Cather Studies, Volume 5: Willa Cather's Ecological Imagination

Will Cather: The Plow and the Pen

Willa Cather The Plow and the Pen J O S E P H W . M E E K E R Environmental imagination is not a term that lends itself to precise definition, but most of us recognize it when we encounter its symptoms. It is there in Gary Snyder’s lifelong exploration of connections between the human soul and natural systems. If we were discussing Faulkner, we would consider his deep rootedness in the mountains of the rural South. We would find environmental imagination hard at work in the writings of John Muir or Henry David Thoreau, and in the rich naturalism of Loren Eiseley. What such writers share is a profound love of the natural world and an active curiosity about its complex processes . They generally feel that a person cannot know who they are without also knowing where they are and what dynamics govern the natural world around them. Characteristically, they see the natural world as possessing high integrity and value within itself that is not dependent upon people’s uses of it. They are also likely to see nature as a source of wisdom and understanding, and as a means through which the human soul can best fulfill itself. They love natural processes, they seek to know them intimately, and they find their best art and thought through immersion in places of natural power. Clearly, there are many kinds of environmental imagination. The writers I have just mentioned are examples of authors for whom participation in their natural scene is a high priority. There are others who see nature as a challenge to be met, and from them we get novels of adventure and conquest. Still others perceive natural processes as the means for humans to fulfill themselves. 77 78 joseph w. meeker For these authors, the land is an instrument for the revelation of human character and purpose. As people change their land, they fulfill themselves. The question before us is how, or whether, Willa Cather is at home among such writers. The best places to look for evidence are in her novels in a Nebraska setting, for there the land and its character clearly play a major role. These books include many vivid descriptions of prairie landscapes, complete with the seasonal changes that provide suffering and joy to their inhabitants, together with the chancy opportunity to earn a living. The prairie ecosystem is the setting upon which these stories unfold. The Nebraska prairie also acts as a character in these novels, interacting with all the human characters and influencing their lives in powerful and subtle ways. The land is often referred to as if it were a person. Although Willa Cather made many forays into distant times and geographic settings for her novels, the Nebraska prairie at the end of the nineteenth century seems to me to be the center of her artistic spirit. The first section of O Pioneers! is titled “The Wild Land.” Here and there are homesteads and sod houses, “But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes . . . the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness” (21). The wildness of the land, despite its savage beauty, is a negative quality to be overcome, not a positive attribute to be learned from. What is most noticed about the wild land is the lack of human influence: “Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening” (25). Wildness in this context simply means, “not yet cultivated.” The instrument of cultivation, and the symbol for human civilization , is the plow. In the early stages, “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” (25). In the course of the novel, it is the plow that converts the land into a source of wealth and status and becomes a central image of the 79 The Plow and the Pen human spirit triumphant. The wild land is an impediment, “like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things...