In the novel, “My Antonia”, the author Willa Cather portrays adolescence and childhood as a time of innocence and a time of tribulation and terror. With experiences like, the death of a character’s parents, child labor, and time spent on the prairie. She uses these childhood ideas to empathize that the environment where an individual is raised, whether it is predominantly negative or positive, plays an extensive role in shaping who you become morally and your core beliefs. Willa Cather writes, “I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to live with my grandparents.” This evidence sets up the background of how the character Jim Burden grew up. Without the death of Jim’s parents, and the …show more content…
Jim becomes more aware and less self-absorbed, he starts to care about others and their feelings. Cather also writes, “She told me she couldn’t remember a time when she was so little that she wasn’t lugging a heavy baby about, helping to wash babies, trying to keep their little chapped hands and faces clean.” The character Lena Lingard, never really had a normal childhood due to the fact that she worked for most of it. As a result of her past, Lena expresses her ideas that she does not want to have children or be in any sort of marriage. “Well, it’s mainly because I don’t want a husband. They begin to tell you what’s sensible and what’s foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time.” This evidence proves that since she had a rough environment during her upbringing she gathered up trauma which affected her in the adult world, with the decisions she chose to make. During adolescent times in My Antonia, playing on the prairie was seen as a time of freedom and youthfulness, “...and thought of how she used to run barefoot over the prairie until after snow began to fly, and how Crazy Mary chased her round and round the cornfields.” When Antonia was sent outside with her sisters to play with Jim, they felt free and felt as though they were actual
The warm blackness of summer nights, settling over your lawn and drifting down familiar street signs, over coffee shops closed for the night and broken down asphalt. Dust, collecting on creaking wooden floorboards and swirling through age-old sunlight. A song forgotten, notes away from your ears. Nostalgia is an emotion that all human beings experience and know well. Willa Cather expands on this fact, infusing her award-winning novel, My Ántonia, with sentimentalism and melancholy. Cather tells a tale of home, drawing from the idealistic “American dream” that all Americans know well. Jim Burden, a young orphan, moves to the countryside, spending his days watching men work in the dusty fields and find community amongst themselves. He adores
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Jim’s visit to Antonia allows him to rediscover “the precious, the incommunicable past” (pg. 144). The times that existed in the past are now gone, and Jim realizes this. However, he still is able to feel great happiness when he looks back on the day of his youth. This relationship with the past is very American. We, like Jim, sometimes lose our way and focus only on material acquisition. However, this can lead one to an empty life filled with the feeling of loss for something cherished. It is only when we chose to live in the present, and put effort into our most important relationships, that we feel
"The movement from possession to loss, from union to separation, is the deep and central pattern of Jim Burden's experience in My Antonia." (Fisher-Wirth) I believe that this quote given by the critic Fisher-Wirth somewhat explains the life of Jim Burden and that although he went through both gains and losses throughout his life; he learned the meaning and purpose of his life with Antonia.
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.
Memories are a stockpile of good and bad experiences that are retained of a people, places. How do you remember your childhood memories? Do certain people, places or things trigger these memories to the past? Does the knowledge of these experience still affect your life today? Throughout the novel My Antonia, Jim's nostalgia for the past is represented by nature, symbolic elements, and above all Antonia.
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.
Antonia and Jim of My Antonia In Willa Cather's My Antonia a special bond is formed, shattered, mended, and eventually secured between the main characters, Antonia Shimerda and Jim Burden. Jim and Antonia seem to be destined to affect each other's lives dramatically, from the beginning of the novel. 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.
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.
Mrs. Burden gets Antonia a temporary job helping her neighbors around the house. Antonia learned English much faster and Jim met many new people. This is where we meet Lena. Lena was a Norwegian girl who later became a dressmaker, but distracted men with her flirtatious act and planned never to marry. As Jim met new people and attended the dances put together in the city, he noticed the segregation and the generalizations made about specific people.