My Antonia 2 Essay, Research Paper

The Use of Parallels and Imagery in My Antonia

by: D.P. ( AKiN )

My Antonia, by Willa Cather, is a book following the narrative of a immature adult male, Jim Burden, and his relationship with a immature adult female, Antonia Shimerda. Jim narrates the full narrative in first individual, associating histories and memories of his childhood with Antonia. He traces his coming to the Nebraska where he and Antonia meet and turn up. Jim looks back on all of his childhood scenes with Antonia with about heartbreaking nostalgia. My Antonia, is a book that makes many analogues to the unhappiness and infirmity, but besides the quiet beauty in life, and leaves the reader with a sense of profound sorrow. One of the chief ways Cather is able to raise these emotions in the reader is through the on-going subject of inevitable fate and separation.

Cather sets the tone of the narrative at the really beginning, a immature Jim Burden & # 8217 ; s parents have died go forthing him to travel to Nebraska to populate with his grandparents. Right from the start Cather workss the seeds of forsaking, with the conclusiveness of decease, in Jim & # 8217 ; s life. When he arrives in Nebraska he is really asleep to life, but he is shortly caught up in day-to-day life on his grandparents farm. He is blissfully happy when he foremost meets Antonia. They become great friends and portion legion escapades.

Cather uses brief, attractively descriptive and nostalgic remembrances of state of affairss and feelings to increase the hurting and unhappiness of the separations that she places throughout the book. An first-class illustration of this is the manner Cather builds up to Mr. Shimerda & # 8217 ; s self-destruction.

Mrs. Cather describes Antonia & # 8217 ; s love and strong bond with her male parent. Antonia negotiations of how much he loved the old state, how much he wanted to remain at that place and populate among his friends. She describes the beautiful relationship of her male parent and a trombone participant and how much her male parent had cried and pleaded with Antonia & # 8217 ; s female parent to remain in the old state. Out of love and responsibility, Antonia & # 8217 ; s male parent had given up everything he loved for his household. This builds the reader up to trusting that possibly the male parent can once more be happy in the America, that possibly everything will be all right. Then he kills himself. An disconnected and improbably sad and affecting farewell. The tendency of farewell is get downing to be associated with the conclusiveness of decease.

Another manner Cather expresses the inevitableness of these separations is through the changing seasons. In summer everyone in the narrative is happy and Cather uses beautiful, descriptive imagination that brings to life a universe that is alive and fantastic. Inevitably Thursday

ough, summer is followed by the sobering fact of winter. Winter, in Cather’s narrative that becomes synonymous with decease, illness and separation. Winter is ever loathed by the characters in the narrative, but most of them besides find a beauty in it. This suggests that in the inevitableness of the unhappiness and farewells of life, there is some significance in it.

In the class of the narrative, the two Russians come and travel, stating their ain narrative of unhappiness. Otto and Jake leave every bit good. A important fact about Otto and Jake is that they are the first major characters in the narrative to go forth. After all of their engagement in Jim & # 8217 ; s development and the stableness they provide they leave really all of a sudden. They leave because of fortunes that weren & # 8217 ; t hone and because their involvements and motivations conflict with those of Jim and his grandparents. An interesting analogue to Jim and Antonia & # 8217 ; s relationship.

In a book with so many perennial cases of heartbreaking separations would about surely become predictable and repetitive. However Cather avoids this by seeing the action through Jim & # 8217 ; s eyes and Jim & # 8217 ; s ideas. Since Jim himself can barely be cognizant of the mammoth forces of destiny traveling about him, he keeps a fantastic optimism. Cather expresses this in Jim & # 8217 ; s love of life and attending to imagery that is associated with Jim & # 8217 ; s felicity. This keeps the reader about every bit naif as Jim himself, and each crisis, no affair how many there are still comes as a jar of unhappiness.

All of this culminates in the concluding daze of Jim and Antonia non run offing and populating merrily of all time after. The reader is caught up in Jim & # 8217 ; s optimism on life and Antonia & # 8217 ; s vigorous personality, anticipating some passionate scene that ne’er comes. Rather, they grow apart in a quiet manner, and ne’er discourse the possibility of a relationship, even though they have an improbably strong one already. Finally, Antonia is wholly out of Jim & # 8217 ; s range and Jim realizes that she is gone from him with the & # 8220 ; conclusiveness of decease & # 8221 ; . He does non travel into tantrums over this, instead he accepts it and looks at all the beautiful times he and Antonia shared. Much in the same manner that he could wonder at winter & # 8221 ; s beauty when all around him it brought down decease and illness.

Mrs. Cather & # 8221 ; s carefully drawn analogues in the narrative that build up to Antonia and Jim & # 8217 ; s separation was a genuinely effectual method of indicating out its calamity. However she besides used other tools, such as imagination and short anecdotes to farther convey her message. All together these elements, plus a good narrative and secret plan make My Antonia an first-class all around book, worthy of being called a authoritative.