How Does Jim Burden Characterize In My Antonia

My Antonia, by Willa Cather, is a novel about Jim Burden and his relationship and experiences growing up with Antonia Shimerda in Nebraska. Throughout the book Jim reflects on his memories of Nebraska and the Shimerda family, often times in a sad and depressing tone. One of the main ways Cather is able to provoke these sad emotions within the reader is through the suicide of Antonia’s father, Mr. Shimerda. His death was unexpected by everyone and it is thought that homesickness is what drove him to take his own life. Homesickness was surely felt by Mr. Shimerda, as it was by many, but it was the failure to adequately find a way to provide for his family that sent Mr. Shimerda into a

At the beggining of the book Jim lost his parents and was sent to live in Nebraska with his grandparents. The day that Jim met the Shimerdas, the girl who they called Antonia caught his eye and he thought that she was pretty. Soon after Mr.Shimerda begged Jim to teach his daughter Antonia, she started speaking english a lot better. Jim and Antonia became best friends, they would see each other as much as possible. Although Jim and Antonia were best friends they had different ideas on life. The Shimerdas lived a very different life than Jims family, the Shimerdas had to live off of the very little they had. During winter the Shimerdas have to go with very little food and shelter from the harsh weather while Jims family didnt't have to worry

In the introduction and chapter one of My Antonia, Willa Cather focuses on the nature of the pioneer experience. By portraying the experiences of two immigrants of Black Hawk, Nebraska, Willa Cather displays the wonders as well as the hardships of the pioneer experience. Jim Burdon, a young boy ten years of age is moving to Black Hawk from Virginia after the death of both of his parents. Jim Burdon’s pioneer experience involves moving cross country to live with his grandparents. For Jim, the wonders of the landscape as well as the beauty of nature inspired awe within him.

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.

O Pioneers by Willa Cather sets itself apart from other novels of its time because of what its stands for, feminism. It exemplifies women’s equality, represented by the main character, Alexandra, by showing her survival in a male dominated society. She succeeded in building her female identity and achieved a sense of female attainment by revolutionizing the wild land and struggling for her equal rights with all that surrounded her. This paper focuses on the feminist thoughts and the positive attitude of the image of the strong character Alexandra, who was independent, brave, and optimistic. A spirit like hers, of strength and courage, insisted that she would never be defeated by man or nature.

In the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather is a book based upon the main characters memories. Many critics have criticized this novel, and have focused on such literary elements as setting,theme, tone and etc. However the strongest argument is the one that states that the foundation of every element in the book is based on the personal memories of Willa Cather. After researching Willa Cather you can discover many biographies that talk about her life. In many instances I found stories about her life that I found similar to Jim and Antonias. Since she used personal experiences and turned them into a story it adds a special touch to her writing.

Willa Cather, a nineteenth century American female writer, used her childhood experiences growing up on the great plains of Nebraska to write about a woman named Alexandra Bergson and her struggles on her family’s farm on the Nebraskan frontier in the book, O Pioneers! (“Willa Sibert Cather”). The narrator follows Alexandra throughout her life, and shows how she became successful while overcoming the patriarchy. Conversely, Cather also wrote about a young, confused girl named Marie Tovesky, who found herself in a crumbling relationship, not sure if she loved the man she married, or Alexandra’s sibling Emil. Her story both regales the reader with a tragedy, but also shows how others treated and oppressed women during that time. Cather’s O Pioneers! tells the tales of two women who find themselves on varying levels of society, and uses their stories to address feminism.

A Wagner Matinee and My Antonia share a lot of the same crucial elements of the spirit and values of what it is to be American. Both poem and story share similar characteristics towards the theme and setting of taking place in 19th century Nebraska "We grew up together in the same Nebraska town-and we had much to say to each other" (Cather, W., & Urgo, J. R. (2003). We see that Willa Cather has a fascination with the stories of the pioneer lifestyle and a fond tendency of using male protagonists in her stories. We also are available to see the somber and enduring reality of how life hard was for a pioneer we can most likely reference such a somber attitude towards the lifestyle by looking at the author's personal experiences living out west in Nebraska during the late 1900s.

Willa Cather’s My Ántonia displays the gender-focused concern about power within the female character’s life. The narrator, Jim Burden, is immediately introduced to the reader as a man who sees the world through rose-colored glasses. That is, he’s got a romantic disposition on life and sees things the way he wants to see them, rather than the way they actually are. The most complicated area that concerns Jim, though, is his relationship with Ántonia. Throughout the novel, there’s a clear longing for her that Jim seems to exude—he never really attempts to kindle a romantic relationship with her, but she’s a highly- romanticized figure in his eyes and someone who he holds very dear. So it’s clear, then, that because of this closeness that Jim feels towards Ántonia, he holds her to standards that have significant

From the birth of the United States, freedom has been the goal. Freedom inspired a large amount of people to come to American to start a new life. With an influx of people and the desire for personal space, America expanded under the jurisdiction of Manifest Destiny. American’s of that time began to move west of the Mississippi river into untamed, and isolated areas. There are many accounts of these migrations and stories of the untamed wilderness, but one of the classics is My Antonia by Willa Cather. Cather, an American migrant to the west herself, relates many of the experiences in her novel to the stories of her childhood. In a critical analysis of the work of Willa Cather written by James Woodress, published in Detroit, Michigan in the

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.

In her novel My Antonia, Willa Cather, while writing in a sexist time, calls attention to the power of the female in life and society through Antonia, Lena Lingard, Tiny Soderball and Frances Harling and accentuates and celebrates the significance of the matriarchal world by use of Jim Burden as the narrator. Jim holds an enlightened consciousness of the female because, after spending most of his life with these women, he sees how they started with nothing ended with a successful life. In a time when women were expected to be subordinate to men, Cather’s female characters defy the stereotype and prove their self reliance and independence with the accomplishment of a prosperous life. The strength of the female is primarily revealed to Jim through Antonia, whose determination and confidence show to him that despite her struggles, she continues to give birth to multiple children which further triumphs her challenges that led to successes. Since most women are accompanied by a male in life, Lena proves that even with their absence, success can come from female independence. Frances serves as a more obvious explanation to how females thrived in a non supported environment because she has the same job as many men, but victoriously triumphs over them. By declining the conform to the typical female role, Antonia, Lena, Frances, and Tiny advocate to the female character their importance in life and society, showing that their absence would be virtually useless to males.

In "My Antonia", Jim states that happiness means “ . . . to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep” (Book 1, Section 2). Jim, along with Antonia were two kids who traveled to Nebraska at a young age. They came from completely different socioeconomic statuses and despite Antonia's lack of language they eventually befriended each other and grew up together. From the very beginning of the book, we find out Jim's opinion on happiness as he is outstandingly intelligent and can easily express his thoughts. By the end of the book, however, through Antonia's words and actions, we find out that she agrees with Jim's definition of happiness.

Willa Cather draws a stark contrast between the respectable women of Black Hawk and the “hired girls” in books II and III of My Antonia through Jim’s unavoidable attachment to them.  The “hired girls” are all immigrants who work in Black Hawk as servants to help support their families in the country.  They are hardworking and charming.  They are simple and complicated.  They are sad and joyful.  They work all day and dance all night.  For Jim they are the most interesting people who  reside in Black Hawk.  The respectable women are boring and predictable.  They all go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning.  Their

“But Nebraska was not always a bed of roses. When the first settlers arrived, they found a harsh, unforgiving place, a vast treeless expanse of barren, drought-parched soil. And so, summoning up the dynamic pioneer spirit of hope and steely determination, they left. But a few of them remained” (Barry). Pioneers move west to the Nebraska area, hoping to find fertile soil and climate weather. In reality, the soil is poor and winters were hard. The pioneers are expecting the land to work with them, but it is actually working against them. Many pioneers give up and leave; the few who remain are proven to be strong and determined to force the land to cooperate. Willa Cather’s purpose in My Ántonia and O Pioneers!, both set on the Nebraska Divide, is to argue to readers that women can be strong and independent pioneers, through their increased understanding of the land, as seen through similes, personification, juxtaposition, and arrangement.