Mr. Shimerda's Suicide in Willa Cather's My Antonia Essay

First and foremost, Jim meets the Shimerda family who constantly face hardships through their tough journey to what they view as success. They are immigrants from Bohemia trying to find a life for themselves.

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.

The story My Antonia is very similar to the poem A Wagner Matinee. They both have a sense of an older story, or of an old book. They both seem like they are stories that have been told for a long time now. Both have settings in the plains and in the west. Both have farm lands in the settings as well. My Antonia to me was a bit of a sad story that had a good ending. A Wagner Matinee to me had an all-around sad story but ended a bit happier than most of the story. Both stories have relatives with some hardships which have brought up some unfortunate situations. Both stories are mostly about time passing and family. What you do with your family while you have it is very important and seems to be the theme in both of these stories to me. I think

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.

The setting of the story has tremendous impact on the characters and themes in the novel "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. Cather's delicately crafted naturalistic style is evident not only in her colorfully detailed depictions of the Nebraska frontier, but also in her characters’ relationship with the land on which they live. The common naturalist theme of man being controlled by nature appears many times throughout the novel, particularly in the chapters containing the first winter.

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

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

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

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

My Ántonia is a novel written by Author Willa Cather. Throughout the development of the novel there are two characters that have a predominant push and pull relationship, Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda. The question is never really answered concerning their relationship and as to weather he is in love with her, or if they are just friends. The story specifically focused on Ántonia and what she meant to Jim. Although at the end of the novel we come to find that Jims feeling for her appearances do not matter. Jim sees people for who they are as a person. Jim has always enjoyed people and has had a particular interest in who they are morally. That is how resolves Ántonia at the end of the novel, despite his conflicted emotions and her weathered appearance. It was almost a spiritual assessment of Ántonia and his morale feelings for her and who she is. In the end who a person is in there “true inner self” is more important to Jim than visual appearance. My Ántonia gives you that message by how Jim sees the world and the people in it specifically Ántonia.

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

Friendship is a gift that is given at life, but what we make of it and how we take care of it is all up to us. Friends are like flashlights in dark rooms and, bandaids on a bad bruise, they make the hard times in life easier to handle and get through. The novel My Antonia shows a prominent theme of friendship between a young country boy named Jim, and a shy Bohemian immigrant named Antonia. Jim and his family provide care and friendship to Antonia's family in order to make survival easier for them through hard times. The survival and wellbeing of an immigrant family in the mid to late 1800’s depended on the connection with neighbors and this can explicitly be seen through the intimacy between Antonia, and Jim and both their families. Despite

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.

My Antonia is a philosophical story, with dream-like ideas left and right. Even so, the book’s main theme was clearly the transition or journey from childhood to adulthood. This theme applied to both the main characters, Jim and Antonia, who were children when the story begins and adults when it ends. At ten years old, Jim Burden moved to the plains of Black Hawk, Nebraska. His parents had died in an epidemic, and Jim was sent to live with his father’s parents on their Nebraska farm. In his new home, he met a Bohemian girl named Antonia, a free-spirited, lively, unique personality. He fell in love with her, and although his feelings were not returned, he and Antonia became great friends. The book has numerous examples of traditional obstacles that people their ages go through, along with additional hardships such as poverty and death of close family members. Antonia developed a sense of independence that became her most prominent trait throughout the book. The characters found activities and places where they felt like they belonged, and they began to discover who they were. As Jim (the narrator) states, “The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again.” Jim was speaking of a place