Students in Bobby Mays' AP Junior English Class discuss the many, many different ways that Cather's classic novel
can be interpreted.
Cather's "My Antonia" Subject of Study
at Como-Pickton High School
by: Bobby McDonald
Como-Pickton Junior English teacher, Bobby Mays, was looking for some novel to inspire his AP Junior English students to read, for a summer reading project. That's when he made the decision to assign Willa Cather's classic "My Antonia." "I warned the students back in May that it would be a book that almost each student would interpret differently!" expressed Mays. "But, when you complete it an hear all of the discussion that it will generate in class, next autumn, you're going to be rewarded with a genuinely exciting summertime read!"
Well, those words of prophesy have come to fruition, as classes have begun this autumn and students in Mays' Junior English class are analyzing the classic work and discussing their formal interpretation of the 1918 classic book. "Certainly, things have changed in the past century, but still some of the basic human characteristics are still the same, and the students have learned that regardless of the setting, we all react in much the same way," explained Mays. "It's a great book to show the basic human needs and the reactions that we all have to those basic needs!"
For those who have "forgotten," Cather's classic deals with the story of immigrant families who move to the rural Nebraska Plains, to start new lives in America. Antonia Shimerdas, is the eldest daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family, who meets book's narrator, Jim Burden, on the train that brings them to Hawk, Nebraska. Antonia's life and hardships are told through the eyes of Jim, who serves as her admirer and friend.
Four years older than Jim, Antonia Shimerda is a bold and free-hearted young woman and embodies the spirit of the prairie, despite losing her father in a tragic suicide, and must care for her entire family. Jim fathoms a deep love for the elder Antonia, but is infatuated with Lena Lingard and realizes that Antonia recognizes the age differences between them.
Jim leaves for college and Antonia remains in Black Hawk, where her life continues with a family of ten children. Some 20 years later, Jim returns to Black Hawk, and continues the admiration he has for Antonia and her entire family.
Students in May's AP Junior English class examine and discuss the plot in Cather's classic novel, discussing the many
obstacles in life that Antonia must overcome, as she embraces the Nebraska prairie.
Students in Mays' Como-Pickton class have offered the two following examples of their interpretation of the book:
Marco Gonzalez
Power and Will in My Ántonia
Through the use of Imagery and characterization, Willa Cather demonstrates in My Ántonia the power and will of overcoming adversity. Throughout the novel, Cather maintains a subtle but ever increasing will to survive in each character. Cather also exemplifies the adversity each character must overcome in order to endure and survive the conflict pressed upon them.
In the course of My Ántonia, Cather’s use of imagery helps expose each conflict to the reader and illustrates the power and will it took to overcome the adversity in their lives. “He twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I thought –he was a circus monstrosity. His abdominal muscularity, his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my leg, and looked as if millstones couldn’t crush the disgusting vitality out of him”. “I ran up and drove at his head with my spade, struck him fairly across the neck, and in a minute he was all about my feet in wavy loops” (29). As Jim encounters a big snake, his instincts to kill the snake come as if they were natural. The snake being a rattle snake had the potential of seriously injuring Jim or even killing him. Encountering a life threatening situation, Jim’s power of will struck what would take his life in matter of minutes. “I killed a big snake–I was now a big Fellow” (31). Killing the snake not only meant living another day, but showed the natural will to survive within Jim. Later in the novel, before the death of Pavel, he tells us about his encounter with wolves. “The wolves ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them. “He called to the groom that they must lighten –and pointed to the bride. The young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her away. In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the sledge and threw the girl after him”. Under the circumstances Peter and Pavel encountered by the wolves, the only possible way to survive was to lighten the weight for the horses, thus getting rid of the groom and bride. Overcoming such adversity with murder takes an enormous power of will to survive.
Adversity did not target merely one character a time. It also influenced the way a whole family lived, For example, when the harsh winter spell fell upon the Burden Family. “The flakes came down so thickly that from the sitting-room windows I could not see beyond the windmill”. “On the morning of the twenty-second, grandfather announced at breakfast that it would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas Purchases”. Such imagery shows us the incapability for the Burden family to have a normal Christmas. “We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town” (47). The Burden Family was not the only target of adversity. The Shimerda family suffered a great ordeal when Mr. Shimerda committed suicide. “Old Mr. Shimerda is dead, and his family are in great distress”. But like the Burden family, they prospered on to live good lives as farmers. “The Shimerdas where in their new log house by then”. “The family had four comfortable rooms to live in, a new windmill—bought on credit—a chicken house and poultry” (67). The imagery Cather uses helps the reader to visualize the intensity and magnitude of each misfortune forced to them in life. . . .
. . . . The approach Cather takes to characterize her novel speaks to say “I want to live”. Father Kelly says that everyone is put into this world for something, and I know what I've got to do. I'm going to see that my little girl has a better chance than I ever had. I'm going to take care of that girl”. Facing the hardship of becoming pregnant, Ántonia’s character remained strong, her power and will pushes her to strive for a better life. "I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered –about her teeth for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Ántonia had not lost the fire of life” (179). After enduring all of what life had to offer, Ántonia never lost that self-indulgence for life that empowers one to survive. Adversity also takes its mark between characters. Ambrosch and Jake are both two hard working men. But as all friendships can go bad, theirs do. “Ambrosch was more than ever the head of the house, and he seemed to direct the feelings as well as the fortunes of his women-folk” (71). Ambrosch’s character seems to feel as the boss of all the family. When Jake is sent to return a horse collar lent to Ambrosch, he feels responsible for it. “When Jake asked for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged to grandfather , of course , and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up” (71). Ambrosch’s refusing to return the collar returns to his duties, which only angers Jake. “Jake caught him by the belt of his trousers and yanked him back. Ambrosch’s feet had scarcely touched the ground when he lunged out with a vicious kick at jakes stomach” (72). “Jake was furious. He Landed Ambrosch a blow on the head—it sounded like the crack of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambrosch dropped over, stunned” (72). Dealing with a argument over a borrowed collar raises tension between the two families. Mr. Burden’s, or as they called him” Grandfather”, character, was one with peace. “It was grandfather who brought about a reconciliation with the Shimerdas” (74). “I don’t want to have no trouble with Ambrosch. If he’ll let me alone , I’ll let him alone” (75). Overcoming a family dispute shows the will to work together in order to prosper in life. Because without one another, Life for themselves would be difficult. Adversity was always a appearing in the novel. Affecting one or multiple characters at a time. In this instance it affects three girls in Black Hawk county, also know as the Country Girls. The country Girls faced adversity within the society. “The country girls were considered a menace to the social order because of their beauty. The men of Black Hawk County were expected to marry Black Hawk women but were strongly tempted by the country girls. “Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background” (109). Even though they were hated by society the girls’ will for a better life kept their heads up and heads straight on what they aimed for in life. “But every one of them did what she had set out to do, and sent home those hard-earned dollars. “The girls I knew were always helping to pay for ploughs and reapers, brood-sows, or steers to fatten” (109).
i Willa Cather’s usage of imagery and characters helps the reader understand what eachperson had to accomplish in order to overcome and prevail in life.
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Students at Como-Pickton, in Mays' class, have learned that each of them have their
own interpretations of the books that they are reading.
Chelsea Lessing
Usage of Setting & Imagery in My Ántonia
The following quote communicates a common sentiment found in humanity: “Optima dies… prima fugit” The quote from Virgil translates to “The best days are the first to flee,”. and illustrates that we are mortal beings. As we grow older our mortality grows more apparent. We begin to realize that we are part of nature, and our lifetimes are miniscule anomalies on the universal timeline with which we are intertwined. In My Ántonia, a novel by Willa Cather, Cather uses setting and imagery to communicate the human connection to the environment.
Setting is a major element in My Ántonia, as the landscape often reflects the emotions of the characters. The setting is a Nebraska prairie, a vast expanse of mostly empty land. During a long, hard winter, Ántonia’s father commits suicide. On the day of the funeral, the narrator, Jim says, “…it has made me remember that white waste and the little group of people; and the bluish air, full of fine, eddying snow, like long veils flying” (65). This quote uses the environment to mirror the feelings of waste, cold, and desolation on the day of Mr. Shimerda’s funeral. Even the mention of the word “veil” has a connotation that may remind one of a funeral veil, covering one who is in mourning. The air was “bluish”, and blue is often a color associated with sadness.
Another example uses the environment to show a feeling of freedom, almost invincibility. When Jim kills a snake in a prairie-dog town, Ántonia is amazed and brags about Jim’s conquest. As they are dragging the snake home, Jim says, “Her exultation was contagious. The great land had never looked so big and free. If the red grass were full of rattlers, I was equal to them all” (30). When Jim feels powerful, the landscape opens up to him, showing its many possibilities. This shows that Jim’s emotions and his environment are powerfully entangled. Ántonia’s feelings are contagious to Jim, and Jim is contagious to his surroundings, reflecting human emotions on everything around him, blurring the lines between himself and his environment; in effect becoming like an infant who cannot yet distinguish between “me” and “them”.
When Jim returns to Black Hawk after college, he visits Ántonia on the prairie, where she is still working the land. This takes him back to his childhood, and symbolism is used with the setting to show his feelings about seeing Ántonia again. “ …the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east…pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world” (171). In this scene, there is a comforting mood, as Jim is returning to a childhood friend in a childhood home, where the best days fled so quickly. The sun and the moon represent Jim and Ántonia, two intertwined objects, meeting again on opposite edges of the world. This shows how the destinies of the two childhood friends are intertwined, yet opposite. They belong two different places, but are one in the same, both destined to meet again despite their differences. .
,During his return to Black Hawk, Jim also says, “I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there” (171). This shows that Jim still feels the connection to the prairie landscape, even after being away from it. It is now an indivisible part of the human spirit after being so closely connected to him for many years. He longs to be a young boy again, but these golden days have long fled. He hopes his life can be a circle that brings him back to Nebraska after he is old, and he later realizes that the lives of humans do go in circles, ending where they started. We start as a part of nature, fused with it, not knowing where it starts and we begin, and we return to nature when our life cycle is complete.
An extremely beautiful, human, and dynamic setting is not useful if the reader cannot picture it. Imagery is a vital element to My Ántonia. Cather’s use of sensory, emotionally connected words help to convey the setting in the reader’s mind, making it feel as much a part of the reader as it is to the narrator. Imagery is also very useful in communicating symbolism.
When Jim first arrives in Nebraska, the vast plain makes him feel insignificant. “Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out” (9). This quote shows how Cather uses emotional phrases like “erased” and “blotted out” to give the reader a feeling of how a small, young boy felt upon arriving in a vast stretch of near-nothingness. Cather uses imagery and connotation to communicate how unnatural Jim feels at first in his new homeland.
Imagery is important to make a reader picture a landscape. Cather uses beautiful, descriptive wording to paint a mental picture of the ever-important landscape. “The pink bee-bush stood tall along the sandy roadsides, and the cone-flowers and rose mallow grew everywhere… I saw a clump of flaming, orange-coloured milkweed…the gaillardia came up year after year and matted over the ground with the deep, velvety red that is in Bokhara carpets” (126). Here, the author uses vivid descriptions of color and names of specific plants to make it easy to see the fiery summer landscape of Black Hawk, Nebraska. The bright landscape and warm colors communicate the heat and brilliance of summer.
When Ántonia’s father dies, he is buried at a place where two roads were planned to intersect. When Jim returns to see Ántonia in his college years, he sees the plot where Mr. Shimerda was buried. “We sat down outside the sagging wire fence that shut Mr. Shimerda’s plot off from the rest of the world. The tall grass had never been cut there. It had died down in the winter and come up again in the spring until it was as thick and shrubby as some tropical garden grass” (170). The description of how the grass naturally regulates its growth, how that sacred piece of land was never corrupted by humanity, uses imagery to show symbolism. The grass dying in the winter and growing in the spring can symbolize life on the Nebraska prairie, where death happens in the winter (the death of the landscape and Mr. Shimerda) and renewal happens in spring (when the Shimerda family goes through a healing period and learns to live without a father in the household). It also shows how, after humans die, we return to the earth, becoming part of its cycle of death and renewal. Nature is uncorrupt; as we are when we come into the world, and as we are when we return to be a part of it.
Another wonderful example of using imagery for symbolism happens when Jim is about to leave for college and goes to pick elderflowers with his friends. After they are finished, they sit down to relax and look at the sunset. “On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun” (132). This image of a plough magnified by the sun is a symbol of humanity taming nature. Jim’s friends, immigrant girls who moved from the farm to town, have been changed by human standards. They have been tamed, before being a wild part of nature; just as the plow tames the rough earth. The use of the phrase “black against the molten red” shows the contrast between these two objects, the sun and the plough, just as there is a contrast between humanity and nature. Humanity often magnifies itself by its effect on nature, just like the plough was magnified by the sun.
My Ántonia is a popular book because of its use of simple language to convey deep meaning. The setting beautifully morphs into the storyline, and use of imagery reveals how truly remarkable this setting is. The theme of the book is how humans are part of the environment, and Cather effectively uses the elements of imagery and setting to show how this is true.
In the end of the book, Jim visits Ántonia’s farm and meets her husband and ten children. “I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man’s experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past” (195). Jim realizes that life is a cycle, a road of destiny that will always bring you back to where you started, which is in nature, a part of the universe. The best days may be the first to flee, but this does not mean they will never return.
Mays and his students highly recommend My Antonia, for a great read "on the characteristics of human nature and the vanities of life, that are experienced, regardless of the time period in which we find ourselves."
The Junior English students will also be reading "Red Badge of Courage" and "Catcher in the Rye" for reading this year. As seniors, they will be introduced to George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
Como-Pickton AP Junior English instructor, Bobby Mays, introduces his classes to a number of the classic books, as they
are encouraged to apply the principles of life learned, to their own lives and situations.
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