BARRON'S BOOK NOTES WILLA CATHER'S MY ANTONIA ^^^^^^^^^^WILLA CATHER: THE AUTHOR AND HER TIMES Willa Cather was born, in 1873, during an exciting period in American history wh en the Middle West was settled by courageous pioneers, some from the East, some from Europe. The eldest of seven children, Cather spent her first years in the E ast, living in a lovely Virginia house that had been in the family for several g enerations. When she was nine, Willa Cather's life changed. Relatives had sent glowing repor ts of farming opportunities in the central Nebraska region called "the Divide." The Cathers were susceptible to tuberculosis and hoped the dry Nebraska climate would be more favorable than that of humid Virginia. In 1883 Willa Cather and he r family journeyed by rail to join their extended family in the small settlement west of Red Cloud that was already known as Catherton. Although there were no longer many covered wagons, buffalo, or Indians in Nebras ka, the huge prairie rippling with reddish grass seemed wild and foreign to Will a Cather. So did her new neighbors. Homesteading immigrants from all over Europe , they were farming previously unbroken prairie land. These people and this land inspired My Antonia and Cather's other Midwestern novels. Until she was ten years old, Willa Cather was educated at home, first by her Vir ginia grandmother, then by her Nebraska grandmother. They introduced her to Shak espeare and the Greek and Latin classics, and encouraged the intelligent and out going girl to think for herself at a young age. Many aspects of my Antonia are autobiographical. The fictional town of Black Haw k is based on Red Cloud. Just like Jim Burden (the novel's narrator), young Will a Cather arrived by train and then rode the rest of the way to her grandparents' house--about fifteen miles--in the straw-covered bed of a farm wagon. Her grand parents' house was exactly like Jim's. And, like him, the young Willa made frien ds with the immigrant families nearby. One of these families, the Sadileks from Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia, pr ovided the model for the Shimerda family in My Antonia. Mr. Sadilek, a musician, was so depressed by the bleak new country that he shot himself after breaking h is violin across his knee. His daughter Annie was the inspiration for Antonia. S he worked in the home of the Miner family, the model for the Harlings in the boo k. A year or so after they arrived on the farm, Willa Cather's parents moved the fa mily into Red Cloud. She and her mother were both homesick and ill, and her fath er didn't like the backbreaking farm work. He went into real estate loans and in surance, and Willa attended a school for the first time. In Red Cloud, as she al ways had, the girl spent much of her time math adults. An Englishman, who read L atin with her, let her help with experiments in his laboratory. She decided she wanted to become a doctor and persuaded two of the town's physicians to let her accompany them on their rounds. About this time, she began calling herself Willi am Cather, M.D. As you see, Cather not only thought of herself as a doctor, she thought of herse lf as a boy. She cut her hair very short (shocking in those days), dressed boyis hly, and was close to her two younger brothers, who called her "Willie." Not many girls went to college in those days, but it never occurred to Cather no t to. At the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the state capital, she continued to lead an independent and unconventional life. Among the influential friends s he made were two families who owned newspapers. Coincidentally, during her first year at the university, a teacher gave one of her essays to the Nebraska State Journal, the largest of five papers in Lincoln. Once she had seen her initials i n print, she decided to become an author, not a doctor. For the college literary magazine and the Journal, she described people and plac es which would eventually make their way into her books. She sometimes insulted people by publishing thinly disguised character sketches of them. As the newspap er's drama and book critic, she expressed decisive views on art and life. She was so busy during her senior year writing newspaper articles and practice-t eaching that her other schoolwork suffered. In courses that interested her, she read far beyond the requirements (sometimes more than her teachers had read), bu t she resented "required reading." After she became famous, she said that she di dn't want students to be forced to read her books, so she wouldn't let her work be printed in school editions or in anthologies. As she had as a child, Cather continued to think "like a man." She didn't accept her generation's idea that women should be passive, domestic, and uneducated. I nstead she actively pursued a literary life and a worldly perspective which gave her work universal appeal. After being graduated from college in 1895, Cather moved back home for a year an d wrote short stories as well as newspaper columns. When she was twenty-three, a publisher invited her to edit a new ladies' magazine in Pittsburgh. After she l eft the prairie she began to feel a nostalgia for the land and people of "the Di vide" which lasted all her life. She liked to say that the years between eight a nd fifteen are the most important. Her own vivid memories of those years are rec reated for you in My Antonia. For the next ten years Willa Cather worked in Pittsburgh at various jobs, and co ntinued to send columns about the books and culture of the East back to papers i n Lincoln. For scholars today, those columns form a sort of diary of Cather's th oughts on the arts and artists during her twenties. Although she practiced journ alism for more than half her life, she knew she would eventually write novels, a nd she already thought of herself as a literary artist. When she placed her firs t short story in a national magazine in 1900, she decided to devote herself to w riting fiction instead of newspaper articles. To support herself she taught Engl ish in Pittsburgh high schools for five years. By this time she had been invited to live in the home of Isabelle McClung and he r parents. Isabelle was young, attractive, and a wealthy arts patron who encoura ged Cather in her writing. The two became inseparable. Although Isabelle later m arried, their friendship remained so vital to Cather that one critic called Isab elle "the great love of her life." (Forty years later when Isabelle died, Cather said she realized that Isabelle had been the person for whom all her books had been written.) Cather's early boyishness and her later close friendship with several women (inc luding her companion of forty years, Edith Lewis) make it unsurprising that she never married. Although the nature of these friendships remains a matter of spec ulation, Cather herself always claimed that generally art and marriage don't mix because an artist must become a "human sacrifice" to the god of art. Eventually, Cather's single-mindedness paid off. Her poetry and short stories dr ew the attention of the New York publisher S.S. McClure. In 1906 she moved there to work on the staff of the famous McClure's magazine. She stayed six years, th ree of them as managing editor. While researching articles, hunting for talented contributors in Europe and at home, and meeting people in the publishing world, she still found time to write her own stories. Still, at nearly forty she had not yet written a novel. Some people have called this journalistic period a "literary detour" which delayed her career as a novel ist until the second half of her life. She herself called it her "apprenticeship ." She evidently learned her trade well, because in the next thirty years she pr oduced a dozen novels, several of which have become classics of American literat ure. My Antonia is probably the most famous. A reader must look to the novels for clues about Cather's later life. When she b ecame well known, she grew intensely private. She avoided publicity. Burning all the personal letters she could get back from her friends, she specified that no surviving letters were ever to be published (though nearly a thousand are now a vailable to scholars in libraries). Film versions of her works were prohibited. She authorized only certain of her writings to be collected. Cather wanted to be remembered for her best work, and she did everything she could to protect it fr om being tarnished by her lesser efforts. Her first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912), was influenced by the works of Henry James and Edith Wharton, both of whom Cather admired. Then she met the Maine wr iter Sarah Orne Jewett, who encouraged her to write about a more familiar geogra phical region and to develop her own style. She was ripe for this advice, and la ter commented that "life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to remem ber." In the next three books, Cather found the subjects and personal style that made her famous. She drew on her memories of prairie spaces and pioneer life. Sometim es called her pastoral or Western novels, they create vibrant portraits of three strong women. O Pioneers! (1913) is divided into two parts. Experimenting, she abandoned the conventional plot structure of novels of her day, and found that s he could still create an effective story. (You will note how she carried this ex periment even further in My Antonia.) The next novel, Song of the Lark (1915), d eals with one of Cather's favorite themes: the escape of a gifted person from un sympathetic surroundings. About Thea, the novel's heroine (and the most autobiog raphical of all her characters), she wrote later that she wanted to show "the wa y in which commonplace occurrences fell together to liberate her from commonness ." My Antonia (1918) is a variation on the same theme. Antonia, an immigrant from B ohemia, has been called a natural earth mother who by the end of the story fulfi lls her destiny by taming the wild prairie and making it fruitful. She creates a kind of paradise of beauty, resourcefulness, and pure, traditional values. To m atch this sense of purity, Cather used a strong, uncluttered language, and a loo se, unconventional structure of which she was now a master. The book is stocked with images and experiences from her past. Other American novelists writing in the early twentieth century also chose to lo ok back and recapture the strenuous, yet inspired, pioneer life. Among the most well known of these works are: O.E. Rolvaag's depiction of Norwegians in Minneso ta, Giants in the Earth; Conrad Richter's three-part work, The Awakening Land, a bout pioneers in Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley; and the series of frontier me moirs for young people by Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose second volume, Little Hous e on the Prairie, was the inspiration for a popular television series. Like many Americans, Cather was disillusioned when World War I brought not peace but more materialism to the world. "The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabou ts," she later wrote. Her next group of novels, sometimes called her "middle per iod," reflect this sadness. She turned away from realism. She tried to create a world of emotions with her characters, images, and symbols. The most successful of these novels was A Lost Lady (1923), which many readers h ave termed a small masterpiece. A less well-written novel, One of Ours (1922), h ad brought her the Pulitzer Prize, securing her literary reputation. Cather withdrew more and more from the modern world in her writing. She establis hed a comfortable home for herself in New York City where she lived with her fri end, Edith Lewis, and a French housekeeper. She traveled a great deal--to New Ha mpshire, New Brunswick (Canada), Europe, and to the Southwest where she visited her favorite brother. Her next two novels became bestsellers, although some critics at the time dismis sed them as escapist. One, Death Comes to the Archbishop (1927), is now consider ed to be one of Cather's best works. It is based on historical figures, two Fren ch missionaries in New Mexico just after the Mexican War. Interwoven in the stor y are local legends, stories of saints and miracles, and facts about the region and landscape. The other, Shadows on the Rock (1931) has a similar theme, the sp read of French Catholicism in the wilderness, but this time in fifteenth century Quebec. Cather published three excellent short stories under the title Obscure Destinies in 1932. Further recollections of her Nebraska youth, two of the stories, "Neig hbor Rosicky" and "Old Mrs. Harris," may be read as sequels to My Antonia. The author lived the last fifteen years of her life quietly, surrounded by her f riends. Many, like the family of violinist Yehudi Menuhin, were from the world o f music. She published two minor novels and a group of essays during this period and continued to receive honors. By the end of her life she had accumulated nin e honorary degrees and many literary awards. Cather wrote that her fiction was her "cremated youth." Yet she insisted that no one had the right to draw connections between her real life and her fiction. He r fierce privacy during her life has not stopped scholars from investigating tho se connections since her death in 1947. Since then, eight books of her other wri tings have been published as well as many studies of her life and evolution as a writer. When she died at the age of 73, her love of the land was reflected in these word s from My Antonia carved on her tombstone: "...that is happiness; to be dissolve d into something complete and great."

^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: THE PLOT In the Introduction, the author writes about meeting an old acquaintance, Jim Bu rden, a New York-based lawyer for a Western railroad. They are on a train and th e time is around 1915. They discuss their childhood friend Antonia Shimerda, abo ut whom Jim is writing a memoir. Both feel that Antonia represents "the whole ad venture of our childhood." Later in New York, Burden brings Cather the novel tha t you read now. Book I also opens on a train--this time in the early 1880s. Ten-year-old Jim has been orphaned and is traveling from Virginia to live with his grandparents on t heir Nebraska farm. On the same train are the Shimerdas, who are emigrating from Bohemia and will be the Burdens' nearest neighbors. Jim is too shy to meet four teen-year-old Antonia, the only member of the family who speaks any English. Lat er, she will become his playmate. The Shimerdas have come to America at Mrs. Shimerda's insistence so that their e ldest son, Ambrosch, can find success. Like his mother, Ambrosch is shrewd and g reedy. His father is a cultured man, a weaver who enjoyed playing the violin in the old country. From the beginning, the unfamiliar prairie landscape deeply affects young Jim. H is descriptions of the land and seasons run through the novel like a recurring s ong. Jim's grandfather is religious, hardworking, and a respected community lead er. He and Jim's grandmother have created a productive farm and a pleasant home. Their farm contrasts sharply with the one for which the Shimerdas overpaid, whi ch has only an earth dugout for shelter and no crops, poultry, or cows. The immi grants barely survive their first winter. Jim teaches English to Antonia, and they have great adventures roaming about the prairie. Jim kills a giant rattlesnake at a colony of prairie dogs. They learn the chilling story of their Russian neighbors, Peter and Pavel. After the first snowfall, they take a long ride over the transformed landscape in Jim's new slei gh, pulled by his pony. Jim's grandparents try to help the Shimerdas through the winter by taking them supplies. But the hardships are too much for the homesick Mr. Shimerda, who commits suicide. Antonia's life is changed by her father's death. She must work in the fields for her brother Ambrosch instead of getting an education. Jim's grandfather invites Ambrosch to work for him during the threshing season, and his grandmother emplo ys Antonia in the kitchen. During these few weeks the Burdens enjoy Antonia's ch eerful personality, and Jim's grandmother begins to take a protective interest i n her. Weary of farming and wanting the best education for thirteen-year-old Jim, the B urdens move into the town of Black Hawk at the beginning of Book II. Grandmother gets Antonia a job with their next door neighbors, the Harlings. (A number of i mmigrant girls from nearby farms have come to town to earn money for their famil ies--they are known as "the hired girls.") Antonia finds in Mrs. Harling a model for her own life. Jim frequently spends time with the Harlings and Antonia. Antonia enjoys a social life that summer that includes attending dances. Soon sh e becomes so popular that stern Mr. Harling forces her to choose between the dan ces or his employment. She leaves to take a job in the home of the lecherous Wic k Cutter. Jim doesn't enjoy the company of the young people of the town and is not encoura ged to socialize with the hired girls. As he prepares for college, he can barely wait to leave Black Hawk. After escaping Cutter's plot to rape her, Antonia ret urns to live on her family's farm. Jim is studying at the university in Lincoln at the opening of Book III. A line from his Latin reading sticks in his mind: Optima dies... prima fugit (the novel 's epigraph) which means the best days are the first to flee. He acknowledges hi s nostalgia for the places and people of his youth. In Lincoln, one of Antonia's friends, Lena Lingard, renews her acquaintance with Jim. He has always found her attractive, and now they spend so much time togeth er that he neglects his studies. His favorite teacher persuades Jim to transfer to Harvard to pursue serious academics. Book IV finds Jim home for the summer after graduation from Harvard. He hears th at Antonia was deserted by Larry Donovan, the train conductor she planned to mar ry. Although she had returned home pregnant and disgraced, she now cherishes her baby daughter and works uncomplainingly for her older brother. Jim finds Antoni a stronger than ever, and they reaffirm their friendship. In Book V, Jim is a New York lawyer. Twenty years have elapsed, and he decides t o visit Antonia again. Now married to a kind Bohemian, she has ten more children and is the mistress of a productive farm. Jim surprises her, and they have a jo yous reunion. Delighted by her children, Jim rediscovers his own child-like natu re. Antonia represents to Jim all that is nourishing and fruitful about the prai rie and its people.

Of the more than fifty characters in My Antonia, only a small number directly af fect the lives of the main figures. However, even the most minor characters have been sharply portrayed, and reappear often in the background. Here we will disc uss only those who play a significant role in the story. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: JIM BURDEN The narrator, Jim Burden, never describes himself. You learn about him instead t hrough what he says and does, and what other people say about him. In the Introd uction you meet him first as a successful railroad lawyer. This job allows him t o travel often through the land he grew up in and still loves. You also learn th at he has always been a romantic, even though he has chosen as his wife a cold w oman who leads her own life. At the beginning of his memoir, Jim is a ten-year-old orphan arriving to live wi th his grandparents. He is shy yet independent, and enjoys spending time alone. He has strong responses to the land and the people he meets: he feels warmly tow ard Antonia and her father but is suspicious of her mother and brother. When Ant onia tries to give Jim a silver ring in gratitude for her first English lesson, he refuses her gift as "reckless and extravagant." Yet her generous and spontane ous nature fascinates him all his life, though he himself is either unwilling or afraid to become directly involved with her. He generally stands back from life and observes. Jim is smart. His academic success is partly due to his willingness to deny the emotional side of his nature. A high point of his life occurs when the country g irls admire his high school graduation speech. Unlike the other boys his age, hi s mind is on college, not marriage. Even so, his friendship with the hired girls is very important to him. After he becomes a lawyer, Jim's knowledge of the prairie helps him achieve succ ess with the railroad. Cosmopolitan as he becomes, he often thinks of Nebraska a nd his early friends. Over twenty years he gets occasional news of Antonia but f ears meeting her as a middle-aged woman. Finally one summer, when he pays her an unexpected visit, Jim begins to break out of his role as observer. He realizes he feels deep emotion for the Cuzaks, as if he has spontaneously become a member of the family. Is there significance in Jim Burden's name? Has he felt like a burden on his gra ndparents who adopted him? Is he carrying a burden--perhaps the story of the Neb raska prairie and the pioneer woman who symbolizes it? ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: ANTONIA SHIMERDA CUZAK (TONY) Cather tells us from the first how to pronounce the name Antonia: An'-ton-ee-ah, with the stress on the first syllable. That European detail finally sets the to ne for the story of the immigrants from Bohemia. In contrast to Jim, physical descriptions of Antonia are plentiful in the novel. Recalling the first time he met the fourteen-year-old girl, Jim writes that her eyes were "like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood," and her brown hair "curly and wild-looking." Her fine tanned skin and cheeks "like... dark red plu ms" will be noted again and again. Antonia is healthy and happy, at one with her self and with nature. Antonia is her father's daughter--bright, sensitive, eager, and quick to learn. "Tony," as Jim calls her, is spontaneous and generous, eager to emphasize and ad mire the best in others. She's sympathetic to all the members of her family, eve n the difficult ones. You see her motherly softheartedness over the dying insect in the garden, Peter and Pavel's troubles, and her father's homesick hopelessne ss. However, like her peasant mother, Antonia is a survivor. After her father's deat h, she accepts that life is going to be hard. She gives up her hopes of going to school in order to work in the fields. Grandmother Burden later helps her to ge t a job in town with Mrs. Harling, so she won't "lose all her nice ways and get rough ones." Mrs. Harling becomes her spiritual mother, the woman after whom she will model her own life, family, and well-run home. Antonia is based on an immigrant woman named Annie Sadilek Pavelka whom Willa Ca ther knew and admired in Red Cloud. Annie was the hired girl of the Cathers' nei ghbors. Like her model, Antonia is an independent spirit. As she matures into ra diant womanhood she has many admirers but stubbornly falls in love with an unpri ncipled man she feels sorry for. After he leaves her unwed and pregnant, she ove rcomes her disillusionment, determined to make a better life. Though Antonia never appears in Book Ill, Jim and Lena frequently speak of her g ood-natured devotion to people. When Jim meets her again in Book IV, he realizes that Antonia's unhappy love affair has deepened her strength and understanding. She seems to find comfort in being outdoors alone and in taking loving care of her baby daughter. This picture of her prepares you for finding her twenty years later the mother of many happy and helpful children, the wife of an indulgent h usband, and the proud mistress of a productive farm. Knowing her again in mid-li fe, Jim thinks, "It was no wonder her sons stood tall and straight. She was a ri ch mine of life, like the founders of early races." Clearly she is the embodimen t of the old pioneer values of family ties, honest work, and love of the land. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: GRANDMOTHER BURDEN (EMMALINE) Jim's grandmother cries as she first looks at him sleeping after his journey fro m Virginia. She misses her son, Jim's recently deceased father. Though somewhat reserved, Grandmother has strong feelings, and becomes a good mother to her gran dson. Grandmother Burden is a tall, dark, weathered woman, with a slightly shrill and anxious voice. She unquestioningly supports her pious husband. Her house and lar ge garden are efficiently organized and pleasant. Born in Virginia, she retains a Southern politeness that will not permit her to speak sharply to Mrs. Shimerda even when provoked. Mrs. Burden is friendly to all living things, from the badgers that sometimes ta ke a chicken, to the Shimerdas who have untidy and grasping ways. She talks loud ly to the foreign Shimerdas as though they were deaf, but takes a particular int erest in Antonia. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: GRANDFATHER BURDEN (JOSIAH) Jim's grandfather looks like the popular image of an imposing biblical patriarch . His long white beard and bright blue eyes add to his natural dignity. He says very little, and the family learns his thoughts from the prayers he offers aloud . A Baptist, Grandfather reads the Bible daily. While strict in his own religion , he demonstrates tolerance, even acceptance, toward others so long as they beli eve strongly in their own faith. Grandfather practices what he preaches; he is g enerous and fair, a leader in the community. He pays Jim's way at college, first in Lincoln and then at Harvard. The Grandfather lives according to the biblical commandments and expects others to do the same. He applies these ancient laws to a new world in a manner typical of nineteenth century Americans. He has a vision of America's future that he wo rks to make a reality. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: JAKE MARPOLE Jake, a young farmhand for the Burdens in Virginia, accompanies the orphaned Jim to Nebraska. There he works for Grandfather Burden and becomes friends with Ott o, the other hired man. Jake is--and probably always will be--an overgrown kid, with unruly hair, a gullible nature, and little sense of how to get along in the world. You like him because, despite his often violent temper, he is good to Ji m and devoted to the Burdens. After he helps them move into Black Hawk, he follo ws Otto out West, presumably becoming a drifter. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: OTTO FUCHS Otto, Grandfather's hired hand, looks like a Western desperado from a book Jim's been reading. Wiry and brown, he has a long scar on his cheek, only part of his left ear, and a mustache which he twists up at the ends. He wears a cowboy hat and boots and keeps fancy chaps and spurs in a trunk. Originally from Austria, h e has worked out West as a cowboy, miner, and stagecoach driver. We feel there i s something dark--violence or failure--in his past. He is Mr. Burden's righthand man, a loyal and hard worker. Although he looks ferocious to Jim at first, he is kind, honest and friendly. He loves to sing and tell stories. With his carpentry skills he makes a sleigh for Jim and a coffin for Mr. Shimerda. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: PETER KRAJIEK A distant relative of the Shimerdas, Krajiek has sold them his wretched little f arm for a high price. He uses the fact that he is the only one who speaks their language to cheat them at every opportunity. He continues to live with them on " their" farm, and Jim compares him to a rattlesnake living in a prairie-dog tunne l, preying on the helpless animals. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: MRS. SHIMERDA If Krajiek can be compared to a rattlesnake, you might think of Mrs. Shimerda as a prairie dog; she has shrewd little eyes and a sharp chin, lives in a dugout, and darts in and out of her hole. She is by nature greedy and insensitive to oth ers. Complaining is her habit. She is so selfish and snobbish that "even her mis fortune could not humble her." Though mostly unpleasant, she sometimes invites sympathy, as when she falls to h er knees and cries over Mrs. Burden's gift of food to her nearly starved family the first winter. She wanted to come to the new country so that her eldest son A mbrosch could prosper. This transition soon costs her husband his happiness and his life. Antonia confides to Jim that her mother had been a poor hired girl who m her father married out of a sense of honor. Her upbringing, so different from her husband's, has accentuated their opposite natures. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: MR. SHIMERDA While Grandfather Burden represents the best of the New World, Mr. Shimerda migh t be considered to represent the best of the Old World. He is tall and stooped w ith sad eyes under a pale, craggy brow. Both dignified and emotional, he seems t o have a special bond with Antonia. In Bohemia Mr. Shimerda was such a learned man that priests came to talk with hi m. He was also a skilled artisan, a weaver of expensive fabric. He played music with friends he'd known since childhood, whom he now misses terribly. Old, frail , and homesick, he cannot stand the miseries of the first winter in the cave-lik e dugout, especially after Peter and Pavel, who were able to understand his lang uage, are gone. He is so lonely for their friendship that he visits their abando ned cabin daily until snow prevents him. A considerate and gentle man, he carefu lly prepares his suicide so that it will cause as little trouble as possible aft erwards. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: AMBROSCH SHIMERDA Ambrosch (or Ambroz) is the oldest child of the Shimerdas, and it is primarily f or his future they have come to America. Like his mother, he is greedy and disho nest, but he is also described as smart and far-seeing. He is contemptuous of hi s gentle father, arrogant with his sisters, but hand-in-glove with his scheming mother. He works hard but also makes money by hiring out his sister and retarded brother at full wages. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: YULKA SHIMERDA Yulka (or Julka) is Antonia's pretty, obedient, little sister. In a memorable sc ene, Mrs. Shimerda tries to force Yulka to make the sign of the cross on her dea d father's bandaged head, but Grandmother Burden speaks up and insists that the frightened child not be forced. Later the teenaged Yulka helps Antonia take care of her baby. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: MAREK SHIMERDA Marek is the Shimerda son who is mentally retarded. He cannot speak and only mak es sounds. He craves attention and wants to be friendly and help with the work. Eventually Marek becomes violent and is placed in an institution. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: PETER AND PAVEL Peter and Pavel are Russian bachelors who come to mean a great deal to Antonia's father. Peter is the short, fat, jolly one. He keeps a tidy, pleasant house for the two of them, and enjoys tending his garden and his cow. Always cheerful, he likes company. Pavel, tall, thin, and excitable, is an unhappy figure with an aura of tragedy a bout him. He sometimes works for other farmers as a carpenter. It is he who caus ed the scandal that forced him and Peter to leave Russia. Now his tuberculosis s eems a punishment for his sin. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: WICK CUTTER A Black Hawk money lender, Wick Cutter forces Peter and Pavel into bankruptcy. H e ruthlessly takes advantage whenever he can. When he employs Antonia after she leaves the Harlings, his lecherous designs on her are prevented by Grandmother a nd Jim. He is a pompous, hypocritical moralizer who delights in being unfaithful to his wife. (Wick Cutter's name suggests both "wicked" and "cutthroat.") ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: MRS. CUTTER Mrs. Cutter is a large, frightening looking, hysterical woman with a face "the v ery colour and shape of anger." Because her husband won't give her any money, sh e decorates china to sell. She is constantly outraged by his womanizing. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: THE WIDOW STEAVENS You first read about this generous neighbor at the time of Mr. Shimerda's suicid e. Later on she rents the Burden farm (after they move to Black Hawk) and grows extremely fond of Antonia. Mrs. Steavens helps during Antonia's pregnancy and ma kes certain the new baby gets tender care in its first hours. When Jim comes hom e from college in Book IV, the Widow tells him the story of Antonia's unhappy af fair. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: MRS. HARLING The Norwegian Harlings live next door to the Burdens in Black Hawk, and the stou t and spirited Mrs. Harling is a bundle of productive energy. Decisive and enthu siastic, she creates a home which Jim likes to visit as a change from the sedate life of his grandparents. On Mrs. Burden's recommendation, Mrs. Harling hires A ntonia to work for her, and teaches her how to manage a bustling household. Mrs. Harling participates in the children's entertainments, but when her stern h usband is home, she devotes herself to him. She likes to garden, and is an accom plished amateur pianist. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: MR. HARLING Jim describes Mr. Harling as "autocratic and imperial in his ways." He travels a great deal, buying and selling grain and cattle. When he's home, the children m ust be quiet, and Jim does not feel free to visit. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: FRANCES HARLING Like her father, the eldest Harling daughter is tall and dark and has a good hea d for business. Frances is chief clerk in her father's office. She knows all abo ut the farm people in the area, both financially and personally, "as if they wer e characters in a book or play." Like her mother, Frances is sociable and musica l. She is Jim's friend and confidante. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: LENA LINGARD Pretty young Lena Lingard has yellow hair, violet eyes, and pale skin, "which so mehow made her seem more undressed than other girls." She and Antonia are friend s in the country and later in town. Men find Lena attractive, and Antonia tries to keep her away from Jim, who plans to go away to school. Nevertheless, when Ji m goes to the university in Lincoln, Lena looks him up and they spend a great de al of time together. Nearly all the men who know her, including Jim, claim to be in love with her, but she is true to her intention never to marry. Lena's chara cter contrasts strongly with Antonia's. She wants independence and a city life, while Antonia wants marriage, children, and a farm. Eventually Lena settles in S an Francisco where she earns her own living as a dressmaker. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: LARRY DONOVAN Larry Donovan, an arrogant young train conductor, thinks of himself as irresisti ble to women. He takes Antonia to the dances, and she falls for him. Prepared to marry him, she follows Larry to Denver, where he stays with her as long as her dowry lasts. Then he disappears, leaving Antonia pregnant. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: ANTON CUZAK Antonia's husband is Bohemian like her, and shares her ruddy coloring. Short, wi th curly black hair, he "looked like a humorous philosopher who had hitched up o ne shoulder under the burdens of life." Trained as a furrier, he is not used to farming, and would have become discouraged without Antonia's strength. He is gen tle and accepting, and somewhat amused to be the father of ten children. Even th ough he misses city life, he's devoted to Antonia. Jim finds him "a most compani onable fellow."

^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: SETTING My Antonia is set in southern Nebraska, on a strip of land between the Republica n and Little Blue Rivers called the Divide. Willa Cather grew up here and based the fictional Black Hawk on the actual town of Red Cloud. Most of the town's bui ldings and streets and the surrounding countryside are drawn from her memory and still exist. When the novel opens, farmers in the surrounding countryside are b reaking the sod for the first time. Many even live in sod houses or dugouts scoo ped out of the earth. The seasons rule people's lives, and winter and summer bri ng extreme temperatures. Images of the vast land and its sense of limitless possibilities fill this book. There are no fences, no surveyed roads, no built-up civilization. "There was no thing but land," says Jim Burden, "not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made.... I had the feeling that the world was left behind, t hat we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction." The land is described in detail by Willa Cather. As a child with a scientific be nt, she had learned the specific names of the local plants and animals. Her accu rate descriptions lend richness to our vision of the setting. The Nebraska of the book is both a place and a state of mind. The immigrant pion eers of the 1880s view it as an opportunity to start a new life. For Jim Burden, it is a magical locale for which he feels a nostalgia the rest of his life. The novel opens nearly twenty miles outside of Black Hawk. New settlers--both fr om the eastern states and from overseas--are clearing the land which the previou s generation in their covered wagons had claimed from the Indian and the buffalo . The farmers must make almost everything they need, and survival is a daily str uggle. In Book II, the setting changes when Jim Burden and his grandparents move from t heir farm into town. In Book III, Jim goes to Lincoln to attend the state univer sity. After two years he goes East to Harvard, and then becomes a successful law yer in New York City. For the next twenty-two years we only see Jim on his retur n visits to Nebraska. My Antonia covers about thirty years. As a ten-year-old Jim arrives in Nebraska from Virginia about 1882, and his visit in Book V takes place around 1914. Inter estingly, Willa Cather and her family also moved to Nebraska when she was about Jim's age. Like the Burdens they lived first out on the prairie and then in the town. Like Jim, Cather went to school in Lincoln, lived for a while in Boston, a nd spent most of her adult life in New York. And about the age Jim returns to se e Antonia, Cather also returned to Nebraska and conceived the idea for this book . ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: THEMES The following are themes of My Antonia. 1. THE PAST My Antonia has been called nostalgic and elegiac because it celebrates the past. (An elegy is a melancholic poem lamenting a death.) Some readers have claimed t his theme was Cather's escape from the materialistic present, while others have said it was her way of showing what values should be carried into the future. The inscription on the title page of My Antonia is a quote from Virgil (the Roma n author best known for the epic poem The Aeneid): Optima dies... prima fugit, w hich means the best days are the first to flee. The childhood days were best for Jim Burden, as he discovers when he leaves home. Certainly Cather felt a confli ct between the past and the present. She uses her narrator to view the events of childhood through long years of memory. Each scene seems immediate and vivid, a s if time has been suspended. The scenes become a "retouched mythic landscape" a s one critic put it. After he's become successful professionally, but personally disappointed, Jim re turns to Black Hawk to try to regain some of the warm feelings of the past. He f inds Antonia with her own family, continuing a kind of life he himself has lost. He feels he can become a child again by playing with her children. Jim's emotions about the past can be seen either as regret or affirmation. Despi te the familiar maxim, "you can't go home again," Willa Cather did it in My Anto nia. She said, "A book is made with one's own flesh and blood of years. It is cr emated youth. It is all yours--no one gave it to you." 2. PIONEER VALUES Many of Cather's stories are about pioneers or artists. These two groups of peop le seemed to her to symbolize the best human qualities: energy, freshness, inten sity, nobility. Cather admired beautiful, talented, dedicated people, and she re created them in her books. She based the character of Antonia on Annie Sadilek, the hired girl who worked for her neighbors. She was "one of the truest artists I ever knew in the keenness and sensitiveness of her enjoyment, in her love of p eople and in her willingness to take pains." My Antonia is a story of the person al strength, creative force, and essential goodness of this pioneer woman. Her v alues were family life, harmony with the land, and hard work. Totally confident about her interpretation of goodness, Cather was bold in makin g value judgments. Some readers called this dogmatism and others idealism. Cathe r and her family belonged to the same American tradition of homespun aristocracy as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Though they were f armers, they studied the classics, read and obeyed the Bible, and stood by their unswerving principles. 3. THE LANDSCAPE My Antonia and O Pioneers! are called Cather's pastoral, or Western, novels. The land is more important than just a setting. You will see that Cather views the Nebraskan landscape in two ways. First, the prairie makes her think of the forces of nature--immense, cyclical, a nd unpredictable. When Jim Burden arrives on his grandparents' farm, he is awed by the sight of "nothing but land." His parents are both recently dead, and he's starting life over again. The huge, impersonal land makes him feel that he's le ft behind all that's familiar. The boundless setting gives him a new perspective on his own identity. "Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted ou t." He adopts the attitude that life will take its own course here on the prairi e. Attracted to this idea of the vast universe absorbing him, he feels at one wi th the landscape. Second, Cather views the land as a natural resource. Like the pioneers, she sees its development as valuable progress for mankind. Nebraskan cornfields will sup ply the world, and farming families like Antonia's will become the backbone of m iddle America. The image of the plough magnified against the sun, at the end of Book II, symbolizes the ultimate domination of the uncultivated land through the toil of people like Antonia and her husband. During the course of the novel, tr ees, fences, surveyed roads, growing towns, and neatly ploughed fields all begin to spread over the wild prairie. To Jim Burden, these changes, brought about by the efforts of the pioneers, seem "beautiful and harmonious... like watching th e growth of a great man or of a great idea." In Book I Cather describes one full year--Jim's first in Nebraska. Book I is the longest in the novel, because what happens there has the most importance for Ji m. It is filled with rich descriptions of the seasons and how they affect the pr airie and its people. Jim's carefree childhood is flavored by the land. He'll ca rry that flavor with him wherever he goes as an adult. He will always associate his time in the country with happiness and with Antonia, his playmate. 4. FREEDOM Playing off the theme of the impersonal vastness of the land is the freedom it r epresents. There are no fences. The unpaved road winds around the hills and acro ss the gullies "like a wild thing." It seems to Jim the road to freedom. Another clear symbol of freedom is the river Jim can see from his window when he moves into the town of Black Hawk. Also note the greater freedom of the hired girls as compared to the proper girls of the town. An even broader freedom is that which the immigrants encounter in the New World: the freedom to establish a new life. 5. IMMIGRANTS Two groups of people travel west to settle the prairie. The first group are the Americans from already established areas of the country, like Jim Burden's grand parents from Virginia. The second group are the newer immigrants from Europe who arrive with little money or experience in farming--like Antonia's family. There is some tension between the two groups. When the immigrant daughters come to to wn as hired girls they are looked down on by some of the town families. While he is from a town family, Jim resents this, and feels that the immigrants will som eday "come into their own." He is right; most of the hired girls end up running successful farms and providing the strong American stock of the Midwest. 6. FRIENDSHIP From her early life onward, close friendships meant as much to Cather as family. That human bond runs throughout My Antonia. Jim is befriended by Jake and Otto; Grandfather Burden befriends the Shimerdas; Lena and Tiny remain close friends all their lives and good friends to Antonia and Jim. There is no better way to d escribe Jim and Antonia's complex relationship than as deep friendship. Friendsh ip is seen as the human tie that transcends and outlasts all others. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: STYLE Willa Cather's use of language in My Antonia is evocative and powerful. No study guide can give you the full flavor of the book. Notice how expertly she creates pictures through her carefully chosen words. One way she creates images is by appealing to the five senses. Cather makes you see bright colors, recognize familiar objects, hear sounds, and smell and taste things (one of Jim's first impressions of his grandparents' farmhouse is the sme ll of gingerbread). Another way to make word pictures is to use analogies such as metaphors and simi les. These literary devices compare two unlike things for an unexpected effect. (Metaphors just substitute one thing for the other; similes add the words "like" or "as" to the comparison.) Cather frequently uses both in My Antonia. A good example of her use of metaphor is the description of a plough as "a pictu re writing on the sun." Another is the image of sunflowers as "a gold ribbon acr oss the prairie." Some of Cather's effective similes are: "the road ran about like a wild thing," and "the air was clear and heady as wine." A third technique of creating vivid images is her use of personification, attrib uting human qualities to an object. Examples are: "the nimble air" and "the clem ency of the soft earth roads." Cather had learned the ancient classics in Greek and Latin, first as a child and then as a university student. In her fiction she refined her style until it res embled the understated language of the classics. (You can see her direct tribute to the classics in the section where Jim Burden is reading the Roman writer Vir gil.) Cather clearly stated her literary intention in this famous comment: "Whatever i s felt upon the page without being specifically named there--that, one might say , is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named." Throughou t My Antonia you become aware of feelings which are evoked without being spelled out. That is what makes it moving--and also hard to write about, or describe. Sometimes the author lets her meanings become clear through symbols rather than direct explanations. For instance, the red prairie grass symbolizes freedom, the children's shadows represent the passing of childhood, the plough against the s unset symbolizes cultivation and civilization, and Antonia herself symbolizes th e hard work and fruitfulness of the pioneers. My Antonia has been called poetic, passionate, and heroic. Readers notice the vi vid descriptions and the author's intense affection for the land and characters. The main characters seem larger than life. They are people who stand for strong values and who fulfill themselves triumphantly. This heroic or epic quality add s a distinctive note to Cather's style. Cather herself recognized that her personal style, or voice, was her strong poin t. Any great literature, she wrote, should "leave in the mind of the sensitive r eader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the author's own, individual, unique." It is significant that she us ed the word cadence, a musical term, because she was a music lover and knew that writing and music both use sound and rhythm to achieve a compelling effect. It is also significant that she spoke of creating a lasting sense of pleasure, beca use My Antonia is a book that has endured in American literature. After Cather parted with her first publisher in 1920, she adopted English spelli ngs for many words--for instance, colour, practise, and grey. While these spelli ngs did not occur in the early editions of My Antonia, later printings made the change. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: POINT OF VIEW My Antonia is told from the point of view of Willa Cather's fictional friend, Ji m Burden. He writes in the first person, and his use of the pronoun "I" makes yo u feel his personal involvement. The point of view is immediate and subjective. Looking back on his memories, he knows what is eventually going to happen to the characters. He persuades you to sympathize with all of them. His perception is broad and persuasive, and sets the tone for the whole book. In the Introduction, Cather herself appears very briefly, as Jim Burden's fellow passenger and childhood friend. In their conversation Jim reveals that he has s een Antonia Shimerda recently and is writing a memoir about her, which he later delivers to Cather, The three-page Introduction thus explains the circumstances supposedly leading to the writing of Jim's manuscript. Cather melts into the rol e of "Jim Burden," drawing on her memories of Annie Sadilek, the model for Anton ia. When Cather has Jim Burden write down "My" in front of the word Antonia on the p ortfolio holding his manuscript, you have the point of view in one bold stroke. Antonia is both the object of the story and its most memorable character. But Ji m is the narrator--the one whose sensibility shapes the characters and events. I n other words, the qualities of the portrait are determined by the painter. What is the purpose of having the story told by Jim Burden thirty years later? F rom that perspective he can present with great clarity and tenderness the highli ghts of his memories. A man of the world, he is reinvestigating his values. Anto nia represents to him the most fundamental, traditional way to lead one's life. In her, you can find the virtues of hard work, charity, love, optimism, pride in one's accomplishments, and sympathy with nature--qualities of the American char acter that Cather revered in her life and dramatized in her novels. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: FORM AND STRUCTURE The form of My Antonia was startling, and perhaps somewhat puzzling, when the no vel first appeared. Readers in the early part of this century had quite definite ideas about literary forms, and My Antonia broke the rules. "It is hard, now, t o realize," wrote Cather's companion, Edith Lewis, "how revolutionary in form [t his novel was]." It has no apparent plot, but is a series of vignettes or episod es that allow you to view the time, place, and characters from many angles. Another Cather friend, Elizabeth Sergeant, described an incident that reveals Ca ther's idea of the form she wanted. The author had set an old Sicilian jar in th e middle of a bare, round table. "I want my new heroine to be like this--like a rare object in the middle of a table, which one may examine from all sides," she explained. Shining a lamp on the glazed jar's orange and blue design, she conti nued, "I want her to stand out--like this--like this--because she is the story." Cather creates a fictional friendship with a man she supposedly has known since childhood--Jim Burden. She presents the story as his memoir of a woman they have both admired and remembered all their lives. You are asked to accept the book a s the work of an amateur writer. This frees her from following rules for the nov el form. Jim Burden sets down everything the name of Antonia brings back to him. (He is looking at the object of his story from different angles, as Cather look ed at the jar.) Therefore, the two central characters are Jim and Antonia. As he tells her story, his gaze may sometimes be drawn away from her--Antonia disappe ars for long sections--but he comes back to her with a richer sense of what she means to him. My Antonia is called one of Cather's pastoral novels. A pastoral work retreats t o an ideal rural setting. Jim Burden not only goes back to the prairie, but more importantly, he retreats to the innocent days of his very first memories. This pastoral becomes a psychological journey of Jim's, or, as one writer put it, "a withdrawal into himself and into the imaginative realm of memory." Like memory, the structure is made up of separate episodes. In the connection be tween one episode and another, a larger pattern or meaning may become apparent. My Antonia proceeds in this episodic way. There is no plot, in the sense of a be ginning, climax, and resolution. The novel is divided into five sections--or Books--that correspond to five stage s in Jim's life, beginning thirty years before the time of his writing, when bot h Antonia and he were children. The first two Books make up nearly two-thirds of the novel. They involve Jim's m emories of Antonia while he was growing up on the farm and then in the town of B lack Hawk. Each of the last three Books is relatively short: forty pages set in his early college days (during which Antonia is not present); thirty pages when he returns after college to visit Black Hawk; and fifty pages when he sees Anton ia again after twenty years. You will also note that Cather often breaks the flow of her main story with a sh ort tale or anecdote. In life, we tell each other vivid little stories that we'v e heard or experienced, and Cather borrows this conversational technique adding both realism and variety to the novel as a whole. Like a parable, which tells a story to illustrate a point, the anecdotes refer to broader ideas in the book. A n example is the tale of why the two Russians had to leave their homeland. Their throwing the bride to the wolves foreshadows the way men will treat Antonia. Ot her anecdotes which have broad meanings include the story of Otto arriving with the triplets, the story of the tramp committing suicide, and the strange story o f the blind musician d'Arnault. Both the episodic quality of the story and the addition of these apparently out- of-context anecdotes caused controversy when the book came out. Some viewed the novel as flawed, while others called it an inspired new art form. Here's what Ca ther herself said about it in 1925: My Antonia, for instance, is just the other side of the rug, the pattern that is supposed not to count in the story. In it there is no love affair, no broken he art, no struggle for success. I knew I'd ruin my material if I put it in the usu al fictional pattern. I just used it the way I thought absolutely true. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: INTRODUCTION NOTE: IMPORTANCE OF THE INTRODUCTION The Introduction is set apart by the use o f italic type. In it the author explains how this book supposedly came to be wri tten by Jim Burden. In reality, of course, Cather wrote both the Introduction an d the novel, creating Jim Burden as a narrator. The Introduction gives us import ant information about the novel, such as clues about Jim's adult life and his fe elings about Antonia. It is the early part of the century, before airplanes, or even cars, are commonp lace. Two people, a man and a woman, who live in New York but grew up in Nebrask a find themselves on a train together crossing the country. They begin discussin g memories of their hometown. It is summer and, as they sit high up in the train 's open observation car, the dust and the hot wind remind them of the prairie. T hey describe its extreme climate and the beauty of its growing season. NOTE: DESCRIPTION This is your first taste of Cather's descriptive powers. Watc h for literary devices she will be using throughout the novel: exaggeration: "buried in wheat and corn" alliteration (repeated initial sounds): "heavy harvests" appeal to the senses: "the colour and smell of strong weeds" modifiers: "billowy," "blustery," "stripped," "stifled" The travelers agree that people who come from that region have a special underst anding with each other. They call it "a kind of freemasonry," which means member ship in a secret club or lodge. (The Freemasons are a worldwide secret society t hat emphasizes charity and brotherhood.) Jim Burden is a lawyer for a railway, and his work often brings him West. He kno ws his territory well and has made the railway a great success. He and his wife seem to have little in common. Though she is attractive, she is "incapable of en thusiasm." This is the opposite of "romantic" Jim Burden (and of Antonia). Mrs. Burden is rich, has no children, and spends her time collecting young artists as proteges. Or at least that's the way she seems from Cather's point of view. The travelers refer to a Bohemian girl they had both known, Antonia. Jim has rec ently seen her again after about twenty years. As they talk about her, they real ize that she symbolizes for both of them their childhood on the Midwestern prair ie. Since seeing Antonia, Jim has been writing down his memories of her. He has a lot of free time on his train trips, so he spends some of it writing. Several months later, Cather tells us, Jim brings his manuscript to her in New Y ork City. He explains that because he simply wrote down everything he remembered , the account has no particular form. (This is Cather's way of alerting you that you are about to read an unusual book.) Jim hasn't given it a title yet, either . He writes "Antonia" on the portfolio containing his manuscript, but that doesn 't seem to be enough. After a moment he adds "My" before her name. The title My Antonia gives just the flavor he's looking for, personal memory and its effect o n his life. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER I Book I also opens on a train. It is more than thirty years earlier, about 1882. Ten-year-old Jim Burden's mother and father have both died in the past year. He is on his way from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. Jim is in the care of a slightly older boy, Jake Marpole. Jake has been his father's farm hand and is now going to work for Jim's grandfather. It's September. The trip takes several days, and the boys consider it an adventu re. After Chicago they meet a friendly off-duty conductor who tells them about a ll the places he's visited. The car ahead of theirs on the train is an immigrant car in which families can sleep and cook as they travel toward their new home. The conductor says that a European family, going to the same destination as the boys, has a pretty daughter just four years older than Jim. (You will later lear n that this is Antonia.) NOTE: VERNACULAR SPEECH The conductor describes the girl as "bright as a new do llar." (Silver dollars were more common than paper ones in those days.) Cather w as expert at capturing the authentic sound of American speech. From the way he t alks, can you form a picture of the conductor? Here and elsewhere in My Antonia, colloquial expressions like this one reflect the characters' small-town backgro und. It takes the train all day to cross Nebraska. That night, when Jim and Jake fina lly step onto the platform in the town of Black Hawk, they get a glimpse of the immigrant family, and Jim hears a foreign language for the first time in his lif e. Jim and Jake are met by Otto Fuchs, who works for Jim's grandfather. On the trai n Jim has been reading about the life of Jesse James, the famous Western outlaw. Otto looks to Jim like a character from that story. Otto leads them to a horse-drawn wagon. Jake rides on the seat with Otto, and Ji m rides behind on a bed of straw in the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo ski n. As Jim tries to peer out into the darkness he can see very little, even after his eyes grow accustomed to the starlight. The land has none of the features he was used to back home: houses, trees, roads. He can feel from the wagon ride th at it is slightly hilly, but the sky comes right down to the edges on all sides, instead of meeting mountain ranges, as at home. NOTE: THE LANDSCAPE The new geography seems to match Jim's feelings about his n ew life. He feels that "the world was left behind, that we... were outside man's jurisdiction." What do you think he means by this? The life he has known is ove r, his parents are dead, he's left his familiar home behind, and he is entering a new life without any rules. He even feels that the spirits of his dead parents have been left behind in Virginia. Although he has no mental picture of his des tination, he is calm. The huge scale of the land makes his little life seem "era sed, blotted out," as if the only reality is the earth and sky, and the past and the future don't exist. Have you ever been in a landscape that made you feel th at way? Watch for the way the land develops from a setting into a major theme. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER II It takes almost all night for the work horses to go nearly twenty miles. Asleep, Jim is put to bed, and wakes up the next afternoon. His grandmother is looking down at him. She's been watching him sleep, and crying because he reminds her of Jim's dead father, her son. She is tall, with suntanned, wrinkled skin, black h air, and a brisk, high voice with which she tries to hide her emotion. Later, while she is getting supper ready, they talk about Jim's trip. She has le arned that the foreign family from his train is going to move onto a homestead s everal miles away--their nearest neighbors. The family is from Bohemia (now part of Czechoslovakia). The men--Jake, Otto and Grandfather--come in from working outdoors. They wash an d sit down to supper. Jim's grandfather is imposing. He has a bald head, a full white beard, and sparkling blue eyes. Dignified and quiet, he inspires awe in Ji m. Otto, too, is impressive, but in quite a different way. Grandmother has already privately told Jim his history: he came from Austria as a youngster and grew up quickly out West in the rough company of miners and cowboys. A year ago poor hea lth had made him come back temporarily to "milder country." To Jim, Otto is a romantic, worldly figure. They eye each other with interest at supper, and make friends immediately afterwards. Otto tells him there's a new p ony for him in the barn. He tells about having been a cowboy and a stagecoach dr iver. Once he was caught in a winter snowstorm, and his ear was frozen off. He s hows off his cowboy equipment including his special boots with pictures stitched on them of roses and naked women--"angels," he tells the boy. The entire household, including the hired men, go upstairs to the living room fo r family prayers before bedtime. Grandfather reads from the Bible in a stirring and sacred voice. NOTE: THE BIBLE The Burdens, like many Christian families in the last century, pray together morning and evening, go to church when there's a preacher in the n eighborhood, and are thoroughly familiar with the Bible. Jim doesn't understand some of the words his grandfather reads, but they seem "oracular"--as if they ha ve secret meaning for the future. Jim feels the promise of his new life is symbo lized by the psalm Grandfather reads: "The Lord shall choose our inheritance for us." The next day Jim explores his new surroundings. The Burdens have a wooden house painted white. Some houses on the prairie are built out of pieces of sod--bricks cut from the grassy topsoil and stacked up, much as igloos are made from bricks of ice. Others, called dugouts, are tunneled out of a slope or the bank of a cr eek or gully (small ravine). But the Burdens' farm is already well established. Grain is stored in granaries and corncribs. A windmill pumps water from a well. There are barns, a chicken house made of sod, pig-yards, a cattle corral, a patc h of sorghum (a grain used to make animal feed and a syrup similar to molasses), and the biggest cornfield Jim has ever seen. Surrounding the farm is tall reddish grass rippling in the wind. Jim is fascinat ed by the "motion in it; the whole country seems, somehow, to be running." This is the same theme Jim stated on his first night in Nebraska: the vast, impersona l, free land makes a human seem small and unimportant by comparison. Jim's grandmother is going to the garden a quarter mile away to dig some potatoe s for the hired men's dinner (the big noon meal is called dinner, and supper is the evening meal). Accompanying her, Jim is enchanted by the countryside. He fee ls "as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping...." Other images of freedom occur to hi m: the air seems light, as if the world ended nearby. He feels he could float of f the edge of it, like one of the hawks overhead. He asks if he can stay alone for a while in the garden. He leans against a big y ellow pumpkin (an image he will remember thirty years later). While the gophers, grasshoppers and beetles go about their business, he sits very still, a part of the landscape. He is having a strange experience--almost as if he is no longer a human being, but an inanimate part of the universe. He thinks this blissful on eness with nature may be how people feel after they die. NOTE: THE GARDEN Why is Jim's experience in the garden important? Like the bibl ical Garden of Eden before man's expulsion, this one stands for goodness, innoce nce, and fruitfulness: some of the pioneer values that are a theme in this novel , and are later symbolized by Antonia. Also, Jim feels a harmony with nature in the warm autumn garden. The joy of being at one with nature was so significant f or Cather that Jim's words were carved on her tombstone: "...that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER III Several days later the Burdens visit their new neighbors. They take them potatoe s, pork, bread and butter, and pies. The Shimerdas have bought their land from a distant relative, Peter Krajiek. They are living with him on the prairie in his small dugout and barn until they can build their own house in the spring. He ha s overcharged them for inferior land, worn-out work animals, and poor quality ho usehold items. They speak no English, and Krajiek is the only one in the region who speaks Bohemian. The Shimerdas' land is rough, with Squaw Creek cutting through the western half of it. It is scored with eroded gullies where rain has carried the topsoil towar d the creek. In one of the gullies is a shed and next to it a window and door cu t into the earth. Out of this crude house step the Shimerdas. The mother, her he ad covered, European-fashion, with an embroidered shawl, has "shrewd little eyes ." A nineteen-year-old boy named Ambrosch has the same eyes, only more crafty an d suspicious. Yulka is a pretty little girl, and her older sister Antonia is fou rteen and even prettier. The other boy, Marek, has birth defects; he has webbed fingers and is mentally retarded. Instead of talking, he makes strange noises. T he father is a dignified, sad-looking old man. His thick grey hair is brushed ba ck in an old-fashioned way that reminds Jim of portraits of his ancestors. He is tall and thin with eyes deep-set in his pale face. He was a skilled tapestry we aver and used to play the violin, and his shapely hands are white and calm. NOTE: MR. SHIMERDA As he takes Grandmother's hand, we notice the difference bet ween the two. Her sunburned, care-worn hands, described when Jim first meets her , are those of a hard-working farm woman. Mr. Shimerda's hands are those of an a rtisan and a musician, unused to rough manual labor. How do you think he will ad just to the drudgery the family must endure in order to make a living on the wil d prairie? Notice how the author has subtly introduced a comparison which will p rove to be crucial later on. Jim's grandparents talk with the Shimerdas, with Krajiek as interpreter. The fam ily has had nothing to eat for three days except corncakes and molasses made fro m sorghum (a grain). Mrs. Shimerda touches the bread eagerly, and even smells it , which seems odd to Jim. Antonia takes Jim's hand and they run with Yulka up the hillside to the windy ed ge of the ravine, overlooking the tops of the cottonwood trees. She wants to kno w Jim's name and the word for blue. Soon they have sat down in the tall grass fo r what will turn out to be their first English lesson. She quickly learns twenty words--a score--and is so excited she wants to give Jim her silver ring, which he will not accept. If these people are so generous and trusting with strangers, he thinks, it's not surprising their dishonest relative, Krajiek, "got the bett er of them." NOTE: THE SHIMERDAS Everything about the Shimerdas is strange and exciting to J im. Notice the similes (comparisons using "like" or "as") which Cather uses in t his vividly descriptive section of the book. Antonia has unusual eyes: "like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood." The girls seem to have the quick, natu ral manner of wild animals: Yulka "curled up like a baby rabbit," and Antonia "s prang up like a hare." The Shimerdas' language sounds faster than English to Jim . Unlike his own grandparents, these people are demonstrative: they express thei r emotions freely. Antonia and her father seem close, and Jim feels drawn to bot h of them. The first meeting between Jim and Antonia will set the tone for the rest of the book. Cather emphasizes the differences in their personalities, using the follow ing words to help bring out Antonia's fiery nature: blazing quick extravagant impulsive wonderfully mournful wrung coaxed searchingly violently insisted entreatingly snuggled reckless earnestness ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER IV Jim learns to ride his new pony. Soon he is running errands, including riding si x miles to the post office. He roams over the prairie admiring the sunflowers al ong the dirt roads. NOTE: SUNFLOWER LEGEND You will see that Cather includes a number of stories an d legends she heard in her childhood. One is that the Mormons who traveled West to find religious freedom scattered sunflower seeds behind them. Those who joine d them the next summer had the sunflower trail to follow. This legend may not be true, but it adds to Jim's feeling that these are "the roads to freedom." To the east is the town of Black Hawk. To the south live some Germans who have a grove of catalpa trees, unusual for that area. To the west is a Norwegian settl ement. And to the north is a colony of prairie dogs--burrowing rodents related t o marmots and rats. The prairie-dog town has hundreds of holes leading to tunnel s. Earth-owls also make their nests in the holes with the prairie dogs, and Jim and Antonia like to go and watch them entering their underground nests. Rattlesn akes are always around there because they can prey on the owl eggs and prairie-d og puppies. Antonia is rapidly learning English. She is quick-witted and opinionated. She he lps Grandmother Burden work in the house, and eagerly learns by watching. Housek eeping is not very easy for her own mother in the dugout. The sourdough bread th ey eat seems disgusting to Jim's family. The Shimerdas never go into Black Hawk, because Krajiek has convinced them they will be cheated there. (The truth is, h e knows if they go there they may find out they are being cheated by him.) They don't like him, but like the prairie dogs, they can't get rid of the "rattlesnak e." ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER V Up north near the dog-town live two Russian bachelors named Peter and Pavel. Whe n Mr. Shimerda discovers that they can understand Bohemian, he visits them almos t every evening. (We realize that he is very lonely in this new country.) Antoni a says it is the first time she's seen him laugh since they left home. The two R ussians have been lonely, too. Pavel is tall and gaunt, with a wild, excitable a ppearance. His constant cough and thin body suggest that he may have tuberculosi s. Peter is short and fat with white-blond hair and beard. He has a wonderful se nse of humor. These two men live in a neat, log house. They have a cow and a garden filled wit h ripe vegetables. Jim and Antonia visit Peter one late summer afternoon when Pa vel is away working for someone. He cuts watermelons for them to eat and consume s a huge quantity himself. Back home, he says, people eat practically nothing bu t melons at this season. Obviously homesick, he hints that he left because of a 'great trouble.' He doesn't want the children to leave, so he entertains them by playing his brig htly painted harmonica. He finally sends them home with fresh cucumbers and a pa il of milk. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER VI Jim and Antonia spend the autumn afternoons outdoors together. Can you sense tha t autumn was Cather's favorite time of year? The land is at its most beautiful a nd bountiful then. But this season of heat and harvest will soon be over. Winter is coming. Antonia's dress is thin, and so they nestle against the sun-warmed g round. In the pass they find one last insect, barely able to move. Antonia, or T ony as Jim now calls her, cups it in her hand and speaks to it in Bohemian. The warmth of her hand and her breath make it start to chirp a little song. This rem inds her of Old Hata, a village beggar who would sing the old traditional songs if you let her sit by the fire for a while. As she tells this, Antonia is homesi ck and there are tears in her eyes. They carefully set the delicate green bug in Tony's curly hair, covered lightly with her handkerchief. Jim walks her part way home. The prairie is lighted with the reddish glow of sunset--like the Biblical "bush that burned with fire and wa s not consumed." They see Mr. Shimerda walking along dejectedly. As they run to him, Tony says sh e's worried because he's sick and unhappy. They show him the green bug in her ha ir, and he shows them the three rabbits he has shot. They'll eat the meat and th en he will make Antonia a little fur hat. Mr. Shimerda promises someday to give Jim his old-fashioned gun, a present from a nobleman at whose wedding he had pla yed the violin. As the sun sets they part and Jim runs homeward. You will see th at vivid descriptions of autumn sunsets will recur at three other significant po ints in the novel. NOTE: FORESHADOWING Several clues tell you something bad is going to happen. It 's late in the year, and also late in the day (both times of darkness and ending ). Jim and Antonia see their black shadows on the grass. Then they see her fathe r, who has become a shadow of the man he was in Bohemia. Why do you think he is "walking slowly, dragging his feet"? Antonia is the only person he seems to care about, and he gives her "wintry flicker of a smile." When she tells him the sto ry of the last insect of autumn reminding her of Old Hata, why is he so moved? I s he thinking of the homeland? Is he pleased at his daughter's kind-hearted imag ination? Is he cheered by the insect's last song in the face of death? What do y ou think is going through his mind? In My Antonia, the weather reflects events and emotions. "As the sun sank there came a sudden coolness and the strong smell of earth...." What does the smell of earth make you think of? Could Cather be preparing you for a death? All these r eferences to autumn's end foreshadow, or warn the reader of, events in the futur e: the starvation and hardship the Shimerdas will encounter and the tragedy that will befall Antonia's father when winter comes. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER VII Antonia, being four years older, sometimes acts superior to Jim. This annoys him . One day they have an adventure which tips the scales in his favor. They have g one on his pony to borrow a spade for her brother Ambrosch from Russian Peter up near the prairie-dog town. On the way home Antonia wants to dig with the spade to find out about the tunnels. They look into one and they can see it connects w ith another tunnel. Jim is moving backwards to see it from a different angle whe n Tony screams something in Bohemian. Turning around Jim sees a rattlesnake, thi ck as his leg and nearly six feet long. Any rattlesnake is frightening, but this one is a "circus monstrosity." It doesn't occur to Jim to flee--instead he runs up and hits the snake's head with the edge of the spade, just as it is about to strike. He keeps hitting, and soon the head is flattened, though the muscular c oils of the long body keep writhing around his ankles. Antonia is extremely impressed. They tie the snake to a piece of string (don't a ll boys happen to have string in their pockets?) and drag it home. She praises h im all the way, until he feels like a hero. Jim knows quite a bit of folklore ab out rattlesnakes--that they have the same number of rattles as their age, that t hey "spring their length," and that a dead snake's mate is likely to appear. He also realizes later that although it was huge, this rattler was too old and fat to have given him much of a fight. So "the game was fixed for me by chance, as i t probably was for many a dragon-slayer." Still, he enjoys the praise of his fam ily, Otto, the neighbors, and especially Antonia. In a way it is a rite of passa ge, an event which shows that you have grown up. Can you identify with Jim's mom ent of triumph? Have you experienced a similarly important event in your life? ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER VIII The autumn brings bad luck for the two Russians. Peter owes money to the ruthles s moneylender, Wick Cutter, and can't pay it back on time, so he has to borrow m ore and mortgage his belongings. Pavel is sick. He strained himself while helpin g to build a barn, and his lungs bled. Since then he's been ill in bed. One evening Pavel is very sick and wants to see Mr. Shimerda. Peter comes to get him, and Antonia and Jim go along in the wagon. The wind builds up and starts m oaning. Peter on the wagon seat is groaning in Russian. The bright stars seem to Jim to have an "influence upon what is and what is not to be." He's referring t o the ancient superstitions of astrology, which he associates with exotic places like Russia. When they arrive, Pavel, too, is moaning. His body is wasted by disease, probabl y tuberculosis. Outside, wind rattles the windows, and coyotes (related to wolve s) are howling. You see how the stage is set for something dramatic. Pavel, his mind raving, begins to talk hoarsely to Mr. Shimerda in Russian about wolves. An tonia grips Jim's hand and listens in horror. It is a long story. Finally Pavel starts coughing blood and can't talk anymore. Then he lies quietly, until he sle eps, and the Shimerdas go home. On the way, Antonia tells Jim the story: A friend of Peter's and Pavel's was getting married to a girl in the next villag e. Afterwards, the drunken wedding party of seven sleighs came home at midnight across the snow. Suddenly they were surrounded by a pack of hundreds of howling wolves. The last sleigh lost control and tipped over. The starving wolves attack ed it; the horses screamed even more terribly than the people. Panic-stricken, t he drivers of the other sleighs tried to go faster, but each was loaded with nea rly a dozen wedding guests. One by one the sleighs were wrecked and wolves devou red the passengers and horses. Peter and Pavel were driving the first sleigh wit h the bride and groom. Theirs was the only one left. When one of their horses st arted to tire, Pavel realized the only way to save themselves was to lighten the load by throwing the bride and groom out, which he did after a struggle. They a rrived safely in their own village, but they were outcasts from then on. Whereve r they went they had bad luck, even after they finally came to the United States . Jim and Antonia discuss this terrible story endlessly. Several days later, Pavel dies, and Peter sells off his mortgaged possessions and leaves the area. Before he leaves, he eats all the melons he had stored for the winter. Mr. Shimerda is heartbroken to lose his only two friends, and visits their empty cabin until th e winter snow prevents him from getting there. NOTE: ANECDOTES Why do you think Cather includes the story of the wolves, so di fferent in tone and location from the material before and after it? Though it co uld be viewed as a digression, this extended anecdote adds to the novel the flav or of European legends and of stories told out loud. In addition to adding excit ement, anecdotes like these may contain a broader message. Could Peter and Pavel 's sacrifice of the bride and groom to the wolves foreshadow the way men will tr eat Antonia? Later in the novel you will learn that her father abandons her by c ommitting suicide, her brother stands in the way of her education by using her a s a hired hand, and her fiance deserts her. Another interpretation of this anecdote might be the contrast between the Old Wo rld and the New: in Russia Peter and Pavel were ostracized for what they felt th ey had to do, but in America they had a chance to start over. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER IX This chapter is a good description of the Burdens' family life. In December, Jim takes Antonia and Yulka for a ride in the sled Otto has made him. Happy to get out of doors, they go such a long way that on the way home they get chilled. The next day Jim comes down with "an attack of quinsy" (a severe sore throat) and h as to stay inside for a couple weeks. Jim spends his time in the comfortable house reading to Grandmother as she cooks or sews for the hired men. Otto and Jake are simple, hardworking fellows. Jake is dull-witted and has a temper, but is generous. Otto sings cowboy songs and te lls stories of the strange characters he has known. One day he tells about his t rip to America. He'd been asked to take care of a pregnant woman with two childr en who was going to her husband in Chicago. On the ship she had triplets. Since Otto was traveling with her, he had to assume responsibility for the family as i f he were the father. The first-class passengers took up a collection for the mo ther, and kept asking Otto how she was. When the husband saw his huge family, he , too, seemed to blame poor Otto. The image of Otto holding three babies makes G randmother laugh until she cries. This tale is another example of the extended a necdotes Cather inserts in her story. It seems to illustrate Otto's failure to b e recognized even when he does good, but to show that virtue is its own reward. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER X One night the Burdens are discussing their neighbors the Shimerdas. Jake reports that Ambrosch shot some prairie dogs and asked Jake whether they were good to e at. Is it possible the Shimerdas are starving? Grandfather tells Grandmother she had better go and see the family the next day. They regard it their Christian d uty to love and help their neighbors. NOTE: TWO FAMILIES The last chapter described the comfortable, well-fed Burden family. They are the perfect pioneers: industrious, resourceful, pious. In contr ast, the Shimerdas' homelife seems especially pathetic. They have no chicken coo p and no root cellar in which to store vegetables. They are living on rotten pot atoes. The girls sleep in a small hole dug into the wall. The house is cramped, dark, and smoky. Now that winter has set in, they face the depressing prospect o f six hungry people confined to the dugout day and night for several months. The next day Grandmother packs a hamper full of food and they drive over to the Shimerdas. Jake says he will bring the food in when he has put blankets on the h orses to keep them warm. The minute Jim and Grandmother go inside, Mrs. Shimerda begins to cry and complain about their terrible conditions. She seems to be bla ming Grandmother. When Jake finally brings in the basket of food, her crying tur ns from accusation into bitter self-pity. Antonia, embarrassed and depressed, is not her usual cheerful self. Her mother is sad, she says, and her father is ash amed of their circumstances. Mr. Shimerda asks Antonia to tell Grandmother in En glish that "they were not beggars in the old country." Obviously he is uncomfort able accepting her gift of food. Before the Burdens leave, Mrs. Shimerda makes a point of giving them a handful of the most precious thing she has, some strong- smelling little chips to cook with. When she gets home, Grandmother throws them away in the stove. She mistrusts the foreign substance, which she associates wit h the Shimerdas' strange and dubious ways of doing things. Years later Jim learn s that the chips were dried mushrooms from the Bohemian forest. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XI Just before Christmas it snows so much that the Burdens can't go to Black Hawk t o shop for the holiday. They decide to celebrate Christmas simply, with homemade gifts and ornaments. Jake takes presents on horseback to the Shimerdas, and ret urns with a Christmas tree he has cut by the creek. It is Christmas Eve, and aft er supper Otto, Jake, Jim, and his grandparents decorate the tree with popcorn s trings, gingerbread, and candles. The finishing touch is a set of Nativity figur es (representing the birth of Jesus) which Otto brings out of his trunk. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XII Christmas is like Sunday. Grandfather is dressed up and holds longer morning pra yers than usual before breakfast. As he reads the Christmas story from the Bible , it seems fresh and meaningful, as though it had just happened in their own nei ghborhood. Grandfather, who doesn't talk a lot at other times, often shows his t houghts in his prayers. It's a quiet day. In the late afternoon, Mr. Shimerda ar rives to thank them for their gifts. He has never been to the Burdens' home befo re. It is obviously a great change from the dugout, and, though he speaks little English, he feels completely content here. Mr. Shimerda stays for dinner, eagerly drinking in the feeling of companionship around the table. He seems to have a special fondness for Jim, and looks into hi s eyes "as if he were looking far ahead into the future for me, down the road I would have to travel." Finally at nine, Mr. Shimerda sets off on his long homewa rd walk. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XIII After Christmas the weather turns warmer. During this thaw, Mrs. Shimerda and An tonia come over to visit. Mrs. Shimerda jealously examines all the household obj ects. When she accusingly says that they have no pots to cook in, Grandmother gi ves her one. After the noon dinner Mrs. Shimerda keeps complaining. Jim's annoyance with Mrs. Shimerda carries over to Antonia. When she tells him h er papa is depressed by this country, Jim angrily says he should have stayed in his own. It turns out Mr. Shimerda was not the one who wanted to come. Mrs. Shim erda pushed the family to come so that her older son, Ambrosch, could get rich. It has broken Mr. Shimerda's heart to leave his dear friends with whom he used t o play music. But Mrs. Shimerda and her son "had everything their own way" in th e family. NOTE: MR. SHIMERDA AND MRS. SHIMERDA In the last chapter we saw Mr. Shimerda as a refined, intelligent man. Jim views him as a symbol of a cultured past and al so of his own future, since Mr. Shimerda seems to take a fatherly interest in hi m. The contrast in this chapter is startling: Mrs. Shimerda is "a conceited, boa stful old thing, and even misfortune could not humble her." Her crude greediness triumphs over his quiet sensitivity. We feel that one person's good qualities a re trampled by another person's bad ones. This is something that Cather hated in her society. Where do we still see it happening today? The weather is nice for several weeks, and then on January 20, Jim's eleventh bi rthday, it starts snowing again. The blizzard is the worst the Burdens have seen in the decade they've lived on the prairie. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XIV Mr. Shimerda kills himself with his old shotgun on the second day of the blizzar d. Ambrosch discovers his body in the barn, and comes to tell the Burdens. Otto and Jake visit the Shimerdas and return before Jim wakes up. At breakfast they t ell how, after his noon meal, the old man bathed and put on clean clothes, went to the barn, lay down on a bunk, put the barrel of his gun in his mouth, and pul led the trigger with his big toe. Otto takes the best horse and rides nearly twenty miles to Black Hawk to get the coroner and the priest. Jim's grandparents ride to the Shimerdas on a black wor khorse, looking "very Biblical," Jim thinks. Alone in the house, Jim feels impor tant. Always a lover of solitude, he sits quietly in the kitchen and thinks abou t Mr. Shimerda's death. Since the man died of homesickness, Jim reasons, his sou l will try to return to Bohemia. But it's such a long way that perhaps it will s top to rest up for the journey in this house, where it had found peace on Christ mas Day. Jim has a kind of mystical experience that afternoon. He feels a deep communicat ion with Mr. Shimerda's spirit. In contemplating all Antonia has ever told him a bout her father's life, "such vivid pictures came to me that they might have bee n Mr. Shimerda's memories." He has the distinct feeling that the old man's soul is there with him in the house. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XV Otto returns the next day from Black Hawk with a young Bohemian named Anton Jeli nek who wants to help the Shimerdas. Warm, friendly, and direct, he explains tha t for Catholics it is a grave sin to die without a priest's blessing. The Shimer das believe they will have to pray a long time before Mr. Shimerda's soul can le ave Purgatory. NOTE: CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS Jelinek's Catholic faith is strong. He tells th e Burdens a story about helping a priest carry the Holy Sacrament to soldiers dy ing of cholera in a military camp. The blessed wafer, wine, and incense they car ried protected them from getting sick, he asserts. Grandfather, who rarely opens up to strangers, likes Jelinek's strong faith, but, as a Protestant, argues tha t "Mr. Shimerda's soul I will come to its Creator as well off without a priest." What does young Jim think of all this? You have seen from the boy's views on th e vast land and his sense of communion with Mr. Shimerda's soul that his religio us feelings are personal and don't really have anything to do with the church. P erhaps he is beginning to equate the divine spirit with the forces of the univer se? At any rate, he finds Catholicism just one more strange and intriguing aspec t of his foreign neighbors. Like their languages and their customs, religion set s the immigrants apart from the other settlers. This cultural difference is a st rong theme in My Antonia. While Jelinek ploughs a road to the Shimerdas, Otto makes a coffin. Cheerfully h e tells the story of making a coffin in Colorado for an Italian miner who fell t o his death. The pleasant sound and smell of his carpentry seems wasted on dead people, thinks Jim. Visitors start arriving on their way to the Shimerdas. They are a wondering where the dead man will be buried, since Black Hawk is too far i n bad weather. The Norwegians to the west don't want him in their cemetery. The suicide seems to have made everybody more talkative and energetic than usual, a treat for Jim, who is the only child in a community of usually reserved adults. Grandfather has accompanied the coroner to the Shimerdas' and back. Though Mr. S himerda obviously killed himself, the case is mysterious because Krajiek's axe s eems to fit a head wound on the dead man, and Krajiek is acting guilty. This mys tery is never resolved. The neighbors are shocked to find out that Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch want to bu ry the old man on their own land, at the southwest corner where two roads will e ventually cross. A suicide, according to Bohemian custom, must be buried at a cr ossroads. Grandfather decides that Mrs. Shimerda's wish must be obeyed, but he a lso predicts that no roads will ever pass over the grave. (We'll later learn tha t he was right.) ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XVI The funeral takes place on the fifth day after the suicide. Antonia is obviously heartbroken. The Burdens and all the neighbors gather, and make a procession to the grave which Jelinek and Ambrosch have chopped in the frozen ground. It is s nowing as Grandfather makes a beautiful prayer. He asks forgiveness for "the sle eper," and also mentions that if anyone has done wrong toward him, "God would fo rgive him and soften his heart." Why do you think he says this? Could he be refe rring to Krajiek? Grandfather thinks that Krajiek, although he did not directly kill Mr. Shimerda, feels guilty knowing that his dirty dealings were as responsi ble for the death as any other factor. Hopefully this tragedy will teach him a l esson. Otto leads in singing a hymn that will always remind Jim in years afterward of t he burial on that little corner of snowy wasteland. And when the roads were surv eyed, they never did pass over Mr. Shimerda's head, but bent a little out of the ir way in respect for and kindness to the troubled pioneer. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XVII Spring finally arrives. The new leaves and blossoms of a Virginia spring are not here, but to Jim the warm, windy air seems to be "spring itself; the throb of i t, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it." (Notice the personal effect the weather and the land have on Jim, as usual.) He often goes to see the Shimerdas in the new log house the neighbors have helpe d them build. He gives reading lessons to Yulka and visits Antonia in the fields . Grandmother thinks Tony ought to go to school, Jim tells her. Tony boasts that school is all right for little boys, meaning Jim, but she's too busy ploughing. This annoys Jim until he sees that she is crying. NOTE: ANTONIA'S PROSPECTS Turning her tearstained face from Jim, Antonia "looke d off at the red streak of dying light." You see that once again Cather uses des cription to communicate emotion. Antonia's hope for the future, like the sunset, is a "dying light." Her well-educated papa would have wanted his favorite child to go to school. instead, she has to do farm chores like a man. Jim stays for supper. Now the Shimerdas' ways irritate him. Ambrosch grumbles an d Antonia looks like a sunburned peasant. Mrs. Shimerda thinks that people try t o cheat her, and yet she cheats them. For example, Mr. Burden sold her a cow for ten dollars down, plus fifteen to be paid later, but Mrs. Shimerda tries to get out of the second payment by saying the cow doesn't give enough milk. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XVIII Jim goes to the one-room school without Antonia. He feels ignored by her, now th at she's so busy. To make matters worse, hot-headed Jake knocks Ambrosch down in a dispute over a borrowed harness. The feud with the Shimerdas goes on until Gr andfather resolves it by inviting Ambrosch to work for him in the wheat and oats harvest in early July. He also hires Antonia to work in the kitchen. Grandfather and Jim ride over to make arrangements with Ambrosch. Seeing them co ming, Mrs. Shimerda dashes off to try to hide the cow for which she owes Mr. Bur den money. In the spirit of generosity and reconciliation he tells her to keep t he cow. Her defensiveness changes to gratitude; she kneels and kisses his hand, as if he were a nobleman and she a poor peasant. NOTE: CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS Grandfather is extremely embarrassed by Mrs. Shimerda 's show of Old World respect. He disapproves of class distinctions, just as he w ould frown on slavery, dishonesty, ungodliness, or prejudice. But he has such na tural dignity that Mrs. Shimerda, who used to steal firewood from a nobleman's f orest in Bohemia, instinctively looks up to him. What do you think of the attitu des of the other characters towards the foreign Shimerdas? Jake, who isn't very smart, thinks all foreigners are peasants. Otto, from Austria, she carries his O ld World prejudices against Bohemians. What does Jim think? When he's angry with Antonia, he's tempted to believe Jake's and Otto's prejudices. But usually he s eems to agree with his grandparents that a person should be judged by his charac ter rather than nationality or social standing. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XIX July is hot. While the men are reaping and threshing the wheat, the corn is grow ing by leaps and bounds in the fields. Nebraska is perfect corn country, and Gra ndfather predicts rightly that it will soon supply the world with corn, just as Russia at that time supplies it with wheat. Antonia is a cheerful influence on the Burden household. Jim loves spending time with her. One night they watch a dramatic thunderstorm together. She treats him like a friend and equal these days. He asks her why she can't be gentle and nat ural like this more often, instead of copying Ambrosch's boastful ways. Tony ans wers that she is happy here because life is easy in the Burden household, much e asier than life can ever be for the Shimerdas. NOTE: JIM'S FIRST YEAR By the end of Book 1, Jim has been living in Nebraska on e full year: he arrived in early September and now it is late summer. His bond w ith the land and the rhythm of its seasons has been established for us in rich l anguage. Note throughout this first book the descriptions of the seasons as the year progresses. During this year Jim's bond with Antonia has also become strong . Their childhood days on the farm will set the tone for their lifelong friendsh ip. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER I After two more years on the farm, the Burdens move to Black Hawk. Jim is thirtee n and ought to be going regularly to school, and his grandparents feel too old t o enjoy farming. The farm hands will have to find other work, so Otto decides to go back out West, and Jake goes with him. They have been like brothers to Jim, but he will never see them again. From his bedroom, Jim can see the bluffs of the Republican River two miles south . When he misses the countryside (a constant theme for him), the river view comf orts him. The Burdens live on the outskirts of Black Hawk, a neat little town where the ne wer buildings are made of brick. For the first time Jim has children his own age to play with. Although Antonia never comes to town, her doings are reported to the Burdens by the Widow Steavens, who has rented their old farm. Grandfather is concerned about Antonia, whose brother is hiring her out as a farmhand. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER II To save Antonia from this masculine work, which her father would never have allo wed, Grandmother recommends Antonia for a domestic position with the neighbors, the Harlings. The Harlings are a Norwegian family with five children. The husband buys and sel ls grain and cattle, and is often away on business. The wife rules the house wit h enthusiasm and decisiveness. Their eldest child is tall, dark Frances, old eno ugh to be a partner in her father's successful business. Next are Charley, 16, m usical Julia, 14, tomboy Sally, 13, and sensitive little Nina. NOTE: THE HARLINGS Cather based the Harling family on her neighbors, the Miners , in Red Cloud, Nebraska. She claimed the portrait of Mrs. Harling was the only one she ever took wholly from real life. You may have noted that the novel is de dicated to Carrie and Irene Miner, the models for Frances and her littlest siste r, Nina. When their cook leaves the household, Mrs. Harling and Frances drive the long wa y out to the Shimerdas to negotiate with Antonia and Mrs. Shimerda. After an arg ument with Ambrosch and Mrs. Shimerda, it is agreed that Mrs. Harling will pay t hem the generous sum of $3 a week, and keep $50 a year out for Antonia to spend as she wishes. Mrs. Harling reports to Grandmother that 17-year-old Antonia, tho ugh barefooted and sunburned, seemed beautiful, and will learn quickly to be hel pful. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER III Jim loves having Antonia nearby again. She is so good with the Harling children that she sometimes neglects her work to play with them. It is a jolly, noisy hou sehold, except when Mr. Harling is at home. "Autocratic and imperial," he "not o nly demanded a quiet house, he demanded all his wife's attention." ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER IV One day a Norwegian farm girl named Lena Lingard comes to the door. At first Ant onia doesn't recognize her because she is all dressed up. Then she doesn't seem very glad to see Lena. Frances and Mrs. Harling invite her to sit down and talk. She has come to town to work for Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker. She says she's gl ad to get off the farm and excited about living in town. Mrs. Harling cautions h er to remember her obligations to her family, and not to get caught up in dances and dubious social life. Frances, who knows all the country folk and their news , asks about the boy who had been planning to marry her. She answers that his fa ther refused to give him any land unless he married someone else instead. Lena d oesn't care; he was "awful sullen," and anyway she doesn't ever want to be marri ed. After Lena goes, Frances asks why Antonia wasn't friendlier to her. Tony answers that Lena had a bad reputation out in the country, and Mrs. Harling might not l ike her visiting the house. Jim remembers that Lena, the eldest of many children , used to herd cattle on the prairie for her father. Though she was poor and rag ged, her yellow hair, pale white skin, and soft, violet-colored eyes made her at tractive. Also she had a gentle, easy personality. Someone else was impressed with Lena; this person is Ole Benson, a fat, unlucky Norwegian farmer who used to love to come and sit with her. This was a scandal t o the neighborhood, and Ole's insane wife threatened to kill Lena for "making ey es at the men." But Lena only laughed in her innocent, sleepy way and said, "I n ever made anything to him with my eyes. I can't help it if he hangs around, and I can't order him off. It ain't my prairie." NOTE: LENA LINGARD Lena is an interesting character who will become more import ant as the story goes on. Is she aware of the effect her good looks have on men? Is she deliberately sexy? Although she and Antonia are friends, they are very d ifferent. Tony wants to make money so her family's farm will prosper. You will s ee later that having a family and running a farm is her goal. She forms passiona te attachments to people. Lena, though, is disillusioned about family life, and never wants to return to the farm. She is a more easygoing, detached person, who wants to be left alone to have a good time. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER V Lena's friend, another farm girl named Tiny Soderball, has also come to town. Sh e works as a waitress at Mrs. Gardener's Boys' Home Hotel, the best one for mile s around. On Saturday nights when all the traveling salesmen are singing and tel ling stories in the parlor, Lena and Tiny listen from behind the closed double d oors. It's the most romantic life the girls can imagine, and Lena often tells Ji m, whom she likes, that he ought to be a "traveling man" when he grows up. (Of c ourse, you know from the Introduction that in a way he does become one as a lawy er for a railroad.) Lena enjoys town life, and Tiny even shares with her some of the gifts the salesmen are always giving her. But when Lena's little brother co mes to town just before Christmas to buy some Christmas presents, she realizes s he misses her family despite her dislike of the farm. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER VI When winter comes, it is bitterly windy and cold in town. On the bleak, gray day s, any color, such as the stained glass church window, is welcome. The Harlings' house attracts Jim, who finds life too quiet with his elderly grandparents. Ant onia, too, finds the house "like Heaven." They act out charades or listen to Mrs . Harling play operas on the piano as she tells the stories. Frances teaches the m to dance, and predicts that Antonia will be the best of them all. In the eveni ngs Tony cheerfully builds another fire in the stove to bake treats for the chil dren, and tells tales in her wonderful deep voice about old Bohemia or life on t he prairie. Once she tells of a tramp who came to a Norwegian farm one very hot day where she was helping thresh wheat. He offered to operate the threshing mach ine for a while, and then jumped into it headfirst, killing himself. NOTE: THE TRAMP Nobody knew where he came from. He had nothing in his pockets b ut a penknife, a wishbone, and a popular poem cut out of a newspaper. When Anton ia commented to him that it was so hot they might have to pump water for the cat tle, he seemed to find it ironic that cattle will always be taken care of--even before a person like him. What do you think of this tramp? Why did Willa Cather tell us his story? Do you see a connection between him and Mr. Shimerda? This is another of Cather's unexpected anecdotes which seem to carry a deeper message. Antonia has a strong effect on the Harlings, Jim, and everyone around her. As sh e matures, she adapts naturally to domestic routines. She finds a role model in Mrs. Harling. (Grandmother was right to suggest she come to the Harlings while s till at an impressionable age.) In many ways Tony and Mrs. Harling share the sam e pioneer values: a love of children, the earth, domestic comforts, independence , honesty, and generosity. Jim is deeply attracted to their "hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but very invigorating." ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER VII The winter drags by, but in March a musician comes to town to give a concert. He is a black pianist named d'Arnault (pronounced Dar-no'), who is blind. As a sla ve child on the d'Arnault plantation in the Deep South before the Civil War, he had been drawn to the main house whenever he heard the piano being played by Mis s Nellie, the owner's daughter. One day when she had left the room, he crept in through the window, even though his mother had threatened that the master would feed him to his dog if he found him near the big house. Instinctively, he touche d the keys of the piano, and began to play things he'd heard Miss Nellie play. O verhearing this child prodigy, Nellie arranged music lessons for him. NOTE: BLIND D'ARNAULT The description of the slave child's wonderful talent is typical of the extended anecdotes that Cather's characters relate. This one intr oduces a taste of the South where Jim--and Willa Cather--were originally from. Y ou will notice that d'Arnault's story is a complete break in setting and mood fr om what precedes it. Why did Cather insert this anecdote? The two groups of peop le she admired most were pioneers and artists. Here, in the midst of a novel abo ut pioneers, is the life story of a natural musician. Perhaps this anecdote also has a broader meaning. In spite of being blind and born a slave, d'Arnault beco mes a well-known artist. And in spite of her early hardships, Antonia eventually triumphs as a pioneer mother and farmer. The night Blind d'Arnault is staying at the hotel, Jim goes there to hear the in formal music-making. Mrs. Gardener, the hotel's well-dressed, strict manager, is out of town. Her pleasant, wishy-washy husband Johnnie can't object when d'Arna ult begins to play plantation songs, spirituals, and waltzes. The pianist senses that behind the doors the hired girls are dancing. The men throw open the doors and draw the fleeing girls into the parlor, despite Johnnie's protests that his wife wouldn't approve. Antonia and Lena and Tiny are there, and also Mary Dusak , another Bohemian girl, pretty and bold. Excited by the dancing, Jim and Antonia walk home together, and linger talking a long time. Their first big taste of adult town society has made them restless. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER VIII Spring brings its usual quickening of activity. The Harlings' garden is planted and the children play outdoors. In June some Italians arrive in Black Hawk and s et up a dancing pavilion. Mr. and Mrs. Vanni will give lessons and hold dances i n an open tent under the cottonwood trees across from the Danish laundry. This g ives the young people something to do besides walk up and down the wooden sidewa lks. The harp and violin music entices everyone to the tent where, for a small p rice, they can dance until 10 P.M. On Saturdays, the tent is open until midnight , and all the farm hands and hired girls are there. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER IX A tension exists between the immigrant farm girls and the young people who've be en brought up in Black Hawk. You might view this as the theme of the conflict be tween the immigrants and their American neighbors. Pretty and capable, but unsch ooled, the immigrant girls still remember the old country. They grew up early th rough the hard work of helping their families dig up the prairie sod to make the first fields. Now about twenty of them are working in town in order to help the ir parents get established and send their younger siblings to school. They are p roud, jolly, free, and physically strong. In contrast, the town girls would never consider working as domestic servants in someone else's home. They think of themselves as refined. Their parents, whethe r farmers or merchants, are just as poor as the immigrants, but have come from t he Eastern states, rather than directly from Europe. They are snobbish toward th e "ignorant" foreigners, not realizing or caring that Lena's grandfather was a w ell-known clergyman back in Norway, or Antonia's father had been so respected in Bohemia that priests would come to talk with him. Jim is annoyed by the prejudice of the townspeople against the hired girls. He k nows that eventually these girls will be prosperous because they are so hard-wor king. The Black Hawk town boys look longingly at the fresh, free country girls, but they will doubtless marry town girls. Why do you think this irritates Jim so much? Is he justified in criticizing the other boys when he himself seems to ha ve no intention of marrying one of the hired girls? Some of the hired girls are fond of a good time, perhaps eager to make up for th eir lost youth. Their bad reputations are in some cases deserved (at least accor ding to the morals of that day): of the three Bohemian girls named Mary, two bec ome pregnant out of wedlock. Though the conservative townspeople consider them a ll "as dangerous as high explosives," they are excellent cooks and can always ge t work. At the dancing tent the town boys and the hired girls meet. A banker's son falls in love with Lena, even though he feels she would not be a suitable wife. He ma rries someone else in order to drown his feelings about Lena. Jim is disgusted a t the boy's lack of courage. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER X Antonia loves to dance, and at the tent she has lots of admirers. Her personalit y has changed: she has outgrown the Harlings' little world, and has become inatt entive to her work. Mr. Harling is increasingly annoyed about the male callers w ho linger around the back door. One Saturday night on the back porch after a dan ce, a boy tries to kiss Tony. She slaps him "because he is going to be married o n Monday," as she explains to the angry Mr. Harling, who heard the slap. She's b een associating with girls with bad reputations, Mr. Harling says, and now she'l l either have to quit going to the dances or quit working for him. This is a crisis. Tony has loved being at the Harlings', but nothing can make he r give up the dances. In spite of Mrs. Harling's pleas, she resolves to take a p lace closer to her friend Lena, at the house of the notorious moneylender and wo manizer, Wick Cutter. Mrs. Harling is heartbroken and warns that the unscrupulou s Cutter will ruin her. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XI Wick Cutter is the man who cheated Russian Peter in Book I. He is a hypocrite wh o preaches "moral maxims" while practicing usury (charging overly high interest rates) and extortion. He plays poker, races horses, and visits prostitutes. He's fussy about his appearance (he carefully brushes his yellow moustache) and abou t his house (he gets boys to cut his lawn and then won't pay them because he cla ims their work isn't neat enough). He is married to a huge, ugly, high-strung woman. Cutter and his wife fight cons tantly about everything from his immoral habits to money. In fact, they both see m to get some needed excitement from their warlike relationship. Later in his li fe Jim will meet other fanatical women who remind him of Mrs. Cutter--some are m ental patients and others are religious zealots. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XII When Tony leaves the Harlings, she devotes herself entirely to having a good tim e. She's very pretty and popular. With Lena's help she has learned to copy the n ew dresses of the town's leading ladies, much to their annoyance. Jim is now a s enior in high school and feeling restless. He's not interested in town girls but likes to chat with Tony and the hired girls. They tease him about what he's goi ng to be when he grows up. Everyone, including Jim, believes he will go into som e profession because he's so smart at school. But Jim is restless all winter. Because he still sees Antonia, Mrs. Harling is n ot very friendly to him. As a result, he can't spend any more warm evenings at h er house. Instead he walks and walks. He starts going to the saloon that the res pectable Anton Jelinek runs, but then Jelinek asks him not to, since it would up set Grandfather Burden. He haunts the drugstore, the tobacco factory, and the tr ain depot, but meets only other dissatisfied, restless people, mostly old men. I n this mood, he finds the town ugly and the people repressed. He doesn't want to join the Owl Club with its respectable young people. So on Saturday nights he s lips out his ground floor bedroom window to dances at the Firemen's Hall. There he meets the country folks such as the simple, pretty girls who work at the Dani sh laundry. He dances with Lena, who always seems dreamy and detached. When he d ances with Antonia, though, he is more impressed by her enthusiasm and talent fo r dancing than by anyone else's. NOTE: ANTONIA'S POTENTIAL Jim realizes that Antonia has a natural greatness. Sh e is musical, energetic and creative. If the Shimerdas had stayed in New York an d become involved in the music world, for instance, instead of coming to Nebrask a, her life might have been different. You should keep in mind this observation of Jim's about Tony's potential. In the very next paragraph a character appears who will have a tragic effect on her. Antonia looks beautiful at the dances with her black velveteen dress, bright eye s, and deeply colored cheeks. She is often with a young man named Larry Donovan, a railroad conductor who is "a kind of professional ladies' man." Naturally, be cause all the boys admire Antonia, Larry wants to make a conquest of her. One night Jim walks Tony home. When his goodnight kiss is romantic instead of br otherly, she is shocked. She's even more shocked to hear that Lena lets him kiss her that way. She cautions him against seeing too much of Lena or of getting in volved with anyone who would keep him from going away to college. He replies tha t she is the only one he likes, but that she treats him like a younger brother. (Tony is nineteen and he's fifteen.) She admits that he's a kid, "but you're a k id I'm awful fond of, anyhow!" she adds, hugging him. Later Jim keeps having a d ream about Lena walking across a field toward him in a short skirt, but when he dreams about Tony, they are always children together. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XIII Grandmother Burden hears the upsetting rumor that Jim has been going to the Fire men's dances, and so he promises not to go anymore. More lonely than ever, Jim t hrows himself into extra academic work to prepare for college. One of his only f riends is Frances Harling, who tells him her mother isn't as angry with him as h e thinks. This proves true when Mrs. Harling comes to Jim's high school graduati on and is very impressed by his commencement oration. After the speech, Tony and her friends are waiting down the street to congratula te him. When Antonia says the speech reminded her of her father, Jim confesses t hat he dedicated it to the memory of Mr. Shimerda. As they hug each other, she i s crying. Why do you think he feels it is the most triumphant moment in his whol e life? ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XIV All summer Jim works hard on trigonometry and Latin. Only one July day breaks th e monotony, when he secretly meets Tony and her friends for a picnic at the rive r. The girls are going to collect elderflowers to make wine. NOTE: THE RIVER PICNIC Though this novel cannot really be said to have a formal plot or traditional climax, this chapter is centrally important for several rea sons. This will prove to be the last shared afternoon of Jim and Antonia's youth . He will soon be going away, so the future looms near. The past also seems near : when Antonia invites him along, she says, "It would be like old times," and th e day does remind us of Book I. Everything in the chapter contributes to a sense of nostalgia, from the beautifully described countryside to Tony's homesickness for Bohemia when she smells the elderflowers. The relationship we've been watch ing between Jim and Tony is more defined now. Though she thinks of him as a chil d, they're extremely fond of each other, a bond which is celebrated and confirme d in this chapter. The theme of the land representing freedom returns here like a musical refrain, as it will again in Book V. Early in the morning, Jim walks the two miles to the river. The road is bordered with richly colored wildflowers. At the riverbank he takes a swim and realizes that when he leaves Black Hawk to go to school he'll miss this river, which he k nows so well from fishing, playing, and skating here. The girls arrive, and begin gathering elderflowers. When Jim is dressed, he goes in search of them and finds Antonia sitting alone, crying under the overhanging elder bushes. They remind her of Bohemia, where her father used to talk about m usic and philosophy with his friends. They both feel that her father's spirit re turned to his beloved country when he died. Tony confides that her mother had be en a young servant in her father's parents' household. When she became pregnant by Tony's father, he married her out of kindness, even though his brothers and p arents thought he should just give her money. (Now perhaps we can understand Mr. Shimerda's suicide more clearly. In addition to homesickness and the hardships in the pioneer dugout, his marriage was not a happy one.) As Tony tells Jim this personal story, she seems to him as full of trust and love as she used to be wh en they were children. Lena Lingard breaks into their private conversation. Jim and the girls eat their picnic on a bluff overlooking the farmland. The four country girls talk about t heir families. Lena starts to stroke Jim's hair, but Tony puts a stop to it. Len a tells of her grandfather rebelliously marrying a Lapland woman. Lapp girls wer e considered dangerously attractive to the men in Norway. "I guess that's what's the matter with me; they say Lapp blood will out," says Lena, referring to her weakness for men. In the hot afternoon, Jim tells the story of the Spanish explorer Francisco Coro nado (1510?-1554). In the New World he was looking for the mythical Seven Golden Cities and was known to have come north as far as today's Kansas. But Jim think s he actually came even farther, to this river, because in a field nearby a farm er once found a Spanish stirrup and sword. Coronado didn't return to Spain, acco rding to the schoolbooks, because he "died in the wilderness of a broken heart." Antonia added, "More than him has done that," referring to her father. They think sadly about the disillusioned Coronado and Mr. Shimerda, and the stru ggles of the first generation of pioneers. The sun is setting. The prairie almos t seems to catch on fire. (Remember the earlier description of the prairie "like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed.") As the sun meets the ear th, it suddenly magnifies a lone plough silhouetted on the horizon. The plough a gainst the fiery red circle looks "heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun. " NOTE: THE PLOUGH What is the significance of this image? You can view it as a s ymbol of several different themes. First, it stands for the farmers' toil and tr iumph over the unbroken prairie. The efforts of the pioneers to tame the land ar e rewarded, despite the disillusioned deaths of people like Coronado and Mr. Shi merda. Second, when the plough has "sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie" it stands for the vastness of the land, which makes all man's acti vities seem insignificant. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER XV The slow, nostalgic, philosophical mood of the last chapter contrasts sharply wi th this one. Antonia's employer, Wick Cutter, acts strangely before going out of town with his wife. He tells Antonia to stay home at night and not have any gir lfriend stay with her. Suspecting something, she asks Grandmother Burden what to do. Jim arranges to sleep at the Cutters' house until they return. One night Cu tter returns and sneaks into Antonia's bedroom where he finds not her but Jim. T hey have a terrible fistfight in the dark, and both are badly beaten up before J im knocks Cutter down and escapes through the window. Jim runs home in his night shirt, disgusted by the whole sordid experience. He makes Grandmother promise no t to tell anyone the story, for fear he would be laughed about all over town. It turns out that Cutter has fled town, with his face bandaged and his arm in a sling, but not before trampling and tearing both the clothes from Tony's closet and the ones Jim had taken off before going to bed. While Tony and Grandmother B urden are back at the Cutters' empty house packing up her things, Mrs. Cutter ar rives, furious. Her husband had tricked her by putting her on the wrong train so he could get home without her. it was an elaborate scheme designed to make her as angry as possible. Mr. Cutter surely enjoyed the ensuing quarrel with his wif e as much or more than the lust which started it. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER I Jim goes to Lincoln to the university. He passes the tough entrance exams on the condition that he study Greek the following summer. One of his favorite people at university is his Latin teacher, Gaston Cleric, a brilliant but frail young s cholar who opens Jim's eyes to an intellectual world. Cleric (whose name means c lergyman and scholar) often visits Jim in the room he rents and talks movingly a bout poetry, the classics, or his stay in Italy. Charmed and excited as he is by Cleric's fascination with the classics, Jim realizes that his own interest is n ot in history, but in the people of his particular past, who seem to live on in his mind even though he's away from home. One balmy spring night during his sophomore year, Jim is trying to keep his mind on his Latin homework. He is reading the Georgics by Virgil (70-19 B.C.), the a ncient Roman author who died before he could finish his masterpiece, The Aeneid. The first line Jim sees is: Optima dies... prima fugit, meaning the best days a re the first to flee. They seem to strike a nostalgic chord for him--and in fact they sum up such an important theme in the novel (the importance of the past) t hat they appear on the title page as an inscription. Jim turns back to another interesting passage: Primus ego in patriam mecum... de ducam Musas. It means, I will be the first to bring the Muse into my own country . By "country" (patriam or patria), Virgil meant the local neighborhood of his f ather's fields, and by "Muse" he meant literature. The great literary tradition of ancient Greece was beginning to trickle into the Roman empire through the inf luence of such writers as Virgil. NOTE: PATRIA Why is Jim moved by this idea? Virgil had brought the Muse home. P erhaps Gaston Cleric is also bringing the Muse into his own region by making cla ssical literature come to life for his students. Or perhaps Cleric's patria is t he rocky New England coast of his birth. Jim, by writing an account of his youth in Nebraska, will also bring the Muse of literature home. Do you think Cather w as also speaking of herself? She was one of the first writers to depict Nebraska in books that would be hailed as great regional (as well as American) literatur e. As he is reflecting on these thoughts about the past, Jim hears a knock at his d oor. He opens it to find his hometown friend Lena Lingard. Now working as a dres smaker in a successful shop, she has been in Lincoln all winter, though Grandmot her did not write that news to Jim. Lena is saving money for the new house she'l l build for her mother next summer. Lena reports that Antonia is now managing Mrs. Gardener's hotel, has made peace with the Harlings, and appears to be engaged to the conductor Larry Donovan. Tho ugh no one likes Larry, Tony is crazy about him and won't hear him criticized. When Lena has gone, her soft laugh seems to remain, reminding Jim of all the cou ntry girls. He decides that the feeling he has about these girls is what inspire s poetry. (Can he be giving himself an excuse to see more of Lena and read less Latin?) ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER III That spring Jim and Lena see several plays together, including Camille by Alexan dre Dumas fils (son of the famous author of The Count of Monte Cristo). This Fre nch tragedy dazzles them with its portrayal of sophisticated society and doomed love. The actress playing Marguerite (known as Camille) is past her prime, but d elivers a forceful performance which has both Lena and Jim in tears. NOTE: CAMILLE In the story of Camille, a young nobleman named Armand Duval fall s in love with an older woman of the world. She has tuberculosis, and they go to live in the country in hopes that she may get well. Of all her affairs, he is t he first person she has truly loved. His father persuades Camille to give up Arm and rather than spoil his future. So Camille pretends she loves someone else. Ar mand cruelly rebukes her. Her health worsens, and, finally learning the truth, A rmand visits Camille to apologize. She dies, happy, in his arms. Why do you think Cather uses the play Camille? Like Camille, Lena is older, and has a good heart but a reputation for being easy with men. Jim, like Armand, is intense but inexperienced. Do you think Jim will fall in love with Lena? If so, will she marry him? Or will she--like Camille--renounce Jim in order not to spoi l his chances for the future? Certainly Cather intends a parallel between the pl ay and Jim and Lena's relationship. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER IV Lena has grown from a barefoot farm girl into a well-groomed, accomplished young woman. Her customers know that although the dresses will take longer to make an d will cost more than estimated, they will have a special flair. Jim enjoys occasional dinners and leisurely Sunday breakfasts at Lena's place. T hey play with her dog and laugh at her stories. He finds her very pretty and see s now why the Norwegian Ole Benson used to hang around her. She claims that ther e was never anything to that: she was lonely, and he loved being with women. He was too generous to be sensible, she says, and she still feels sorry for him. Across the hall from Lena lives an emotional Polish violinist who is jealous of Jim's attentions to her. The violinist is also jealous of the landlord, a widowe r who has a soft spot for Lena. Jim declares that all three of them are in love with Lena. One night the violinist is going to play a concert. He hasn't worn hi s evening coat in so long it has split down the back where it was folded. He kno cks on the door and asks Lena for some pins. Jim is there for supper. While Lena goes to mend the coat, the rivals glower at each other. The violinist makes ins inuating remarks about Jim's interest in Lena. Jim responds gently that he's kno wn Lena for years and "I think I appreciate her kindness." The violinist apologi zes, and from then on treats Jim like a special friend in a world of enemies. Be rating the citizens of Lincoln for their lack of musical appreciation, he writes a letter to the newspaper calling them "coarse barbarians." He sees everything in terms of chivalry and sentiment, and provides Lena and Jim with unintentional entertainment. Jim realizes that ever since he started seeing Lena he has paid less attention t o his studies. Gaston Cleric observes, "You won't recover yourself while you are playing about with this handsome Norwegian." Since Cleric has been offered a jo b teaching at Harvard, he wants Jim to come East, too. So Cleric writes Grandfat her Burden for permission. Jim never expects Grandfather to agree, but he does. (Do you think Cleric could have mentioned Lena in the letter?) Jim's feelings are mixed about leaving. He longs to escape the stifling small-to wn atmosphere of Lincoln, but he hates to leave Lena. He goes to see her to disc uss it. Lena informs him she's planning never to get married. She has seen too m uch poverty and hard work in her family brought on by too many babies. She'd sle pt three to a bed till she left home at nineteen. Now she's determined to keep h er independence and not be "under somebody's thumb." It isn't hard for her to guess that something's on Jim's mind. Confessing that h e's distracted and captivated by her, he tells her he's moving to Boston. She re plies that she's always liked him. Though she probably shouldn't have looked him up, it seemed natural to spend time together in Lincoln. (Compare this with Ant onia's earlier warning to Jim about Lena's fondness for men.) When they part for the evening, Lena kisses Jim as usual: "She always kissed one as if she were sadly and wisely sending one away forever." NOTE: LENA AND JIM Jim is clearly attracted to Lena, but we're never told wheth er they have had an affair. Jim, who probably would not lie, assures the violini st his intentions are honorable. Still, much has been made so far in the novel a bout Lena's sexy manner and lenient morals, and Jim is certainly infatuated and distracted from his work. But does it seem to you that either has any intention of getting seriously involved? We remember that Jim once said to Antonia: "I'm n ot half as fond of [Lena] as I am of you." And although she likes kissing Jim, L ena's kisses seem to send him away, or renounce him, rather than encouraging him . In his heart, Jim has already decided to go. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER I Between graduating from Harvard and entering its law school, Jim comes home for the summer. Little has changed, except Antonia, whom Frances Harling, now marrie d, calls "poor Antonia." Unmarried and a mother, she lives on her family's farm and works in the fields for Ambrosch. While Antonia suffers, her friends do better, which seems unfair, since Antonia had so much potential. Lena is now Lincoln's best dressmaker, and Tiny has set u p a residence hotel for sailors in Seattle. Black Hawk gossip to the contrary, J im thinks she'll run a respectable place. In a flash forward, Jim narrates Tiny' s success story. Hearing of gold in Alaska, she crossed snowfields and shot rive r rapids to help found Dawson City near the soon-to-be-famous Klondike Creek. Sh e started a hotel, then made a fortune in real estate and by developing a gold c laim. Part of the price she paid was the loss of three toes to exposure. She lim ps a bit. Years later, Jim has met her again. She is a hard-driving business wom an but has always stayed close to Lena, whom she's persuaded to set up a dressma king shop in San Francisco. Jim finds Tiny a bit weary with all her success. She isn't interested in life anymore, unlike Antonia. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER II At the town photographer's shop, Jim sees a picture of Antonia's baby on display in an expensive frame. How like Tony, Jim thinks, to be proud of her baby even though it is illegitimate. NOTE: JIM AND ANTONIA Why do you think Jim has felt so possessive about Tony, e ver since they were children? Possible reasons are that they were close neighbor s for three years; that, though younger, Jim, as a boy, felt like her protector; that he was her tutor in English and in softening her foreign ways; and that th ey had a kind of personal or spiritual kinship which kept them close. Perhaps th at is why he uses the word my in the title. A result of this possessiveness is t hat Jim is bitterly disappointed when Tony does something he disapproves of. He is crushed that she has let herself be deceived and publicly shamed (and to a mi ddle class person at the turn of the century, a child out of wedlock was conside red a terrible shame). "I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity," he says, but after seeing the photo of her baby, he begins to weaken: "I could forgive her... if she hadn't thrown herself away on such a cheap sort of fellow. " Though he is very critical of Antonia, Jim can never stay angry with her for l ong. Larry Donovan had been an arrogant train conductor who felt himself above such l owly tasks as making the passengers comfortable. He was fond of women, whom he l iked to impress with stories of "his unappreciated worth." How had Antonia been so thoroughly fooled by him? Jim asks Mrs. Harling. She tells him to go talk to the Widow Steavens, the only person who has kept in touch with Tony. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER III Jim drives a horse and cart out into the country to his grandparents' old farm, still rented to the Widow Steavens and her brother. The land, much of it now und er cultivation, seems "beautiful and harmonious... like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea." Mrs. Steavens invites him to stay overnight, and after supper she tells him Anto nia's sad story. Antonia, eager to be married, spent much of the summer in prepa ration. On the Widow's sewing machine she made clothes and underclothes, trimmin g them with lace her mother made for her. Larry wrote her often. One letter said he'd been transferred to a different "run," or train route, and they would be b ased in Denver. This momentarily crushed Antonia, who wanted a farm life. Finall y Larry summoned her to Denver. Ambrosch, who gave her a set of silverware and a generous check for $300 as a wedding present, drove her with three trunks to to wn. On the way they stopped so she could say good-bye to the Widow, and Antonia also whispered, "Good-bye, dear house!" probably thinking of happy times with th e Burdens. (You may remember her father's contentment in that house a short whil e before he died.) When she arrived in Denver, Antonia wrote Mrs. Steavens that they would be marri ed when Larry got his promotion. However, over a month later, mournful and disgr aced, the once-hopeful bride-to-be was back at home. It seemed that Donovan didn 't have a job after all. He'd been fired and blacklisted. He had also been sick, lived off her $300 until it was gone, and then disappeared to Mexico to get ric h cheating the railroad company. Now Antonia is not married and is going to have a baby. The Widow had cried to hear this story. She could have seen this fate for Lena, but not for Antonia, who "had so much good in her." NOTE: A QUIRK OF FATE? Lena, though she often gave her affections easily, cheri shed her independence, and never became involved enough with anyone to threaten her freedom. In contrast, Antonia's deepest need was to love someone and to be a mother. She wanted this so much that she was blind to Larry Donovan's unsuitabi lity, and became pregnant. To the Widow Steavens, this outcome seems like a crue l quirk of fate, but you may see it as an indication of Antonia's desire to be p art of a loving family. During the spring and summer the pregnant girl worked in the fields for Ambrosch . (Marek had grown violent and had been sent to an institution.) Antonia never w ent to town because she didn't want to see anyone she knew. She had toothaches, but wouldn't go to a dentist. Mrs. Steavens was the only one who went to see her . Once the Widow suggested to Ambrosch that by working so hard the girl would lo se her self-respect. Ambrosch responded angrily that the Widow should keep those ideas to herself. Ambrosch was obviously the boss, so she stayed away after tha t. In the fall when Antonia was herding cattle, Mrs. Steavens would sometimes me et her on the prairie and talk. Antonia liked to soak up the autumn sun. She rem inisced to the Widow about her father and the old days of playing with Jim on th e prairie. In winter Antonia dressed in heavy men's clothes. One day in December, after her ding her cattle in the snow, she went into her room, closed her door, and delive red her baby alone. Her mother came to fetch the Widow, who took care of the new born. When the Widow showed it to Ambrosch, his response was to "put it out in t he rain-barrel"--his way of saying the whole situation was a disgrace and an imp osition. But the baby did well. It's now a year and eight months old, and Antonia loves i t "as dearly as if she had a ring on her finger." Mrs. Steavens calls her a natu ral-born mother, but says there's little hope now of her being able to marry and have a family. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER IV The next day Jim walks over to see his old friend. She is thin and her face has a strong new seriousness, but she has the same deep color in her cheeks that has always made her look healthy and passionate. They walk to her father's gravesite, and Jim pours out all his plans and dreams. She realizes that his studying law and then working in New York City may mean s he won't see him again. But she won't lose him. She will keep him alive in her h eart, as she's done with her father's memory:"... he is more real to me than alm ost anybody else." Antonia feels her own purpose in life is to give her little g irl a better chance than she had. Also, she knows she belongs in the country, "w here all the ground is friendly." Moved by her assuredness as well as her love for the child and the land, Jim sud denly confesses his feelings for her; he thinks of her more than anyone else fro m his youth. Her personality continues to influence him. "I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything that a wom an can be to a man. The idea of you is part of my mind." She is overwhelmed and pleased. Their shared past means much to her, too. As the y start homeward, the richly described sunset reminds us of other sunsets they'v e shared. NOTE: WHY DON'T JIM AND ANTONIA MARRY? What prevents Jim from asking Tony to ma rry him? Several intangible barriers stand in their way, and neither considers t he possibility. She's four years older, they're from different social classes, a nd he's now far more educated than she is. Though Jim admires Tony more than any one else he's ever met, he must believe they would not be happy living together. The very fact that they do not plan to marry perhaps frees them to be such clos e friends. This scene, like other important ones in the novel, shows several different emot ions happening at once. The two friends are glad to see each other, but sad to b e parting. Jim's excited about his plans, but wishes he "could be a little boy a gain...." He holds Antonia's hands against his breast for a long time in what mi ght be called their most romantic moment, yet they both know they will never be lovers. Though they have reaffirmed their close friendship, they might not ever see each other again, despite Jim's promise to come back. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER I Twenty years pass. Jim learns that Antonia married a Bohemian named Anton Cuzak. They are poor and hard-working with a large family. Jim's afraid to part with h is cherished memory of her strength and beauty, so he avoids going to see her. Tiny Soderball and Lena Lingard live in San Francisco, both successful, independ ent, and unmarried. When Jim visits them, Lena urges him to go and see Antonia. So on his way back East he rents a buggy and team of horses and finds the Cuzak farm. Face to face with Antonia, Jim is deeply moved. Though work-worn and older, her eyes still show "the full vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished ." For a moment she doesn't recognize him because he's standing against the ligh t from the doorway. Then, ecstatic to see him, she calls her children round her. There are eleven in all. The eldest girl, Martha, whom Jim had seen as a baby, i s married and living on her own farm. The eldest boy, Rudolph, is away at the fa ir in Wilbur, with his father. (Antonia has no trouble persuading Jim to stay ov ernight until they return.) Two helpful teenaged girls are Anna and Yulka. Three of the older boys are Ambrosch, Anton, and Charley. Leo is the devilish twelve- year-old whom his mother loves best of them all. The youngest three are Lucie, J an, and Nina. Sitting in the kitchen, Jim and Antonia chat together. Though she has lost her y outh and quite a few of her teeth, she has not lost what other people lose, her "inner glow... the fire of life." She seems to Jim like her old self, and he fee ls young again with her. They all go to look at the family's new fruit cave, an underground storage room for home-canned goods. The small children, who don't speak English, point out al l the jars. It takes a lot of food to keep this big family going. "It's no wonde r their poor papa can't get rich," says Antonia. Jim and Antonia leave the cave first and the little ones run out after them, "a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight." NOTE: THE FRUIT CAVE Cather experienced this very scene in the fruit cave at th e farm of Annie Sadilek Pavelka, on whom the character of Antonia is based. The author claims it was at that moment she knew she would write the novel. The imag e of life emerging out of a dark cave is a central symbol for several reasons. T he Shimerdas lived in a "cave" (their dugout) at first, and the hardships there contributed to Mr. Shimerda's suicide. Also, Antonia has emerged from her "dark" trouble and shame to the "sunlight" of happy fulfillment. The Cuzak farm is well managed and pleasant. The ten children have been trained to help. As they tour the property, Jim notes the names of all the plants and an imals as he has at other times in the narrative when he feels especially close t o the earth. In the sheltered apple orchard Antonia tells him how she and her hu sband worked hard to make a farm. She remarks that since she's had children she doesn't like to kill anything, even an old goose she's going to roast. (Do you r emember Grandmother Burden feeling "friendly to the animals" early in the book?) Despite the struggle to make ends meet, Antonia says she's happy on the farm. In town, she sometimes used to be sad. Perhaps, suggests Jim, she should never hav e gone to town. But Tony insists that she learned from Mrs. Harling how to keep house and bring up children well. She learned a lot from working in someone else 's home, but she's glad her own daughters will never have to. Jim goes with Anton and Ambrosch to milk the cows. The older boys treat Jim as i f they have always known him--and indeed Antonia has talked about him often. Jim tells the boys he "was very much in love with your mother once, and I know ther e's nobody like her." With his old possessiveness, he lectures the boys to be co nsiderate and appreciative of her. After supper Leo is persuaded to play his grandfather's violin. He obviously has inherited talent and sensitivity from Mr. Shimerda--and his grandmother's criti cal skepticism. He is a restless, wild boy with a sharp tongue but a winning sen se of humor and passion for life. He's somewhat competitive with Jim for his mot her's attention (and it seems from his description of the boy that Jim might sli ghtly resent Leo's place in Antonia's heart). As she shows Jim her photograph collection, Antonia's children crowd close aroun d her, making an almost photographic real-life grouping. Here are pictures of th e three Bohemian Marys, all formerly known as "dynamite," now steady farm wives. Here are Lena, Frances, and Mr. Harling. Here, too, is a photo of Jake, Otto, a nd Jim, which brings back many memories. That night Jim sleeps in the hayloft with Ambrosch and Leo. As he lies looking a t the stars through a big window, he thinks about this striking family. They lea ve vivid pictures in his mind, just as Antonia has always done, images "that gre w stronger with time." Antonia has a strong body and a strong heart. To Jim she represents activities and ideas "which we recognize by instinct as universal and true." Antonia has kept Jim's memory fresh in her heart as she said she would. Clearly, he has done the same with her image. They represent the happy past for each oth er. More than that, he sees her as almost mythically fulfilled: "a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races." This is especially meaningful because h e has no children of his own. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER II Awakening in the sunny barn, Jim enjoys secretly watching Leo, who, like his mot her, "seemed conscious of possessing a keener power of enjoyment than other peop le." After breakfast Antonia tells Jim how sad she had felt when Martha got marr ied. They'd never spent a night apart. The family was so close that the other ch ildren hadn't known Martha was not their full sister until her engagement. In the mid-afternoon, Papa Cuzak returns from the fair with Rudolph. Antonia's h usband is short, with one shoulder higher than the other--"a crumpled little man "--but he is lively and friendly. Jim immediately likes him and his tall son. Th ey are full of stories about the tightrope dancer and Ferris wheel at the Bohemi an fair. As Cuzak tells his wife in Bohemian all the greetings from people she k nows, Jim drops back and observes them. They seem friendly and comfortable toget her. Cuzak watches for her responses to everything he says. In the kitchen Cuzak brings presents out of his pockets for the children. He see ms gentle and very fond of them and also amused that there are so many. He has b rought Bohemian newspapers home. One news item involves the singer Maria Vasak. She is from Cuzak's own section of Prague (now the capital of Czechoslovakia), a nd he's delighted to learn that Jim has heard her sing in Europe. At dinner Rudolph tells Jim the story of Wick Cutter, who turned out to be more wicked than anyone would have thought. In his old age, his fear that his wife's relatives would inherit his money became an obsession. Two years ago he bought a pistol. He shot his wife at five in the afternoon, wrote a letter stating that he had survived her, and then shot himself at six. He managed to fire a second s hot through the window, and point out to the passersby who came running that he had survived his wife and was the sole heir. Thus, adds Rudolph, he "killed hims elf for spite"--surely a strange thing. Cutter's fortune turned out to be $100,0 00 (a huge amount of money in those days), and much of it went to the lawyers wh o handled the estate. When they first met, Jim had the impression Cuzak knew all about him. Now, after supper, Cuzak tells Jim his own story. After bad luck in the fur business in Ne w York and the orange business in Florida, he came to Nebraska to visit his cous in, Anton Jelinek (who was so helpful at Mr. Shimerda's funeral and later ran a respectable saloon in Black Hawk). He fell in love with Antonia and they were ma rried immediately (in contrast with Larry Donovan, who had kept putting her off) . Turning the prairie sod into farmland was tough, but Antonia was strong enough for both of them--and anyway babies kept coming, so they had to stick at it. A city man, Anton never thought he'd settle permanently in one place, especially a farm. But it's clear he's still in love with his wife. It is a testimony to her powers of attraction to have kept him contented for all these years. NOTE: ANTONIA'S FULFILLMENT "Cuzak had been made the instrument of Antonia's sp ecial mission," writes Jim, meaning that Cuzak allowed himself to be fitted into her earthy vision of a thriving family and fruitful farm. Some readers have ref erred to Antonia as an earth mother because she seems to represent fertility, ha rvest, and harmony with nature. She has almost bewitched Cuzak, who wonders at h ow quickly the years have passed. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: CHAPTER III Leaving the Cuzak farm the next day, Jim waves good-bye to Antonia and her child ren, who make another memorable picture grouped by the windmill. Thoughtful, aff ectionate Ambrosch opens the gate for the buggy, and Jim hates to leave him. Jim has made a plan to take the older boys hunting at the Niobrara (a river in nort hern Nebraska) which he is looking forward to as much as they are. On the way home he spends a disappointing day in Black Hawk, where very few of t he people from his youth remain. Walking out to the edge of town, he finds a hal f-mile stretch of the old wagon-road "which used to run like a wild thing across the open prairie." Out there he experiences once again the beauty of sunset and autumn (recurring images). The memory of his first ride over that road comes to him strongly. Now he feels that this road has brought him and Antonia back toge ther. It is "the road of Destiny" along which their lives have traveled. "I had the sense of coming home to myself," he writes, "and of realizing, in the contex t of the vast prairie, what a little circle man's experience is." Now, looking b ack on it all, Jim believes, "Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past." NOTE: "THE INCOMMUNICABLE PAST" Is the past incapable of being described or exp lained, as this quote implies? Jim's manuscript seems to contradict its own last sentence. Full of nostalgia, it richly evokes the places, people, and emotions of his past--which is to a large extent Cather's own past. Jim's memories of Antonia are strong, and his visit with her strengthens his fee lings even more. She is his oldest friend. That alone would make her precious, b ut in addition she has become a symbol of endurance, love, and the values of the pioneer way of life. She has also created "enough Cuzaks to play with for a lon g while yet," and through them Jim has already begun to rediscover the happiness of his lost boyhood. ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: GLOSSARY AIGRETTE an ornamental spray of feathers or gems AMOUR PROPRE French phrase meaning self-esteem ARNICA an herb used in a liniment for sprains or bruises ARROYO a water-carved gully or channel BILE a secretion of the liver, used figuratively to mean anger BOHUNK slang word for Bohemian, used pejoratively BREAKING SOD ploughing prairie land for the first time CAPOTE a long cloak CHASED (silver) decorated with an indented pattern CONDITIONS (university) two years of preparatory courses conditions for entry t o university COURT-PLASTER an adhesive bandage CROUP a children's illness marked by coughing and difficult breathing CUT BANDS to cut pieces of twine or metal for binding sheaves of grain DINNER the hot noon meal on a farm DIVIDE a watershed, or dividing ridge between drainage areas DRAW a natural ditch or valley that draws the water off a piece of land DRAY a strong low cart or wagon DUGOUT a dwelling dug out of a hillside FIXY slang for particularly neat FLEECED cheated GELDING a neutered male horse GRIZZLED streaked with gray GULLY a small gorge cut in the earth by a stream HARTSHORN hart's antler, a source of ammonia; also the ammonia water made from it HOMESTEAD a piece of land acquired under the Homestead Act (1862), or the farm established on such land KAWN-TREE Antonia's pronunciation of 'country' LARIAT a long rope for lassoing animals LARIAT PIN the peg by which a lariat is fixed to the ground, restricting an ani mal to one area LIVERY TEAM a hired team of horses and a wagon MAMENKA familiar term for mother in Bohemian MUTTON TALLOW fat drippings from a cooked sheep NIOBRARA a river in northern Nebraska NOBLESSE OBLIGE French phrase meaning a nobleman's special obligation to behave honorably PLACER CLAIM a tract of potentially valuable land (especially on land thought t o contain particles of gold) PLAITING WHIPLASHES braiding rawhide strips into whips POULTICING applying a medicinal compress (poultice) PRIMER a simple book for teaching children to read PROVIDENCE divine guidance or care QUINSY a severe inflammation of the throat accompanied by swelling and fever QUIRT a riding whip with a short handle RAVINE a narrow, steep-sided valley, bigger than a gully and smaller than a can yon SCHOTTISCHE a dance like the polka but slower SECTION LINES the boundaries between surveyed sections of land SHELVING BANKS the sloping sides of a river or stream SHOCK a pile of sheaves of grain set up in a field with the butt ends facing do wnward SOD top layer of prairie land SOD HOUSE a house built from brick-like pieces of sod SORGHUM a grain cultivated for syrup or animal feed SPRING WAGON a light wagon with springs STACKS haystacks STEER a neutered (castrated) bull raised for beef TATINEK familiar term for father in Bohemian TITHONUS in Greek mythology, husband of Aurora (the dawn) TRANSOM a small ventilation window above a door USURY NOTES a moneylender's receipts VICTUALS food (pronounced "vittles") WINDLASS WELL a water well with a bucket that is raised on a rope by turning a crank

^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: ON MY ANTONIA Few American novels are likely to be read longer than My Antonia. In it, theme, character, myth, and incident ride together comfortably on a clear, supple prose style. It is probably Willa Cather's greatest work. Everything went right--a sp lendid concept executed with perfect taste and mastery. Willa Cather combines th e yea-saying vision of Whitman with a disciplined artistry learned from James, F laubert, Sarah Orne Jewett, and others, and the novel goes considerably beyond e ither of its immediate predecessors.... The wonder of it all is that the novel, so rich in suggestiveness, is so artfully simple.... Emerson to Whitman to Willa Cather: The line in American literature is direct an d clear. Although her methods were modern and her subjects the immigrant farmers of Nebraska, she belongs to the tradition of American romanticism. -James Woodress, Willa Cather: Her Life and Art, 1970 ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: ON CATHER'S WORK Where to place Willa Cather will always puzzle the literary historians. But the reader of her best novels is not likely to worry about that. These novels have a strength and an individuality that it is not easy for the critic formally to de scribe, virtues which can be experienced even if they cannot easily be talked ab out. Her position among American novelists is unique; no other has brought to be ar quite her kind of perception on the American scene.... [Her work] transcends national problems to illuminate one of the great questions about civilization. T o put the matter briefly, Miss Cather's novels are civilized; and if we interpre t that term too narrowly, that is because we have not read Willa Cather carefull y enough. -David Daiches, Willa Cather: A Critical Introduction, 1951 It is customary to speak of Willa Cather as an "elegist" of the American pioneer tradition. "Elegy" suggests celebration and lament for a lost and irrevocable p ast; but the boldest and most beautiful of Willa Cather's fictions are character ized by a sense of the past not as an irrevocable quality of events, wasted in h istory, but as persistent human truth repossessed--salvaged, redeemed--by virtue of memory and art. Her art is a singular one. The prose style is suave, candid, transparent, a styl e shaped and sophisticated in the great European tradition; her teachers were Ho mer and Virgil, Tolstoy and Flaubert. But the creative vision that is peculiarly hers is deeply primitive, psychologically archaic in an exact sense. In that pr imitivism was her great strength, for it allowed the back door of her mind to ke ep open, as it were, to the rumor and movement of ancestral powers and instincti ve agencies. -Dorothy Van Ghent, Willa Cather, 1964 All of what Willa Cather wrote, it seems to me, is ultimately a metaphor of the conflict which Miguel de Unamuno referred to as an "inward tragedy," the conflic t "between what the world is as scientific reason shows it to be, and what we wi sh it might be, as our religious faith affirms it to be." For Willa Cather, this conflict was most broadly expressed in terms of the world she knew in her child hood--the pioneer era which she clearly idealized and ennobled in her fictional recreation of it--and the post-World War I wasteland she so thoroughly repudiate d. It is easy to lose sight of the essentially symbolic nature of this conflict and to read it too narrowly in terms of literal past versus literal present. Her theme was not the superiority of the past over the present, but, as Henry Steel e Commager observed, "the supremacy of moral and spiritual over material values, the ever recurrent but inexhaustible theme of gaining the whole world and losin g one's soul." Rather than being irrelevant to the modern world, the moral thrus t of Willa Cather's art, her concern with pioneers and artists as symbolic figur es representing the unending human quest for beauty and truth, places her among the number, not of the backward-looking (which she saw herself as being one of), but of the true spiritual pioneers of all ages in whose lives or work other men continue to find inspiration. -Dorothy Tuck McFarland, Willa Cather, 1972 ...She thought the traditional themes of love and despair, truth and beauty, the struggle for artistic honesty, far from exhausted; indeed she held, with Henry James and Ellen Glasgow, that these were the only themes capable of inspiring gr eat art. "Ideals," she wrote, "were not archaic things, beautiful and impotent; they were the real sources of power among men," and unlike so many of her contem poraries--Hemingway, for example--she was not embarrassed by this vocabulary. Sa rah Orne Jewett had admonished her, when she was scarcely more than a girl, that "you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity g oes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength... is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation, sentiment falls to sentimentality--you can write about life but never write life itself."... [She] wrote life itself, wrot e it so passionately that the characters she created seem to us more authentic t han the characters of history. -Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind, 1950 ^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: ON WILLA CATHER It is time to remove some of the pink and blue from our image of the apple-cheek ed and prairie-blue-eyed Willa Cather. This writer we think of as Middle Western er spent most of her life in the East. She chose to be a New Yorker. She was the hard-driving editor of a successful magazine and didn't start writing fiction f ull time until she was 40. Her literary ties were to Europe. The girl next door of American letters hated small-town America, rejected heterosexuality, and dist rusted the family as the enemy of art. It is time to establish Willa Cather's co mplexity and her stature as a writer. -Phyllis Rose, "The Point of View Was Masculine," The New York Times Book Review, September 11, 1983 THE END