My Antonia by Willa Cather - Essay Example

My Antonia by Willa Cather My Antonia is a historical fiction novel written by an American Willa Cather in 1918.She takes a first person narration of a man, Jim Burden, who narrates the story as his own memoirs. He comes out as an intelligent and introspective orphaned boy from Virginia who moves to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. His thoughtfulness gives him the ability to portray himself and others with consistency and sympathy. He is able to convey the lost Nebraska with an evocative poetic accuracy. He comes out as romantic and has long attachment to the people he grew up with in his youth and gives his narration of Nebraska life with commitment and deep longing, a quality that colors the story in a great way. The way Jim remembers the past brings out the emphasis of the novel as something personal to Jim Burden who remembers it. This makes Jim to call his memoirs My Antonia and not just Antonia, not to claim ownership of Antonia but to indicate that the story of Antonia is a product of his own mind and heart as it is of the past. In the course of the novel Jim ages from a ten-year-old boy into a middle aged man who also grows from the shy orphan he was in his earlier years to a successful legal counsel in New York for the railroad companies after having acquired an impressive education in the University of Nebraska and in Harvard University. In spite of all this Jim remains consistent in his interest for others though he also finds satisfaction in spending time alone; he often assumes the role of the detached observer watching situations unfold. It is only at the end of the novel when Jim sets aside his passive reservations to reunite with the middle aged Antonia on Cuzak farm and makes an active attempt to connect with the past he cannot forget. Jim’s most important relationship is with Antonia in the form of their friendship. His allowing Antonia to remain in his mind as an abstract symbol of the past is a strong illustration of Jim’s introspective mentality. He allows himself to drift away from her in the physical but reserves a special place for her in his heart by treating her memory with great nostalgia over the years. After 20 years he can however contemplate recreating a real relationship with Antonia, he now seems to acknowledge that she exists and is still herself even after the past they shared has ended. In Ursula Le Guins, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Jim Burden can be equated to the inhabitants of Omelas who after learning the misfortunes of the unfortunate child silently leaves the city but does nothing to help the poor child. In My Antonio, Jim seems to admire the innocence, brilliance and good heartedness of Antonia but he does nothing beyond having her memories. He even says “Some memories are realities, and are better than realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.” (Cather, p.259) He is even seen associating her to the lost purity and innocence of childhood. He sees her only as a friend yet if maybe he married her by helping her rise above the cultural inhibitition making her not love him, something that may have solved her poverty and slavery. He even tellingly thinks of Lena who is carefree and even rejects all men who offer to marry her, more sexually than he does Antonia (Rosowski, 33-46). Antonia Shimerda is emotionally presented as a believable, independent lady in her own right as captured in Jim’s nostalgic memoir of his younger days. She is brought out as pretty, vivacious and extremely generous. She fascinates Jim as he feels that she is unusually alive, a sentiment he echoes even after he meets her as a mother of ten children at the end of the novel when he says “Her warm, sweet face, her kind arms, and the true heart in her; she was, oh, she was still my Antonia!” (Cather, p. 258) Throughout the novel she is caught up between her natural optimism and cheer and the extreme difficulties she faces after her family’s emigration from Bohemia to Nebraska and her father’s suicide in America which pushes her to work as a girl servant. She is also limited by the cultural differences that makes her feel always like an outsider in Nebraska and which contributes in a way to her inability to love Jim in a way that presents him as more than just a brother. Her family go hungry, a situation that forces Antonia to work as a servant girl. Some members of the Black Hawk judge her harshly for her love of dancing, her fiancé leaves her to raise their child alone yet this doesn’t change her self sufficiency and graciousness. She is always determined to make the best of her situations. She is also determined to secure her independence by refusing to sacrifice it to improve her life. For example she would rather work for the wretched Wick Cutter than follow Mr. Hartling’s order to stop going to dances. Antonia s symbolizes the past, possesses a deep rapport with her settings and represents the experiences of the immigrants to Nebraska. In Ursula Le Guin’s, The ones who walk away from Omelas , the city with unbelievably blissful life, it happens that the whole society enjoys the privilege of bliss, prosperity and success at the expense of one unlucky child who suffers all forms of perpetual filth, darkness and misery kept locked beneath it in squalor and torture. This child does not deserve the kind of torture he/she goes through since it is only too young and the novel talks only of its unfortunate state. However the larger proportion of the inhabitants of Omelas, when they get old enough to learn of the child’s predicament, though most of them are initially shocked and disgusted, they are ultimately able to come to terms with the fact. They resolve to live their lives in such a manner as to make the suffering of the child worthwhile. However a few citizens both old and young silently walk away from the city and no one knows where they go. The undeservingly suffering child in the novel can be equated to Antonia in My Antonia who also suffers undeservingly. First she suffers culture shock as a result of her parent’s decisions to move from to Nebraska. Circumstances force her to work as a girl servant after her father’s suicide who had been the breadwinner. It is important to note that the father does not die under natural circumstances making Antonia and the unfortunate boy look like ‘sacrificial lambs’ in both cases. Even as a young man in Black Hawk, Jim associates Antonia with a lost past of emotional purity that precludes sex much as he always loved her as brought out by his fond memories of her. It makes one wonder why he could not think of marrying her instead of equating her to a lost past. Lena Lingard is the daughter of a Norwegian immigrant and Antonia’s friend. Cather through the narrator Jim presents Lena as a sharp contrast to Antonia. While Antonia possesses an independence that gives her quiet inner strength, Lena craves excitement and outer independence. She refuses to marry all the men who fall in love with her beauty and charisma. She becomes important to Jim’s life as he transitions into adulthood to represent his change from innocence and purity, memories represented by his memories of Antonia, into adulthood. Tellingly, Jim fantasizes sexually about Lena in a way that he cannot about Antonia. (Susan, 2003 p. 96) Lena continues to become more important to Jim as he attends college and even as they both live in Lincoln. Though in his memories she is not as exalted as Antonia she is still very pivotal in his growth from childhood to adulthood. In Ursula Le Guin’s, the ones who walk away from Omelas, Lena can be compared to the inhabitants of Omelas who after learning the predicaments of the boy decide to continue living their enjoying the successes without thinking much about the boy who suffers in their place. They actually decide to make the best of the situation for themselves. This is because she is carefree and even refuses to marry any of the men who get attracted by her beauty and selfishly prefers her independence and excitement. Sharon O’Brien in her review of My Antonia said ‘most students will admire the protagonists (especially Antonia) who pose the imagination and ideas to seek a more hopeful destiny in an unfamiliar territory. She recommends it ‘for those wanting to get hold of an elusive past’. She alleges that it’s the homesickness of both Antonia and Jim that powerfully fastens them together and what urges them to turn the Nebraskan land into a land of bliss. She asserts that though Antonia and Jims paths diverge their spiritual bond remains locked in lengthening shadows of a common past (O’Brien, 23-27). Conclusion Willa Cather has invested much in her characters for the smooth flow of the story. She has used the main protagonist Jim to bring out the setting so clearly. It is worth noting that her ability to remember some events so clearly stems from his trait of paying keen interest in details as well as his assumption of a passive interest in issues. Thus it can be said that Willa Cather’s use of characters has excellently blend with the settings, the themes and the flow of the story. She has demonstrated a deeper understanding of the society around her through the character that she adopts in the story thus fulfilling the major role of literature as the mirror to the society. Works Cited OBrien, Sharon, and Emory Elliott. New Essays on Willa Cathers "my Antonia". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print. Rosowski, Susan J. Willa Cathers Ecological Imagination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska press, 2003. Print. Read More