My Antonia Essay, Research Paper

Writer: Willa Sibert Cather, Nebraska & # 8217 ; s most celebrated writer was born in Virginia.

At the age of 10 she moved with her household to Webster County, Nebraska. Many of

Cather & # 8217 ; s familiarities and Red Cloud country scenes can be recognized in her

Hagiographas. Cather wrote poesy, short narratives, essays and novels, winning many

awards. In 1920 she won the Pulitzer Prize for her fresh One of Ours, about a

Nebraska farm male child who went off to World War I. Willa Cather & # 8217 ; s repute as 1

of America & # 8217 ; s finest novelists rests on her novels about Nebraska and the

American Southwest. These novels express her deep love of the land and her

antipathy for the philistinism and conformity of modern life. Devoted to values

such as the importance of household and the demand for human bravery and self-respect, she

created strong female characters whose kind of strength and finding had

antecedently been attributed to merely work forces. My Antonia, one of Cather & # 8217 ; s best plants,

is an unconventional, romantic novel of prairie life. It tells the narrative of a

singular adult female whose strength and passion epitomize the innovator spirit.

Fictional characters: Jim Burden & # 8211 ; The adult male narrating the narrative. Antonia Shimerda -The

girl of Bohemian immigrants and the heroine of the narrative. Ambrosch Shimerda

– Antonia & # 8217 ; s mean brother Marek Shimerda -Antonia & # 8217 ; s mentally handicapped brother.

Yulka Shimerda & # 8211 ; Antonia & # 8217 ; s younger sister. Mr. and Mrs. Shimerda & # 8211 ; Antonia & # 8217 ; s

gently male parent who committed self-destruction, and her bitter, kicking female parent. Larry

Donovan & # 8211 ; The adult male Antonia idea was traveling to get married her. Lena Lingard & # 8211 ; A miss

that Jim grew up with and was successful. Anton Cuzak & # 8211 ; Antonia & # 8217 ; s hubby. The

Book The book begins with an debut. In the debut it tells about

James Quale Burden ( Jim Burden ) and how the narrative came to be written. The

debut is written by a adult female who is an old friend to Jim and who grew up

in the same Nebraska town as he did. They are both now populating in New York where

Jim is a successful attorney. She tells about Jim & # 8217 ; s married woman, Genevieve, who she does

non like, and doesn & # 8217 ; t believe she is good suited for Jim. They start speaking about

Antonia, who they both knew and admired, and inquiring why something wasn & # 8217 ; T

written about her. Calendar months subsequently, Jim brings her what he had written and She

writes the narrative as Jim had written it. The narrative begins with 10 twelvemonth old

Jim Burden going from Virginia to Nebraska to populate with his grandparents

after losing his parents. They live on a prairie farm and Jim enjoys the land

and making jobs and being with his grandparents and their hired aid. The

writer shows her love of the land by the manner she has Jim to depict it:

“ The new state lay unfastened before me: there were no fencings in those yearss,

and I could take my ain manner over the grass uplands, swearing my pony to acquire me

place once more. . . . I used to love to float along the pale-yellow corn fields,

looking for the moist musca volitanss one sometimes found at their borders, where the

smartweed shortly turned a rich Cu coloring material and the narrow brown foliages hung

curled like cocoons about the conceited articulations of the root. Sometimes I went south

to see our German neighbors and to look up to their Indian bean grove, or to see the

large elm tree that grew up out of a deep cleft in the Earth and had a hawk & # 8217 ; s nest

in its subdivisions ” He shortly met the Bohemian immigrants, the Shimerdas, who

had come out on the same train as he had. He shortly became friends with their

girl, Antonia, whom he thought was really reasonably. “ I remember what the

music director said about her eyes. They were large and brown and full of light, like

the Sun reflecting on brown pools in the wood. Her tegument was brown excessively, and in her

cheeks she had a freshness of rich, dark colour. ” The Shirmadas had been conned

into purchasing their topographic point. They lived in a dingy, soil floor cave and were really

hapless. They didn & # 8217 ; t speak English. Jim started learning Antonia English, and she

was a good scholar. Antonia & # 8217 ; s father felt that he couldn & # 8217 ; t cover with the strains

of his new life and back up his household so he committed self-destruction. She is forced to

make the work of a adult male and bends

from a soft immature lady into a adult male, in some

ways. The elements of merriment in her childhood were few and far in between.

& # 8216 ; Antonia & # 8217 ; s life is full of letdown and she is forced to turn up much excessively

rapidly. The route she takes is full of ditches and decompression sicknesss but it clears and

straightens in the terminal. Equally shortly as her male parent is buried, Antonia realizes that

she now has a heavy load on her shoulders. Since she is one of the eldest in

the household, she must now work to set nutrient on their tabular array. Her female parent is a

whiner and can & # 8217 ; t talk English, her oldest brother, Ambrosch, is strong,

mean and non good liked, the 2nd oldest brother, Marek, is mentally and

physically handicapped and her sister, Yulka, is still a child. With the aid

of their neighbours, the Burdens, & # 8216 ; Antonia is able to set up a meager life

for her household. She does this by working on her farm every bit good as the other farms

in the country. While this work is really good for the household, & # 8216 ; Antonia is

turned into a unsmooth and wild animal. When she is old plenty, & # 8216 ; Antonia leaves

the prairies and goes in to town to happen work. She becomes what we would name

today, a live-in housekeeper. She works difficult and sends all of her rewards place to

aid her female parent and siblings on the farm. The hours were long and the interruptions few

so when she did acquire to travel out, & # 8216 ; Antonia and her friends create rather a

repute for themselves. She somehow gets assorted up with the incorrect crowd and

easy begins to lose the award and regard she worked so difficult to derive. & # 8216 ; Antonia

foliages to get married a “ good-for-nothing “ and comes place entirely, sorrowful and

dejected. Her fianc? vitamin E had told her that they had been married but so ran off

without her. & # 8216 ; Antonia subsequently gives birth to a miss, the illicit kid of

this supposed matrimony. She takes great pride in her girl but with her

birth, she loses whatever esteem she had left. Old ages subsequently, & # 8216 ; Antonia is found

in Hastings, Nebraska, married with 11 kids. Her dream has come true, to

have land of her ain and many delicious small kids running wild all over

the topographic point. She works difficult and is weary but has been repaid as her want has been

fulfilled. She has her land, her household, her garden and she still has the fire

of life within her. & # 8216 ; Antonia & # 8217 ; s life was a hard one. The loads that she

had to transport were non meant for her shoulders. All through her life & # 8217 ; s

troubles she remained devoted to whatever household she had. Ideas of her

household ever came before ideas of herself. “ She lent herself to

immemorial homo attitudes which we recognize by inherent aptitude as cosmopolitan and true.

. . She was a beat-up adult female now, non a lovely miss ; but she still had that

something which fires the imaginativeness, could still halt one & # 8217 ; s breath for a

minute by a expression or gesture that someway revealed the significance in common things.

She had merely to stand in the grove, to set her manus on a small crab tree and

look up at the apples, to do you experience the goodness of planting and care and

reaping at last. All the strong things of her bosom came out in her organic structure,

that had been so indefatigable in functioning generous emotions. ” Jim Burden makes

an of import sociological observation when he notes that the town boys admire

the Bohemian misss, but won & # 8217 ; t get married them ; while the hard-working Bohemian adult females

aid to do their farms profitable, and the “ refined & # 8217 ; town misss don & # 8217 ; t. He

so lives out this observation by get marrieding & # 8216 ; good & # 8217 ; , a adult female whose wealth and

household connexions help set up him in concern ( as marrying Antonia would non

– would, in fact, have prevented him from of all time accomplishing the position he has

acquired at the beginning of the book ) , but who brings him neither felicity nor

kids. Antonia, in malice of her troubles with her household and her first

effort at matrimony, does accomplish a existent and satisfactory life. Remarks When I

finished this book, I realized how many lessons I had learned about life. For

case, life may be difficult but it & # 8217 ; s the difficult times that make us stronger. It is

a fantastic narrative of a strong adult female who builds a great life out of a bad

state of affairs.

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