These resourceful and brave people trekked into the unknown land of the Midwest and Nebraska, brought their families, and sometimes hired hands with them. Since Cather peopled her fiction with individuals and immigrant groups who had not been written about before, students will find her characters individualized, intriguing and true-to-life. Moreover, they will be amazed at the hardships, the plight, and the conditions of life on the rural Nebraska prairie land of late nineteenth century America. Undoubtedly, students will want to know why people like the Shimerdas, the Lindgards, Krajiek, Otto, Anton Jelinek, Anton Cuzak, Peter, and Pavel emigrated to America. She wrote that Slavonic, Germanic, Scandinavian, Bohemian and Latin “spread across our bronze prairies like the daubs of color on a painter’s palette.” Willa Cather focused on depicting ethnic values of the different cultures of the various immigrants who came to Nebraska. Is an ideal book to introduce to high school students because it deals with the great variety of people from other countries who were confronted simultaneously with the creation of new lives and a new country. The film shows Cather’s places and characters-the American land, her choice of characters and her countries-the red grass prairie of Which would serve as an ideal springboard for this unit. Films for the Humanities has produced a film called It should be highly effective if taught with other novels or classics such as:Īs a comparative group of American fiction.Ī visit to the Yale Art Gallery to view early Twentieth Century paintings and sculpture would make this unit even more stimulating and pleasurable. It should take at least two weeks to cover adequately and experience deeply. In addition, it could be used appropriately for English four students if they have not read the novel in their junior year. Also, it could be integrated with an American history course and correlated with the themes of immigration and westward expansion. This curriculum unit will be used as a segment of the American literature course for honors, college, and basic junior students.

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