My Antonia

In my copy, there is a footnote on the first page in Chapter 1 which explains how the name is pronounced. It reads as follows:"The Bohemian name Antonia is strongly accented on the first...

As the narrator, Jim Burden, so acutely observes, "it was homesickness that killed Mr. Shimerda" (Chapter XIV). In the old country, Mr. Shimerda was a weaver and a musician. He was happy...

In the 1918 novel My Ántonia by Willa Cather, Peter and Pavel are two Russian immigrants living on a small farm in America. Peter is a physically large and friendly character who is willing to...

In Black Hawk, the "hired girls" are all daughters of immigrant farmers; they are country girls, as opposed to the town girls in Black Hawk. These hired girls work to help their families pay off...

The nature of the relationship between Jim and Antonia reflects idealism and transcendence can exist in the interactions between human beings. While time changes both Jim and Antonia, there is...

In the following quotes from early on in the novel, figurative language exalts the prairie and expresses happiness as a merger into nature. In the first quote, from early in the novel, Jim...

In the town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, a firm social class distinction separated the town girls, those whose parents were born in America, from the hired girls, those whose parents were immigrants....

Although both Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda are new to Nebraska (they arrive at the same time), Jim is an American who has to leave Virginia after his parents' deaths to live with his...

In the novel, Antonia is important to Jim because she is the personification of all the things that he holds dear. In his mind, she is a connection to his new home in Nebraska and his early teen...

The prairie is as much a character in Cather’s book as Jim or Antonia herself. Like Antonia, for example, the land around Black Hawk also grows and develops over the course of the book, starting...

Antonia approaches the prospect of raising her child by herself with an attitude of strength and determination. Mrs. Stevens says about Antonia, "Antonia's got on fine. She'd loved (the baby) from...

When the reader first meets Antonia, she is a young girl. She is full of hope and plans for the future. She wants to learn English, she wants to go to school. After her father dies, however, she...

In Willa Cather's novel My Antonia, the story is told from Jim Burden's point of view. While Jim may be considered nostalgic (and is even told by Francis that he is a romantic), he holds a special...

Well, yes, the previous answer is correct, Jim is an orphan and has to travel to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. This makes for an interesting story though, because that fact that he is an...

One key incident that showed Antonia’s strength of character and determination to succeed on her own terms was her failed engagement to Larry Donovan. Antonia had enjoyed some relatively carefree...

There are several key differences between the two main families featured in My Ántonia. The Burdens are the family of Jim Burden, the orphaned boy who's the novel's narrator and protagonist, while...

Jim was ten when he came to live with his grandparents on the prairie. Three years later, when he turned thirteen, his grandparents decided to move away from the farm to the nearby city of Black...

Ántonia's father, Mr. Shimerda, commits suicide by going into the family's barn and putting the barrel of his shotgun in his mouth. He uses his big toe to pull the trigger. His despair and...

Mrs. Shimerda resents the Burdens at times because they are well-off enough to live comfortably, and she and her family have nothing. As Grandmother kindly explains to Jim, "a body never knows...

Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a story set in the American Midwest near the turn of the twentieth century. Readers of this novel can relate Antonia Shimerda’s journey to that of Cather’s since the...

Willa Cather’s 1918 novel, My Antonia, is a perfect example of literary regionalism. The Nebraskan landscape directly contributes to the emotional growth (or decline, in some cases) and the...

It seems to me that in the novel, winter symbolizes the hardship and suffering Antonia's family survives. However, when spring and summer arrive, new life comes to everyone, but especially to...

In Willa Cather’s novel My Ántonia, Jim Burden becomes an orphan when he is still a young boy living in Virginia. Sent by relatives, he travels by rail to Nebraska to live with his grandparents....

The Burdens befriend the Shimerdas, and the Shimerdas come to Nebraska ill-equipped for life on the prairie. While the families are on friendly terms, there is a tension that arises between them....

This quote is expressing Jim's reaction when he first encounters the wide open unsettled expanses surrounding his grandparents' farm. Coming from Virginia, the surroundings appear undeveloped, but...

The above quote indicates the very powerful magnetism that Antonia exerts on Jim, the narrator of this novel, throughout the story. Remember the title of this book and how it represents the way...

Mr. Shimerda never fully settles down in America. In fact, he never even wanted to come over in the first place. His inability to speak English is just one of many reasons why he doesn't fit in to...

Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda arrive in Black Hawk, Nebraska at the same time, but their situations are different in a number of ways. First of all, compared to Antonia, Jim has come a relatively...

There is a friendly, companionable atmosphere between the two families, Shimerda and Burden. When the Shimerda's arrive, Mr. and Mrs. Burden immediately go to them offering friendly hospitality....

Jim asks Ántonia if she would like to go to school for the next semester. Ántonia refuses, saying that she is kept too busy by farm work: Ántonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if...

The crossroads where Mr. Shimerda is buried can be understood as a metaphor for both Antonia's and Jim's futures. Both spend time as children on the prairie in the early years when a single stake...

British novelist W. Somerset Maugham wrote, It is very difficult to know people. For, men and women are not only themselves, they are also the region in which they are born....You can know them...

As the title of Book IV suggests, this section of the book is all about the different fates of the three pioneer women explored in the novel: Lena, Tiny and Antonia. The three women have enjoyed...

Antonia makes this statement to Jim when he relays the suggestion made by his grandmother that Antonia attend the term of school that is to begin in a week. Antonia, who has been doing brutally...

I think, for practical reasons, the answer has to be Jim. The story is told from Jim’s point of view, so whatever lessons Antonia might have learned are simply the ones Jim thinks she has learned....

The character of Jim Burden experiences several kinds of cultural collisions that strongly affect his personal development. Because he is the novel’s protagonist and the first-person narrator of...

The way that different characters react to the dancing pavilion reveals a lot about them. The hired girls (Antonia, Lena, etc) all enjoy dancing at the pavilion, while the town girls do not. The...

Although Willa Cather has transmuted her own history into a romantic story of significance, it is certainly fashioned in a realistic style. It does not tell of the fulfillment of the American Dream...

It is a curious characteristic of many who have lived and, especially, farmed in the prairie states and the plains states that, while to the casual observer of these areas there is little beauty in...

The tone of a work of literature is of course the attitude of the author towards a subject, character or theme. The overwhelming focus of this great pioneer work of American Literature is the...

All three find their own measure of "success," although each must undergo hardship before they can attain it. You are right to qualify the term "success" with "by their own standards," since...

Given that Jim Burden has always been an introspective character, especially considering his role in this book as the all-seeing eye over the Nebraska prairie land, I believe he would speak about...

It affects him so deeply because Jim is a very sensitive young man, with a highly developed sense of empathy. It's instructive that when Jim first hears of the sad news, he instinctively realizes...

In the novel, "My Antonia" by Willa Cather Antonia is the model of a successful pioneer woman because she is a survivor. She is an immigrant that has been moved to a new country. This takes...

Mr. Harling is a man with a keen eye for business who openly disapproves of Antonia's carousals at the town dances. Jim describes him as "autocratic and imperial" and finds his shadow which is...

The landscape is both a kind of paradise and a symbol of the vastness of nature that people in the frontier of that period had to overcome. When Jim arrives in Nebraska, one of his first...

An author of a novel is not necessarily the narrator of that novel. In this case, the author of My Ántonia, Willa Cather, is different from the narrator, who is a fictional character named Jim...

In Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, the author relates a story about the settling of the American Midwest near the turn of the twentieth century. Much of Cather’s perspective comes from her...

When Mr. Shimerda kills himself or dies (depending on your interpretation of the scene) the entire saga seems to suggest that the Shimerda's particular brand of religion is entirely rigid, unwieldy...

In Willa Cather's My Ántonia, the two characters that work both with and against each other are Jim and Ántonia. Both arrive as children on the harsh Nebraska frontier, where they grow up together....