Friendship means ‘a relationship in which two people expressed outward emotions of liking each other in a friendly manner; typically, the friends provide something for each other.’ This statement accurately depicts Jim and Antonia’s relationship towards each other. Though one can care more for one person than the other, in a loving type of way, unless both do not show that, it is considered a friendship. Jim did care for Antonia more, but because Antonia never expressed love, their relationship never went further. Throughout their lives together the reader can gather that Jim had more feelings for Antonia than Antonia did for Jim. The fact that in the introduction we learn that Jim recently married, after he lived with Antonia as a child, after …show more content…
Sitting in his room at night, writing about her, must have taken a major part of his day out, but he believed it was worthy enough of his busy life as a lawyer. In Antonia’s life, Jim was just her best friend, which she had no other feelings about. She was oblivious to Jim’s interests in her. IF the two of them confronted each other and expressed their feelings either they would have stayed friends after, or Antonia would have lived her life with Jim. Jim would have liked the second one, and Antonia would have, most likely, preferred to stay friends. Though WIlla Cather does not allow for Antonia to tell the reader her feelings on the inside, it is concluded that Antonia did not express the same feelings for Jim. If she did, she might have wrote letters to Jim, or visited him. Because of their different opinions on their friendship, Jim and Antonia’s relationship stayed as a …show more content…
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
Using these methods enables Cather to emphasize differences between Jim and Ántonia, showing her readers the cause of his nostalgia for home: “While [the sun] hung [in the low west], the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel… for five, maybe ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.” Cather represents Ántonia and Jim as the sun and moon, respectively; always pulled back away and together but never meeting. At this passage, Ántonia and Jim had just reunited after many years apart. Jim had returned from Harvard whereas Ántonia had a child. The impossibility of them reconnecting on a fundamental level is much like the moon and the sun, where no matter how close they get, they will never meet. Cather emphasises the difference to explain how Jim misses Ántonia and by extension his home, depicting the change and distance from each other as a great and impossible void to cross. Cather reinstates this point, writing, “I lay awake for a long while, until the slow-moving moon passed my window on its way up the heavens.” (161) Here, Cather calls Jim “slow-moving”, one who reflects life and light rather than emitting it. In comparison, Ántonia is the sun. Cather describes her as a “rich mine of life, like the founders of early races” (162). The further emphasis of difference at this point in their lives enables Cather to
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
Jim was also impacted by the death of Mr. Shimerda. He was not so much impacted emotionally but he was impacted in a way that he felt he had to keep an eye on Antonia and make sure she didn’t lose her way. Jim is in possession of Mr. Shimerdas gun and in a way this hold Jim responsible to keeping the memory of him alive in Antonia. Jim didn’t want Antonia to stray from the gentle teachings of her father. He begins to see this when she starts working with Ambrosch and even worries that she is becoming like her mother. A boastful and insistent
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
Webster defines friendship as the emotions or conduct of friends; the state of being friends. Growing up you realize that every relationship is tested throughout time and some make it through that time and others do not.
A friendship is a special relationship between peoples , It occurs between friend that care about each other. In talking about friendship , the novella from John Steinbeck “Of Mice and Men”. Two friends George and Lennie ,they are trying to find a job together to complete their dream of having a farm. But Lennie is an adult size with a child's mind, he gets in trouble a lot and as his friend, George helping him solve the problem and taking care of Lennie. Later George and Lennie finds a new job , but George lies to the boss about the problem that Lennie has.
... what the town saw as amenable. As he says, "Disapprobation hurt me, I found-- even that of people whom I did not admire." (174). Jim hides behind the shadow of his dream, never fearless enough to accomplish his own goals. As Antonia faces the world with a dauntless face, Jim shrinks back at its hand. And as she cherishes her own family, Jim settles for his. He may be accepted by society but he'll never reach his own expectations.
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.
Jim’s feeling of loneliness has a big impact on his view of Alena. If Jim met another girl that day on the beach, and who was not as attractive he would have acted very different. Jim was very vulnerable at that moment and needed som...
My Antonia, by Willa Cather, is a book tracing the story of a young man, Jim Burden, and his relationship with a young woman, Antonia Shimerda. Jim narrates the entire story in first person, relating accounts and memories of his childhood with Antonia. He traces his journey to the Nebraska where he and Antonia meet and grow up. Jim looks back on all of his childhood scenes with Antonia with nearly heartbreaking nostalgia. My Antonia, is a book that makes many parallels to the sadness and frailty, but also the quiet beauty in life, and leaves the reader with a sense of profound sorrow. One of the main ways Cather is able to invoke these emotions in the reader is through the ongoing theme of separation. Willa Cather develops her theme of separation through death, the changing seasons, characters leaving and the process of growing apart.
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.
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.
Dreams are nothing but our innermost desires. We are made to pursue these dreams and have them be the driving force in all we do. Jim Burden is no different; like everyone, he has dreams, and he does his best to pursue them and fulfill them. Or does he? Jim writes the story of Antonia through his own life. He is plagued with the disease of romanticism. He cannot move on; though time will move, Jim's thoughts and emotions are rooted in the past. Frances Harling said it right when she said, "the trouble with you, Jim, is that you're romantic." Jim is a romantic, a dreamer who never acts. Many things contribute to Jim's romanticism, his experiences, his emotions, and his actions; however as no one could suspect, it helped him mature and appreciate loves lost.