Migration In Willa Cather's My Antonia

Antonia knows the struggle firsthand since she has faced the harsh conditions of starting off in a new country since she is a Shimerda. Antonia tells Jim,“’ If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us’” (Cather 90). Antonia knows the racial difference between her and Jim. She has to work harder than the native speakers to be able to achieve what might come easily to them. Later on in the novel, Antonia goes off with a guy named Larry Donovan he informs her that his job has moved. This ended up being a lie. He leaves her whilst she's pregnant, so she becomes a single mom. Jim expresses his thoughts, “I was bitterly disappointed in her [Ántonia]. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity” (Cather 192). Jim expresses his dismay that Antonia has basically ruined her life by putting faith into a man of words. Antonia’s reputation fell drastically after this and it appears as though it would be hard to pick up. However, when Jim returns, he ends up being wrong. In the literary criticism, Anthony M. Dykema-VanderArk states, “She appears at the end of My Antonia as a figure who has tri­umphed over the hardships of her life through stal­wart struggle...ensuring an easier future for her children” (Dykema-VanderArk 211). Antonia has gone through a lot throughout her life. Her father’s death to ruining her reputation by being oblivious. Her race caused her to be inferior compared to the women that don't have to work in order to survive, but she still gives a good life to her children. Despite her hardships, she still kept to her strong attitude and doesn't sway away from it. That's success through the work she put

Like many immigrants, Ántonia faces difficulty with the language barrier. Upon their arrival, the Shimerdas only speak a few sentences of broken English. According to Jim, “They could not speak enough English to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known” (Cather 46). In the beginning of their friendship, Antonia is unable to communicate efficiently with Jim. For example, during one of Antonia and Jim’s adventures, they come across a snake that sneaks up behind Jim. Antonia, who only speaks little English, is only able to scream at Jim in Bohemian. Although Jim is able to kill the snake, he lashes out at Antonia for speaking Bohemian gibberish. While Ántonia’s ability to effectively communicate with Jim frustrates her, it also makes her more determined to learn English. It is this desire that pushes her to travel, by barefoot, to the Burden’s home daily to acquire new English phrases (Gerber 11). It is through her perseverance that she is soon able to speak English better than any of the other children in Black Hawk.

In the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather is a book based upon the main characters memories. Many critics have criticized this novel, and have focused on such literary elements as setting,theme, tone and etc. However the strongest argument is the one that states that the foundation of every element in the book is based on the personal memories of Willa Cather. After researching Willa Cather you can discover many biographies that talk about her life. In many instances I found stories about her life that I found similar to Jim and Antonias. Since she used personal experiences and turned them into a story it adds a special touch to her writing.

By he end of the book she learns to trust a few select people and starts to open up. Antonia also manages to make a friend, which she was without in the beginning. "Don't worry, Antonia. I'll be in touch. You just enjoy being back home with your own family." Page 183 paragraph 7. By reaching out for help, Antonia realizes that her life is finally starting to head in the right direction and that it all started because she was able to drop her guard with Jazz.

Antonia, despite having an enormous warmth about her, is too simpleminded and preoccupied with manual labor in order to have time to reflect on the meaning of happiness; nevertheless, she is always dissolved in the moment which allows her to unconsciously live by Jim's definition of happiness. She often finds herself completely submerged in her joys which predominantly come in form of her work, personal freedoms, and family. She said once, "'I belong on a farm. I'm never lonesome here like I used to be in town... And I don't mind work a bit if I don't have to put up with sadness'"(Book 5, Section1). Here it is evident that her work on the farm allows Antonia to forget her troubles and keep her from being lost in her negative thoughts. She was also found bragging to Jim about the

. In Jim and Antonia’s relationship, Jim learned more because the book is from Nick’s point of view. When Jim moves to Nebraska, he starts over beginning a whole new stage of his life. He also meets a group of immigrants and begins to fall into the negative stereotypes people have about immigrants. One of the immigrants is Antonia, and she helps him learn that immigrants are people too. Throughout the story, Jim comes to appreciate the will and spirit that make immigrants like Ántonia so successful. In the book, it says “ The girls I knew were always helping to pay for plows and reapers, brood-sows, or steers to fatten," This quote shows how Jim changed his point of view and learned to understand and appreciates immigrants hard work. Another

Each of the women face hardships with family, life in general, and men. Antonia a young, Bohemian girl is faced with many challenges and hardships throughout her life. After the death of her father, Antonia is obliged to start living by working in the fields alongside the men. Every member in her family depends on her both physically and emotionally. “With the death of her father, Antonia is forced to work on the family farm for her family to survive, and this shift in her role sparks a change in her identity. Antonia now wears some of her father’s belongings to suggest that she has indeed moved into a role that her father was supposed to play” (Everton). Antonia’s brother, Ambroch, makes use of her abilities as much as he can. When she works out on the fields he profits from the cash that she earns because he is the man of the household. “Antonia worked as a hired girl at the Cutters, and she was worried about Cutter’s intentions towards her. The moneylender, Wick Cuter, was known in Black Hawk as stingy towards his customers and over friendly to young girls . . . . Wick’s wife needed to go to Omaha for the weekend, and as a result of Wick’s infidelity she forced him to go with her. Although it seemed that Wick had left with his wife, Antonia still feared his intentions and pleaded with Jim to stay the night at the Cutters in her place . . . during the

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the United States gained many new citizens – immigrants from other countries in search of the American Dream. However, the immigrants, who came from countries like faced a large obstacle in the form of prejudice. The belief that foreigners were less than native-born Americans was prevalent, and this nativism was present in both society and the laws. Sometimes foreigners were the subject of a museum display in which Americans viewed them as spectacles, not people, and laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 limited or even banned immigration from certain countries. Social Darwinism was a popular theory used to support these nativist views; the fact that many immigrants lived in poverty was used as evidence that they were inferior and failed because natural selection, so to improve American society immigrants should be removed or banned. However, some citizens viewed these policies and beliefs with distaste, including Willa Cather.

Although Antonia faces severe hardship, she remains strong and responding to her simple life that focuses on kid raising and family comforts. When Jim visits her after so many years, he realizes that she established a very happy life, a good marriage, and has a large family. Antonia bravery has qualified her to develop self-esteem and become a complete female of pride.Although Antonia faces severe hardship, she remains strong and responding to her simple life that focuses on kid raising and family comforts. When Jim visits her after so many years, he realizes that she established a very happy life, a good marriage, and has a large family. Antonia bravery has qualified her to develop self-esteem and become a complete female of

The book ends with Jim reflecting on his life, realizing that many of the people he loved are now dead or have moved away from his small Nebraska home, but that he still longs for the prairie. He remembers the first time he saw Ántonia and her family, the scared, brave immigrants on the train with him trying to make a better life for themselves. He feels that Ántonia has fulfilled her goals and reached happiness, but that all he has tried to accomplish in life has left him feeling empyt and unhappy. Jim vows to return to the place he was his happiest, the place Ántonia and he grew up, the place where Ántonia

While the times change between both Jim and Ántonia there is something profound about the connection between both of them. Through out the development of the novel both Jin and Antonia change over time and grow to live their own lives. Even though Ántonia lives her own life the distinct reality that emerges is that the beauty and passion that she exhibited towards life and Jim will never leave. As the time passes, the relationship between both acquires greater intensity and depth precisely because time has formed both of their identities. In the end, the relationship between both speaks to the transformation from the precise to the

The central narrative of My Antonia could be a check upon the interests, and tho' in his fib Jim seldom says something directly concerning the concept of the past, the general tone of the novel is very unhappy. Jim’s motive for writing his story is to do to change some association between his gift as a high-powered any professional person and his nonexistent past on the NE grassland ; in re-creating that past, the novel represent each Jim’s retention and his feelings concerning his recollections. in addition, inside the narrative itself, persona usually look rachis yearningly toward the past that they need losing, particularly when Book I. Life in blackness Hawk, Jim and Ántonia recall their Day on the farm Lena appearance back toward her spirit together with her family; the Shimerdas and therefore the Russian mirror on their lives in their several home countries before they immigrated to the United Country .

Cather’s work, My Antonia, is a memoir told from Jim Burden’s perspective, as he recollects his youth moving from Virginia to life on the plains of Black Hawk, Nebraska. Upon moving in with his grandparents, Jim begins to admire Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant who moved to Black Hawk alongside the rest of her family, the Shimerdas. As Jim spends more time in Black Hawk, he bears witness to the many hardships which the Shimerdas faced, such as their limited proficiency with English, their horrible financial situation, and the death of the father, Mr. Shimerda. Later in the novel, Jim moves into town to further his education, while Antonia moves into town to find work. In town, Jim finds more hard-working immigrants, known as the “Hired

Throughout My Antonia, the difference between immigrants and native lifestyles are shown. While neither Jim not Antonia is rich, Jim is definitely more well off than her. He knows the language and has enough that he can have more opportunities. Antonia realizes that her life is going to be more difficult and that she will have to work more because of her mother’s decision to move to America. She tells Jim that “if I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us,” (90) and knows that her gentle personality might be at stake. This also foreshadows future events where Antonia struggles as an immigrant farmer. It adds obstacles to her life which might lead to them drifting apart in their friendship, even complete separation. This relates to the world in how immigrants had a harder time getting going in life. Antonia’s mother has already become changed because of poverty. She is grasping, selfish, and believes everyone should help her family. Jim’s grandmother defends her, knowing that, “a body never knows what traits poverty might bring out in them,” (60), though it is socially unacceptable. The pressures of helping her family led Antonia to not be educated and become a farmer. She is happy, but this leads to Jim being away, “twenty years before I kept my promise,” (211) as he is a successful lawyer and travels. They still have old connections, though being from Bohemia did change Antonia’s life and where it could have gone.

Jim’s relationship with Antonia shapes him as a character and provides him with the tools to grow from a child to a young adult.