Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Literary criticism of my antonia
Literary criticism of my antonia
My antonia literary analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Literary criticism of my antonia
Conflict Shapes Character in Willa Cather's My Antonia The conflict in ones life will shape their character in the future. This is especially true in the novel My Antonia, 1918. The author Willa Cather takes you through the life of a young Bohemian immigrant, Antonia Shimerda, as seen through the eyes of her good friend Jim Burden. At age ten, Jim Burden lost both of his parents and was sent to live with his grandparents on their Nebraska farm. He first meets Antonia when his grandmother and one of the farm hands take the Shimerdas some provisions. When they reach the Shimerdas farm, they find the family living in a cave dug out of the side of the hill. There are six people living in this little dugout. There are four children, the youngest daughter Yulka, the oldest daughter Antonia, the two boys are Ambrosch the eldest child and Marek. Marek is different from the other children; "Even from a distance one could see that there was something strange about this boy." (14). Jim Burden says this when he first sees the boy emerge from the barn. After the children there was Mr. an...
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
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
Antonia's mom smokes and she has been really sick lately. Her mom is the 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 friend's house and her mom and brother decided 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.
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
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.
My Antonia, Jim's nostalgia for the past is represented by nature, symbolic elements, and above all Antonia. The Nebraskan prairies are beautiful and picturesque and set the scene for a memorable story. Big farm houses and windmills placed throughout the graceful flowing golden yellow grass become a nostalgic aspect of Jim as he leaves his childhood life behind. The frontier includes destructive and depressing winters and luscious summers that
The landscape and the environment in Willa Cather's, My Ántonia, plays several roles. It creates both a character and protagonist, while it also reflects Cather's main characters, Jim and Ántonia, as well as forming the structure of the novel. Additionally, it evokes several themes that existed on the prairie during the time in which the story takes place. Some of these themes that directly relate to the novel, which are worth exploring, are endurance, hardship, and spirituality. Additionally, the symbolism of the "hot and cold" climate will be examined, revealing the significance it has on the novel in an overall manner. The analyses will further explain Cather's construction of the novel, which is based on three cycles: the cycle of the seasons, the cycle of life and physical development and lastly, the cultural cycle.
In her novel, My Antonia, Cather represents the frontier as a new nation. Blanche Gelfant notes that Cather "creat[ed] images of strong and resourceful women upon whom the fate of a new country depended" . This responsibility, along with the "economic productivity" Gilbert and Gubar cite (173), reinforces the sense that women hold a different place in this frontier community than they would in the more settled areas of America.
Another thing to take into consideration is the physical health risks during and after an abortion. As Ring-Cassidy and Gentles(2003) said “Abortion is never with out risks”(p. 89), this tells us that you can never be sure your going to come out completely fine when you go in for an aborti...
Second, to ensure that parental rights are enforced; minors should need parental consent to obtain an abortion (Earll). Parents are legally responsible for the well-being of their children. They are responsible for giving th...
...ean imperialists came to these continents they believed that they must spread the Christian religion to the rest of the world. A large amount of the native people of Asia and Africa converted to Christianity. In addition, countries in Asia and Africa still face problems and many are considered “third-world countries” because of being imperialized by European countries for a long period of time. When each country was decolonized and granted independence, the governments were filled with grief and confusion about how to properly control their nation. As a result, economies faced problems and poverty struck the populations. In conclusion, western imperialism in the 1800s and early 1900s had positive long-lasting effects such as spread of a new religion, Christianity and negative long-lasting results such as religious conflicts and turning into “third-world countries.”
G. Hossein. “Legitimacy, Religion, and Nationalism in the Middle East.” The American Political Science Review, Volume 84, Issue 1 (1990. 3), 69-91.
Murray, Roxane Farrell. "The Lord of the Rings as Myth." Unpublished thesis. The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 1974.
“Are political Islam and democracy compatible?” This question has been troubling both Muslims and non-Muslims living in East and West for a long time now. Contemporary Islamic political thought has become deeply influenced by attempts at reconciling Islam and democracy. Muslim thinkers who deal with political debates cannot disregard the significance of the democratic system, as it is the prevailing theme of modern western political thought. Hence, it is necessary for any alternative political system, whether it is religious or secular, to explore its position with regards to democratic government. In fact, a large literature and media publications have developed over the last century on this heated discourse of democracy versus Islam. While many argue that Islam has all the ingredients of modern state and democratic society, many other reject the phenomena “modernism” and “democracy” as a whole because of their “foreign nature”—alien to “Islamic values”. For Islamists and modernists, the motivation for such effort to either embrace or reject democracy often is to remove suspicion about the nature and goals of Islamic movements and Islamic revivalism or resurgence. But before diving into this discourse, one needs to understand the definition and origins of “democracy.” Although purely a Western ideology in its origin, there is no consensus on the definition of “democracy” as a political system. The Oxford English Dictionary describes democracy as: “A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives” (“democracy, n.”). In my paper, I will examine whether or not democracy and Sunni political Islam are compatible through the eyes of three revolutionary Sun...
In this book , Esposito provides a succinct, up-to-date survey of the Islamic experience, an introduction to the faith, belief, and practice of Islam from its origins to its contemporary resurgence. He traces the emergence and development of this dynamic faith and its impact on world history and politics. He discusses the formation of Islamic belief and practice (law, theology, philosophy, and mysticism), chronicling the struggle of Muslims to define and adhere to their Islamic way of life. Equally important is the essential information Esposito provides on the contemporary world of Islam, from Muslim responses to the challenges of colonialism and modernization to the reassertion of Islam in politics and society.