Theme Of Happiness In My Antonia

Antonia knows the struggle firsthand since she has faced the harsh conditions of starting off in a new country since she is a Shimerda. Antonia tells Jim,“’ If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us’” (Cather 90). Antonia knows the racial difference between her and Jim. She has to work harder than the native speakers to be able to achieve what might come easily to them. Later on in the novel, Antonia goes off with a guy named Larry Donovan he informs her that his job has moved. This ended up being a lie. He leaves her whilst she's pregnant, so she becomes a single mom. Jim expresses his thoughts, “I was bitterly disappointed in her [Ántonia]. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity” (Cather 192). Jim expresses his dismay that Antonia has basically ruined her life by putting faith into a man of words. Antonia’s reputation fell drastically after this and it appears as though it would be hard to pick up. However, when Jim returns, he ends up being wrong. In the literary criticism, Anthony M. Dykema-VanderArk states, “She appears at the end of My Antonia as a figure who has tri­umphed over the hardships of her life through stal­wart struggle...ensuring an easier future for her children” (Dykema-VanderArk 211). Antonia has gone through a lot throughout her life. Her father’s death to ruining her reputation by being oblivious. Her race caused her to be inferior compared to the women that don't have to work in order to survive, but she still gives a good life to her children. Despite her hardships, she still kept to her strong attitude and doesn't sway away from it. That's success through the work she put

In “My Antonia”, Cather uses symbols from nature to express the essential aspects of the characters. According to Cather, ones’ environment symbolizes ones’ psychology. This may even mold one’s emotional condition by giving emotions a tangible form. For example, the river is used as a symbol of freedom. In the story, the river makes Jim feel free, and he comes to admire freedom.

In chapter X of My Antonia, there is a conflict between Mrs. Harling and Antonia. Antonia is seen trying to find another job with another group of family because she was told by Mrs. Harling that she should stop going to dances. Antonia was furious about this and decided to leave this job in search for another. She states, “A girl like me has got to take her good times when she can. Maybe there won’t be any tent next year, I guess I want to have my fling, like the other girls.” This particular passage tells the reader that Antonia is searching for her own independence and she will do anything to seek it.

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 central narrative of My Antonia could be a check upon the interests, and tho' in his fib Jim seldom says something directly concerning the concept of the past, the general tone of the novel is very unhappy. Jim’s motive for writing his story is to do to change some association between his gift as a high-powered any professional person and his nonexistent past on the NE grassland ; in re-creating that past, the novel represent each Jim’s retention and his feelings concerning his recollections. in addition, inside the narrative itself, persona usually look rachis yearningly toward the past that they need losing, particularly when Book I. Life in blackness Hawk, Jim and Ántonia recall their Day on the farm Lena appearance back toward her spirit together with her family; the Shimerdas and therefore the Russian mirror on their lives in their several home countries before they immigrated to the United Country .

Julia Norris conveys, “No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Antonia.” Love is a very strong force that cannot be muffled, but it can be ignored. In My Antonia, love was always bringing Jim and Antonia together. Cather says in My Antonia, “I had a sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man’s experience is. For Antonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.” So Jim and Antonia were in love a person could say. This love was often ignored throughout the book though. Jim many times moved away seeking new opportunities instead of staying and loving

Your mother passed me down to your 15-year old self. I am kissed by your heartbeat in a necklace.

Throughout My Antonia, the difference between immigrants and native lifestyles are shown. While neither Jim not Antonia is rich, Jim is definitely more well off than her. He knows the language and has enough that he can have more opportunities. Antonia realizes that her life is going to be more difficult and that she will have to work more because of her mother’s decision to move to America. She tells Jim that “if I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us,” (90) and knows that her gentle personality might be at stake. This also foreshadows future events where Antonia struggles as an immigrant farmer. It adds obstacles to her life which might lead to them drifting apart in their friendship, even complete separation. This relates to the world in how immigrants had a harder time getting going in life. Antonia’s mother has already become changed because of poverty. She is grasping, selfish, and believes everyone should help her family. Jim’s grandmother defends her, knowing that, “a body never knows what traits poverty might bring out in them,” (60), though it is socially unacceptable. The pressures of helping her family led Antonia to not be educated and become a farmer. She is happy, but this leads to Jim being away, “twenty years before I kept my promise,” (211) as he is a successful lawyer and travels. They still have old connections, though being from Bohemia did change Antonia’s life and where it could have gone.

In the late 19th century, gender roles were strictly enforced. Being a woman did severely affect the possibilities or the chances to succeed. Success depended on how badly the person wanted to succeed. Men were meant to be the main source, and women were meant to get married and care for her family. But Ántonia, does not want to obey to the typical female role. On the prairie, after her father dies, she insists on working in the fields with the men. This disappoints Jim and even agitated him by Antonia's change to a more "masculine" attitude.

In the book “ The Shimerdas” there is a guy named Jim Burden and a girl named Antonia Shimerda who were both brought to Nebraska from different places to become pioneers. Jim Burden is an orphan from Virginia and Antonia Shimerda comes from a family of Bohemian immigrants. Antonia came to America to have a better life and become successful. However, Jim ends up teaching Antonia english. In Section 2 of the book Jim defines the word happiness by saying “At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep”. This shows that Jim is stating that happiness is a great feeling and that it's a feeling that is like a sixth sense to people.

Jim meets Antonia’s family and leaves the next day after catching yp with Antonia’s life. Jim realizes that a man’s life goes in a circle and, “ For Antonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again.” (Cather 238) Jim and Antonia after catching up discovered that they both went in two different life paths. Jim wen to school and got married but had no kids, while Antonia did not go to school but got married and has eleven kids. Jim and Antonia are physically in different paths but destiny draws them together at the end. They will also meet up at the end when they have not met each other in twenty years. Jim and Antonia’s relationship is fate and is another reason why they have a strong bond.

Antonia, when she first moved to America was penniless. Her family lived on a small farm in a little dugout house. The first thing that Jim knew about Antonia is that she was a child from a poor bohemian family. Jim is not very rich himself, but throughout the story Jim talks about Antonia always referring to her house, her farm, her family, her job, that she had limited things to do since she was poor. Antonia was always viewed as poor from beginning to end of the story. Towards the beginning of the story after Jim just moved in with his grandparents, Jim's grandmother makes a comment about Antonia's family and their home on the way to meet them for the first time. "If they're nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter in that cave of Krajiek's," said grandmother. "It's no better than a badger hole; no

Jim feels the way he does about happiness because he has led a fairly charmed life. Even though he became an orphan and had to move to Nebraska to be raised by his grandparents, Jim had many privileges and support from them growing up and he tended to be able to set his sights on what he wanted and go after it with success. Antonia, in contrast, even with her wonderful soul, great strength and ability to keep moving forward with a positive attitude, had to fight hard for every bit of happiness that came her way. Antonia says to Jim, “Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us.” She and Jim had drifted apart some after her father committed suicide. She and Jim were sitting together watching an electrical storm on top of the chicken house and Jim asked her why she had changed. It was clear that Antonia could see that Jim had a promising future ahead because he was going to school and she was trapped having to take care of her family and wouldn’t be able to go to school.

Nebraska sparks Jim's imagination and it is like he is born again and "dissolved into something complete and great." This is language of romantics, the idea that a connection can be made with the spiritual and energy of the place. so I think that Antonia would agree with Jims definition because She doesn't have time to learn And she can work like mans

My Antonia is a philosophical story, with dream-like ideas left and right. Even so, the book’s main theme was clearly the transition or journey from childhood to adulthood. This theme applied to both the main characters, Jim and Antonia, who were children when the story begins and adults when it ends. At ten years old, Jim Burden moved to the plains of Black Hawk, Nebraska. His parents had died in an epidemic, and Jim was sent to live with his father’s parents on their Nebraska farm. In his new home, he met a Bohemian girl named Antonia, a free-spirited, lively, unique personality. He fell in love with her, and although his feelings were not returned, he and Antonia became great friends. The book has numerous examples of traditional obstacles that people their ages go through, along with additional hardships such as poverty and death of close family members. Antonia developed a sense of independence that became her most prominent trait throughout the book. The characters found activities and places where they felt like they belonged, and they began to discover who they were. As Jim (the narrator) states, “The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again.” Jim was speaking of a place