My Antonia by Willa Cather

760 Words2 Pages

Ántonia is a very nice young girl at the beginning of the story. She is so beautiful, that all boys are mesmerized by the way she looks. She is a very nice your girl and is willing to be friends with anyone who wants to be friends. She is especially nice to Jimmy, because he is the first person that she meets when she moves to her new house. Ántonia becomes much better friends with Jimmy as time passes. He teaches her English and many other things. They spend much of their time together playing and having fun, when they don’t have to work on their families’ farms.
As the years go by, Ántonia and Jimmy see less and less of each other. Antonia’s father kills himself, which means that Ántonia must work much harder to make money to help her family survive. She is always working around the farm and telling everyone what to do, so those things get done right. She is a very bossy young lady and everyone listens to her because of the reign that she has over people. Everyone looks up to her because she is a very strong woman, and an excellent worker.
Eventually when Ántonia becomes old enough and gains enough respect from people, she moves into town and becomes a “live-in housekeeper” for a wealthy family. She works hard there also and sends all of her wages home to help her mother and siblings on the farm. While Ántonia is working in town, she isn’t allowed to have very many breaks, and when she does, her and her friends go out and create quite a reputation for themselves. She eventually becomes mixed up in the wrong crowd, and ruins her reputation that she has worked so hard for.
Up until this point, Ántonia has been a very strong your lady and is able to stand up for herself and not let anyone tell her what to do. She is still a beautiful woman that all men find very nice looking and are attracted to her in some strange way. After joining the wrong crowd, Ántonia loses her ability to make good decisions for herself, and ends up marrying a “no-good”. She comes home alone, sorrowful, and rejected. Her fiancée had told her that they had to be married, but he ran off without her. Ántonia later gives birth to a little girl.

Summary Of Nostalgia In My Antonia
1349 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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My Antonia Essay: Jim Burden
783 Words | 2 Pages
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
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El Norte And My Family Mi Familia Analysis
1037 Words | 3 Pages
She is said to be “bossy” by her brother Paco which causes her to not follow the traditional route of a Latino woman. She, at first, goes into a follows a nun order but then leaves to marry a priest and become a political activist. In his article, “La Movie Rara”, Daniel Enrique Pérez states, “She and her husband become radical leftists and spend the rest of their lives fight for immigrant rights (107)." In his article he is talking about the queerness of Antonia 's character. However, since she is working for the rights of immigrants, she has not completely assimilated. As far as the film goes, she is successful in this line of work by keeping Isabel, Salvadorian refugee, alive and makes this a career for herself and her husband. The level of assimilation in this character is then challenged by her brother,
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Define Normal Book Talk
435 Words | 1 Pages
Antonia's mom smokes and she has been really sick lately. Her mom is that antagonist in this story because she can't even get out of bed unless she feels good. Since her mom has been sick, Antonia has to take care of everything around the house, including her brother. So one day Antonia was at a freind's house and her mom and brother decide to go on a picnic and when they were done she took her son to a motel, and then left to go to a bar down the road. When she was done at the bar, she went back to the motel and passed out on the floor. So when Antonia got home, nobody was there. About a half an hour later, her brother called and said that their mom had passed out and that they were at a motel. Her brother didn't know the name of the motel so he looked around and remembered the bar. He told his sister the name of the bar that their mom had gone to and then she knew right where they were.
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My Antonia by Willa Cather
629 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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Personal Memories In My Antonia
1449 Words | 3 Pages
My Ántonia brings together the life of a young boy and young Bohemian female in the old prairie. The book details this hardships and memories together as they grow older and their lives change in the ever-different worlds. The one thing that keeps them close through all of the turmoil is their personal memories. Neither Jim or Ántonia ever recall large historical events though but rather only the ir personal memories which keeps them closer than they think if when they are separated for long periods of time through the novel.
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My Antonia Essay: Theme of Separation
996 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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My Antonia Essay: The Character of Lena Lingard
1791 Words | 4 Pages
Lena Lingard is the best example of a non-domestic central character which appears amidst the domesticity of My Ántonia. Often the sections which feature Lena instead of Ántonia are seen as confusing divergences from the plot line of a novel that purports to be about the woman named in the title. However, since Lena appears in the novel almost as often as Ántonia, and more often than any other character except Jim, she is a central character. Lena is a working woman who refuses to accept the constraints society places upon her. Even when society predicts that by becoming a dressmaker instead of marrying she will fail and become a "loose" woman, she disrupts their expectations and succeeds.
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Theme Of Nostalgia In My Antonia
720 Words | 2 Pages
Jim perceive the past with nostalgia, through nature, symbols, and Antonia. As the narrator in My Antonia, Jim presents a loving and affectionate mood towards his family, the immigrants and nature, which convinces the reader that this novel is a romance, one between Jim and life. Jim sees through the lens of nostalgia; the eyes that can see to the past through all of the components discussed. Life is memory, so live every second of every memory to its highest potential.
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Special Bond In Willa Cather's My Antonia
1504 Words | 4 Pages
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.
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My Antonia Essay: The Role of Women
2160 Words | 5 Pages
In the same way, Jim recognizes that it is the "hired girls" like Antonia who will form the backbone of the society when the next generation comes: "the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are to-day [sic] managing big farms and fine families of their own; their children are better off than the children of the women they used to serve" (150-1). These assertions--of the women's direct involvement of the development of the region, both agriculturally and socially--highlight an important point: "it is insufficient to think of nationalism affecting gender in a one-way relationship" (Walby 237). In other words,...
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My Antonia Theme Of Independence
1078 Words | 3 Pages
In the words of entrepreneur Brandi Harvey, “You are enough, without anyone else’s stamp, without anyone else’s validation or approval.” In this quote, she validates the fact that people, women in particular, do not need somebody to tell them they are sufficient enough— a woman does not need a man to provide for her needs, make her happy, or make her feel good about herself. It shows that women who lose their independence often lose their dreams as well. This idea centers all throughout the book, “My Antonia” by Willa Cather. In this book, the author focuses on the life of a young man named Jim and the many diverse women that surrounds him all from he was a small boy to a grown man. The idea of independence
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How Does Mr Shimerda's Death Affect My Antonia
574 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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Use of Environment, Landscape, and Cycles in My Antonia
3299 Words | 7 Pages
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.
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A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
975 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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My Antonia by Willa Cather

Summary Of Nostalgia In My Antonia

My Antonia Essay: Jim Burden

El Norte And My Family Mi Familia Analysis

Define Normal Book Talk