Sarah Snow
Paper 3
Writing in the Discipline of English
October 10, 2012 Central Themes in A Lost Lady * In Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady (1923), the author tells a story of a boy named Neil who’s growth into manhood is molded by the Forresters; the Captain who represented the pioneer spirit of the old west in the United States, and the beautiful Marian whom he idolized to such an extent that her moral downfall initiated his loss of innocence. As he grows up, his family, friends, and his home of Sweet Water change. Where the Forresters were once the pillars of grandeur and dignity, they fall into poverty and sickness. The Captain’s passing signifies the end of a time when those who shaped the country prospered in its unsoiled
He not only uses it for profit, he enjoys seeing it gone. He has proven his dominance over the Forresters, just as he dominated the bird. * Loss, and change in response to loss dominate much of Neil’s life. The story commences when Neil is a small boy and,“Mrs. Forrester was still a young woman, and Sweet Water was a town of which great things were expected” (8). When he returns from Boston as an adult, she has grown older and weary from poverty and hard work, much like Sweet Water. The town no longer prospers from the Burlington Railroad, and the social elite who made the town what it was have all gone, or become humbled by their poor circumstances. As Neil grows into an adult and leaves the innocence of childhood behind him, everything around him that he loved fades with it. Marian most embodies Neil’s loss. She begins as the epitome of grace and exquisiteness in his boyhood. He fell in love with her persona, which forever shaped the standard to which he held all women in his life. Her affair reveals to Neil a side of her he never imagined possible: * * “In that instant between stooping to the window-sill and rising, he had lost one of the most beautiful things in his life . . . This day saw the end of that admiration and loyalty that had been like a bloom on his existence” (71-72). * * Just as she falls from the pedestal Neil has placed her on, the Forresters’ status as the royalty in Sweet Water fades, and they fall