Natures Influence on the Central Characters of My Antonia - Research Paper Example

Nature’s Influence on the Central Characters of “My Antoia” Willa Cather’s novel, “My Antonia”, deals with the narrator Jim Burden’s attempt to revive his past in the prairie of Nebraska. In the novel, which he gives to Mr. Anton Jalinek as a memoir, he sails back to his childhood in the prairie of Nebraska. Obviously, in such attempt of the narrator, Antonia the protagonist of the novel and the countryside environmental beauty of Nebraska serve as two main anchors to his past in the country. His narration interchangeably revolves around these two, while digging up the highly nostalgic stories of the tidbits in his childhood. Antonia’s presence in Jim’s childhood may seem to be a morsel for a high-society New York city-lawyer. But Antonia stays at the center of his wholehearted endeavor to reestablish a connection between Jim’s present life as a lawyer and his vanished past. Indeed, how oft-repeatedly Jim draws references to Antonia necessarily reveals that she serves as a lighthouse for a randomly roaming traveler (Jim) who has lost his path which he had been familiar with at least twenty years ago. Indeed, Antonia and Jim’s past are indispensable from each other. Jim’s memory of the past mostly comprises of his feeling of innocence and purity about the people, things and place in Nebraska. By clinging to this symbol of innocence in his introspective mentality, he rather vainly makes an effort to retain his innocence. But meanwhile, he intentionally allows her to recede from his life in order to build up his career as a lawyer and comes back to Antonia with an attempt to incorporate his past into his present life. In his novel, Cather shows that past is neither recoverable nor escapable. It is remarkable that Jim rarely says anything about his motif to revive his long-lost childhood. But the nostalgic tone remains implied throughout the whole narration. It seems that he physically roams back on the long-lost path of life. In his nostalgic realm of memory, he takes the readers with him. While the readers can eyewitness how his childhood was, they also can experience Jim’s nostalgic feelings which are infused with the narration of his childhood. Additionally, the narrator allows the readers to experience other characters’ nostalgia from each of the characters’ individual perspective. In Book II, while Jim and Antonia are living in Black Hawk, they recall their days on the farms. Like Jim and Antonia, Lena also recalls her days with her family. In some ways or others, all of the characters are tied with their past and failingly endeavor to revive it in their present life. Indeed, in the characters’ nostalgia, the past seems to incorporate two cardinal qualities: first, they consider it as something preferable to present. Secondly, past is something unrecoverable. Jim longs for his past days on the prairie of Nebraska, whereas Antonia misses her days in Bohemia. But none of them can attain what they desire for so dearly. In fact, this impossibility of reviving the past makes it sweeter, more melancholic and nostalgic. Yet there is another aspect of the past. That is, if it is not recoverable, it is not escapable either. In the novel, the past has been endowed with another important characteristic, that is, its subjectivity. The pasts upheld by different characters are extremely subjective and personal. The narrator describes his past with an implied mourning, nostalgic tone. Such tone of the narration reveals that Jim is inevitably tied to his past and his narration consists of most of his personal memories, perceptions and longings about people, places and things on the prairies of Nebraska during his past days. Indeed, this seems to be one of the reasons why Cather has chosen the name “My Antonia” instead of “Antonia”. The title “My Antonia” is a more personalized one than the impersonal “Antonia” which may refer to an array of historical evaluations of things, places and events. Necessarily, the novel tells about Jim’s own thoughts and personal feelings in the colors of emotions. Jim’s decision to keep constant communication with Antonia finally seems to infer that though the past cannot be recovered, it can be reconnected by establishing connection with people or objects from the past. The countryside natural beauty of Nebraska as well as the companionship of Antonia continually provides him with the scope to grow intimacy with his past and also to incorporate it into his present. The importance of Antonia as a connection between Jim’s past and present is evident in the following speech of the narrator: During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood. (Cather 34) For Jim, Antonia’s importance in Jim’s past is quite evident. For him, Antonia is “the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood” (Cather 47). Jim always views her as a symbol of innocence, grace and countryside purity. But it is remarkable that Jim does not drift away from his goal of achieving social establishment. Rather he allows her to recede from his life for a certain period of time. Yet during those years, he preserves a special place for Antonia in his heart. His childhood relationship remains the same pure and innocent as the Nebraska countryside is. Jim’s nostalgic perception of Antonia’s purity and innocence is complete contrast with his relationship with Lena. Obviously, Lena is also important in Jim’s life because of the sexual attraction he grows for Lena. If Lena’s presence in Jim’s life represents his transition from childhood to adulthood, Antonia represents the static countryside innocence and purity. Along the passage of time, thought Jim grows relationships with other characters, his relationship with Antonia appears to be the most significant one who reveals a great deal of Jim’s introspective mentality. During all those years of career building as a lawyer in New York, she remains an abstract symbol, of the past, which also plays a significant role in Jim’s effort to reestablishing the connection between Jim’s past and present. For Jim, Antonia is quite able to evoke “immemorial human attitudes which [people] recognize by instinct as universal and true” (Cather 59). In Book V, Jim says that though she has grown into a mature woman, she is still the source of childhood imagination and object of fascination as the nature itself is. For him, she is a “rich mine of life, like the founders of early races” (Cather 58). One of the characteristics of Antonia which appeals to the readers is her adaptability with an apparently hostile environment. The wilderness of Nebraska is both “the happiness and the curse” of Antonia’s life. Jim seems to be attracted to this struggling aspect of Antonia’s character. For him, she is one of the most beautiful and fragrant flowers which survive in the wilderness of the prairie by her own right. With her feminine virtues she struggles hard amid the wilderness of the prairie to survive for herself and her families. Though her father commits suicide, she does not break down. Rather she starts with new zeal to pursue after the American Dream. In spite of the harshness, animosity and the brutality of the prairie, she remains undaunted in her aim to survive and to make life easy for the people around her. When Jim leaves her for his career as a lawyer, she is seduced by another immigrant boy. But eventually he also leaves her pregnant with baby girl. In face of her family members’ opposition, she decides to raise the baby. Indeed, for Jim if she is a wild Nebraska flower, she seems to retain fragrance with her womanly tolerance and determination. Referring to this characteristics of Antonia, Carol Leavitt Altieri comments, Cather’s protagonists (especially Antonia) possess the imagination and ideas to seek a more hopeful destiny in an unfamiliar territory through coping with hardships and stoically overcoming many of them. The heart of the novel, however, lies in Antonia’s harmony and creativity with her environment and her contribution to the creation of new lives and a new country. (pars.3) In Cather’s novel, the nature or environment plays a very critical role in building up the setting of the novel. It not only contributes to the development of the setting of the novel, but also it plays a principal role in determining the theme as well as the central characters. This powerful role of Nature has been wrought out through its incessant but unreceptive interactions with the characters. The nature’s role in the development of the characters and setting of the novel is passive in the sense that it does not unswervingly interrelate with the characters; rather the protagonist, Jim, depicts it in such a manner that it intrudes into the novel’s theme with an influential presence. In one way, Nature or atmosphere seems to be the reflector of the characters emotional states. On the other hand, it itself is oft-repeatedly reflected in human psychology and, to a great extent, nature also seems to symbolize different traits of the central characters. Jim’s connection with Nature, in the first place, evokes a nostalgic tenor which prevails throughout the novel. In a sense, Jim’s nostalgic memory of the past is his emotional exploration of Antonia’s and other characters’ relationship with the wilderness of Nebraska. Even Nature exerts an overpowering influence on Jim’s mind from his childhood in the Nebraska frontier, as he acknowledges, “Between that earth and that sky, I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.” (Cather 52) The vastness of Nature rather induces the existential anguish in his mind. His self-perception of being a small entity amid the vastness of the universe, indeed, contributes to the melancholy of recalling the past. He becomes beleaguered by this enormity and fails to pray since he feels that his plea may remain unheard. Such existential anguish evolves from his perception of being tied to the fate of a vast universe. Perceptibly, Jim feels that “what would be” cannot be altered in this world. Yet in the novel, Nature functions as a resource of motivation and enthusiasm. In this man-and-nature association, nature’s role is, visibly, two-folds. On one hand, it replicates Jim’s and Antonia’s emotional state of mind. On the contrary, it shapes and determines their emotional state. Unlike Jim’s timorous presence amid the vast wilderness of Nebraska’s prairie, the river serves as a symbol of liberty, which makes him feel liberated and excited. All over again, this same vast universe which evokes Jim’s existential anguish invites Antonia to construct a harmonious connection with it. Referring to Antonia’s connection with Nebraska’s Praries Carol Leavitt Altieri says, “Cather’s protagonist possesses the imagination and ideas to seek a more hopeful destiny in an unfamiliar territory through coping with hardships and stoically overcoming many of them.” (2) Indeed Jim’s anguish seems to be in conflict with Antonia’s awareness of the Nature and the universe. This twofold influence of the nature and the universe on Jim and Antonia eventually asserts Cather’s philosophy about the indispensability of man and nature. In the novel, different characters perceive it differently. Unlike Jim and Antonia, the other characters perceive the wilderness of Nebraska as the source of pains and sufferings. In opposition to the river’s power to shape Jim’s emotional state, the sunset rather reflects his introspective loneliness, as it is evident in the following lines: “There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky….the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.” (Cather 79) Apart from capturing Jim’s introspective loneliness and nostalgia, the event of the sunset hails nature’s superiority in the man-nature relationship. Both “the forgotten plough” and “its own littleness” remind the readers of the temporariness of man as well his efforts. This temporariness is indeed man’s incompleteness from which unhappiness evolves. Near the beginning of the novel, Jim explains that happiness is to be “dissolved into something complete and great.” (Cather 3) Though Jim does not explicitly define what this “something complete and great” is, for Jim, in a remote sense, this complete and great thing is nature itself. Also Antonia is a symbol of this completeness and greatness, for Jim, since she has merged herself and bonded a relationship of harmony with Nature. Jim remarks, “More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood” (Cather 2). Indeed Antonia represents the completeness because she could assimilate herself into her surrounding which is apparently hostile and strange, as Kim Well comments: If in Book one Antonia represents the eternal endurance under supreme hardship of woman appointed propagator of the race, and in Book II she represents the overflowing liveliness and energetic abundance of physical woman come to the flower, in Books III and IV she symbolizes the calm and faithful endurance of woman eternally wronged . . (3) Through her struggle to win this hostile environment, Antonia rather assimilates Nature into herself. In this regard, Carol Leavitt Altieri comments, “The heart of the novel, however, lies in Antonia’s harmony and creativity with her environment and her contribution to the creation of new lives and a new country” (Alteiri 3). Jim’s strong attachment to the Nebraska’s plain contributes greatly to his romantic and nostalgic personality. Even after two decades of detachment, he could not forget this bond with the environment of Nebraska. In his narration, the past is thoroughly permeated with the romantic details of the country landscape. In her novel, Cather portrays the narrator-protagonist’s Jim’s attempt to establish a connection between his past and present. Though he is now an establish lawyer in New York, he cannot evade the memory of childhood on the prairie of Nebraska. In his present urban life, he is oft-repeatedly carried away to his days with Antonia amid the wilderness of Nebraska. Even though he endeavors to revive those days in his narrative, the melancholic and nostalgic tone of the narration is essentially induced by his perception about the irrecoverable nature of the past. Jim’s narration revolves around the highly nostalgic memories of his childhood. Indeed, Antonia as well as the beautiful environment of the Nebraska-prairie remain at the center of his effort reconnect his long-lost past with his present life as a lawyer. Indeed, Jim cannot evade his past days from urban life. But though he once lets Antonia drift away from his life twenty years ago, he again comes back to Antonia with an attempt to incorporate his past into his present life. Works Cited Altieri, Carol Leavitt. “Willa Cather’s My Antonia: the Happiness and the Curse”, March 4, 2012. Available at Cather, Willa. My Antonia, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954 Wells, Kim. “My Antonia: a Survey of Critical Attitudes”. 27 November, 2000. 30 March 2013. Available at www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/pdf/antonia.pdf Read More