother and Emil. It was not long before the two boys at the table neglected their game to listen. They were all big children together, and they found the adventures of the family in the tree house so absorbing that they gave them their undivided attention. (1.4.46)
This is a nice example of a homey scene from the beginning of the novel. The narrator suggests that this homey-ness captures some of the innocence and naivety of frontier life, where, despite a hard existence, people, deep down, are still "all big children together."
Quote #3
When the grass required his close attention, or when he had to stoop to cut about a headstone, he paused in his lively air,--the "Jewel" song,--taking it up where he had left it when his scythe swung free again. He was not thinking about the tired pioneers over whom his blade glittered. The old wild country, the struggle in which his sister was destined to succeed while so many men broke their hearts and died, he can scarcely remember. That is all among the dim things of childhood and has been forgotten in the brighter pattern life weaves to-day […] Yet sometimes, in the pauses of his work, the young man frowned and looked at the ground with an intentness which suggested that even twenty-one might have its problems. (2.1.5)
Don't get us wrong, though. Youth is not all that innocent in O Pioneers! As the scene suggests, Emil's youthful ease doesn't entirely mask the early stirrings of dissatisfaction and a dangerous desire for more than is allowed.