My Antonia Essay: Jim Burden

“Money doesn’t buy happiness.” Most children learn this proverb and immediately try to disprove it, or simply do not believe it. However, age allows one to see the truth in this phrase. In My Antonia, a novel by Willa Cather, the protagonist, Jim Burden, reflects on his childhood in the American frontier. Despite achieving wealth and an elevated social position, benefits most associate with attaining the American Dream, Jim Burden eventually realizes that true success, and happiness, is found in strong emotional connections.

Jim Burden’s early years follows the structure of the idealized childhood of the American West, one where he can run freely in the country and is surrounded by the natural world. However, prejudices are still prevalent in his community, and have a noticeable effect on its inhabitants as they mature. From a young age, members of the Black Hawk, Nebraska community are instilled with the idea that daughters

of merchants “are‘refined’ and that the country girls, who ‘worked out’ are not” (Cather, 80) Even though the American farmers has as many challenges as the immigrant farmers, they still think themselves to be of a higher class. It is partially for this reason, and also for the perception of the Black Hawk boys’ “respect for respectability” (81) that Jim is initially wary about pursuing a relationship with Antonia that is more intimate than the sibling-like relationship of their youth. When he does try to kiss Antonia after a night of dancing she rejects him. “Now don’t you go and be a fool like some of these town boys. You are going away to school and make something of yourself” (90). Antonia recognizes Jim’s potential to achieve the “American Dream” of prosperity, and she wants to make sure that he does not forgo his chance for upward mobility to follow his heart and stay in Black Hawk. Losing Antonia, the most precious person in his life, is a blow that Jim never recovers from.
Jim did in fact go on to attain the success that Antonia desired for him. He follows an esteemed professional path, travelling back east to attend Harvard, and become a lawyer. In New York, Jim marries Genevieve Whitney who after being “brutally jilted by her cousin … married this unknown man from the West out of bravado” (4). The relationship is built on Genevieve’s unfortunate compounding circumstances, and has little to do with true emotional connection. Jim’s marriage shows how the pressures of society have lead him to follow a path that results in an improved social stature and financial situation, but also a union devoid of true emotional connection. By the measures of traditional value system that defines achievement as prosperity, Jim is successful, but in his case, the vocational success came at the expense of his emotional fulfillment.
Twenty years after leaving Antonia with the promise that he would soon be back, Jim returns to Black Hawk.

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

love.
Jim’s visit to Antonia causes him to have the “sense of coming home to [him]self” (237). The power and potency of love comes from its ability to lead one to self-reflection as result of powerful bonds with others. Jim is ultimately able to find himself not through his achievements, but through his connection Antonia, one that he has felt throughout his life. Through his understanding of love, Jim has a moment of clarity that shows what is important and valuable in life. We, like Jim sometimes lose our way and focus only on material acquisition that constitutes the American Dream. However, it is only when we chose to live in the present, and put effort into our most important relationships, that we are able to find gratification in life.