My Ántonia by Willa Cather is a story of the coming of age of Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda. The recently orphaned Jim moves to Blackhawk Nebraska to live with his grandparents. On his trip from Virginia to Nebraska, Jim first catches glimpse of the Bohemian immigrant family who happen to be moving in near the Burdens. Because she Shimerda’s speak no english, they are quickly cheated out of their money and have moved into a small lean-to on the side of a hill. Jim’s grandmother is a very kind woman and agrees to have Jim help Ántonia learn English. The two spend much time together and go on many adventures with Jim’s pony, Dude. It is on some of these adventures the reader is able to see how much the protagonists are maturing. On one such trip, Ántonia gains a lot of respect for and begins to consider Jim an equal after he saves them both by chopping off the head to a huge rattlesnake. They proudly carry the enormous reptile home and Ántonia boasts about Jims bravery to his grandparents and their farmhands. Not all of Jim and Ántonia’s time together was pleasant, though. ...
It’s not often that throughout their lifetime, a person stays the same. As humans, most of us tend to grow and learn from influences that surround us, whether it be family, friends, or strangers, and when this happens, often times our judgement and our opinions are changed. I say “most”, because in Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Jim Burden doesn’t quite show these changes. Jim is the narrator and main character in the book and he portrays a static character, who seems very advanced as a child, and his thoughts on the world never seem to change. While Jim’s physical appearance changes, his intellectuality never seems to stray from what he believes when he first moves to the Nebraskan countryside as a 10 year old boy.
Jim and Antonia's relationship could not extend beyond the friend-zone because of the divergent paths their lives were taking after Mr. Shimerda's death. Later in the novel, Antonia had to quit school
My Antonia took place in the late 19th century. Jim Burden narrated his recollections of Antonia's life and their childhood together, after a twenty-year absence. The novel began when the ten-year-old orphaned narrator moved from Virginia to the plains of Nebraska to live with his grandparents. He spent his childhood alongside his grandparents and a neighbor Bohemian on the prairies. This Russian girl, new to America, was Antonia. Jim and Antonia spent endless afternoons together. He taught her English and about America. Her lessons were of life and strength. His daily life on the farm changed when he moved with his grandparents into the nearest town, Black Hawk. Antonia found a job as a house hand in town, even though her family was still on a farm. Their adolescent years were occupied with dances and picnics. Jim went on to college after graduation. Antonia, never able to go to school, was courted but left with a child out of wedlock. However, soon after, she was married to a fellow Bohemian and they had eleven children. This book is the moving story of his friendship with Antonia, his Antonia.
I think in the teaching relationship with Jim and Anotonia they both learn a great deal from each other. What Antonia learned from Jim was definitely more crucial for survival but what Jim learned was also valuable. Antonia learned english from Jim and Jim learned about another culture and a sense of adventure from Antonia. They both played a huge part in the lives of each others lives. Jim’s love and memory of Antonia shaped the man he became and fueled his youthful drive even when he aged. Antonia’s memory of Jim kept her company when she was alone. I think Jim learned a lot about
Willa Cather’s 1918 novel My Ántonia is often celebrated for its complimentary depiction of the immigrants that flocked to America at the turn of the twentieth century and hailed for its progressive approach to the ever-relevant immigrant debate. Despite the novel’s superficial benevolence towards foreigners, Janis Stout questions the authenticity of the book’s (and, by extension, Cather’s) kindnesses in her critical article “Coming to America/Escaping to Europe.” Stout argues that Cather’s ethnic characters (or lack thereof) reflect the popular, discriminatory views of her time, and extracts evidence from both the novel and the author’s personal life to buttress this claim. Stout’s criticism inspired my own interpretation-- that Cather’s treatment
He is apprehensive about seeing Antonia, fearing that she will no longer be the idealized person who exists in his memory. Jim is not let down when they meet, as even though she is now a “battered woman … but she still had that something that fires the imagination, could stop one’s breath for a moment” (226). Age has not dampened the spirit that Jim was drawn to throughout his youth and now his adulthood. He speaks about her through a lens of true love and respect, telling her children that he “couldn’t stand it if you boys were inconsiderate [towards Antonia] … I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there’s nobody like her” (222). Jim refers to Antonia as a “rich mine of life,” and it is clear that Antonia’s type of richness is more valuable in Jim’s eyes. Through her, he is able to realize that tangible fiscal wealth is far less precious than the impalpable beauty of emotional connection and
The American college dictionary defines success as 1. The favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors, 2. The gaining of wealth, possessions, or the like. This has been the general seances for the past hundred years or more. But in more modern days the prospective of success has changed slightly. It has shifted to having a good education, going to collage, getting a carrier getting married & having children. Having your own home and eventually dying and passing it all on to a child or children. Success is no longer satisfaction or personal goals. It has been supplemented by the goals society has preset for the populous that have been drilled into the minds of the young from the very beginning. To a man named Santiago in The Old Man and The Sea by: Earnest Hemingway, success was to conquer the Marlin Santiago had fought for so long. But as a cruel twist of fate his success is taken away in an instant when the prize he had fought so hard for was eaten by sharks, leaving Santiago with no spoils left to show for his hard fight. He was even so crushed by of the loss of the Marlin that he cried out to the sea "I am beaten.....hear stands a broken man" (234). Santiago still experienced success in the fashion that when he returned to port the little boy named Manolin that he had taught how to fish earlier in the novel was allowed to come back to fish with him. This was the ultimate form of success that was perceived for Santiago by Hemingway. To Jean Valjean in Les Misreables By: Victor Hugo , Valjean's success was represented in the form of going from convict to loving father of a daughter. The little girl named Cosette may not have been his true daughter, but after he had had dinner with a bishop that had seen the possibility of good in he started the transformation of his life. he met Cosettes mother and vowed to save her daughter from the place where she was being kept. The success Valjean experienced was what made his character the man that he was. But to Willa Cather in My
In Willa Cather’s My Antonia, immigrants face conflict with their respective communities. The difference between values and norms of the immigrants and society are highly emphasized throughout the novel. In My Antonia, Antonia and Lena suffer the most hardships amongst immigrants because they are judged harshly for their actions. The novel focuses on three immigrant teens: Jim, Antonia and Lena. Cather establishes reverse gender roles within the novel. Jim has the privilege of getting an education and never having to work due to having successful grandparents. In contrast, Lena and Antonia come from poor families in which they must perform physical labor and take care of their families, typically the norms of men. Although Lena is confronted with reverse gender roles and disapproval by her community, she eventually finds
Antonia and Jim became very close friends and went through many childhood experiences together. Their friendship was soon torn apart when Ambrosch and Jake engaged in a quarrel which separated the two families for quite some time. But once again, the families resolve their differences and become close again. (Chapter 1)
Cather sets the tone of the story at the very beginning; a young Jim Burden's parents have died leaving him to go to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. Right from the start Cather plants the seeds of abandonment, with the finality of death, in Jim's life. When he arrives in Nebraska he is very numb to life, but he is soon caught up in daily life on his grandparents' farm. He is blissfully happy when he first meets Antonia. They become great friends and share numerous adventures. Cather uses brief, beautifully descriptive and nostalgic recollections of situations and feelings to increase the pain and sadness of the separations that she places throughout the book. An excellent example of this is the way Cather builds up to Mr. Shimerda's suicide.
Cather mends a special relationship between Jim and Antonia that is formed and broken throughout her novel My Antonia. The two characters meet at young age and begin to develop a ------- friendship. Jim teaches Antonia the language and culture of America while Antonia shares her culture and morals. Soon their respective friendship turns into a brother-sister relationship, an ardent love but not intimate.
Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson, portrays the wonderful but heart wrenching journey of a young girl named Ramona. Set in Old California during the early 19th century, Ramona has grown up under the care of her distant stepmother, the Senora Moreno. Due to the fact Ramona is the daughter of an Indian and an Irishman, the Senora Moreno finds it impossible to feel compassionate towards the girl, treating her coldly and having no real affection for her whatsoever. Her uncharitable attitude only grows as the book progresses, to the point where it is cruel. This insensitivity eventually drives Ramona to elope with her Indian lover, Alessandro, because the Senora Moreno disapproves of their affection for each other. Leaving the only home she has ever
As Jim attends school with other children of his social stature, Antonia is forced to manually work in the fields. A division between the two characters is immediately created. Antonia develops resentment towards Jim; "I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mother can't say no more Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him.
In the novel “My Antonia,” rattlesnakes represent an immovable foe. Throughout the novel Jim restates that they must be on the lookout for rattlesnakes. One symbolic element of the rattlesnake is the character Peter Krajiek. He is even compared to a rattlesnake by Jim. Following the Shimerdas' move to the prairie, Krajiek acts as a parasite to the Shimerdas' homestead. He stays in their barn and eats their food, much like the rattlesnake eats owls' eggs and prairie dog young, all while living in their underground tunnels. Jim concludes, “They kept him in their hole and fed him for the same reason that the prairie-dogs and the brown owls house the rattlesnakes—because they did not know how to get rid of him.” Another symbolic element associated with the rattlesnake is Jim becoming an equal in Antonia's eyes. Because the rattlesnake is seen as a villain that cannot be eradicated from the prairie, Antonia sees it as an act of absolute heroism when Jim kills the, “circus monstrosity.”
The images that stuck out to my most in this story were when Jim killed the rattlesnake, Jim visiting Antonia after many years, and Jim's reaction when Antonia introduced all of her children.