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영어

Willa Cather has been well known as a representative writer of the Plains literature. She favorably pictures the European immigrants in such works as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia and “Neighbour Rosicky” as exemplary settlers whose diligence, courage and endeavors work as fundamental qualities for their success in the new country. Her characters get over their adverse circumstances by preserving their own language, foods, and cultural traditions. But her contemporary old-stock Americans looked these immigrants, especially those from southern and eastern Europe, with suspicion and even hostility. Cather also describes Bohemians rather negatively for their tendency for instability, emotional fluctuation and violence, but their defects are covered with their positive traits and virtues or diluted by being juxtaposed with other vicious American settlers. Americans’s negative attitudes might be due to the influence of their biased belief in certain Puritan values and American spirit. Cather also fretted about the rude foreigners in the aftermath of the massive influx of immigrants in the 1930s. Similar to this situation, Korean society is now undergoing an abrupt flux of immigrants that raises social arguments on accepting immigrants and multiple cultures. Cather’s works and views would be good examples for Koreans to consider when they look back on the general attitude of Koreans to immigrants and their intrinsic cultures.