My Antonia Research Paper

During the summer Jim and Antonia spend a bit more time together. They end up together in a rainstorm watching the sky from the top of the chicken coop. Antonia tells Jim that things will be ok for him, but harder for his family.

Unlike Jim who comes off as verbose, Antonia is just the opposite. To fix this, Jim decides to help Antonia with her English and resolved the problem. Soon, Antonia’s English becomes voluble and their communication improves. As the reader, I can relate to this on a personal level, I can think of people in my family that have had a tough time communicating. These two characters’ friendship proves that even with hindrances you can find a way to be friends with someone.

The modernity of ‘My Antonia’ can be seen through the narrative style used by Cather. The opening narrative sets the scene for a nostalgic reminiscence of Antonia’s life and delivers background information on Jim. It is through the initial framing narrative that we acquire Jim’s manuscript. This forms a

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.

I believe Antonia learned more through her relationship with Jim. Antonia uses Jim to learn

Also traveling in the same direction he’s going. Making friends with the Shimerdas children is how he meets Antonia. A young lady that’s very attractive with eyes that was “big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the woods”. Jim and Antonia start to spend lots of time together exploring the landscape together “not country, but the materials

Throughout the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather, Jim Burden has a tendency to be very critical of his friend Antonia. He expects her to be a strong, independent woman that will not be swayed by anyone that tries to interfere with her plans. Yet as they get older, they soon go into different directions. When Jim prepares to leave for college, he learns that Antonia is unmarried and has a two year old baby back at the farm. Jim becomes instantly disappointed in Antonia, as if he was her father looking down on her. Even though they are just friends, and Jim is younger than Antonia, it comes to question why Jim is so critical of Antonia.

In the story My Antonia, symbols are used to show some essential points of the lives of the characters, the majority of these symbols being from nature. In my opinion, The reason for writing this story was to try to reestablish a connection between his current life as a well known New York City lawyer and his long gone past on the vast prairie in Nebraska. I feel that the prairie served as a calming place for Jim. In a way, he seems to miss his life in Nebraska, but he understands that his past life is definitely unrecoverable. Antonia shows that she deeply misses her life in Bohemia, similar to how much Jim misses his past life in Nebraska. I feel that both of the characters Jim and Antonia share one thing about their past lives, this

Jim knew from his first impression that there was something very special about Antonia. She gave Jim a ring to symbolize the friendship they shared. All Mr. Shimerda wanted was for his daughter to be happy and she was that when she was with Jim. Mr. Shimerda also wanted Antonia to learn and be happy in the new land. Unlike her, Mr. Shimerda was depressed and unable to be in the new land.

Jim learns more about their friendship as they did everything together including looking at the animals, the river, hunting grounds, helping Antonia learn english and by their adventures. I feel like they have always been really good friends, from the time they met, and I feel like Jim had a crush on Antonia since he met her.

In my Opinion I believe this quote is sending a strong message to the readers and the rest of people. This message demonstrates us if we like something we should devoted all our effort in order to reach our potential dream. If we found our dream our life will be very complete and very grateful. However, as dreamer, we should reach our fortune until we got. But the question is can we reach our vision before it comes our real natural sleep (death). According the reading section, Antonia wants to learn English and sees the English language is very difficult but not giving up. She is trying her best to achieve her dreams. In the story we learned that Antonia and Jim are becoming friends and Antonia gets a chance to improve her English skill since

I strongly believe that Jim learned a lot more from Antonia that anyone expected, than he expected. Mr. Shimerda, Antonia's father begs Jim to "Te-e-ach, Te-e-ach my Antonia", but all story long she was the one doing the teaching. In my opinion we are not really certain on what Antonia learned from Jim and what was going through her head the whole story, only what Jim assumed that she has learned. Jim is also the narrator of this whole story so we have a front row seat on what Jim is thinking throughout that Story. We only know what Jim thinks and what he believes he knows.

First of all, Jim is the narrator, so we are privy to his innermost thoughts. The story of Antonia is only told through Jim's narrative, and Jim's perspective, so we truly don't know what she learns, just what Jim thinks she may have learned. Also, from the beginning, Jim is a brooding, alienated, cerbral character. He learns a lot about who he is and who he is not from observing the way, Antonia lives, the way she interacts with her family and others not always to her better man, and by weighing his own philosophies and way of life against hers, he learns more about himself. We don't have any evidence in the novel that Antonia does this in return. In fact, she mostly rejects the way Jim chooses to do things and when he gives her advice about

Jim’s view of the past is not bettered by horrifying experiences or tragic events. His remembrance of the past is a nostalgic trip, one where Ántonia is at the center of it. Ántonia is the first of many foreign girls that Jim, looking back, realized he idolized; these girls who immigrated to a new country, whether it was to find freedom or to live the American

Antonia wouldn’t understand Jim’s idea of happiness. Her life was so different from Jim. She didn’t know what he had been through to get his contentment. Jim had his own sorrow with the death of both parents. He is taken on a long, hard journey to Nebraska to live with grandparents he didn’t know. I can imagine the relief he had felt to have a home with people who loved him. He knew when the grandmother said to herself, “My, how you look like your father!” He remembered his father had been her little boy. To him, having the comforts of shelter and food wasn’t as important as knowing someone cared. These feelings hit him one day in the garden. His fears melted away with the warmth of the sun.