“My Antonia” by Willa Cather is a pastoral novel set in the plains of Nebraska in the early 19th century. The story is about an orphaned young boy, Jim Burden, who moves from Virginia to the Great Plains to be with his grandparents. Jim is also the voice of the novel, so all of the episodes and characters are seen from his perspective.
Jim and Antonia
While on the way to his grandparents, Jim meets Antonia Shimerda, the oldest daughter of an immigrant family from Bohemia. The Shimerdas are the Burdens’ nearest neighbors as well. Antonia is just slightly older than Jim, so they become friends soon and start hanging out with each other. Although Jim cannot resolve his feelings for Antonia--sometimes he loves her sometimes he hates her-- he cannot erase her from his memory. After her father commits suicide, Antonia takes charge of the house, drops out of school and starts working on the farm. It is at this point that Jim and Antonia grow apart, both physically and emotionally.
Jim moves to Black Hawk, a neighboring town to attend college, where Antonia also moves to start working as a hired girl in an affluent household. Later Jim moves to Harvard and learns from an old acquaintance that Antonia got married but the guy has left her. And that she has returned to Nebraska and is working on the farm. He promises to go visit her, but never does. 20 years later, Jim returns to the Great Plains once again. This time, Antonia is married to a man named Cuzak and has a house full of kids. She is happy and contended, with her land and with her children. Playing with her children, Jim reminisces about his younger days when he moved in with his grandparents and the innocence of that age and realizes that he has indeed come a full circle.
The Modernist Perspective
Willa Cather uses this novel to contrast the corruption of the industrialized society versus the hardworking simple souls of the rural Midwest. Cather’s writing flows smoothly making it a pleasure to read. Plus the first-person narrative helps readers identify better with the protagonist’s dilemmas, his choices and sacrifices.
The imagery in the novel is vivid....vast, never-ending stretches of land, the prairies, the farm, the animals, the simple fun, and the innocence….it harks you back to your halcyon days. It certainly gave me a sense of déjà vu and brought back fond memories from the past. Cather’s metaphor of likening the tough, resilient and hardworking Antonia to the land itself was subtle yet brilliant. The author also makes Antonia the representative of all immigrants who worked hard to settle on a foreign land that was often hostile to them.
My Antonia in a lot of ways, reminded me of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. In terms of story and characters they are almost similar, except that My Antonia is a far more vivid and sunny portrait of the coming of age of the protagonist as opposed to the gloomy pallor of Pip’s inner turmoil growing up in 18th century England. Pip and Jim are both orphaned early in life. Jim’s friendship with Antonia is a dead ringer for Pip’s love-hate relationship with Estella that continues to haunt him throughout his life.
The Conclusion
The one paragraph that made the book unforgettable for me reads thus:
Jim is in the garden one day with his grandmother, who warns him about rattlesnakes that are often lurking around. Leaning against a warm yellow pumpkin, he says,
“….I kept still as I could. Nothing happened. I didn’t expect anything to happen….I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it’s the sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
So simple yet so profound, which can be said about the novel itself.