My Antonia

Rating:
Summary: A sense of community
Review: The writing is timeless. One reads Willa Cather with confidence that she has shaped the novel for her audience. The introduction is the beginning of a fictitious memoir Cather has produced for this story. Having an introduction lends verisimilitude. It is a device for Jim Burden, now a railroad lawyer, to tell the story. He had first heard of Antonia during his initial journey to Nebraska.

Jim Burden and his grandparents lived in a wooden house. Everyone else lived in sod houses or dugouts--not very roomy. The Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, lived in a cave in the beginning. Jim and Antonia Shimerda liked to go to the prairie dog town to watch them and to watch the owls. After a time Mr. Shimerda, a sensitive, cultured person, discovered a pair of Russians in the farming community. He made friends with them since they were able to speak with each other.

Once Jim and Antonia encountered a large snake and Antonia said that Jim was brave because he killed the snake with a spade. Then one of the Russians died and the other one moved away. The lives of the children centered on their need for warmth and food. Jim felt his life was as adventurous as that of the family in THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, a book he read to his grandmother while she worked.

In December Jim and the hired man and his grandmother visited the Shimerdas. As suspected, they were in terrible want. Mr. Shimerda died in January. Men sent for the coroner in Black Hawk, and eventually he was buried at the corner of his own property. Years later when the red grass had almost disappeared from the prairie, Mr. Shimerda's grave was still visible on the land.

By spring the Shimerdas were in their new log house. Hard work changed Antonia. She felt that she could not go to school, that she needed to work. When July came around, Kansas and Nebraska were filled with breathless, brilliant heat and Antonia and her brother worked with Jim's grandparents on the wheat harvest and on other tasks.

Jim had been living with his grandparents for three years when they decided to move to Black Hawk. The Burdens's neighbor in Black Hawk hired Antonia as their servant. The neighbor, Mrs. Haring, played the piano and did a great deal to entertain the youth of the town. A phrase used in the novel has winter coming down savagely on the little town on the prairie. Tony told stories of Bohemia and the countryside to the Haring children.

In the spring a dancing tent arrived in the town. Young men belonged to something called the Progressive Euchre Club. Country girls worked in town to help their immigrant farm families. The foreign girls were deemed a menace to the social order. Antonia suffered the indignity of a failed relationship to a scoundrel and was eventually redeemed through marriage to a good person. Twenty years later Jim is able to visit the vibrant family.

Rating:
Summary: A classic that reads like modern lit
Review: This is a book that sat on my shelf for several years. I was almost daunted by its 'classic' status; I've often been disappointed by some of the American lit greats like Twain and Steinbeck.

But I shouldn't have waited. This book is a wonderful, textured story. The main and supporting characters are three-dimensional people who are both complex and realistic.

The plot is basically the coming-of-age story of a boy and a girl on the Nebraska prairies at the turn of the century. It is told in the first person by a young man. Cather does an amazing job of capturing the voice of a boy as he becomes an adult.

But it's also about the struggles of early farmers against the harsh land and climate of their adopted land. It's about the difficulties of immigrants, particularly women immigrants, who came to make their fortune in a new place. The subplots within the story are not distracting, but they are complex enough, (like the story of Russian Peter, or of Tiny) that they are almost worth a novel themselves.

Considering that the story takes place over 100 years ago, it reads like a very modern book. Both the language and the motifs remain relevant today. I whipped through this story in only a couple of days and it kept me up past my bedtime on both evenings. Willa Cather's humour, straightforward style, and detailed sense of place all make this an extremely enjoyable read. I will definitely read more of Cather in the future.

Rating:
Summary: "Optima dies...prima fugit."
Review: Willa Cather's My Antonia takes place in the late 1800s and proceeds through the turn of the century. In this book that takes place on the Nebraska plain, Cather undoubtedly has no trouble describing the lives of Jim Burden and Antonia, a Bohemian immigrant through strong feeling and emotion. Although the story does start off a little slow, Cather manages to tell a lovely story where two people's lives become intertwined forever.
"Optima dies...prima fugit," are the words that Jim Burden uses to describe the days that he tells about in this story. "The best days are the first to flee." Through the memories of Jim's experiences, he tells the story of a Bohemian immigrant, Antonia, and the hardships she had to face on the Nebraska prairie. An orphan himself, he is sent to live with his grandparents at the age of 10. Jim tells of his family, the Burdens, and their acquaintance with the new Bohemian neighbors, the Shimerdas. The two families help one another in the harsh Nebraska winter. Both experience the same losses and gains. Jim teaches Antonia English while Antonia teaches Jim a few things about life. One way Jim describes Antonia towards the end of the book is "She never lost the fire of life."
As Jim grows older, Antonia continues to be a shadow in the back of his mind. As the prairie does, Jim's life changes and takes shape. He takes a different path than that of Antonia. He goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin and later moves on to Harvard to attend Law school. Antonia stays in Nebraska to help her family. He begins to leave behind those that have made him what he is...his grandparents, the Norwegian Lena Lingard, Tiny...and the Harley family. However, with all the memories, what Jim remembers most is his dear Antonia on the Nebraska prairie... "The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't even realize it. You really are a part of me..."