My Antonia

Rating:
Summary: It's definitely not "Little House on the Prairie"
Review: Laura Ingalls Wilder once commented on her little house series of books saying that there was much that she could not have included in them since they were intended for children. For example, she didn't include the episode where Pa and a posse hunted down a family of serial murderers who ran an inn.

Well, what Wilder only hinted at, Willa Cather delivers in "My Antonia." The wild west was a lot wilder than we might have supposed. This book (based upon her experiences of life on the frontier) includes suicide, assaults, unwed pregnancies, social climbing and more! The book starts off slow and its series of stories may put off some readers, but you end up with the feeling that you have known real persons after your complete this book. Life is more messy than we may like, but there's still value in it as shown in "My Antonia."

Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: There is no need for me to recount the details of the book. I found both the picture of rural Nebraska and the relationship of Jim and Antonia to be fascinating. I believe the book is very much about the stultifying effect small towns have on relationships. Jim's true love was Antonia. His passions were aroused by the immigrant girls as a group. However, he was from the "other class". Anton told him despite their friendship, he didn't want Jim in his saloon because it upset his grandfather. When Jim snuck out at night to dance with the immigrant girls he never felt more alive. Yet he stopped the instant he found his grandmother in tears over his behavior and what that meant in their small town. He then stops his relationship with Lena in Lincoln and leaves for Harvard because he can't accomplish anything when he is involved with her. (To his surprise, his grandfather has no objections to his leaving Lincoln for Harvard.) He admires not only Antonia, but all the immigrant girls, but he is never more than friends with them. They understand and he understands that he is from the "good" families and they are not. Ironically, the "good" people are very helpful to their immigrant neighbors, but not to the point of letting their sons (and grandsons) marry them. The only "non-immigrant" man available to Antonia turns out to be a well-known (to the "good" people) scoundrel who totally betrays Antonia. Consequently, Antonia marries a good-hearted countryman who treats her illegitimate daughter as his own and they are impressively raising a large family. Jim in turn is childless, married to the "right" woman, but not to a woman he loves. In the end I feel it is Jim who has lost despite the Harvard degree and the well-connected wealthy wife. Antonia is shamed for trying to escape her destiny as a farm wife and Jim refuses to break from his social constraints. Yet there is hope. Tiny and Lena reject the role of wife and mother because their youth was spent doing too much domestic drudgery. They end up as successful and well-travelled business women. A thought-provoking contrast between them and Antonia.

Rating:
Summary: A marvelous novel by one of America's great writers
Review: The greatness of this novel lies in its characters. Like in most of her novels, plot plays very little role in Willa Cather's MY ANTONIA. The core of any of her best books is the people who populate them, and this is probably truer in this novel than any of them. Willa Cather delighted in her characters, good and bad. She had little interest in developing a complex, tightly knit story, with surprises and twists and turns. But she was obsessed with the inhabitants of her tales. The particular characters in MY ANTONIA are especially vivid and well-drawn, because they were all, especially the central characters, based almost explicitly on actual people she grew up with in Red Cloud, Nebraska. More than any of her other books, more of this novel was based on real people and real incidents. While the fate of the real life Antonia differed from the one in the novel, the resemblances were sufficient for all the residents of Red Cloud to recognize themselves and their neighbors in the novel.

Willa Cather is known primarily in two modes. On the one hand, she is remembered as a novelist of the prairies, though, in fact, she wrote only a few novels and stories about the prairie, as such. Her novels are set in a wide variety of locales, from Nebraska to the Southwest to the South to Quebec. Any understanding of Cather as a regional novelist would be mistaken. Also, one must remember that she herself left Nebraska in her early twenties, and lived the rest of her life in Pittsburgh and New York. Nonetheless, while her novels are set in a variety of locales, the plains of Nebraska remained one of the primary sources for her work as a whole. Even though she lived the bulk of her life in New York City, she nonetheless remained conscious throughout of where she was from.

Much of the power of MY ANTONIA derives from the fact that it is her most autobiographical novel. Cather was an intensely private person, giving virtually no interviews in her lifetime. She had several close friends, but they were not many and she did not admit many new individuals into her life. To anyone very familiar with her life, the idea of writing an autobiography is almost inconceivable. But in MY ANTONIA, while she doesn't put a great deal of herself into the book, she does put a great deal of what she remembered of her early life, of the people she knew, and of the town she lived in. She was an acute observer, and as a result this novel has a vividly tactile sense about it. It has a concreteness and reality few novels possess.

For anyone enjoying this novel, I would strongly encourage further exploration of Cather's novels. The closest of her other novels to this one is probably O PIONEERS!, since it is also set on the prairie. THE SONG OF THE LARK tells the story of a woman, like Cather herself, who leaves the prairie for the big city. But Cather's greatest novels are not set in the Midwest or the prairie. Her greatest novel, and one of the finest American novels of the 20th century, is the exquisite DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP. Equally as good, though on a much smaller scale, is A LOST LADY. I also strongly recommend THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE and SHADOWS ON THE ROCK. The former is actually three stories combined to form a single book, while the latter is a fascinating novel about a young girl living in 17th century Quebec. It is probably not a secret, given what I have said about her here, that Willa Cather is one of my favorite novelists.

Rating:
Summary: a must for anyone growing up midwestern
Review: The words "historical fiction" may inflict the same agony as "pop quiz" or "speeding ticket" to many teenagers, but reading My Antonia is quite painless.

Title character Antonia Shimerda is introduced to the reader and the narrator when she can say only one phrase of English: "We go Black Hawk, Nebraska." On a seemingly endless train ride across a young United States, Bohemian immigrant Antonia and her family meet recently orphaned Virginia-born Jim Burden for the first time. He tells the story of the Shimerdas and his friend Antonia now as a middle aged man, illustrating his respect for the prairie and the woman who embodies it.

My Antonia is a story for the most part told about the youthful years of a select group of opinionated, hardworking, and brave souls. It is unique, and an especially intriguing read for teens, because the novel is told as a bittersweet memory from an old man. The story might make a reader realize that you may actually look back fondly on some of those pop tests or speeding tickets. "The best days, " quotes Cather on the beginning page, "are the first to flee."

Rating:
Summary: Cover to cover stupidity.
Review: They purposely choose the stupidest, most boring, flat-out WORST books in the entire universe to make us use for the summer reading program. This book is a summer reading HORROR. I got (very literally) a page and a half into it and was appalled. I thought, "How am I going to get through this entire piece of garbage?!" This is one of those dull, puts-you-to-sleep stories that makes you ask: "WHY? Do I honestly CARE about ANY of these characters?" It drags on...and on...and on! Never entertaining, amusing, interesting, fascinating. Just sheer stupidity, cover to cover. "My Antonia" is horrible. I don't recommend it to anyone. And I don't have the time to waste reading [junk]like this, and I don't know how or why Willa Cather bothered to write it. This is supposed to be a great work of literature, no? Well, I've read great works of literature and gotten something special out of them. I got NOTHING out of this. I like books with an actual storyline. "My Antonia" is one of the worst books ever, period. I give it negative one star.

Rating:
Summary: My Antonia by: Willa Cather
Review: The book My Antonia by Willa Cather is a very slow moving book but the plot makes up for it. It takes a very long time for any action or plot changes to accure. Though the character's personalities were very strong, they had little to build on. The infatuation between Jim and Antonia keeps the book moving and makes you wonder what the result will be. The suicide of Mr. Shimerda and not knowing whether it actually was a suicide hooks you early on. His death begins the attachment to the characters which lasts throughout the entire book. It makes Antonia an easy character to relate to because everyone has lost a loved one. Though the action was dull for the most part, the layered personalities makes this book, overall, worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting & Stimulating
Review: My Antonia (pronounced An-toe-knee-UGH, not An-Tony-a) is a lesson in life about responsibility and unshared love. Jim Bundren lives his life in love with an unattainable girl, Antonia, a beautiful Bohemian immigrant. It is from this point that Cather begins to explore what it is to be human and the irony that goes along with it.

This is a powerful book, for the unexpected is always occurring. Cather reveals how sometimes the people that others believe to be unworthy are the most worthy of all. Antonia and her two immigrant friends reveal faithfulness to their patrias, a loyalty to their home and to their family. However, Jim, an American, does the opposite of this, abandoning his home. It is this idea that spawns various realizations; among these is the idea that sometimes where a person is born or how well he lives plays no part on how faithful he is to his patria, owning up to responsibilities. It is an ironic view of people: the supposingly faithful, white American (who is actually a fleeing boy who cannot think for himself) in comparison to the flashy, low-class immigrant (who is actually responsible, loyal and strong-willed).

Cather explores the idea of racism and its artificiality; however, this IS NOT A DULL BOOK!!! Suspenseful and interesting events occur throughout; there is a couple who kills (this story is revealed), a drunk who sets out to rape an innocent woman, unwed sexual relations and more! Needless to say, Cather reveals her point in a way that stimulates the mind intellectually while satisfying the desire for scandal. This is definitely a book that keeps you thinking and one that can be related to various other works. If you like this one, I recommend William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying!

P.S. This is an easy read!

Rating:
Summary: Shift of Emphasis away from Narrator and Antonia
Review: Cather's Details:
All the reviews of My Antonia are more or less useful; mine moves away from the usual content-based critique (the narrative voice, Antonia-as-character, Nebraska and immigrant settlement of the plains, etc) and focuses on a brief analysis of the emotive detail in this by-now 20th-century American classic. The detail I am underlining is the Peter/Pavel incident with the wolves in their native Russia and how Cather, in no more than two-three pages, elicits a strong and enduring response that marks the incident and its consequences for the two characters named, but also creates a tone of renewal through death (dealing with death) that informs the novel as a whole.
The friends drive the lead sleigh, the one with the bride and groom, back to the home town after the wedding reception. It's winter, it's night, and the wolves have begun their attack on the wedding party. As sleigh after sleigh is overturned behind them, and the screams of the passengers as they are attacked fill the night air, Peter and Pavel realize that they must "lighten" or perish. Cather's use of the euphonism "lighten" for 'throw the bride and groom to the wolves' seems a mere detail, but the emotional response, keyed to the fact that the friends are continually ostracized from that night on, never leaves the reader's consciousness, and helps raise the book from historico-dramatic American realist-romantic fiction to poignant memoir.

Rating:
Summary: My Antonia as Literature
Review: "My Antonia" is about the life of immigrants in our country in the early 1900's, in particular, is Antonia and her family who emigrated from Bohemia. Her family settled in the Nebraska plains where she meets the neighbor's son, Jim Burden. It is Jim who tells the story about Antonia authored by Willa Cather. Here he tells about the life on the farm, after the farm, and how he thinks of her in later life and meets again with here many years later. It is a spell binding adventurous novel about life in the prairie. It brings the characters to life in the way Willa Cather describes them in everyday life.
In this story Jim Burden expresses his feelings about Antonia throughout the book about her beauty as she matures. You get the sense that he is in love with her however, he is unable to confirm his own feelings for her. Eventually, they both move on pursuing their own goals in life, but Jim never forgets Antonia and is able to write a story about her and their childhood together. The emotions flow heavily throughout this piece.

Rating:
Summary: Worthy of Lasting Impressions
Review: I have been required to read this novel a number of times throughout my academic career...And college served as no exception...A most recent expectation took place in a course entitled Major Themes in Literature...Where My Antonia...Among other works such as The Symposium...Oedipus Rex...And The Importance of Being Earnest...Were all incorporated into a curriculum centered around various ideas and these were... Desire...Humanity...Identity...Free Will and Determinism...Coming of Age...Innocence and Experience...The Individual and Society...And Suffering, Divine Justice, and Theodicy...To name a few...And some played a major role in laying the groundwork for the literary framework of My Antonia...However...Beyond looking at some of the themes at work in this novel...I particularly appreciated Cather's depiction of the American landscape...Being a geology major and all...I think any book that makes Nebraska sound beautiful is worthy of these lasting impressions.