My Ántonia is a good book to read, it has a good message and the different characters work well together and against each other. In My Ántonia, the two characters that work both with and against each other are Jim and Ántonia. Jim and Ántonia work both and with against each other through their whole childhood. Ántonia cannot go to school so Jim schools her. Jim cares deeply for her, has certain expectations of her and he finds it very difficult to look past her failure
Our lady of Guadalupe is the most venerated and respected by the Catholics. The appearance of the Virgin caused a great commotion in the Catholic Church. Ever since the Virgin's first appearance, Catholics have respected and acquired so much faith to the Virgin. The lady of Guadalupe has so many faithful followers that believe in her without any hesitation because of the miracles that she has made for the people that were once suffering and were miraculously helped by her. Because of the help that she has provided for those who were suffering people never forget her and they celebrate the day of her appearance every year by doing parties in her honor. The Lady of Guadalupe’s appearance certainly changed the belief of Catholics and, I believe
In Willa Cather's novel, My Antonia, Marek Shimerda is starved for attention because he is constantly ignored due to his mental retardation. It is solely because of his handicap and the assumption of his inability to help out with the farming and household chores that his family views him as helpless which results in Marek's strange and awkward actions. He is presented as an ill minded young man throughout the novel, repeatedly excused, and resides in the shadow of his healthy, fully functional older brother, Ambrosh Shimerda.
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
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.
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.
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
Mrs. Cather's carefully drawn parallels in the story that build up to Antonia and Jim's separation was a truly effective method of pointing out its tragedy. However she also used other tools, such as imagery and short anecdotes to further convey her message. All together these elements, plus a good story and plot make My Antonia an excellent all around book, worthy of being called a classic.
The hard-working middle class, with an educated upper class is one of key characteristics of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Likewise, an emphasis on the middle class and socioeconomic discrepancies between classes are central traits of realism. My Antonia, a realist novel by Willa Cather, chronicles the life and development of Jim Burden. Jim is an upper class, well-educated young boy who grows into a Harvard graduate and successful lawyer. His journey and development is constantly assisted by others, whether it is Antonia Shimerda, a poor Bohemian immigrant that Jim befriends, or Gaston Cleric, a college professor and comrade of Jim. It is not until the end of the novel that Jim can exist as a free character, independent of others. Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a tale of the development of Jim Burden, which can be seen through the suicide of Mr. Shimerda, his attempt to kiss Antonia, and his reconciliation with Antonia at the end of “The Pioneer Women’s Story.”
Willa Cather used her own experiences to start the plot and give the story background. Both she and Jim Burden were born in Virginia, and moved to Nebraska. In the beginning of the novel, Antonia is the crutch that supports Jim through his slow early development. Later, she just becoms a catalyst that continues jim's development as a character. My Antonia is about the character development and struggle for Jim to overcome his sense of Nostalgia after modeling himself after a Bohemian immigrant who was unable to bear the pressures of emigrating to America.
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.
Right off, it is apparent that many of the characters struggle to feel comfortable in their own skin. This is especially prominent in Coralie, who faces many challenges in relation to her appearance, often putting herself down for the way that she looks. This reveals that this problem doesn’t merely exist today alone, but extends back as far as the early twentieth century. I was astonished to see a universal problem such as this so pronounced in a remarkably different era, despite the drastic change in women’s rights. Within the novel, it seems that whenever Coralie talks about her hatred regarding her webbed fingers, it stems from her father’s rule of wearing white gloves, as he does, “not wish [of her] to be thought of with disdain” (Hoffman,
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.
Victoria Guzman is a victim of Direct Violence in her youth, and a perpetrator of Cultural Violence as an adult to make-up for the pain from her past.
In every story there are always characters that as readers are drawn towards and grown fonder of them, no one likes a story that they can not relate to. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth tragedy, Macbeth is the character that most people feel for. Macbeth displays the general characteristics of a tragic hero throughout the play, catharsis, hubris and he is very easy to relate to.
There was no other Shakespearean character that embodied the true spirit of evil and ruthless determination as Lady Macbeth. Macbeth by, William Shakespeare is a story shadowed by supernatural events filled with images of selfish violence and innocent blood, all ignited by a character that is like an apparition appearing only to mold the plot and disappear once devastation occurs. William Hazlitt analyzes this character in Macbeth: Critical Essay,