My Antonia

“More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.”

Cather introduces the Bohemian girl, Ántonia, as symbolizing the Nebraskan frontier experience with its pioneering immigrants. The unnamed narrator gives additional force to Jim’s recollections by agreeing that Ántonia was special and memorable.

“There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.”

Jim Burden’s observation emphasizes the undeveloped nature of the frontier. When Jim does not see fences or fields, he perceives the land as lacking structure and the mark of civilization. This sets up a binary of wild versus tamed, in which a landscape must be tamed by people to be considered part of society.

“Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping. . .”

Cather’s simile comparing the shaggy prairie grass to a loose animal hide beneath which herds of buffalo gallop indicates Jim Burden’s romantic imagination. Jim’s impressions refer to images of the Old West, which is also a romantic image. The passage reverses the idea of Jim moving through the landscape on the train; rather, the landscape is moving through him.

“At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

Jim’s sense of oneness with nature leads to his sense of supreme happiness, and he wonders if this is what people feel when they die. Jim’s ecstatic experience occurs in the natural landscape of the Nebraska frontier when he sits in the garden with his back against a large pumpkin, feeling the warm earth beneath, the light air above, and the sun shining down.

“Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away.”

Cather compares the misfortune experienced by the Russians, Peter and Pavel, to an evil bird that settled on their house and flaps its wings, warning others away. The Russians experience such bad luck in Nebraska, with excessive debts, accidents, illness, and death, that some people are frightened to associate with them. Cather suggests that the horrible decision that Pavel made in Russia, to sacrifice people to the wolves in order to save himself and Peter, created bad luck that followed them to America.

“I was convinced that man’s strongest antagonist is the cold.”

On the Nebraskan frontier, Jim perceives that the strongest antagonist is not wild animals or human villains but the dangers of cold weather. During the winter, figuring out a way to stay warm is a matter of life or death for the settlers. Jim notes that their lives “centred around warmth and food” (66) as the basement kitchen seems “heavenly safe” (65) with its large stove.

“I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms.”

Mrs. Shimerda’s gift to Grandmother Burden is an example of the cultural misunderstandings that occurred between the Bohemian immigrants and the native-born Americans. Mrs. Shimerda measures out a teacup portion of her treasured delicacy and ceremoniously presents it to Grandmother Burden as a valuable present. However, the Americans cannot tell whether the dried mushrooms are animal or vegetable. Unable to appreciate the strange shavings, Grandmother Burden tosses them out.

“I knew it was homesickness that had killed Mr. Shimerda, and I wondered whether his released spirit would not eventually find its way back to his own country.”

The immigrants’ longing for the familiarity of their native land is a theme in Cather’s novel. Jim thinks that Shimerda’s spirit eventually will take the long journey back to his country of origin after his death. Jim believes that Shimerda felt contentment in the atmosphere of comfort and security in the Burden home and imagines his spirit resting there, but he was not able to endure the unhappiness, hardship, and displacement he felt as a musician trying to farm in an unfamiliar culture.

“I never came upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me.”

Jim refers to Shimerda’s grave as “the spot most dear” to him. He is touched by the fact that Mrs. Shimerda tried to follow the Bohemian tradition of burying someone who died by suicide at a crossroads, but he is even more moved by his grandfather’s declaration that no one in this country will be willing to ride over Mr. Shimerda’s head. In another example of a cultural difference, the Americans preserved the grave “like a little island” (119), placing the roads so they did not run over the grave, mercifully swerving from the surveyed lines so that passers-by would not disturb the grave, which is marked by a wooden cross.

“‘Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!’ she used to sing joyfully. ‘I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I like to be like a man.’”

Due to the immigrants’ need on the frontier for help in farming, gender roles are less rigid: Women work out in the fields or do any job that needed to be done. The death of Shimerda makes it even more essential for Ántonia to work to help her brother. Ántonia is proud of her physical strength and her ability to carve out a farm to provide for her family. She even competes with her brother about how much plowing each one has completed in a day. Ántonia is more comfortable outdoors, letting her hair fly in the breeze and refusing to wear the sunbonnet offered by Grandmother Burden.

“Those two fellows had been faithful to us through sun and storm, had given us things that cannot be bought in any market in the world.”

Jim values the spiritual qualities of the two farmhands, Otto Fuchs and Jake Marpole. They help the Burdens in any and all ways, even though the Burdens do not pay them much, and are careful not to offend Grandmother Burden with coarse behavior. When the Burdens move into town and no longer need the farmhands, Jake and Otto help them to relocate and prepare their new house.

“Frances was dark, like her father, and quite as tall. In winter she wore a sealskin coat and cap, and she and Mr. Harling, used to walk home together in the evening, talking about grain-cars and cattle, like two men.”

The Harlings are Norwegians (Mrs. Harling emigrated from Norway, but Mr. Harling was born in Minnesota). Again, Cather points out a less rigid gender role differentiation among the immigrants. Harling utilizes the “unusual business ability” (149) of his eldest child even though Frances happens to be a daughter. Frances physically resembles her father, and due to her business expertise, her father talks with her as if she is a man. However, Frances also exhibits traditionally female qualities, taking more than a business interest in all of the farm families and making sure every bride gets a wedding present.

“When boys and girls are growing up, life can’t stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no.”

For Jim, the transition from childhood to maturity entails losses as well as gains. The purity of Jim’s childhood friendship with Ántonia now has to be adjusted to their developing sexuality, and later, romances and marriages. Although Jim tries to romantically kiss Ántonia once, she pushes him away and treats him as a younger kid with whom romance is out of the question.

“Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigour which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.”

Jim notices and admires the immigrant girls’ differences from the American girls who were raised in towns where “physical exercise was thought rather inelegant for the daughters of well-to-do families” (198). He and other young men find the healthy immigrant girls, who are fit from working outdoors and natural in their movements, very attractive.

“In every frontier settlement there are men who have come there to escape restraint.”

On the frontier, the law and people’s scrutiny of misbehavior are less burdensome than in a long-established society. Cutter is a gambler and “notoriously dissolute with women” (210), taking advantage of the immigrant girls. In the end, he shoots his wife and then himself, demonstrating antisocial and criminal tendencies in line with his inability to exist in a society.

“Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share—black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.”

Jim sees a plough left standing in a field with the sun setting just behind it. The lighting effects magnify the black figure until it comes to symbolize for Jim the human effort of creating a country out of the natural environment. The plough represents the heroic pioneers’ cultivation of the land.

“I turned back to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. ‘Primus ego in patriam mecum . . . deducam Musas’; for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country.’”

During Jim’s time in college in Lincoln, Nebraska, he is introduced to a new mental world of Latin poetry. Yet Jim’s imagination returns to the people and places of his rural youth on the prairie. Jim feels inspired by the parallel with the poet Virgil whose Latin phrase refers to writing about his own rural neighborhood where he was raised.

“‘That’s Ántonia’s failing, you know; if she once likes people, she won’t hear anything against them.’”

Lena Lingard points out that Ántonia is “so sort of innocent” (268) that she will not believe anything negative about someone she likes. Jim loves Ántonia’s generous and trusting heart. However, Ántonia’s loyalty also sets her up for betrayal by Larry Donovan.

“It came over me, as it had never done before, the relation between girls like those and the poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry.”

Jim has a revelation during his college study of Virgil’s poetry--that the immigrant girls’ loveliness and vitality on the Nebraskan frontier can be inspirations for great literature. Jim is realizing the impact of his childhood experiences as he reflects on Virgil’s phrase, “Optima dies . . . prima fugit,” translated as “the best days are the first to flee” (263). Willa Cather memorialized aspects of her childhood on the Nebraskan frontier through the fictional Jim Burden’s experiences.

“The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea.”

When Jim returns to Nebraska for a summer vacation after completing courses at Harvard, he sees that “the whole face of the country” (306) is changing, as the prairie’s red grass is disappearing, replaced by wheatfield and cornfields. Wooden houses have replaced the old sod houses and orchards have been planted. Although Jim loves his early days on the prairie, he views the human cultivation of the country as positive, leading to a prosperous, fertile land with contented citizens. He compares the West’s development to the growth of a great idea.

“I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister—anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it.”

Jim’s close childhood connection to Ántonia is connected to his deep feelings about the past and his first impressions of the Nebraska frontier. Although Jim never truly has a romantic relationship with Ántonia, he feels that she has been an integral part of his life, inseparable from all his other qualities and experiences.

“Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”

Jim delays returning to Nebraska and visiting Ántonia for 20 years because he is afraid of disillusionment and losing his precious, early memories of their childhood friendship. Jim feels the truth of Virgil’s statement that “the best days are the first to flee” (263) and is reluctant to ruin what remains of those idyllic days if the current reality proves too harsh.

“She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.”

Jim describes Ántonia in civilizational terms, signifying how fundamental her presence is to his life on the prairie. The frontier is unsettled land, but Ántonia is the quintessential settler, able to adapt and thrive in adversity with a resilience that is rare among town- and city-dwellers.