Literary Analysis Essay on My Antonia by Willa Cather

Introduction

The novel My Antonia by Willa Cather has characters from different backgrounds and settings. Antonia and her family the Shimerdas are initially from Bohemia. According to (Wilhite 270) there is a cultural dissonance in My Antonia and the struggle to survive and yet the characters manager to work together for the most part. Nebraska the land of the prairies. Apart from the Shimerdas, who are Bohemians, there are the Russians, Peter and Palev. Peter grows watermelons sand the two came to America from Siberia in Russia because in their village they had been responsible for the death of loved ones. Other immigrants include Germans, who have a settlement to the North of James Burden's grandparents' farm. There are also Scandinavians; Norwegians, Swedes and even there is mention of a blind black musician. All these culturally diverse people are looking for new opportunities in Nebraska

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Even Jim Burden, who is the narrator in the story, has to adjust to life in the countryside of Nebraska and the small town of Black Hawk. Jim is originally from Virginia, and at ten years old he is already an orphan. When Jim meets Antonia as a ten-year-old, she is 13 years old but enthusiastic and curious about life: "Antonia had opinions about everything, and she was soon able to make them known" (Cather 23). Jim admires Antonia and loves him romantically even though she sees him as a little brother.

The tragedy that sets the story on a different trajectory is the suicide of Mr. Shimerda, Antonia's father. Krajiek, their fellow Bohemian is suspected by some people to have been involved somehow, Jim Burden being one of them. The old man was a musician in the "old country," and he was depressed in the fact that making music could not fetch him money and respect in Nebraska. The Shimerdas have a very efficient work ethic. Ambrosch is a very hard-working farmer. Antonia too plows the land, and as fourteen and fifteen years old she has a muscular physique for a woman. Antonia's brother Marek, who Jim calls "the crazy one" due to his mental problems, puts an effort in working the land. Most of the adult immigrants in the novel work the farmland.

Otto Fuchs is another immigrant from Austria. He is a farm-hand and a sort of jack of all trades for the Burdens. When Antonia's father dies, Otto is the only carpenter who can make the coffin. He remarks, "I sometimes wonder if there'll be anybody about to do it for me" (Cather 125). Fuchs is concerned that he might not get a proper coffin when he dies. He is an excellent carpenter, and Jim Burden is sure that carpentry could make him more money. Later in the story, Fuchs goes farther west to prospect for gold, and that is the last thing we know about him.

There are also the "hired girls" called so because they are the cooks, maids, waitresses and other subordinate roles. The best two are Lena Harding and Tiny Soderbell. Both of them start from rags to riches. They are the older girls in their families and so have to work in Black Hawk to send money for their parents and younger siblings. Lena Harding, a Norwegian, as a nineteen-year-old girl has a reputation for being a temptress. She surprises everybody when she moves to Lincoln and becomes a fashion icon there; designing and making clothes for all kinds of clients. Tiny Soderbell manages a guesthouse and then gets lucky in the gold prospection business to the point that she is the wealthiest person by the end of the novel. There is a section where Jim, Tiny and Lena Harding meet in San Francisco (Cather 340), and the two women are good friends and take care of each other. The working immigrant women are essential to the immigration narrative as they show that hard work pays regardless of background.

Works Cited

Cather, Willa. "My Antonia. 1918." Ed. Charles Mignon and Karil Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P (1994).

Dixon, Mary Marie. "Willa Cather's Immigrants: An Aesthetics of Food Strategies in Negotiating Displacement Anxieties." The Journal of American Culture 40.3 (2017): 227.

Wilhite, Keith. "UNSETTLED WORLDS: AESTHETIC EMPLACEMENT IN WILLA CATHER'S" MY ANTONIA." Studies in the Novel 42.3 (2010): 269-286.