“Great” is a word that you have most likely heard very often in your lifetime. You may have heard a teacher tell you that you have done a “great job!” on your homework assignment, or have been told that you are destined to do something great with your life. You might have even asked yourself questions such as, “what makes a great leader?” or “what makes art great?” In this case, I have come to ask myself what the greatest work of American literature is. Each person has their own idea of what great is and no single work of literature will ever be critiqued exactly the same by everyone who reads it. To me, a great work of literature is one that is able to relate to a person in one form or another. A Nigerian novelist by the name of Chinua Achebe …show more content…
once said, “This is one great thing that literature can do—it can make us identify with situations and people far away.” Willa Cather wrote a trilogy and the third book in the trilogy is called My Antonia.
This novel is recognized as one of her greatest works and as one of the best American novels. My Antonia is a beautiful story that truly captures life in the Midwest and that allows for us, the readers, to see how people during that time and in that place might have lived. Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, was first published in 1918 and was translated the following year to Swedish. Since then, it has been translated 83 times. My Antonia is widely known as a classic novel about the American immigrant experience. It is a story about a Bohemian immigrant who, along with her family, moves to America to pursue a better life. Antonia and her family leave behind their home—a place that gave them a sense of comfort—to a Nebraskan prairie that is unknown to them. Her family sacrificed everything for a better future in a country that was foreign to them. As a family, they faced a great deal of challenges, but Willa Cather demonstrates the characters’ courage and strength through the eyes of Antonia’s childhood friend, Jim Burden. Throughout the novel, we get to see that Antonia, and all the other characters who are faced with challenges, are able to make of the best of their situation. Willa Cather writes in such a unique way; it
is her way of writing that allows us to go back to a certain time and place. This is mainly due to the fact that her many of her stories are written based on her real life experiences. The settings in My Antonia reflect the places in which Willa Cather grew up in. Because she depicts the lives of the characters based on what she experienced growing up, is almost as if we are able to relive a particular time in history. Her style of writing has a very visual quality and it gives us the power to see what Cather herself saw when she lived on a Nebraska prairie. This is one of the biggest reasons that Willa Cather’s novel is the greatest piece of American literature—we are able to identify with the characters in the book in one way or another, even if their situations are not exactly the same as ours. For example, we might relate Antonia moving away from home to a new place to us moving to a new city and being the new kid at school. We might even relate to the challenges faced in the novel to our own personal struggles. My Antonia is not just a story of life on the farm, but it is a story of coming of age, overcoming obstacles, and even about love—love for family, friends, and for the beauty of nature and the environment. The characters in My Antonia are so admirable. Cather depicts them to be courageous, generous, kind, warm-hearted people. Despite them not having much, they remain thoughtful people. There is one character in the book that remains present throughout the entire novel, which is one that we can all admire and appreciate. This character would be the natural world. The setting of the natural world is described in great detail that it can be considered another character in the novel. The Nebraska setting plays a major role in the story. There are several changes in the season within the novel, which either provide suffering or joy to the people who live in that area. The prairie ecosystem also interacts with all the characters in the book and influences their lives and moods, in both powerful and subtle ways. The land in My Antonia is frequently referred to as a person. It is through the eyes of Jim Burden that we are able to learn about the environment around him and the love Willa Cather has for the Nebraska prairie. Cather portrays the natural world in a positive way. The environment is a place of growth and development, and of beauty. We encounter the natural world every day, but it is not every day that we stop and take a moment to take it all in and appreciate the environment that surrounds us. Reading My Antonia allows us to experience the relationship between man and the natural world. The characters in the novel truly respect and admire beauty of the environment around them. Seeing this reminds us about the importance of the natural world in our everyday lives. My Antonia would not be the same without the red grass of the Nebraska prairie. My Antonia is told from a male’s perspective, but it is a story that women can relate to and can even be inspired by. This novel portrays women to be strong and independent. Willa Cather does a good job of representing women from several aspects, from the traditional housewife to the self-dependent woman.
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 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.
Willa Cather's My Antonia is a novel of heroic success to some and of disappointment to others. It is perceived differently by its audiences, as all things in life. It is an excellent piece of work none the less.
In the novel, My Antonia, by Willa Cather, society seems to govern the lives of many people. But for the others, who see past society's stereotypical values, had enough strength to overcome this and allowed them to achieve their dreams. Throughout the book, everyone seems to be trying to pursue the American Dream. While they all have different ideas of just exactly what the American Dream is, they all know precisely what they want. For some, the American Dream sounds so enticing that they have traveled across the world to achieve their goal.
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.
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
...n American Literature. By Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 387-452. Print.
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.
“A plump, fair skinned girl was standing in the doorway. She looked demure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her blue cashmere dress and little blue hat, with a plaid shawl neatly about her shoulders and a clumsy pocket book in her hand.” This is the first glimpse of the transformation from girl to successful woman of Lena Lingard in My Antonia, by Willa Cather. In the beginning of the book, Lena is portrayed as a struggling dressmaker, who because of her personality, goals, and motivation, becomes a successful individual.
Rosowski, Susan J., ed. Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Antonia. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. 1989.
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.
Wells, Kim. "My Antonia: A Survey of Critical Attitudes." August 23, 1999. Online Internet. November 4, 1998.
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.
Mrs. Marian Forrester strikes readers as an appealing character with the way she shifts as a person from the start of the novel, A Lost Lady, to the end of it. She signifies just more than a women that is married to an old man who has worked in the train business. She innovated a new type of women that has transitioned from the old world to new world. She is sought out to be a caring, vibrant, graceful, and kind young lady but then shifts into a gold-digging, adulterous, deceitful lady from the way she is interpreted throughout the book through the eyes of Niel Herbert. The way that the reader is able to construe the Willa Cather on how Mr. and Mrs. Forrester fell in love is a concept that leads the reader to believe that it is merely psychological based. As Mrs. Forrester goes through her experiences such as the death of her husband, the affairs that she took part in with Frank Ellinger, and so on, the reader witnesses a shift in her mentally and internally. Mrs. Forrester becomes a much more complicated women to the extent in which she struggles to find who really is and that is a women that wants to find love and be fructuous in wealth. A women of a multitude of blemishes, as a leading character it can be argued that Mrs. Forrester signifies a lady that is ultimately lost in her path of personal transitioning. She becomes lost because she cannot withstand herself unless she is treated well by a wealthy male in which causes her to act unalike the person she truly is.
Throughout my Junior year I have come across many pieces of American literature. When the question of “What makes American literature American?” Is asked, my answer is that the ideals and virtues (both positive and negative) embedded within the writing is what makes it American. American literature consists of tales of hard work, of standing up for personal belief, of the American Dream, but also consist of our corrupt Judicial system, of our past struggles with one another in terms of race, of how the American Dream is possible through hard work but that work might not always be considered “right.” The Americanality of American literature is not determined by the author of the piece, but of the morals that shine through in the piece.