Free My Antonia Essays: An Analysis

My Antonia

I think that My Antonia, written in 1918, is one of Cather's finest works. Critic H. L. Mencken thought it to be the most accomplished, and shortly after it was published in 1919 he wrote,

"Her style has lost self-consciousness; her feeling for form has become instinctive. And she has got such a grip upon her materials...I know of no novel that makes the remote folk of the Western praries more real...and I know of none that makes them seem better worth knowing."

One of the high points in the story is the tragic case of Mr. Shimerda's death. In this character Cather shows an almost obsessive longing of hers for the past. A cultered man, Antonia's father cannot handle the hardships he encounters in Nebraska, and longs for his life back in Bohemia. He clings to his Old World wardrobe and foods..."a knitted grey vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully crossed and held together by a red coral pin." Homesick for his native land Mr. Shimerda shoots himself. Some critics find Cather's recurring preoccupation with the past destructive, T. K. Whipple said that there was an element of passion in the theme. "To have cared intensely about anything, is not to have lived in vain." I think that the theme of the immigrants longing for the past was very fitting. Many of the settlers of the mid-west praries were immigrants, and most did desperately try to cling to their past while building a new life in the melting pot of America. The hardships of the immigrants were not uncommon. Many were forced to go into town to become a "hired girl" as Antonia did before she returned to the farm labor that she enjoyed, where she discovered city life in the dance clubs.

My favorite part about reading My Antonia is the beautiful descriptions of the land and other small details. In this story Jim Burden is not only a narrator for Cather, but for the land. Throughout the story his descriptions bring an eloquent style to her writing and capture the reader into the story. "Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy red grass, most as tall as I." In a phrase that is now on Cather's tombstone, he comes to accept the power of the land over him, saying, "That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.