Farmer Boy Book Analysis

Wilder produced nine books in the Little House series. Eight of these were based on her experiences growing up in various places on the American frontier, and one, Farmer Boy (1933), tells of her husband, Almanzo’s, boyhood on a farm in New York State. Each novel can be understood without reading the others, but taken together they form a cyclical tale which follows the Ingalls family from Laura’s early childhood to her marriage.

In keeping with the development of Laura, the reading difficulty and sophistication of ideas increases with each book. All are narrated by Laura, but they are not first-person narratives, nor are they autobiographical. Wilder employs a limited omniscient point of view. In all the Little House books except Farmer Boy,
The descriptions of daily work, physical challenges, shared meals, singing and storytelling on winter evenings, and dangers overcome together form the structure of the novels. Domestic rhythms are bolstered by the seasonal shifts in land and work which mark the completion of a year. Cyclical activities emphasize the relation of life inside the Ingallses’ cabin to life outside—-on the prairie, on a claim, or in town. The tension of completing harvesting, hunting, or building while the weather allowed these tasks stresses the urgency of each day’s work for pioneer families. Wilder’s coordination of outdoor work and family growth emphasizes the communal and environmental nature of life on the Ingalls homestead.

Wilder captures the essence of the pioneer spirit in her books, affirming the independent determination of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay “Self Reliance” by comments like Ma’s, that “a body makes his own luck” in These Happy Golden Years(1943). Pa’s determination to prove up on his claim in De Smet, Dakota Territory, after years of loss and relocation is a testimony to his unbreakable spirit, one that Laura emulates in her own
It contains danger and can menace the Ingalls family by drought or force. As a mature woman, Laura, on a buggy ride with Almanzo, watches the approach of a ferocious rainstorm which ravages farms for miles as well as the town of De Smet. Wilder captures the drama of rolling black clouds sweeping across the plains, sending down fingers to touch the ground as the storm roars past, leaving the joyriders untouched. In an early episode in Little House on the Prairie (1935), the new cabin, without windows or a solid door, is surrounded by a pack of wolves howling and snuffling at the cabin’s sides during the night. Wilder is not naïve. She expresses the complex relationship of frontier people to the land. It both nurtures and haunts them, offering grand, healing vistas and the sense of space and possibility, along with infinite chances for harm to crops, animals, or the settlers