My Antonia Essay

Willa Cather has a strong admiration for the character Antonia in "My Antonia." The introduction of "My Antonia" states that the narrator and Jim were to write down all they knew of her in order to maybe "get a picture of her." I believe this strong admiration is because of the characteristics that are shown by Antonia throughout the story. She is a hardworking girl that belongs to a Bohemian family who has started a farm in Nebraska. Not only is she hard working but throughout the story she shows

Willa Cather’s My Antonia and Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain are two literary works that effectively recreate the landscape of the stories they are telling. Their writing styles have a few similar characteristics, such as their word choice and their usage of visual elements; however, they take advantage of various writing elements that make their writing styles distinct, such as the use of figurative language, emotion, and rhetorical questioning. First and foremost, Willa Cather and Mary

In Willa Cather’s 1918 novel, My Antonia, ideas of immigration, growing up, and how these ideas intersect with each other. The use of the English language, and each character’s proficiency in the language in this novel seems to serve as a measure of how far into the development each character is. As it is demonstrated early in the text, Antonia and her family are new to the area, and are referred to as being from “across the water” (Cather 51). This is followed by the conductor of the transportation

In My Antonia by Willa Cather, a character named Jim moves to Nebraska, also known as the Wild West, because his parents died. There, he meets his grandparents for the first time. He also notices an immigrant, Lena Lingard whom he meets outside of Black Hawk on her family's farm. Later in life, he moves to Lincoln University, to become a lawyer and is mentored by Gaston Cleric. Overall, Jim has been influenced and changed by the impact of befriending and meeting different people of different lifestyles

Power of the Frontier Exposed in My Antonia         Willa Cather's novel My Ántonia dramatizes the effect the frontier has on both native-born people and immigrants that come to the West in search of new beginnings. The story centers around two families living in a remote area of Nebraska from completely diverse backgrounds. This tale suggests that regardless of where a person comes from, the trials and tribulations of living under such tough conditions will ultimately impact his/her

Willa Cather’s My Ántonia has been considered by some to be a transitional work for Cather in that, beginning with this novel, she stops creating strong female characters and moves more into a masculine realm. Deborah Lambert expresses this opinion in her article “The Defeat of a Hero: Autonomy and Sexuality in My Ántonia.” Lambert claims that Cather abandons women in her later novels and focuses exclusively on “patriarchal institutions and predominantly male characters” (680). This transition

The Importance of the Past in Willa Cather's My Antonia   In My Antonia, Willa Cather emphasizes the importance of the past through Jum Burden's narration. Jim Burden realizes at the conclusion of the novel how much he enjoyed his childhood days and how much his memories mean to him. There are three events that Cather included in the novel which contribute greatly to the overall theme, concerning the importance of the past. One event is in Chapter II of Book III. Jim decides to write

Assignment 1 #5 5. The poem, A Wagner Matinee, resembles My Antonia in its theme and as a celebration of the beauty of the prairie. Read this poem online at http://cather.unl.edu/ss011.html A Wagner Matinee and My Antonia share a lot of the same crucial elements of the spirit and values of what it is to be American. Both poem and story share similar characteristics towards the theme and setting of taking place in 19th century Nebraska "We grew up together in the same Nebraska town-and we had much

Theme of Sacrifice in My Antonia and The Song of the Lark         A common trait for Willa Cather's characters is that they possess a certain talent or skill. This art usually controls the lives of these characters. According to critic Maxell Geismar, Cather's heroines who possess a skill often either do not marry or marry men whom they dominate; if they do marry the marriage is without excitement because their passion is invested in their art. In a sense, Geismar accuses Cather's heroines

Readers of Willa Cather’s book, My Antonia, may find themselves astonished by what they discover between the covers. The title itself creates the expectation of a gratifying tale about a young woman’s life journey struggling to adjust to, and overcome, the challenges of her adopted country’s environment. However, the title character, oddly absent from the majority of the book, nearly satisfies the role of a central character, during the opening section, yet, becomes reduced to a bit player throughout