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 …show more content…
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 …show more content…
I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand… Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past. (170) Cather chooses to refer back to Jim’s past at the end of My Ántonia to emphasize how, even though the story ends, Jim will always remember Ántonia and their experiences together. Despite both of them growing up and leading very different lives, Ántonia and the recollection of his youth are so important to him that he still remembers the days of his childhood, travelling to a place he would call home. Willa Cather’s use of sentimentality-inspiring diction creates a nostalgic memory of Jim’s childhood. Her words are very descriptive and immerse the reader in the scene and tone she
William Cather showed a great amount of information about the "old wild west" and the expansion of the United States. In My Antonia, Jim Burden told a story of his childhood, the people in his life, and the struggles he and his surroundings faced during this time.
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
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
My Antonia by Willa Cather is a novel based on the memories of the protagonist, Jim Burden. Many critics have criticized this novel, and have focused on such literary elements as symbolism, motif, and characterization. The strongest argument however is the one that states that the foundation of every element in the book is based on the personal memories of Willa Cather.
...back], you're here, like my father. So I won't be lonesome" (256). Those memories of her father and Jim are all that Antonia posses of her past and they are all that shapes her future
In the book, “My Antonia,” written by Willa Cather, talks about the life of an immigrant named Antonia. The feeling that the world is left out, like I was at the edge of it all outside of man’s jurisdiction is a relation Antonia and I have in common. Also with an interaction with a deadly rattlesnake was a flashback to when I encountered with a venomous serpent. Last, I relate to the curse of bad luck through life, which leads to me out of people’s minds, sitting in my own prison cell of life.
Willa Cather uses the character`s in My Antonia to portray certain messages throughout the novel. Every story Willa Cather tells in My Antonia has a message behind it. For example, Willa Cather used Mr. Shimerda's suicide to present the hardships immigrants encountered when coming to America.
You see, Ántonia is a symbol. She is representative of the group of immigrants who helped to develop the American West. Her strength, spirit, and sheer will are a tribute to the fearlessness and determination of this historically important set of individuals. Much like the “half-naked,” “sweaty” and “husky” laborers in Sandburg’s “Chicago,” the hired girls toil endlessly in order to make ends meet and provide for their families (Sandburg). My Ántonia takes place at a turning point in American history, when the unsettled lands of the frontier attracted many hopeful settlers eager to make a fresh start. Though they are treated poorly and will never achieve the same economic and social standings as the native women of Black Hawk, the hired girls are vital to the success of the American frontier. Similar to the ways in which the laborers survive the “wicked” city in “Chicago,” the hired girls are trying to survive the harsh realities of the frontier (Sandburg). For example, in book II, chapter IX, we read about the three Marys–hired girls that used to work in Black Hawk. All three women were taken advantage of and impregnated by the men of the families they worked for; because of this, they are seen as dangerous and a “menace to the social order” (201). “Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Mary’s; they were all Bohemian’s, all
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 was a large, beautiful room, rich and picturesque in the soft, dim light which the maid had turned low. She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage. She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mourning notes without promise, devoid even of hope. She turned back into the room and began to walk to and fro, down its whole length, without stopping, without resting. She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the glittering circlet.
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 life of Antonia Shimerdas, the main character in Willa Cather's My Antonia, could easily be judged a failure. Perhaps measures of wealth, career, beauty and love fall short when held next to Antonia. If one could categorize life by that unnamable light or spirit which Antonia never loses, she would surpass all who belittle her achievements in other areas.
Cather’s works presented into American literature realism, although his novelties in technique, style, and use of imagery gave much of his best work a romantic form rather than a natural feature. The ideas that found in the novel of My Antonia such as survival, determinism, violence, pessimism, and nature being an influence that touches a one's life were presented to illustrates an important time in the
Jim’s nostalgia of Antonia is introduced in the novel first when he is leaving for school and Lena is introduced back into his life; second when he comes back to Blackhawks to see Antonia. When Jim is first leaving for school he is laying on the bank with Antonia, he exclaims, “ Antonia seemed to me that day exactly like the little girl who used to come to our house with Mr. Shimerda” (129). This happened before Jim and Antonia spent any time apart, however, Jim still recalls the time of his fond childhood memories. He consistently recalls the time spent with Antonia because he has had feelings for her his entire life Talki...