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: An American Classic!
Review: Willa Cather's novel was a recent selection for the One Book, One Chicago program and what a rich treat it was, since I was familar with any work from this author. While I'm not big on "pioneer" or "western" type novels, this book was sheer joy. There are many themes in the book and to go through each one would be to write a review that goes on for pages and pages. So I'll try and hit the major themes that came out to me. First the theme of the immigrant expereince are here, the hardships of trying to build a new life in a stange life where opportunity is promised. Second, you get the real feel of the Nebraskan land and the effect of the land on the people and vise versa. Third, the reader becomes aware of the "circle of life" and the people in our lives; how our existence effects and is affected by so many people. Fourth and finally, it is a subtle love story between Antonia and the narrator, Jim Burden, which is the device the Cather uses to tell this incredbile story. Jim leaves small town life an becomes a educated sucessful man, while Antonia stays behind and gains her education from the her own life, one that can not be validated by any piece of paper. A true masterpiece is written here with every sentence.