Willa Cather Essay

Landscape of Emotions      Being consumed by one’s surroundings results in an impressionable experience. Taking a deep breath of fresh air, admiring a breathtaking view, and watching the sizzling sunset evoke emotions. Willa Cather effectively evokes emotions in the reader, in order to relate to the characters’ feelings, by providing vivid descriptions of the setting, as well as through the reactions of Jim.      From the start of the novel to the

In Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, she uses a variety of library devices in her writing in order to solidify and convey her messages and themes. Through her novel, Cather defines a variety of themes. The nature of Jim’s town suggests a theme of foreign treatment and struggles and his relationship with Antonia introduces a theme of love and youth. In support of the theme regarding immigrants in America, Willa uses motifs and dialect to portray her message. On page one hundred and twenty, it days

Self-imposed Estrangement in "Paul's Case," by Willa Cather Many times, we try to separate ourselves from the world around us; we distance ourselves from society that gives us life. What is worse, we are voluntarily subjected to the lonesomeness which precedes wallowing in our own self pity. "Paul's Case," in which the theme of the fatal progression of deliberate seclusion presents the major conflict, centers around a young man, in his alienation, suppressing his need for attention and satisfying

The Role of Women in My Antonia        In her novel, My Antonia, Cather represents the frontier as a new nation. Blanche Gelfant notes that Cather "creat[ed] images of strong and resourceful women upon whom the fate of a new country depended" . This responsibility, along with the "economic productivity" Gilbert and Gubar cite (173), reinforces the sense that women hold a different place in this frontier community than they would in the more settled areas of America.        One manner

Willa Cather, a nineteenth century American female writer, used her childhood experiences growing up on the great plains of Nebraska to write about a woman named Alexandra Bergson and her struggles on her family’s farm on the Nebraskan frontier in the book, O Pioneers! (“Willa Sibert Cather”). The narrator follows Alexandra throughout her life, and shows how she became successful while overcoming the patriarchy. Conversely, Cather also wrote about a young, confused girl named Marie Tovesky, who

Psychoanalytic Criticism of My Antonia             Abstract: This essay uses psychoanalysis as the strategy of interpretation to read Willa Cather's My Antonia.  Freud's well-known theory--the Oedipus complex--and Lacan's theory of the Mirror Stage are used as the modes of approaching the novel.   I use psychoanalytic criticism as a means of interpreting Willa Cather's My Antonia because I find some similarities between My Antonia and Peter Pan, between that and The Awakening when reading Keith

Elements in My Ántonia and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass The books My Ántonia by Willa Cather and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass both use formal elements to convey their purposes in different ways, with some similarities and differences. Cather’s book is a story about nostalgia for the past but Douglass’s story is about resent for the past. Cather uses a nostalgic tone, narrative, and setting to serve the book’s message whereas Douglass uses

husband worked. Alexandra went against this social normality. Anna Wilson wrote in a biography of Willa Cather, “Her manipulations of self soon became more pronounced, and more clearly cross-gendered; either in 1886 or in 1888 (accounts vary), Cather took herself to the barber's for a crew cut, and began referring to herself as "William Cather, Jr." and "William Cather, M.D." (Wilson 1) This shows that Willa believed that women could be like men and that Alexandra could do anything a man could. If Alexandra

Why do many immigrants make the long and usually costly move to America? Is it the largely idolized notion that Americans are wealthier with better opportunities? Moreover, is the price some pay worth the risk? In Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, Ántonia faces struggles as a young child, including language barriers, poverty, harsh living conditions, and her beloved father’s death. However, as Ántonia grows into a woman, she must face struggles of a social nature, such as the division of social and economic

positive and negative events that Jim Burden experiences. This also allows us to see into the author’s life because she bases memories from her own personal life to the book. Paralleling characters and events from her own childhood in the Midwest, Willa Cather gives an insightful look into pioneer life in My Antonia. There are many examples of deep and dark memories in this novel. This can be known as gothic literature, which “...the gothic is an eruption of chaos, a haunting within the heart of realism