My Antonia

1447 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: In depth analysis of my antonia

My Antonia is a novel about a man’s look into his past and his account of his childhood friend, Antonia. Throughout the novel, many characters are introduced that are separated from the majority due to their nationality and migrating to the mid-west. Antonia Shimerda is one of the main characters that shows this separation, with language and her nationality as the barrier while migrating west with her family. Though Jim is an American boy, he suffers from separation with being away from home and with being in a new place. Through their growth, each character faces their own separation and comes to terms with their differences. The theme of character separation is seen within My Antonia. Through this separation, the connection of two individual characters becomes a bond that keeps the two characters connected through the novel.
The story begins with Jim Burden being separated from his family after their deaths. Since he loses his parents, he must travel to Nebraska to live with his grandparents, a journey that he set out on with one of the farm “hands” of his father. This journey to Nebraska offers for Jim a new and different life. Jim’s forced separations “orphaned and expelled from the East by his relatives, feels the same sense of having ‘left behind’ forever the things and people that matter to him” (Holmes); a loss from what he knew and where he grew up, leaving behind everything, even his parents’ spirits. He expresses his journey as setting out to “try our fortunes in a new world” (Cather, 49). Jim knows that there is a separation all around him especially the separation from his coach car to the immigrant car, where Antonia and her family are traveling in: “their initial separation is a durable dividing line that foresh...

... middle of paper ...

...ction to people. Antonia does not allow for her separation to be a burden or barrier unless she wants it to be. This is seen when she travels back home after her failed marriage. She causes her own separation from the community when she closes herself off. With time, she takes her life back and returns to the community and ends the separation that she causes.

Works Cited

Cather, Willa. "The Norton Anthology American Literature." My Antonia. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company , 2012. 47-181. print.
Holmes, Catherine D. "Jim Burde's Lost Worlds: Exile In My Antonia." Twentieth Century Literature 45.3 (1999): 336. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 14 March 2014.
Palmer, Scott. "'The train of thought': classed travel and nationality in Willa Cather's My Antonia." Studies in American Fiction 29.2 (2001): 239+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 March 2014.

Show More
Related

  • How Does Mr Shimerda's Death Affect My Antonia

    574 Words  | 2 Pages

    She is very close to her father so this impacts her deeply. She feels the need to step up and care for her family. This turns Antonia into a very hard worker. She begins working with Ambrosch, her brother, by plowing the fields. She takes on the responsibilities of a man. This makes her stop going to school. This worries Jim until he finds out that Antonia is actually very hurt by the event of her father dying. Antonia cries in secret and longs to go to school.

    Read More

  • Special Bond In Willa Cather's My Antonia

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    Starting at a young age, the main characters lives are intertwined. They form a special bond, which have both positive and negative affects on their relationship. At the time when Jim and Antonia are growing up, a rigid social structure exists in Nebraska. This social difference contributed to the creation and alteration of their friendship; in part, it is responsible for their behavior toward one another.

    Read More

  • Define Normal Book Talk

    435 Words  | 1 Pages

    Antonia's mom smokes and she has been really sick lately. Her mom is that antagonist in this story because she can't even get out of bed unless she feels good. Since her mom has been sick, Antonia has to take care of everything around the house, including her brother. So one day Antonia was at a freind's house and her mom and brother decide to go on a picnic and when they were done she took her son to a motel, and then left to go to a bar down the road. When she was done at the bar, she went back to the motel and passed out on the floor. So when Antonia got home, nobody was there. About a half an hour later, her brother called and said that their mom had passed out and that they were at a motel. Her brother didn't know the name of the motel so he looked around and remembered the bar. He told his sister the name of the bar that their mom had gone to and then she knew right where they were.

    Read More

  • Dark Overtones And Their Contrasts In My Antonia

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    It seems that Jim tries to express that the prairie is forlorn, and deprived of life, making one aware of being alone. Because Jim has left behind all that is familiar, and started over his life, he has a clean slate, and that is what the prairie is. E. K. Brown, once wrote, ³The impersonal vastness of the land is the freedom it represents.

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: Jim Burden

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jim Burden’s early years follows the structure of the idealized childhood of the American West, one where he can run freely in the country and is surrounded by the natural world. However, prejudices are still prevalent in his community, and have a noticeable effect on its inhabitants as they mature. From a young age, members of the Black Hawk, Nebraska community are instilled with the idea that daughters

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay - An American Tale

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    To conclude, My Antonia is an American Tale because it couldn’t take place anywhere else.   Only America holds the abstraction of diverse ethnicity more commonly called “the melting pot.”  America is customarily called the “land of opportunity,” and this is the reason the immigrants in the novel moved to America.  Ultimately, the Shimerdas wouldn’t have the tale of their demise and struggle if they had remained in their own country where they were on stable grounds. r

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: Independence and Belonging

    668 Words  | 2 Pages

    In My Antonia there are two types of women, those who want to have a man and those who don¹t. The key word is want, at no point does a woman need a man in the entire course of the novel. From the Hired Girls to Tiny Soderball and Lena Lingard women are capable of self sufficiency and happiness. The majority of the truly contented people are either alone or living without the opposite sex. Antonia and Cuzak are the only example of a ³normal² happy couple, all others have some problems that prevent a normal relationship.

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: Importance of Setting

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    The setting of the story has tremendous impact on the characters and themes in the novel "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. Cather's delicately crafted naturalistic style is evident not only in her colorfully detailed depictions of the Nebraska frontier, but also in her characters’ relationship with the land on which they live. The common naturalist theme of man being controlled by nature appears many times throughout the novel, particularly in the chapters containing the first winter.

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: The Role of Men in My Antonia

    814 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...back], you're here, like my father. So I won't be lonesome" (256). Those memories of her father and Jim are all that Antonia posses of her past and they are all that shapes her future

    Read More

  • Lena Lingard And Antonia Comparison

    598 Words  | 2 Pages

    Willa Cather’s “My Antonia” is a collection of fictional memories loosely based off Cather’s own childhood. Throughout the novel young Jim Burden encounters several characters and befriends men and women alike, but two female characters become very close; Antonia Shimerda and Lena Lingard. Antonia and Lena both aid Jim throughout his life; one through childhood and the other through adulthood. While both characters have minor similarities, the differences between them are pronounced.

    Read More

  • Friendship Relationship Between Jim And Antonia's Friendship

    888 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Antonia’s situation, Jim did not mean much other than friend, teacher, and security. In Antonia’s case, Jim’s definition was ‘friend’. Jim was her first friend in America. Both were coming from an outside area, so they had similarities. Antonia was also four years older than Jim. Still to this day, it is looked down upon if you marry a younger man, so Antonia never really had the thought of Jim as a boyfriend. For Antonia, Jim was also a teacher. When JIm and her family met for the first time at their house, it was clear that Antonia would be the most likely to succeed in English. Her mother asked Jim to teach her daughter English on that first day. Form that day on, Jim ws Antonia’s teacher. Lastly, Jim’s family cared about the Shimerda’s. As practicing Catholics and good people, the Burden’s provided the Shimerda’s with knowledge how to survive in the land. WIthout the Burdens, the Shimerda’s most likely would have died in their cave. When Mr. Shimerda committed suicide, the Burden’s hired Antonia; this allowed for Antonia to receive food and for the Shimerda’s to receive income. In Antonia’s mind, she was grateful to have a friend like Jim Burden, but it was very different for

    Read More

  • Physical Journeys

    1515 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mark Twain’s picaresque novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (hereafter Huck Finn) gives a realistic portrayal of Southern life before the American Civil War and depicts the way companionship enables the journeyers to learn from diverse perspectives enriching the journeys power to prompt inner growth and development. This is clearly depicted through the use of first person persona, where Twain employs the uneducated vernacular voice of Huck Finn. This technique contributes to the authenticity of Huck Finn’s Southern characterisation emphasising his transformation from racial prejudice and small mindedness to a more moral and tolerant perspective. Together Huck and Jim embark on their personal quests for freedom; Huck for freedom from “sivilisation” and Jim for freedom from slavery. Together they travel down the river a motif that symbolises their desire for liberation and security. “ I never felt easy till the raft was…out in the middle of the Mississippi…we was free and safe once more”. As they travel they are not merely moving down the river but discovering who they are as they learn and grow along the way.

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: Contrasts between the Hired Girls and the Black Hawk Women

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    The hired girls are important characters in My Antonia both as a connection to the country and contrast against the respectable women in Black Hawk; and as comparison figures for the most important hired girl, Antonia.  Their success is ironic because of their meek beginnings, and says something about the value of poverty.  Through them, the reader is shown the value of overcoming obstacles with hard work.  The vivid descriptions of them, as well as Jim’s attraction to them really make them objects of poetry to read about.  They ultimately show a lot about Antonia in their similarities and dissimilarities to her.

    Read More

  • Shimerda's Antonia Characteristics

    274 Words  | 1 Pages

    Antonia Shimerda has three very distinct qualities and characteristics that make her who she is and helps capture readers as well as Cather’s attention. One of these qualities that he eventually came to admire was her independence, “There was a basic harmony between Ántonia and her mistress. They had strong, independent natures, both of them.” She captured his admiration simply by having lived life the way she had, and with the suicide of her father and being very independent in life, especially from having to emigrate from Bohemia, she could be a very independent and strong willed character and Cather really admired this in her. Antonia was a very strong willed human who somewhat had a tone of authority because of the things she had gone through.

    Read More

  • Gothic Elements In Matthew Lewis's The Monk

    2182 Words  | 5 Pages

    Antonia and Agnes are the characters in the novel that suffer the most, the difficulties that they encounter are due to their position in society, as women and as under the control of those who have more power than them. Agnes in particular is held prisoner and tortured by those who yield power over her. While Agnes is trapped in a one room prison with the decaying body of her baby, the nuns hold complete control over her. Agnes is depleted of all control in her life, she is brought down to skin and bones and she has lost years of her life as well as the child she gave birth to in her prison cell. The differences in power is extremely stressed with the nuns and Agnes as well as with Ambrosio and Antonia.

    Read More

More about My Antonia

Open Document