Similarities Between My Antonia And A Wagner Matinee

To solve the “Indian problem”, they designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi river. White Americans, more so the ones who lived on the western frontier, feared and resented the Native Americans they would encounter. They saw the Indians as unfamiliar people

My Ántonia is a novel written by Author Willa Cather. Throughout the development of the novel there are two characters that have a predominant push and pull relationship, Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda. The question is never really answered concerning their relationship and as to weather he is in love with her, or if they are just friends. The story specifically focused on Ántonia and what she meant to Jim. Although at the end of the novel we come to find that Jims feeling for her appearances do not matter. Jim sees people for who they are as a person. Jim has always enjoyed people and has had a particular interest in who they are morally. That is how resolves Ántonia at the end of the novel, despite his conflicted emotions and her weathered appearance. It was almost a spiritual assessment of Ántonia and his morale feelings for her and who she is. In the end who a person is in there “true inner self” is more important to Jim than visual appearance. My Ántonia gives you that message by how Jim sees the world and the people in it specifically Ántonia.

The purchase of Louisiana doubled the United States in size and was the key to the beginning of westward expansion. This expansion of the U.S. served as one of the defining topics of American history but contrarily, it nearly demolished the entire democracy. Because of Louisiana’s high birth rate and rapid immigration, the United States’ population increased from about five million to more than twenty-three million people. Such expeditious growth as well as economic depressions drove millions of Americans to the west in search of fresh territory and opportunities also known as manifest destiny. At the start of the 1830’s almost one hundred twenty-five thousand Native Americans lived on southeast acres that their ancestors had inhabited for generations. But then President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian removal act which gave the government the authority to trade native held land for land to the west that the United States had obtained with the purchase of Louisiana. By the closing of the decade, only a few Natives were left because the Federal government mandated that they abandon their homeland and go to designated Indian territory. This expedition was better known as the Trail of Tears. The purpose of these reservations was to bring the Native Americans under United States government control, eliminate conflict between the Indians and settlers, and finally to further encourage Native Americans to take on the habits of settlers. In exchange tribes usually received money but it was never a lot and the majority were spent on purchasing food and supplies from traders. But the daily living conditions of the reservations primarily had the most catastrophic results with devastating and long lasting effects. Overall, the rapid territorial expansionism resulted in relocation and brutal mistreatment of Native American occupants of territories now occupied by the United

During the manifests destiny era, the white settlers of our new country were full of land-lust, they didn't think twice before taking ownership of land. "...Facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them,

Oklahoma was once referred to as the “Unassigned Lands” (Fugate,138). This land was land inside Indian Territory that had not been claimed by one of the tribes (Hoig). Whites believed they were entitled to this land and wanted to get the statement across that America is a “white man’s country” (Dorman, 38). Immediately after Benjamin Harrison, the United States of America’s president at the time, announced the land would be opened for settlement, people began gathering their belongings, loading their wagons, or preparing their horses for travel. Thousands of people crowded the borders of the Unassigned Lands in hopes of establishing a settlement in the area (Fugate,140). At noon on April 22, 1889, people dashed across the land with their belongings seeking a plot of land. The Oklahoma Land Run was an exciting, puzzling, and in some cases, a violent day in Oklahoma’s history.

The American people had a great relationship with the land. In “American Progress” it shows how people are wanting the land out west, so they are moving to the west. As the Americans and new technology are moving west, they’re pushing the Indians out of their own land. In the article “on Manifest Destiny,1839,” it states that the Manifest Destiny is the God given right that people can move west, and have a relationship with the land and do as they please with it. In the article it states,” The expansive future is our arena, and for our history.”

Willa Cather’s My Antonia is the story of a lifelong friendship that began between Jim and Antonia, two people who became friends when they were young and lived on the Nebraska prairie. Jim and Antonia encountered a large rattlesnake and a startled and, rather than yell out in English, Antonia speaks in her native Bohemian language. Antonia’s father, depressed and sad over missing his homeland, committed suicide and left the family to fend for themselves in a strange country. Jim’s grandparents decide that they are too old to run a ranch daily so they move to the closest town, Black Hawk.

Despite the push to move westward, it was not till the end the of the War of 1812 that the westward movement became a significant outpour of people across the continent. For the grand spirit Manifest Destiny created, it also created a darker side of American History. While the positive side of Manifest Destiny was a growth of enthusiasm and energy for pushing West to extend the land, the negative side was the belief that the white man had the right to destroy anything and anyone. "God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Tectonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-admiration" (Ryser) Tracing the path of Manifest Destiny across the west would highlight mass destruction of tribal organizations, confinement of Indians to reservations, and full blown genocide. The dark side of Manifest Destiny revealed the white man's belief that the settlement of land and civilization from its native peoples was predetermined by

The somewhat nomadic lifestyle of the plains natives often interfered with White America’s exploration of the great Wild West. To solve this inconvenience, White Americans moved the Natives onto reservations, which were smaller plots of land, sometimes not in the tribe’s home area, and were subject to White American authority. The creation of reservations was just one of many assaults on Native culture and destroyed the Native’s idea that freedom meant the ability to roam.

The story of the United States has always been one of westward expansion, beginning along the East Coast and continuing, often by leaps and bounds, until it reached the Pacific, what Theodore Roosevelt described as "the great leap westward." The acquisition of Hawaii and Alaska, though not usually included in discussions of Americans expanding their nation westward, continued the practices established under the principle of Manifest Destiny. Even before the American colonies won their independence from Britain in the Revolutionary War, settlers were migrating westward into what are now the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as parts of the Ohio Valley and the Deep South. Westward expansion was greatly aided in the early 19th century in the year of 1803 by the Louisiana Purchase , which was followed by the Corps of Discovery Expedition that is generally called the Lewis and Clark Expedition; the War of 1812, which secured existing U.S. boundaries and defeated native tribes of the Old Northwest, the region of the Ohio and Upper Mississippi valleys, and the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forcibly moved virtually all Indians from the Southeast to the present states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, a journey known as the Trail of Tears. In 1845, a journalist by the name of John O’Sullivan created the term "Manifest Destiny," a belief that Americans and American institutions are morally superior and therefore Americans are morally obligated to spread those institutions in order to free people in the Western Hemisphere from European monarchies and to uplift "less civilized" societies, such as the Native American tribes and the people of Mexico. The Monroe Doctrine, adopted in 1823, was the closest America ever came to making Manifest Destiny official policy; it put European nations on notice that the U.S. would defend other nations of the Western Hemisphere from further colonization. The debate over whether the U.S. would continue slavery and expand the area in which it existed or abolish it altogether became increasingly contentious throughout the first half of the 19th century. When the Dred Scott case prevented Congress from passing laws prohibiting slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska act gave citizens of new

Those in favor of westward expansion embraced the idea of the Manifest Destiny. They believed it was their God-given duty to “increase the wealth and happiness of… our society” [Doc. G] by expanding their nation from coast to coast. In order to achieve this goal, Native Americans were forcefully removed from their homelands in the south and pushed further West in an event known as the Trail of Tears [Doc. D]. Supporters of westward expansion believed they were helping natives by forcing them to move and assimilate into Western culture. One of these supporters, Lewis Cass, wrote: “[the Cherokees] have resisted… every effort to meliorate [improve] their situation…” [Doc. C]. Many believers in the Manifest Destiny

A5. There are quite a few similarities between the poem "A Wagner Matinee" and the book "My Antonia". One of them is that they both involve one character seeing another character after a long time. One quote from My Antonia that proves this is "I told Antonia I would come back, but life intervened and it was 20 years before I kept my promise." A quote from "A Wagner Matinee" that proves this is "She questioned me absently about various changes in the city, but she was chiefly concerned that she had forgotten to leave instructions about feeding half-skimmed

Cather’s work, My Antonia, is a memoir told from Jim Burden’s perspective, as he recollects his youth moving from Virginia to life on the plains of Black Hawk, Nebraska. Upon moving in with his grandparents, Jim begins to admire Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant who moved to Black Hawk alongside the rest of her family, the Shimerdas. As Jim spends more time in Black Hawk, he bears witness to the many hardships which the Shimerdas faced, such as their limited proficiency with English, their horrible financial situation, and the death of the father, Mr. Shimerda. Later in the novel, Jim moves into town to further his education, while Antonia moves into town to find work. In town, Jim finds more hard-working immigrants, known as the “Hired

The setting of the story has tremendous impact on the characters and themes in the novel "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. Cather's delicately crafted naturalistic style is evident not only in her colorfully detailed depictions of the Nebraska frontier, but also in her characters’ relationship with the land on which they live. The common naturalist theme of man being controlled by nature appears many times throughout the novel, particularly in the chapters containing the first winter.

The Italian opera and the German opera are two different fields that both share characteristics, some of which are paralleled, and some of which contrast. Specifically, Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner use motifs such as: redemption through love, patriotism, and sacrifice which run throughout both of their operas. The theme of betrayal also seems to be echoed throughout both operas; yet they are each used to project a different response. The significance of this comparison demonstrates that Verdi and Wagner may allude to the same references, such as Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, and Byron, but the operas The Flying Dutchman (German opera) and that of Nabucco (Italian opera) are completely different in context, and musical style; perhaps even